The RS three Mini is without a doubt my favorite gimbal that I've ever used.
And if you are someone like me
that prioritizes having a lightweight filmmaking set up above everything else,
you are absolutely going to love this gimbal.
Spoiler for this review Out of the way.
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson and today I'm going to be reviewing the symbol.
From the perspective of a wedding filmmaker and telling you why,
I think that DJI absolutely knocked it out of the park with the RS three mini.
So if you film weddings or documentaries or real estate,
are you just wanting a lightweight and affordable gimbal?
This reviews for you.
Also, for the sake of ethics,
I want you to know this video is not paid or sponsored by DJI in any way.
They don't even know that I'm making it.
And I bought this gimbal with my own money.
Well, technically, I bought this gimbal with DJI credit that I had
because I'd bought so much stuff in the past.
And they give you credit whenever you buy through their website.
And I built up enough credit to be able to afford this very affordable gimbal.
So I did use my own money, but it was more like a gift card than cash.
Anyways, in the world of gimbals, it feels like manufacturers like DJI
and Scion Tech were chasing a need they saw to make bigger
and beefier gimbals with bigger and beefier motors like the Crane three.
And don't even get me started on the DJI Ronin SE.
That game was stupid heavy and you can comment down below
if you remember the arm workout that you'd get from that thing.
So my point here is
that things were just getting too heavy when it came to Gimbals.
Thankfully, in the last couple of years it feels like we're fine,
only seeing a shift in the other direction from gimbal companies.
DJI released the incredibly popular RC three Gimbal, which has a ton of carbon
fiber and comes in at a svelte at £2.8, which was such a welcome change.
But most importantly, even with this lighter weight,
these new gimbal motors are still powerful enough to hold heavier cameras.
It's the best of both worlds lighter gimbals that are still powerful.
This trend of lightning gimbals has now continued, too, with the announcement
of this little guy, the DJI Rs3 three Mini, and look at how tiny it is.
I love it.
DJI has managed to make this gimbal even smaller and lighter
than any of their other offerings, but at the same time,
it still has powerful enough motors to hold most camera setups these days.
If I had to compare how using this gimbal feels to something whenever I was filming
a wedding with it recently, I was filming with my friend Justin Porter,
who you may have seen from TikTok, and whenever he held this gimbal,
he said it felt to him like he was holding a DJI Osmo You know what
I'm talking about One of those little baby gimbals the DJI makes.
It holds a cell phone.
Now, granted, Justin works out, He lifts.
But I agree with him.
This gimbal is super lightweight. At £1.8.
It almost feels like something
that should be used to hold a cell phone, not a bigger camera.
But that said, the motors are still quite strong in my testing.
The Airstream mini, unsurprisingly, easily held my A7 as three
with a 24 millimeter lens.
It also held a heavier 24 to 105 millimeter lens,
which did strain a bit due to how much that lens extends.
And as a plus, I was even able to balance a Sony
72 200 f4 lens on it as well.
Keep in mind though, that lens was total overkill.
I actually had to mount the camera to the gimbal instead of the lens
like you traditionally would to get the center of gravity to work properly.
So my point here
is that even though this gimbal is tiny and feels more like an osmo,
it is still easily strong enough to handle the vast majority of mirrorless
cameras and lens combinations that you can throw at it today.
That said, though,
I do want you to be aware that this gimbal does have some limitations in regard
to motor strength.
If you're used to coming from a bigger gimbal with the biggest difference
being that if you are using a zoom lens like the 24 to 105 that I was using
and you need to zoom the lens. What's on the gimbal?
This gimbals motors are not strong enough to hold the camera steady while
using the zoom ring and the gimbals arms are going to want to rotate.
This isn't a huge deal.
I just wanted you to be aware of it.
So the small size of the RS three Mini, coupled
with its relatively strong motor strength, is a huge pro for this gimbal.
When I bought it, I was concerned that the motors
might not be strong enough, but I was pleasantly surprised.
This leads into my next area of concern that I had about the Rs3 mini before
I bought it though, because unlike its bigger brother, the RC three,
I was worried because this gimbal is so small, its battery life may suffer,
especially whenever you consider that it only has an internal battery here
in the handle and is handling that big and that battery is not swappable.
Unlike the larger RC three, which has a detachable handle
that you can swap out if you need to change the battery.
So with the RS three Mini, your only option is to charge the gimbal
if it runs out of battery.
And if you watched my review of the Zion, we will too, which was another gimbal
that was billed as being smaller and also did not have a swappable battery.
One of my biggest complaints about that gimbal was that it only lasted
for about half a wedding day before I needed to charge it to make sure
I could get through the rest of the day.
So in a word, the DJI RC three mini
small size and its relatively smaller battery made me nervous.
Thankfully, I am so happy and excited to tell you
that my fears were completely unfounded because I was frankly
shocked by the battery life that I got from this gimbal.
I tested the RS three Mini in a real world scenario,
filming a wedding from 9:30 a.m.
in the morning until 10 p.m.
at night with my camera on the cymbal the majority of the time.
Of course, also being mindful to turn off the cable whenever
I didn't need it by filming this way on and off for over 12 hours.
I ended the wedding day with the gimbal reporting its battery percentage
was still at 54%.
Yes, over half of the battery life was still remaining.
And I use this gimbal all day at a wedding.
Now, if the battery had been down to 30% or 20%, I would have been getting nervous.
But heck, 50% I could have gone out and filmed another
entire wedding day with this gimbal and not had to charge it.
The battery life is awesome on the RS three mini.
Of course, in a perfect world I would still love
if the handle was detachable
or the batteries were swappable just to give me that extra peace of mind.
As a professional that stresses about battery life a lot.
But I understand that I wanted to make this a simple and affordable gimbal.
So it's cool and I think you can trust it for even a long day of filming.
Anyways, I'm not done telling you what I love about this gimbal
because we need to talk
about some other cool features starting off with the power on speed.
There are three mini starts off with a few seconds,
which I feel like is on par with most of the gimbals these days
and I have no complaints about how quickly you can get it up and running.
More importantly, though, one thing that I love about this gimbal
that I'm sure is present on other DJI Gimbals, but for me, coming from Zion.
It is great to see this.
This Gimbal remembers
your previous settings you were using whenever you started up.
What I mean by that
is that I'm a big fan of using the pan tilt follow mode on a gimbal,
meaning that when I use it,
I not only want the gimbal to pan to side to side whenever I rotate the base,
but I also want the gimbal to tilt up and down.
In the past, with my zone gimbals, every single time
that I would turn off the gimbal and turn it back on, it would always
default to the basic pan follow mode where the gimbal wouldn't tilt.
And this was a huge pain
because I would always have to go into the settings and change it.
Of course, it was only a button press or the flick of a switch,
but it was something I still
to remember every single time that I turned on the gimbal.
Thankfully, with this DJI Gimbal, the RS three Mini remembers
the setting that I was using whenever I turn it off.
So every single time that I turn it on, it saves me a second of needing
to change the setting to pan tilt follow, which is fantastic.
It's the little things.
Now there are other features.
The RS three mini supports as well,
like mounting points on the side here for a briefcase grip,
as well as the ability for you to connect your camera to the gimbal
with a control cable so you can start and stop recording, etc..
For me though, I'm a simple man
when I'm filming a wedding, the last thing that I want
is for my camera to be connected to a gimbal with a cable
because I'm taking the camera on and off the gimbal all the time.
If you film weddings or film fast like I do, I'm
sure you can understand this where you get a shot with your gimbal.
But then immediately after that you want to go handheld.
So you put the gimbal down really quick to take off your camera.
If you're filming all day on a gimbal and never taking your camera off,
by all means, get a camera control cable to use with the RS three mini.
But if you're like me, you don't want any of that extra stuff.
You want a super simple gimbal that will get you stable footage.
And if you have to reach up
and press record on your camera instead of moving your thumb
to press a button on the gimbal, this takes maybe half a second longer.
It's not a big deal.
So that's my general stance.
As far as accessories go for the RS three mini.
I'm sure they're nice, but I have not personally used them other than plugging
in the camera control
cable from the gimbal into my Sony camera to be able to confirm for you
that it does work
and you can start and stop your recordings with the gimbal from this cable.
Anyways, if I had some wishes for the RS three mini
that I could dream that they might include in an AR S4 mini.
As I already said earlier, I would love
if the batteries were swappable or if the handle was at least swappable.
That would put it more in line with the RS three pro.
Another feature that I would love, the RS three Mini to take away from the bigger
RS three would be the auto locking arms feature.
I was talking to Justin Porter about this and he was telling me how he thought
that the auto locking arms were a gimmick on the RS three until he used them
and now he can't go back.
Lastly, I would love to see a different quick
release plate for this gimbal
in a perfect world it would be the same as my main Frodo quick
release plates that I use on my cameras, but those are pretty big.
I just wanted something that's a little bit
more standardized than what DJI went with all that said, though,
if any of these additions in the form of an extra battery
or auto locking or a different plate, etc., were to add weight to this gimbal,
I would not want them to be added because I know I said earlier,
But I need to reiterate again, I absolutely love how lightweight it is.
If you are someone like me that films, weddings or other events where you need
to be filming for 12 plus hours at a time like I did when I tested this gimbal,
I was so thankful that it was lightweight because usually halfway through a wedding
my arms are killing me due to carrying a heavy gimbal around.
But with this RS three mini, it was a joy to use all day
and I don't want to see DJI screw that up by adding more weight to a successor
in the future.
In fact, here's one more add on that I would like to see
DJI included with a successor to the RS three Mini
Make it carbon fiber like the RS three make it even lighter.
I'm fine with that.
Of course, carbon fiber could make it more expensive,
but that leads into us needing to talk about the price of this gimbal,
which is frankly ridiculous in the best possible way.
At the time of making this video, DJI is charging 369 bucks,
which is easily the cheapest price that I've ever paid for a gimbal.
And that makes me really happy.
Like I said earlier, this gimbal almost feels like it's in Osmo territory
when it comes to its weight.
But seeing that price tag, it's also close to the Osmo in price as well.
I'm telling you, the RS three mini is dangerous because it's
almost in an impulse purchase territory for some filmmakers.
I have plenty of friends that are going to look
at that price and say, Oh, only 300 something bucks.
I'll buy it right now.
And so should you buy it?
Well, like I said at the start, the DJ Ice
three Mini is without a doubt my favorite gimbal that I've ever used.
And if you are looking for a super lightweight gimbal
with an absolutely stellar battery life you can film all day with
and not feel like you did 500 bicep curls the morning after.
I think you are going to absolutely love this gimbal and I highly recommend it.
Speaking of things that I recommend, you got to check out my color presets.
If you like the colors in this video
and you want to get colors like them with your cameras, regardless of
whether you film with Sony or Canon or Panasonic or Nikon,
you are going to love my Who is it that lets color presets
that are laid out in the video description?
Also linked down in the video description.
I'm going to put a link to my free edit videos.
Like a pro guide.
This guide is going to walk you through some of the biggest things
that took me years to learn as a video editor,
and it's going to help you level up your video editing so fast.
You can check it out for free at the link down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.