I have been asked to help get some footage of a tree and from a tree.
One request was footage ascending the tree (not of a climber). We all know how difficult holding a camera on rope can be so I thought of the counter weight set up used in 'David Attenboroughs Life of mammals, Life in the trees'.
Basically there are two pulleys rigged on opposite sides of a tree, a climber up in the tree clips on to one side and his weight lifts the person on the ground on the other end of the rope. In the video David is on the ground sitting on a type of bosun's chair. Some extra pull may be required on the weight side if the weights are not right.
What do you think?
Any other ideas for smoothly getting video cameras into trees?
What about stabilising the camera once its up?

If you use a climber who starts up in the tree as a counter weight be sure to have them rappel with some sort of friction device so that their descent is smooth. If they just tie onto the other end of the rope and drop out there is a likely chance that you may not have things in balance and the load could go whipping up and the weight go crashing to the ground.

Practice...practice...practice...first, without live weight on the lift. Weigh the load and then substitute weight lifting plates before the real person or load is used.

Use large diameter and efficient pulleys for less friction. Make sure that your ropes run straight from place to place. iF you have any ropes rubbing on the tree you'll increase the friction a lot and have an unknown variable in the system.

Are you thinking of flying a camera up into the tree without an operator? that would take some clever rigging to keep it from swinging/spinning. At least two ropes. In fact you would likely have swinging or spinning even with a camera operator.

Make sure that all of your ropes are dressed so taht you don't have twists which will lead to hockles. Do you normally coil your ropes? If you do you will have LOTS of twists in the rope already. By bagging or flaking your ropes you have fewer twists left in the ropes.

Use static lines for rigging.

They used a similar technique inthe Bogachiel Tree Fund Climb. Order a copy from Sherrillls and see it for yourself . It looks pretty handy idea to get a second climber fast into the tree.
Good luck.

You're right, Desi. On the next day the Moonlight Majesty Climb re-rigged the tree for our climb. When I was setting the lines for Patty's ascent I rode an elevator back up one time. It was fun meeting my counterweight on his trip down! That was the easiest 150' climb ever did in my life!

Thanks Tom good points,
I am going to test the balance close to the ground. Ideally the climber and camera man would be a similar weight. Have a tag/belay line on the bottom of the camera mans set up and have the weight (climber) tie in mid line right up near the pulley so the extra tail can be used to pull them if required. The tag/belay could be used to slow the camera man if required. Although this does require extra rope and potentially four people.
Rope- 11mm blue water
Pulleys- Petzl rescue
Do you think descending with the friction device would be smoother?
In your set up does the climber descend on their own access line and just attach the counter weight line to their harness?
Hope it all makes sense...

My method for stabilizing a small camera shown in this thread. Scroll down to see the photos. Could be scaled up for a larger camera. The systems uses the weight of the camera and tripod against the attachment point to create stability, works well.

Some good pointers here from Tom and Moss.

Several of us also practiced a method used five or six years ago by National Geo photographer Neil Reddig, and it worked pretty well.

Two good pulleys were hung from anchor points about 8-10 feet apart and the main climbing rope was threaded through both of them.

The person to be photographed would start from the ground with just an attachment to the counterweight system.

A camera person would climb one of two separate SRT systems that were positioned about two feet either side of the counterweight rope. At the top the camera person would transfer to the counterweight system and thread the other two ropes through carabiners attached to the side D's on the saddle. The other two ropes would then be pulled fairly tight and anchored to the ground; this is to keep the camera person pointed in the correct direction at all times.

As the camera person slowly descended on the counterweight system, the other climber would slowly ascend and eventually pass the running camera.

The second method was to climb a nearby tree to about the halfway point and secure the camera's tripod to the trunk with plenty of 1-inch tubular webbing or something similar. The camera would then be aimed at the target tree and the lens would be set for its widest opening. Finally, the camera was put on its finest setting so there would be plenty of pixels to work with when it was downloaded and enlarged on the home computer.

The first method required a long time to set up and it needed several people, including at least one who stayed on the ground to manage the photographer's various lines.

The second method could theoretically be used by a solo climber, but he or she would have to quickly descend the camera tree and immediatey make a fast climb in the target tree because most digitals will only do about four to five minutes of filming before they automatically shut off. That's a definite bummer.

I'm sure there are a lot more methods out there and a few of them will probably work better than these, but the two described above have worked to a reasonable degree for me. Good luck.

You mean like this?

Here is a clip I did in Panama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OV5hEXCJBw

YouTube slaughtered my video quality on this one. I may try to re-encode and re-upload to see if I can get it better.

I rigged the whole setup remotely without even climbing to the 80' branch I pulled the camera up to. I used 2 lengths of zingit. one was doubled to provide rails for the camera sled to ride up and down on. The other went over a pulley up top to raise and lower the camera sled. The "rails" were absolutely necessary to keep the camera from spinning. They could have been a little tighter because I still got a little shaking here and there.

I came up with the idea on a whim one morning and built the sled out of a scrap of wood, a coat hanger, and a 1/4 X 20 eye bolt I found in the ITEC tool shed.

I think it worked pretty good for a first run prototype setup.

We used a stick up top and a stick on the bottom as spreaders for the rails. A third zing it was used to haul the rig up over a branch and also provide tension for the rails.

Hanabku
How did you tension the rails?
Cheers