DIY PVC Table/Skater Dolly

Introduction

A table dolly is a small, low profile camera support designed to be used on a table top and often used to add movement to product shots. Its axles are usually adjustable to allow it to travel in straight lines or curves and circles. It can be used for a lot more than product shots though. On a suitable, smooth floor it can be used for low-angle tracking and trucking shots. If you have a folding table (borrow one from craft services if you don’t) or a board on a couple of saw horses you can also easily simulate a slider or a traditional full sized tripod and dolly movement.

There are lots of commercial table dollies available at all sorts of price points. A lot of people have also made DIY versions ranging from the complex copies of the commercial offerings to a bean bag balanced on a skateboard. This version is very influenced by the Frugal Filmmaker’s project (http://filmflap.blogspot.com/2010/06/make-pvc-table-dolly-for-under-20.html I’m a big fan of his video tutorials and attitude) with a few key differences. The main one is that his design is intended for smaller camcorders but I wanted to be able to use it with a larger DSLR with a decent lens too. Too this end I needed the dolly to be more stable, so I made it have a larger wheel base. I also wanted it to take a more substantial head so I made it accept any standard head with a 1/4” screw mount. Being lazy, I didn’t want to have to cut any PVC pipe either so I came up with a simple drill, glue and screw design using easily sourced, hardware store, parts.

Supplies

• 1 Rollerblade (go to the thrift store if you don’t have one lying around from the 90’s; they’ll have plenty to choose from for a few dollars. It doesn’t need to be very high quality. It just needs to have 4 wheels and bearings in decent shape.)
• 5x 1/4” diameter, 1.5”long machine screws and appropriate washers and nuts for axles and to mount head. If you salvage the axles from the skate wheels you only need 1 screw to mount the tripod head.
• 3/4” PVC pipe components
• 4x connectors
• 4x 3” risers (threaded both ends)
• 4x Screw on end caps
• 2x plain T-joint
• 1x T-joint threaded incoming pipe
• 1x screw in plug
• 2x 90 degree elbows
• Glue
• PVC Cement
• Epoxy (the 7 min version specifically for plastic works best)
• Optional: Goof-off or some kind of solvent to remove the sticker residue.

Tools

• Drill
• 1/4” bit
• Allen Keys (to disassemble the skate)
• spanner/wrench

Construction
1. Preparation:

• Remove the wheels from the skate. If the axles on the skate are useable, salvage them as well.
  
• Remove stickers from the PVC components. This is the hardest part of the project but with the stickers covering all these components they won’t go together properly.

Running gear:

• Drill a hole in the center of each of the screw on end caps.
• Screw the wheels on to the end caps. Use a washer or two between the cap and the wheel and the nut and the wheel. You can either use new hardware or the original axles from the skate. I used the original skate axles (hex keys required) and nylon washers I had lying around between the end caps and the wheels. The wheels need to be tight enough to be held securely but not so tight that they don’t run freely.
• Glue the axle in place in the end cap using the epoxy for further rigidity. Set aside to cure.
• Glue a riser into each side of a plain T-joint using PVC Cement and a connector into the top of it - repeat for the other set of running gear.
• Screw the wheel assemblies on to the end of each riser.

Body:

• Glue a connector into each smooth end of your thread T-joint.
• Glue a 90 degree elbow onto each of the connectors. It is critical that this assembly is true if all 4 wheels are to sit level at once.

Tripod head mount:

• Drill a hole in the center of screw in PVC plug.
• With a washer on the bolt, screw it through the hole you made. Using a set bolt on the screw and the washer make the screw protrude about a 1/4” through the plug and is solidly in place.

Assembly:

• Screw the tripod mount into the threaded t-joint on the body.
• Mount any small to medium sized tripod head on to this. A small ball head is the most compact for traveling but a pan or small fluid head is easier to use.
• Slip the running gear onto the body. Friction will be enough to hold them in place but they should be loose enough to set a turning radius.
• Mount the camera onto the tripod head and you’re ready to roll.

Use/Demo
Just like any other camera movement, using the table-top dolly takes a little practice to get smooth. Use it to circle, or describe an arc, around or past an object. You can also dolly past or along a subject. You can also truck into or out from a subject. If a small subject is too low relative to your camera’s lens a small, improvised stage can be used (an upturned glass is useful). Set the radius of your turn before moving the camera and don’t try to adjust it in the middle of a movement.

Demo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martintaylor/4970049615/

Adventure in RC Helicopters: Honey Bee V2 FP Arrives!

Very excited as my new Honey Bee V2 helicopter arrived via UPS this morning - of course I was in the shower.

I opened the box and checked everything was there and undamaged - excitement rises! But then I encounter my first problem: I plug the Li-Po battery into the E-sky charger and both LEDs just keep flashing. According to the information on the charger this means “battery goes wrong” (another example of Google Translation at work?) which I assume means that there’s something wrong with the battery. I get in touch with xheli.com via their chat feature on their site and 'George' says he’s sending me a new charger - I don’t understand why when the badly translated lights indicate that it’s probably a fault with the battery but what do I know?

Oh well, at least I can try flying the virtual RC copter with the included software. I try to install it on my Win7 laptop and it fails to launch with the Application Error “Exception EComPort in module fms.exe at 008B728. Registry error (win error code: 2).”

A little digging around reveals that the software is actually freeware and it needs a ‘virtual com port’ to work. The solution the site describes doesn’t seem to work. I find another program called VSPE - that says I need to pay $25 for the 64bit port of the ‘free’ program but it does seem to work without me hitting my credit card again. Then FMS hits another problem “D3DRM.dll is not downloaded”. Back to the forum. I finally find the missing dll and place it in the FMS directory. Finally I get the program to work. I download and install a model of the Honey Bee V2 and calibrate my transmitter for use with the program (for the record, it must be switched on to work. Finally I ready to fly but I’m out of time.

A frustrating first experience - at least the helicopter looks good sitting on my desk.

Adventure in RC Helicopters: New Heli Ordered

After much deliberation I ordered a Esky Honey Bee V2 FP from XHeli.com. The other strong contender was the Falcon 40 from Exceed but, after reading around, the consensus seems to be that the Honey Bee is a little more robust. As, doubt, I'll crash my new toy while I'm learning this was the deciding factor for me. I also ordered some spares for the Honey Bee, the training legs and some other pieces to repair my very battered S107. Even with tax and shipping the total was less than $150. I think that’s pretty good bang for the buck.

Adventure in RC Helicopters: Introduction

My little brother very generously sent me a little S107 co-axial helicopter for my birthday. I really hadn’t being paying attention to the current state of technology in these little toys but as soon as I was up and flying around the house I was sold. The co-axial was so easy to fly but I wanted something more challenging; something bigger that could fly outdoors. A little research revealed that the next step up was probably a 4-channel, fixed pitch helicopter. Whereas the co-axial practically flies itself as long as you’re careful with the throttle, a single bladed helicopter flies more like the real deal and is much more tricky to learn. As I read the various tutorials around the web it became obvious that I shouldn’t expect to be lifting off the ground for at least a week or more and that I should expect to crash and have to repair my helicopter even if I was cautious and patient.

Improve the Google ranking of your portfolio site

I was recently asked by a photographer how she could improve the ranking of her site in google's results. I asked the obvious question, what google searches did she want her site to appear in? She told me "San Francisco based photographer" and the like.

So I took a look at her site. It was really nicely designed, showed off her work professionally and her work looked great but it was certainly not optimised for Google ramkings. Her site was built by a graphic designer who made the typical mistake of assuming that if you put keywords into the metatags (metatags hold information about your page/site that are not visible to your viewers but are used by other programs) that would be enough to court search engine spiders and bots. Unfortunately, google no longer really uses the keywords metatag very heavily, if at all. It was too easy to trick search engines into ranking a page highly based upon its keywords when its content may have had little to do with those words. Indeed, some speculate that if your page has keywords which are not then found on that page that your page may be penalized for "keyword spamming" and suffer in the search engine's ranking as a result. One thing we to do, therefore, is make sure that your keywords are also found elsewhere on your pages.

Please keep in mind that I'm not a specialist in this area and that improving a site's ranking is something akin to alchemy and is not an exact science but is subject to change whenever google changes its bots.

First off, a tiny bit of technical background to put my suggestions into context. Photo portfolio sites are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to search engine rankings. Why? Because search engines, and google in particular, do everything they can to rank what they consider the most useful and relevant results first (I won't complicate things be talking about those who chose to pay to improve their tankings). How does google do this? Mainly through the text found in various places on your pages (both hidden and visible) and through how many other pages link to your site. Being so image heavy in their content, as opposed to text based, puts photo portfolio sites at a distinct disadvantage in this regard.

Two tags that are used more heavily by search engines are your page's title and its description. The page's title is the text you see in the very top of the window of your browser when you visit a site. It is, therefore, really important that we get the page title right. For the site I was looking at I suggested something like " - a San Francisco / Bay Area based photographer specializing in lifestyle, interior, portrait, editorial and travel photography". Changing this could be the single most important factor in improving a sites ranking.

The description metatag is what a search engine uses to describe your site when it returns results. If a page does not have a description tag the search engine simply uses the first few words of text it can find on your site. This was what was happening with the site I was looking at so I suggested putting a description on to each page, something like: " is a San Francisco based photographer working in the Bay Area and specializing in lifestyle, interior, portrait, editorial and travel photography." This may seem very repetitious when viewed in relation to the title I suggested but there is a search engine concept called "keyword density" that I won't bore you with but basically means that the more often you page contains a word that the search engine indexes, the better its position in the result rankings.

Another thing I suugested we could do that may have a small effect on rankings is to optimize the "alt text" associated with the images on the site. The alt text is a piece of information associated with an image that tells the browser what the image is in a textual format. You rarely see this text but as a portfolio site has so little textual content we should take every opportunity we get to add some. I suggested that each image should contain a description like " - by - a San Francisco based photographer working in the Bay Area and specializing in lifestyle, interior, portrait, editorial and travel photography." Again, it may seem repetitive but keyword density means that it may pay off when a search engine hits your site to index it.

As the site was so image heavy I also suggested that adding a biography, mission statement or content page of some kind. This page could be then used to inject more text into the site which google would see as making your site more useful and, therefore, might affect the result rankings possitively.

Finally, the most important factor that will affect your site's rank I couldn't really help the site's owner with. That is the more often other "useful" sites link to a site the more useful google thinks the site is and the higher it will rank it. Do whatever you can to get links to your site put on other sites; get clients to link to your site from their acknowledgments, get your site listed in directories of similar sites. Do you ever write anything that is published on the web? If so, make sure you have a link back to your site from the article. Do you post to any bulletin boards or newsgroups? Put a link to your site in your signature so it's included in every post you make especially if that community is, itself, indexed by google. Persuade friends to link to your site - whatever you can do to get links to your site, do and the higher the ranking the site linking to yours has with a search engine itself the better. Google rates a link from an "important" site higher than a more provincial one.

How to Use Meta Tags In Search Engine Promotion
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google
Score Higher in Google Search Engine (and why Google is saving the web.)
The Search Engine Tutorial for Web Designers