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Review: Insta360 announces its first gimbal – The AI-tracking Insta360 Flow

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Insta360 is most famous for its 360-degree cameras and action cameras. It looks like they’re taking a little change of direction and expanding out into helping you get great video with your smartphone, too. Insta360 has now officially announced the Insta360 Flow (Buy here). It’s its own take on the now ubiquitous smartphone gimbal, and having played with one now for a little while, I think it’s pretty good.

In a gimbal market dominated by companies like DJI and Zhiyun, it’s interesting to see Insta360 enter it. We’ve seen many other companies come and go in the gimbal world, but Insta360 isn’t just some random no-name brand that pops up out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly. If they’re going to have a go at something, they’re going to do it properly. And properly is exactly what they seem to have done.

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Zhiyun adds more lighting options and 25 hour battery life with the new Smooth 5S smartphone gimbal

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Zhiyun has announced their newest 3-axis smartphone gimbal, the Zhiyun Smooth 5S. It offers some nice improvements over the Smooth 5, including a built-in LED light on the mounting arm, superior anti-shake performance and new motors to help with more extreme shots and camera angles. It offers up to 25 hours of use and when it does go flat, takes only two hours to charge back up from flat to full over a USB-PD fast charging connection.

As well as the new built-in light on the camera mount, you also get the option of two magnetic fill light fixtures, allowing you to either add more light in front of you or to have lights pointing away from you and towards you for when you’re regularly switching cameras in your device or when shooting dual video, utilising both front and rear cameras simultaneously.

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The Moza Air 2S gimbal offers 20 hours of runtime and focus wheel like a fishing reel handle

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Gudsen has announced their new Moza Air 2S gimbal; successor to their popular Moza Air 2. It brings with it a new battery offering up to 20 hours of use, with rapid charging taking you from flat-to-full in a mere 2 hours compared to 16 hours of use and 5 hours charge time of its predecessor as well as an all-new metal construction.

The new Air 2S offers a similar load capacity to the Air 2 and while it might seem like an incremental update, it offers some some nice advantages and improvements. As well as one new feature that seems a little… odd. There’s a little flippy out handle on the focus wheel so you can spin it like a fishing reel.

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Check out these eight 3D printed photo & video tools designed to make your life a little easier

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I put off getting a 3D printer for the longest time. I didn’t want to get one just for the sake of having a new toy that I’d get bored with, so I held off getting one until I felt I had a genuine need for one. Now, I have five – the most recent of which are the Snapmaker 2.0 A350 and its predecessor, the Snapmaker Original, and I find them absolutely invaluable.

I’ve been using them recently to print a bunch of tools and accessories to help me with my photography and filmmaking. Some of them are workflow and organisation accessories while others are actual tools used to create content. So, here, I’m going to talk about some of the most useful things I’ve printed lately.

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The Zhiyun Crane 2S is a powerful 3-axis gimbal that’s small enough to fit in a backpack

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I’m going to open this post with a very subjective, but completely honest, opinion. The Zhiyun Crane 2S (first look review here) instantly became my favourite gimbal as soon as I took it out of the box.  Ever. That’s it. Review over. Ok, not really review over, but it really has become my new go-to gimbal for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

The Crane 2S is the followup to Zhiyun’s extremely popular Crane 2 (review here), launched in September 2017. Although already a very capable gimbal, the Crane 2S offers some very noticeable upgrades over its predecessor. So, let’s talk about those.

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First Look: Zhiyun updates a legend with the new Zhiyun Crane 2S 3-axis motorised gimbal

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Zhiyun has today announced an update to their ever-popular Crane 2 gimbal. Not surprisingly, it comes in the form of the Zhiyun Crane 2S. Over the original, it offers increased load capacity, a more extensive camera compatibility list, axis locks, an improved follow focus wheel, larger OLED screen, more shooting modes to match the rest of the gimbals in Zhiyun’s current lineup and greater accessory connectivity.

I’ve had one here to play with for a couple of days so far, and we’ll have a much more extensive review coming in the near future, but here are some of its major features and differences over the original Zhiyun Crane 2.

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The Zhiyun Crane 3S is a big beefy gimbal for big beefy cameras that offers a lot of versatility

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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.

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Zhiyun has now officially announced the new Weebill-S gimbal

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Leaks happen all the time, and manufacturers usually ignore them. But when a retailer like B&H drops the news a little early, it often forces their hand. So, Zhiyun has now officially announced the Zhiyun Weebill-S gimbal. A followup to the Weebill LAB, the new Weebill-S comes with 300% more motor torque and 50% response speed increase.

Despite being small, it’s pretty mighty, capable of handling many of the current popular DSLRs and mirrorless cameras along with 24-70mm and 24-105mm zoom lenses. And it can now auto-tune its power to optimise for the load you’ve placed on it.

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B&H leaks the $439 Zhiyun Weebill-S gimbal ahead of official announcement

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The competition on motorised gimbals these days is pretty intense. They didn’t even really exist a few years ago, except for small devices like phones, action cameras, and drones, but now there are a number of companies producing some solid piece of gear. And these companies are generally pretty secretive about new releases, right up until they’re ready to announce them.

One of the biggest names in gimbals is Zhiyun, who was pretty much an instant hit since they introduced their first Zhiyun Crane back in 2016, and they’ve been going from strength to strength ever since. It turns out they had a new gimbal on the way, the Weebill-S, but B&H broke the secrecy and leaked it ahead of their own official announcement.

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The Zhiyun Smooth Q2 and Crane M2 are small but mighty little gimbals

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Zhiyun has given us no shortage of new gimbal releases over the last year or so. The Crane 3 LAB and Weebill lab have both been big hits. But now Zhiyun is focusing on the smaller things in life with the new Crane M2 and Smooth Q2 gimbals for small compact cameras and smartphones. We had the opportunity to chat with Zhiyun at IBC 2019 and find out more about them.

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