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Holiday Gift Guide – Best Tripods, Sliders and Gimbals of 2021

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.

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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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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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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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Zhiyun’s new Smooth Q3 gimbal features a built-in rotating LED fill light

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If you ever needed more proof that smartphone gimbals were primarily designed for vloggers and social media shooters who want to film themselves or others talking to the camera at short range, then this is probably it. Zhiyun has today announced the new Zhiyun Smooth Q3 smartphone gimbal and this one comes with a built-in LED fill light.

The Smooth Q3 is a 3-axis gimbal, boasting a range of new features over the Smooth Q2, including SmartMode, gesture control, SmartFollow 3.0 Object Tracking, Instant Dolly Zoom, MagicClone Pano and, of course, that built-in LED which can rotate from the front for selfies to the back for filming other people.

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

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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The Zhiyun Smooth X is the ideal gimbal to be the centre of attention in your smartphone content

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The first smartphone gimbal I ever purchased was a Zhiyun Smooth C back in 2016. Smartphone gimbals have come a long way since then, particularly from Zhiyun. So today we’re going to be taking a look at the Zhiyun Smooth X folding smartphone gimbal.

It’s a 2-axis smartphone gimbal that offers some unique advantages over its competitors in this sector. Of particular note is its small size. This is one of the smallest smartphone gimbals I’ve seen when folded, and easily slips into a pocket. It also has a built-in selfie stick, allowing you to capture more of the scene in the shot when vlogging or travelling.

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Zhiyun shrinks their smartphone gimbal even further with the new Smooth XS

Zhiyun has announced their new Smooth XS gimbal. Like the Smooth X launched earlier in the year, it’s a 2-axis gimbal designed for smartphones, although the Smooth XS is actually even smaller while seemingly offering the same feature set.

The Smooth X offers up to five and a half hours of battery life from its internal battery that charges in three hours. It provides 290° in the pan access and 268° in roll with a payload of up to around 200g. Oh, and there’s an over-the-top launch video that very much signifies who the target market is.

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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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