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Zhiyun updates two of its popular smartphone gimbal lines with the Smooth 5 and Smooth X2

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Zhiyun has launched two new smartphone gimbals today. The Zhiyun Smooth 5 and the Zhiyun Smooth X2. The Smooth X2 is the follow-up to the popular Smooth X (review here), a 2-axis gimbal with a built-in selfie stick aimed at social media shooters and consumers who generally want smoother videos from their smartphones.

The Smooth 5, on the other hand, is targeted towards more serious smartphone filmmakers, offering a number of features found in Zhiyun’s higher-end range, like a multi-function focus wheel, exposure control, and various different shooting modes, including the “GO” (Sport) and Vortex modes.

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The Moza AirCross 3 is a transformable gimbal that switches between classic and underslung modes

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Gudsen has today officially announced the Moza AirCross 3 – an update to its popular Moza AirCross 2 gimbal for small DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. Gudsen describes the AirCross 3 as “four gimbals in one” combining the classic single handle approach along with sling mode, dual-handle mode and a grip extension for use with devices like the Slypod Pro.

It inherits a number of features from the AirCross 2, though. It’s still a fairly small lightweight gimbal that you can easily slip into a backpack and it allows you to mount the camera in vertical mode for you social media shooters using the supplied quick release L plate.

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Zhiyun announces the Crane M3 mirrorless camera gimbal with built-in LED light and a shotgun microphone

Zhiyun has today announced the latest iteration of their lightweight mirrorless gimbal, the Zhiyun Crane M3. Unlike its predecessors, the Crane M2 and the original Crane M, it comes with a new bright white colour scheme. It lets you easily swap camera batteries without having to rebalance, a built-in LED and you can even connect it up to an XLR microphone.

In fact, not only can you connect it to an XLR mic, but Zhiyun has released their first XLR Shotgun Mic along with the TransMount Base to go along with the Crane M3 to let you get the best quality audio that you can. There’s also a stylish new Zhiyun backpack to carry it all in.

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The Zhiyun Weebill 2 Pro Plus kit is the ultimate gimbal combo for solo shooters

When it comes to gimbals, there’s no shortage of them on the market these days. So, why has the Zhiyun Weebill 2 become my favourite over the last few weeks? Well, mostly because it makes my life a million times easier when shooting on my own or filming myself.

The Zhiyun Weebill 2 is the follow up to the popular Zhiyun Weebill-S. It’s grown a little in size and weight over its predecessor but comes with some new unique extras. Like that built-in flippy out touchscreen LCD.

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Manfrotto’s new 300XM Gimbal features a modular design for maximum versatility

With as many companies as there are making gimbals these days, and with a whole wave of new ones coming out each year, it’s become difficult for them to stand out from each other. But Manfrotto thinks they’ve found a good approach with their new modular gimbal, that allows you to go from the traditional handled setup to whatever you want by removing and moving bits around at will.

The Gimbal is part of Manfrotto’s new “Move” ecosystem whose core focus is modularity and versatility. The 300XM Gimbal is the central core of that ecosystem and is designed to fit into the workflows of as many filmmaking needs as possible.

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13 Gimbal tricks to up your gimbal game

Gimbals have become increasingly popular and it’s obvious why. Moves that required master camera operators can now be done with significantly less training. Add the fact that gimbals are becoming more powerful, more affordable, and more features rich, and you have a winning tool. That being said, gimbals still require a learning curve. This series of tips is here to help you get the most out of our gimbal on your next shoot. We got our resident gimbal expert Oleg Balzanov and a super talented dancer, Danielle Stephen to help us teach you these tips.

For this tutorial, we used three pieces of kit. A Manfrotto MVG460 gimbal, a dedicated remote, and a monopod style accessory called a Gimboom. The 460 is a great gimbal with tons of nifty features and a really good payload capacity. AS for the Gimboom, if you have seen their FAST tripod legs, it’s basically a single leg of that tripod. It’s nice to see that Manfrotto saw how monopods are used in tandem with gimbals and created a dedicated product for it.

So without further ado, here are our top 13 gimbal tricks:

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Zhiyun’s new Weebill 2 gimbal has a built in flippy out touchscreen LCD

Zhiyun has today (yes, today, not yesterday) announced the new Zhiyun Weebill 2 gimbal. A couple of retailers jumped the gun a little early yesterday, but now, Zhiyun has made it official. It looks a lot like the Weebill S, but it has a neat flippy out full-colour touchscreen LCD and a few other tricks up its sleeve.

As well as the new LCD, the Weebill 2 dumps the 18650 batteries in favour of a built-in battery that you can charge while you’re using it (with USB-PD support!) and features a new Infineon sensor which Zhiyun says improves its overall performance.

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The Moza Moin Camera is a tiny gimbal camera with a huge touchscreen LCD

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Gudsen has launched its first camera. It’s the tiny gimbal stabilised Moza Moin Camera with a big 2.45″ flippy out touchscreen LCD. The lens offers a nice wide 120° field of view with a 1/2.3″ sensor. It shoots 12-megapixel photos, shoots 4K video at 60 frames per second,  or offers 1080p slow motion at 200 frames per second.

Designed to shoot both what you see as well as for vloggers, the Moin Camera’s view can face either forward in the direction you’re looking or back towards yourself when you want to speak to the camera and keeps it steady whichever way it’s pointed and it can also track your face to ensure you’re always the centre of attention.

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This little single-axis gimbal lets you shoot wider cinematic footage on racing drones

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With most drones that have built-in cameras with stabilisation, we typically see fully motorised 3-axis gimbals that can compensate for just about any movement of the gimbal and keep the camera locked onto the subject. For those that don’t have built-in cameras and gimbals, most people typically attach something like an Insta360 ONE R, GoPro or DJI Osmo Action and rely on electronic image stabilisation and horizon levelling.

But horizon levelling has one big issue. It has to zoom in and crop when it’s off-axis. Can a single-axis gimbal solve this issue and always allow your camera to see the full, wide field of view of which it’s capable? According to Nurk FPV, yes, it absolutely can. And in this video, he shows us why with the Quark single-axis gimbal.

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The Magic Ring II is a grip frame for your gimbal with built-in D-tap power points

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Sometimes, you need to go a little “extra” with your gimbal rig. Sometimes, you need the two-handed holding power that only a solid frame can provide. Digitalfoto’s new Magic Ring II, is one of them. But it’s a little different to most. It allows you to attach a V-Mount battery to its base that passes power through the frame to devices up top.

This means you can attach monitors, transmitters, audio recorders or other devices onto the top of the frame without having to worry about how you’re going to power them or monitoring a bunch of separate smaller batteries. Being able to mount a V-Mount battery underneath also helps to lower the centre of gravity as it takes some of that extra weight away from up high.

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