Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
For this giveaway, we’ve partnered with Zhiyun to give away a Smooth-Q4 gimbal to a lucky winner.
We chose this gimbal because it is amazingly small, and it folds to fit in your pocket. This makes it perfect for those times when you travel or explore and just need something better than a selfie stick. All you have to do to enter this giveaway is to let us know what color you prefer for your gimbal (assuming you could get them in any color of the rainbow).
The giveaway ends on July 22nd!
It looks like it’s not just Zhiyun announcing a new gimbal today as DJI announces two of theirs, the DJI RS 3 and the DJI RS 3 Pro along with the new DJI Transmission system – their first attempt at a completely DJI wireless video viewing and control workflow. DJI says that the “new generation of the Ronin ecosystem allows creators to focus on what’s in front of their camera by simplifying everything connected to it”.
DJI says that the RS 3 and RS 3 Pro bring “landmark improvements to the classic and reliable Ronin series” with the new DJI Transmission system combining “reception, monitoring, control and recording in one”. It sounds a lot like the Zhiyun VC100 MasterEye & TransMount AI combo (more info here) only it’s for DJI’s gimbals and not Zhiyun’s and it’s way more expensive. Of course, it looks a lot more capable, too!
Gimbals are more popular now than they ever have been and their popularity will no doubt continue to rise in the future as they become more advanced, more accessible and higher-end features come to lower end and lower-cost models. But if you’ve never used one before, they can be a bit of a learning curve to get used to so that you’re shooting nice smooth steady footage.
That’s where Josh Morgan at Momentum Productions is here to help with this beginner’s guide to getting smooth and stable footage from your gimbal as quickly and easily as possible. In the video, Josh uses the Zhiyun Weebill 2 (review here) along with the Sony A7S III and Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 Art lens to demonstrate some exercises to try in order to learn how to use your gimbal effectively.
Have you ever watched footage of people skiing and wondered how it was shot? Well, if you’re filmmaker Antoine Frioux you’ll likely be using some sort of gimbal to create incredible follow-shots of the action.
This time, however, Antoine decided to try out filming with a DJI Ronin 4D that shoots 8K video, just to see how it would come out. I must say the results are impressive, and the behind the scenes footage of him actually skiing whilst operating the camera is pretty incredible!
Canon isn’t a name we normally associate with drones, but a new drone gimbal camera patent suggests they might be starting to try to take on the consumer drone market. If they are planning to tackle the likes of DJI and Autel, Canon does have some experience with drones. This isn’t their first one, having released the PD6E2000-AW-CJ1 drone (doesn’t that name just roll right off the tongue?) back in 2017.
But that 2017 drone wasn’t focused towards general consumers or even higher-end working photographers and filmmakers at all. That $20,000 drone (along with the $20,000 camera you need to bolt onto it) was designed specifically for activities like search and rescue. This new patent, though, looks like they might be targeting the consumer market.
Gimbals are cool. We know they’re cool. They were cool the day they were first introduced to the world and we know they’re still cool now because there are about three million different models of them out there now that just keep on selling. They can be overused, of course, and they definitely have their place, but most of us aren’t that attached to them. Most of us.
Not Russian filmmaker Olesya Zakharova, though, who goes by the name la_rushka on social media. She definitely has something of a… special relationship with her DJI Ronin SC2, as evidenced by her recent Instagram posts. Sure, lockdowns over the last couple of years have been hard on all of us, but this probably isn’t the answer. It is pretty hilarious, though.
The season of giving is upon us – which becomes immediately obvious whenever you walk into a store and you’re overwhelmed by Whamageddon. If you want to avoid the Christmas music and prefer to do your shopping online, then have no fear, DIYP’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guides are here to rescue you with some of our favourite new releases of the year, as well as a few old favourites that always seem to find a place in our gear bags.
In this post, we’re going to be taking a look at Tripods, Sliders & Gimbals. Keep an eye out for our next guide coming tomorrow covering other photography and filmmaking accessories and gadgets and be sure to check out our previous guide going over the best of this year’s new Cameras, lenses and lighting gear.
If you’ve ever seen a high-budget movie, you know that some of the magic is in how the camera moves. If the Director of Photography did their job well, the camera will move seamlessly from one position to another. But when you think about it, there is actually no way that a camera could do some of those moves. Take the chase shot from The Raid 2 for example (embedded below). I mean, there is no way the camera just floats in the air like this?
And this is what we’ll do today. We will look at how to create three shots that defy physics all with a very minimal budget. All you need for these shots is a gimbal – we’ll be using the Manfrotto 300xm and some pipes and cables. For all the shots below we had our camera secured via extra cables and security cords. If you put your camera in the air, always make sure that it is well secured.
It feels like this thing has been teased and announced about a dozen times over the last couple of years but now the Sony Airpeak S1 Professional drone is now available to pre-order starting at $8,999.99. And that doesn’t include a gimbal. If you want to get the Gremsy Gimbal T3 kit to go along with it, that’s going to cost you an extra $2,200 bringing your total cost up to $11,199.98.
The Sony Airpeak S1 was first unveiled back in January and it’s taken almost an entire year, with a sort-of release six months ago, for it to actually open up for pre-orders. And beyond “coming soon”, there still doesn’t appear to be an actual shipping date yet, so actually getting one into your hands might still be a little way out.
Feiyutech has announced two new motorised 3-axis gimbals. These are the Scorp and the Scorp Pro. Unlike many other gimbals, though, the “Pro” model isn’t just the regular gimbal with a bunch of extras added. In this case, it’s actually a completely different gimbal. Like the regular Scorp, but modular, adding a lot of versatility and shooting options over the basic model Scorp.
The Scorp is a motorised 3-axis gimbal with a design that reminds me of the Zhiyun Weebill 2 if the handle were permanently attached – but without the cool flippy out LCD. The Scorp Pro, on the other hand, appears to be like a scaled-down version of the Crane 3S, with removable handles for both the base and rear underslung mode.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!