Flying a DJI F550 from Starlite in Grants Pass, Oregon.

I like flying my DJI F550 hexacopter to shoot aerial video of various scenery,  I use a Contour HD 1080P camera mounted to the F550 to capture the video. I have been through countless iterations on mounts for the camera and my current contraption is a "Food Storage Bowl" with some memory foam inside to reduce the vibrations from the airframe to the camera.  I can't even remember how many modifications I've gone through with shaping the foam inside the bowl of this setup nor how many different foam types I've tried until by chance I got a piece of this memory foam.

I get a lot of teasing from friends who also fly about the food storage bowl..."you got a sandwich in there?"

Now that I've gotten most all of the jello out of the camera the next step was to get the camera stable so the wind affecting the airframe won't affect the camera's video recording.  I need a gimbal.

One of the nice things about having a food storage container below the airframe is that it makes for excellent landing gear.  It also is darned good protection from impact for the camera, and yes I learned that one the gard way, but that's another story.

So my gimbal needs to fit inside the confines of my food storage container.

Most of the gimbals I've seen are all very tall and hang low below the airframe.  I wanted to do something different.

I found some really great mechanical parts atServoCity, specifically their "Servo Blocks".  I also wanted some good fast and powerful servos so I got a pair of Futaba BLS156HV.  This is what I've got so far:

This setup is very low profile and also eliminated a bunch of mechanics because the servos output shafts direct drive the shafts of the Servo City servo blocks.  

This setup is strictly Roll and Tilt, no Pan because I just want to eliminate airframe motion.

I also needed the "Roll" servo to be concentric with the camera lens centerline.  A fellow local flyer with a CNC was very generous with his time and even found the piece of aluminum channel at a local boat builder.  Thank you John!

The Contour HD camera has a mount bracket with a 1/4-20 standard camera thread and the fabricated "L" bracket has a hole positioned so the camera is as far back in the assemble as possible.

Next up is the mounting of this gimbal to the airframe.  This will be done with some Servo City spacers that fit to the four holes seen in the lower gimbal photo.

Wait until you see the new food container!