Hi, my name is Jordan Cowan.
I film for On Ice Perspectives on the ice with figure skaters,
and here are my five tips on how to shoot with a gimbal.
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Tip number one, I've got to go through this,
but this is how I balance my gimbal.
My recommendation, if you're just starting out,
is not to try to balance it with any accessories.
Right now, I have the microphone, which will make this a little bit more advanced,
but start without a microphone if you need to.
Um, I think of a gimbal as an onion that you have to go from the inside and out.
So, you want to start with the axes that are closest to the camera first,
and then balance your way out. That way, you don't really need to go back and forth.
This gimbal has locking axes,
which is going to be very helpful.
So, I start with actually unbalancing it
by making it very top heavy.
And this is something you don't always see,
but that way I can find
just where the center of gravity is on this tilt axis.
And, as you can see, I already have it.
I need to unlock my roll axis
and find my center
while it's extremely top heavy.
And I found it. It'll never stick because, again, it's top heavy,
and a little bit of wind will blow it over.
Now I lock that axis. Now I'm ready
to balance my tilt axis at a 90 degree angle.
And, done!
Now the axis that everyone forgets about is the pan axis,
and that's the one that's closest to the handle.
It's the last one that we have to balance.
This one's pretty easy.
I find it right here. Another way to find out if your pan axis is balanced
is to tilt your gimbal like this.
Watch what happens.
Because of the forces,
depending on which way I roll it,
It's gonna move in a different direction
when I bounce it up and down.
Okay, I know we've all seen this before, but
it's nice to see it one more time.
It was pretty fast.
Now I unlock all of my axes.
And hopefully, without any wind,
when I keep it centered, it should follow,
with just the slightest bit of friction,
exactly where I want it to roll.
And this, to me, this is good enough.
Okay, that was the hardest tip, honestly,
but we got it balanced exactly where we need to be.
And when I'm skating at high speeds,
I need my gimbal balanced perfectly.
The next thing to do is calibrate your gimbal.
Most gimbals have like a secret setting you can do without using any menus.
For this one, it's holding down the trigger and menu buttons at the same time,
and you'll see it starts to do its calibration process.
Now, it's important to hold your gimbal where you're going to hold it.
So I'm holding it in the handle
because if I don't, and this table is very wobbly,
it's actually going to calibrate itself incorrectly.
So I hold it the way I want to hold it.
And it's done!
So that's tip number two, is find a fast way to calibrate
because you're going to be doing it a lot,
especially if you're going to be changing lenses,
adding filters, taking microphones on and off.
Calibrate it every time.
Tip number three--
and this should probably be tip number two--
is make sure that you have everything in your camera.
I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to put my battery in,
or a memory card, or take my lens cap off,
and you have to do the whole process again.
So make sure that you have your screen folded out the way you want it to
before you start balancing your gimbal.
Tip number four, and I've done this with every single one of my gimbals.
I never like using the default settings.
I go into the app,
(most gimbals have an app that you connect to through bluetooth)
and you can customize everything from your follow speed
to something very important called the dead band.
Now, the dead band is what allows you to have slight micro movements in the handle,
and it won't respond.
So that's usually a range or a degree angle.
For this one, when I'm filming on the ice
and I want to follow a pan really quickly,
I actually take my dead band very low.
So that as soon as I twist, I have that control,
but because I'm moving so fast
and my body is moving like this,
I keep my dead band on the tilt axis actually quite large
So that I don't have an image that's constantly bouncing up and down.
Also, something to add in settings is experiment with the different modes.
I see a lot of people using a gimbal,
and all they use is the pan follow mode.
So it's great if you're just starting out on a gimbal,
but if you want to get those really cool angles that go above and below
and make someone's head look bigger or their legs look longer,
I really recommend having a bit of a tilt follow as well.
It's very fun to work with.
Okay, tip number five,
and that is working with auto focus on a gimbal.
This is something big that no one I've seen has really talked about,
but the way cameras, especially the Sony a7S III, track autofocus
is they do it through contrast.
Now, think about it: with a lot of motion blur,
there's not a lot of contrast.
So if you're shooting at a low frame rate and a low shutter speed,
like 1 over 50,
and you're panning around a subject,
and you want to keep that subject in focus,
you have to keep that person at the same location on the screen at all times.
That way, the background gets motion blur,
and with that motion blur the camera can't find contrast,
and that is how I keep my autofocus aimed on the subject that I'm shooting.
So, those are my tips on filming with a gimbal.
If you have any tips to share of your own,
leave them in the comments below!
Once again, my name is Jordan Cowan.
I shoot for On Ice Perspectives,
which you can find on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Twitter, Twitch and Patreon.
My website is oniceperspectives.com.
Thank you, and enjoy your day!