Updates from the War on Wobblies

Some background

If the story of Spacecam was told as a motion picture, the tale would follow the traditional Hollywood theme of triumph over adversity.

The initial story would be told through a musical montage, with imagery flashing onto the screen alternatively showing a young Ron Goodman, the passionate inventor pouring his soul into his work, and spinning newspapers providing a sense of passing time.

It’s 1971 and Goodman leaves the company that would later become Wescam to travel to Europe with a Wescam system. Newspapers spin between imagery of Goodman reworking his system. With updated electronics, Goodman markets his Wescam as the X-Mount and newspaper headlines tell the story of anti-Wobbly victories in Europe – Superman I, The Empire Strikes Back, …

Showing an early commitment to technology tweaking that he would later become best known for, Goodman continued to iterate the X-Mount eventually rebranding it as the Spacecam. Spacecam is to aerial photography what BASF is to the rest of us. They don’t invent the core technology – they make the core technology better through trial and error and iterative improvements.

In 1991 Goodman and the Spacecam suffered a crushing-blow. While bravely battling Wobbly on Far and Away a devastating helicopter accident destroyed the only Spacecam. Fortunately both the helicopter pilot and Ron Goodman escaped without serious injury.

Where most people would have called it a day and moved on, Goodman left the accident with a renewed vigor and dedication to aerial cinematography. Over the following 10 years, Goodman not only rebuilt the Spacecam and increased inventory from one to four systems, he also continued to practice his craft as an aerial DoP, working on monster productions like Waterworld.

Living in the larger Wescam’s shadows for most of the 10 years following the crash, Goodman happily played the role of the scrappy underdog. However, he was never distracted from his singular focus of providing quality weapons for defeating Wobbly and constantly tweaked and reworked his systems.

Goodman’s hard work and perseverance paid off – for the past 5 years his Spacecam systems have been the leading weapon against Wobbly.

Goodman has tweaked his mature systems to obtain the highest level of performance that the core technology can provide, even complimenting the products where necessary with accessories that further advance performance beyond the technology’s capabilities.

Today, each Spacecam contains more than just the blood, sweat and tears of Ron Goodman. After years of work, the systems have grown to become an extension of Goodman himself.

My Review

Not being on the tightly controlled approved list at Spacecam, I had to obtain flight time on the sly. A few calls to friends in the industry and I was able to find an approved operator on a Spacecam job willing to let me take a turn at the controls during a “ferry flight.”

The system itself is truly something to behold. It’s a beautiful piece of equipment – almost a work of art. If the Spacecam were a car, it would be meticulously maintained and detailed classic with state-of-the-art performance tires and a brand new honking stereo. The spotless chrome shows nothing of the 25 year old chassis that lies at its core.

We set out on a cold morning at the end of ’06 and after a few lessons from the aerial DoP I soon found myself sitting with my hands on the mounted console. The pilot and I ran through a number of standard aerial shots and I was impressed with the anti-Wobbly performance that the system offered. Pushing the lens to longer focal lengths, the Spacecam handled all of the vibration that the helicopter tried to introduce into the image, producing a quality of shot unmatched in other systems that I’ve flown.

While the steering, complimented by the RAMS mount accessory that was additionally included in the kit, performed better than other aerial systems, it continued to leave something to be desired. I found the steering still moved laterally throughout a shot, in a ghost-like way, and on the whole was not as precise or responsive as I would have liked. While the RAMS mount accessory helped maintain the horizon longer than other aerial systems, the Spacecam eventually succumbed to the same horizon difficulties that plague all current aerial anti-Wobbly products.

The system I tested included the standard Spacecam camera and lens package – a Mitchell Mark II with an Angenieux lens and a 1000’ mag. While the Spacecam faces the same payload constraints as other anti-Wobbly aerial systems, Goodman’s ingenuity has enabled the integration of specialized payloads into the system. With this niche strategy for payload integration, the Spacecam can accept a range of nontraditional payloads – from a DCAM 65 – 15 to a proprietary 65mm-5 perf system.

The test system included Spacecam’s laser auto focus system, an additional accessory that claims to provide precision focusing while on the move. After trying this accessory I found it to be more of a gimmick than anything – setting my focus to near infinity everything I shot remained in focus.

Flying over a football stadium, nearing the end of our flight, I came to the realization that despite its limitations in steering, Goodman had a product to be proud of. Though based on a platform as old as many of its operators, Goodman’s dedication to tweaking has maximized the products performance and has crafted the leading weapon in the aerial anti-Wobbly arsenal.

While some of the accessories do not bring much additional value, others have allowed Goodman to extract an additional smidgen of performance from his systems. If you’re an aerial DoP and are able to get listed on Spacecams list of approved users, I recommend this aerial system for many aerial applications.

Spacecam was contacted by email and phone for comment on this story. Unfortunately due to either the 8 hour time difference or an unwillingness to get involved, we were unable to secure comment.

[update: discussion that was occurring within the comments to this post but on a different anti-Wobbly weapon have been moved here]