Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
The Zhiyun Crane 3S is the latest iteration of Zhiyun’s flagship line of Crane gimbals, traditionally designed for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. On first glance, the Crane 3S looks a lot like the Crane 3 LAB, but it definitely holds a few extra tricks up its sleeve.
I’ve been using one for a few weeks now when weather and Scotland’s lockdown rules have allowed and I’m going to go over some of those differences and the advantages the Crane 3S has to offer over the Crane 3 LAB.
For those who’ve never come across it before, the Arri Trinity is an insane $50,000+ (and the camera) gimbal/steadicam hybrid type device that lets you make some really cool and unique shots. We featured it here recently when Potato Jet got to see and try it out for himself and it offers many obvious advantages over other filming techniques.
But most of us don’t have $50k lying around. So, what can we do? Well, we can just make our own. Sort of. In this video, filmmaker James Matthews combines his Zhiyun Weebill S with an old Flycam HD-3000 to produce the “Minity”, letting you get similar shots. Ok, so, it’s not quite the Arri Trinity, but for a hundredth of the budget, what can you really expect?
I don’t shoot on a gimbal all that often. When I do, it’s usually for b-roll. But I’m usually doing it with manual focus lenses. It presents some challenges, but they’re pretty easy to overcome. Sure, plenty of cameras have autofocus these days when shooting video, and it’s getting better and better all the time, although it’s still not perfect.
Imperfect systems that are quite easy to confuse are the problem that wedding photographer and filmmaker Matt Johnson has with autofocus when shooting on a gimbal, too. So, in this video, he talks about three of his top tips for shooting video on a gimbal using manual focus lenses.
Zhiyun just announced a smartphone gimbal that is cheaper than a cup of soup in some restaurants – the Smooth X. I am actually kinda surprised by the number of features you can cram into a gadget that costs so little.
The biggest highlight of this gimbal is the fact that it folds down to pocket size. Ideally, that would make it easier to have the gimbal ready whenever you want it. In a world that may soon rid of smartphone gimbals (See Huawei P40), this is a big move in the direction of reducing the overhead of carrying another gadget.
Gudsen has just launched their new MOZA Mini-P. It’s a $199 gimbal that works with everything from action cameras and smartphones to compacts and small mirrorless cameras. And it folds up small to pack away when you’re not using it, too.
Feiyutech has announced a new camera that looks somewhat familiar. It’s the new Feiyu Pocket Handheld Gimbal – a tiny 4K 60fps 3-axis stabilised camera that can be held easily in your hand. Yeah, it does resemble the DJI Osmo Pocket a little bit huh? Except, this one’s about 2/3rds the price of the DJI, priced at only $249
Zhiyun has just announced their new Zhiyun Crane 3S motorised gimbal, and it’s a bit of a monster. It’s based around the design of the Crane 3 LAB, but the Crane 3S is a very different animal indeed. For a start, the weight capacity has been raised to an impressive 6.5kg, thanks to newly engineered motors. It’s not a replacement model for the Crane 3 LAB, but more a higher capacity version of it.
To account for the bulk of the larger weight capacity, the Crane 3S is also modular, allowing you to reconfigure it in different ways to account for different cameras. It features a whopping nine mounting points, has a couple of removable handles, and comes with an arm extension to handle cameras as large as the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro G2.
It’s amazing how small they can make tech these days. Vivo has unveiled its latest update on the APEX concept line. Famous for showing off some pretty insane concepts for future phones, many of their predictions have come true. Popup selfie cameras, under-screen fingerprint readers, and almost completely button-and-bezel-free designs.
In Vivo’s latest concept device, the front-camera has come back, sitting underneath the display, but the main rear-camera also sees a pretty significant new feature. Taking optical image stabilisation (OIS) to the next level, they’ve essentially built it into a gimbal.
Smartphone gimbals are pretty commonplace today. There are countless models from companies like Zhiyun, Moza, Feiyu, and a million other brands. It feels like we’ve had them forever, although they’ve only really been around for about four years. And sometimes, even today, we need to figure out a way to live without them.
You’re not always going to have it with you when you see something cool and want to whip out your phone to grab a sequence. Or perhaps, as filmmaker Brandon Li mentions in this video, carrying a gimbal defeats the whole purpose of using your phone. Putting his money where his mouth is, this 10-minute video shows us how we can get gimbal-like shots without a gimbal.
I have to admit, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for DJI to get into ground rover territory. But according to new patents released by DJI, two new products may be coming in 2020, one of which looks like a radio-controlled vehicle of some kind featuring a built-in gimbal and camera. The other appears to be a gimbal along similar lines to the Freefly Movi Pro and DJI’s own Ronin 2, but utilising one of DJI’s own Zenmuse cameras instead of your DSLR or mirrorless camera.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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