The camera crane boom is modeled as a cantilever beam with a concentrated end load representing the camera system mass. The crane is designing around a Sony Alpha ZV-E10 camera.
The camera’s specifications and dimensions are listed below:
The design camera system consists of the base camera body (no attachments or add-ons) plus mounting hardware and fasteners. A load factor of approximately 3× is applied to account for handling shock and manual acceleration, resulting in a conservative design load:
$$ P=W_{camera}×\text{load factor} \newline P=0.8 \text{ lb}×3.125 \newline P=2.5 \text{ lbs} $$
The governing geometric parameter is the maximum horizontal distance from the pivot to the camera center of mass, not the total vertical reach of the system. For this design, the maximum horizontal reach is defined as:
$$ L = 5 \, \text{ft} = 60 \, \text{in} $$
To ensure visually stable footage, the allowable tip deflection is defined using a stiffness-based criterion:
$$ δ≤\frac{L}{500} $$
Therefore:
$$ δ_{max}=\frac{60\text{ in}}{500}=0.12\text{ in} $$
To dynamic motion amplification and quality, the static deflection target is set to half this limit: