is it possible i could stabilize my cable cam with a counter wait? im building my first design for a snowboard film any ideas would be great
thanks

Hi Kmart14 - Welcome to the site.

Check out Léonard Chevalier's "Bignoz Cable Cam" His site is in French, but using google translate you can make out most of what he's trying to say: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http% ... en&ie=UTF8

I believe that's what you're looking for.

The body building weights are pretty good weights for stabilization. Adding weight in the right amount and areas will make it more stable. Ideally you want heaps of weight but in practice that can make everything more difficult. Harder to get they sag out of the static rope/ cable, stronger rope, harder to manhandle the thing in some possible tricky situations. I have been using some 1kg weights for a steadycam I made. They are a little smaller than the ones bignoz is using. Plus they are pretty cheap and can be bought from any sports store.
The trick is to try and use the gear you are are putting on the moving trolley as the counter weight. eg. Camera, pan/tilt, control battery. Then fine tune it with additional weight.

Have a look also at this site. This guy is the world licencee for superflycam.
http://www.bensemanoff.com/semanoff-photo-gallery.html
There are some great pictures of the superflycam and as you can see they are using a vertical style balance. The weight of the camera below and the control gear above as a counter balance. I must mention they are also using 2 or 3 kenton gyros to keep it rock steady as well ( Big $$$$$ there!!!) They are the the black things in the photos that look like vitamin capsules, maybe 3" round.

The brother of superflycam, flycam uses the horizontal balance method to keep the overall height down. Camera to one side batteries to other.

Having adjustable sliding mounts for the weights and other gear helps. When you get it all on the rope on and it leans to the side you can then fine tune the balance and therefore the stabilization.
Having bigger pulleys on the trolley and having them mounted further apart along the rope seems to help as well. There is less vibration transfered from the rope into the trolley.

If you want it really steady you can go for the ninjacam style with two static cables. It just means more rigging to do when setting it up and a bigger trolley.

Every time I see cablecam stuff on tv/videos, I check for sway. It appears even the pro models still can't get away from having some sway. It seems to help if you can afford the gyros, but they are heavy and expensive.

Hope this helped a bit.
Navo