Today you are going to learn everything you need to know about the moza air
cross 2 to gimbal. We will unbox it, setup the aircross 2, balance it, go through some specs, learn
some tips and tricks, see some real-life footage shot on the Moza air cross 2 - and
review aircross 2, so you can be up and shooting in no time. You can skip ahead to the
section that you need by clicking on the timecode in the description below. The
Moza air cross 2 is extremely affordable and it adds a ton of
production value to your videos. You might be wondering what the difference
is between the Moza air cross 2 vs the Moza air. The Moza air cross 2 is
designed for slightly smaller mirrorless cameras. It weighs about one kilogram and
can support payloads between 300 grams and 3.2 kilograms. The Moza Air 2 in
comparison supports payloads up to 4.2 kilograms.
I'm gonna be testing it today with my sony a6500 with a 24 through 105 f/4
Sony G Master lens. The a6500 body weighs 453 grams and this lens weighs
653 grams for a combined total of 1116 grams or about 35% of the max advertised
payload of the Moza air cross 2 gimbal. Alright so let's jump right into
it and unbox the Moza air cross 2. The first thing you have inside is the
gimbal itself. Then I'm going to take out the tripod and attach it to it straight
away. Then I'm going to pop out the battery and get this thing charging
right away. it takes about two and a half hours to fully charge from my experience.
and don't forget to remove the plastic strip that's on top. Here
you then have the Manfrotto quick-release plate. You have the
quick-release baseplate. Then comes the L-bracket. You then have the phone holder
which you can attach to the top of the camera. Although I don't really like to
use this because it puts a lot of top weight onto your camera and it makes it
pretty difficult to balance the gimbal. You have an ARCA Swiss baseplate.
You have a small little tool box with all of the cables that you might need.
In theory you should be able to connect your Sony a6500 to the gimbal
and control the camera through the gimbal however after multiple attempts
of doing this, I spent probably an hour trying to figure it out I could not
control my sony a 6500 through the mozi air cross 2. If anyone knows how to do it
please leave a comment below. I haven't seen any instructions from Moza on how
to actually control the camera from the gimbal. Okay so the first step is to take
your gimbal take the battery make sure that it's fully charged and that you've
removed the plastic safety strip and then you insert it like this. Then we're
gonna take our Manfrotto baseplate and attach it to the bottom of the camera so
let me just move this out of the way. The easiest way to do this is
to flip your camera upside down make sure the follow focus support rod is
facing towards the front of the camera so if I have my camera upside down like
this with the lens pointing that way. I'm going to apply it like this, so try to get the
base plate centered. And I always like to use a coin to tighten it as much as I
can. Now we'll set the camera aside for one second. We're gonna take the
Manfrotto quick-release baseplate and the L-bracket. So we're gonna take the
long side of the L bracket with the short side facing my right hand your
left, and we're gonna take the screw of the base plate facing away from the long
arm, and we're gonna set it right on top like that. If you are having trouble
moving this screw that's in the bottom of this base plate, you just need a
tighten it clockwise and then it'll pop up. Then you can freely slide it.
I'm gonna about Center this again I'm gonna take this screw and make sure it's
facing away from the short side of the bracket. it's easier if you always turn
it upside down. this is sort of an odd design because the screw won't fully let
you push the bracket all the way in. it sort of obstructs it
moving this baseplate so the furthest you can go is about there. so that's
where I have to tighten it. okay so once we have the Moza quick-release baseplate
attached to the long side of the L-bracket, now we can take the sony camera. We
can unscrew this screw here, and we just slide it in like so. And it has these
little safety pins to make sure it doesn't slide out of place. make sure you
firmly tighten the screw and we're gonna set this aside for one second. now we
take the gimbal. I'm gonna have the control panel facing me. you're going to
unlock all of the latches on this gimbal so that the motors can rotate freely.
so the first latch is here on your right side. if you have the control panel
facing you, then you have a another latch right hidden down here. so we're gonna
open that one and then we're gonna lock it so that it's perpendicular to the
floor. we're gonna have this roll motor the motor that's on the back closest to
me facing me and then I'm going to unlock the tilt motor I'm gonna have it
again perpendicular to the table. and you know you'll have the balance right if the text on
the tilt motor is written facing up and if the text on this arm is written
facing up. if this is written facing down you have it the wrong way. now I'm just
gonna lock this pan motor at the bottom just to keep it secure. I'm going to
unscrew the base plate mechanism on the back of the tilt motor. I'm going to pull
the safety latch and I'm going to start from the top and slide it down like that.
and make sure it's in there securely and you want to just tighten the screw now
let me just take one step back and take this camera out because I want to give
you the secret of how to balance any gimbal. the secret to balancing any
gimbal including the moza Air cross 2 is to find the center of gravity of this
whole setup. so you want to find the center of gravity for the lens the base
plate and the L-bracket and the camera body. so what you do is just put it in
your hand and kind of get a feel for it obviously the center of gravity is not
right here because if I were to balance this on my
finger like the camera would fall down like so. the
center of gravity is usually somewhere down the barrel of the lens and then
about an inch or two outside of the sensor. so right about here is where the
center of gravity is on this setup. I'm not gonna try to balance my $3,000
camera setup on one finger, but you can imagine that if I let go I can do a
pretty good job balancing it. Just get a kind of get a feel for it and think
about where the center of gravity is. Because what you need to do to balance the gimbal is get the
center of gravity lined up with each of the axises of the motors. so I want the
center of gravity to be in this axis in this axis and then right above this axis.
okay so the first thing we're going to do is balance the tilt motor. so I'm
gonna face like this way so you can see. so as you can see if I let go the camera
is falling forward that means that the center of gravity is ahead of this axis.
so now what I want to do is move this slightly ever so back and then try again.
so now I've moved it too far because if I let go the camera falls that way. the
center of gravity is now too far on this side of the axis, so what I'm gonna do is
just make micro adjustments like so. and when I say micro adjustments I mean
micro adjustments. you want to move just one hairline on the hash mark and when
you have a perfectly balanced gimbal it should stay. and don't get frustrated with this
it will take a long time your first time. but as you can see we just got it it's
not very difficult. if you're having trouble just take a breather walk away
from the table and come back and try again in a few minutes. I found that that
usually calms down my frustration. now we're gonna face the camera with the
lens shooting straight up so again as you can see there's too much center of
gravity on this side of the axis. it's falling that way. so what we need to do
is move the camera this way and we do that by loosening this screw here. I'm
gonna push the camera that way now you can see I've done it too far. so
have to go back this way and that's about right. you'll know that you have
your aircross gimbal perfectly balanced when you can point it in any direction and it
stays there. I'm not going to perfectly balance the gimble in the interest of time,
but you can imagine if I took my time I would be able to have it stay right
there in position. next we're going to balance the back motor so I'm gonna
unlock it and you can see if I let go it's falling this way,
meaning the center of gravity is too far past this axis. so I need to move the
camera this way. so I'm just going to unscrew the top here and kind of get a
feel for it my hands. still going that way too much making micro adjustments.
now there so now it's not falling to any side so that means it's balanced in the
middle. so now we're gonna balance the most difficult which is the pan motor on
the bottom. we're gonna unlock it tilt it down I'm gonna hold the gimbal
perpendicular to the table. and you can see that if I let go the camera is going
this way meaning I have to come back up unscrew
it push it that way and still too far.
still too far. so it's really a balancing act it takes quite a while I'm not going
to get it perfect for this video. but that's about right so now the way they
can test to see if your aircross 2 is balanced is to point it in any direction
and it should stay there. So that's actually very balanced and I did this
very quickly. One thing I might add is that before you balance your gimbal make
sure you have your complete setup, so take off your lens cap if you're gonna
use a lens hood put it on, if you're gonna have a microphone on the gimbal,
put it on because you need the final weight and weight distribution of how
you're gonna be using your camera setup. when you balance it I always like to
leave the lens cap on just because sometimes when you're balancing this
thing can bounce around and you could crack your lens. so I always leave the
lens cap on. A little tip that I like to give to people is once you have your
lens and camera perfectly balanced you can make a note of the hash marks so
that if you need to come back and change your lens and then switch
this lens again I will have saved all of the hash marks to balance this
particular setup. Before I go any further I just like to say that if you're
enjoying this video and would like to see more tutorials and reviews just like
this please click like please click Subscribe, and if you have any questions
at all leave them in the comment section below I respond to every single question
within 48 hours. okay so once you make sure that all of the motors are unlocked
you're going to turn on the moza gimbal and you're gonna do that by long holding the
power button that's right here around the follow focus wheel. so you push it
for about two seconds and the gimbal comes to life, and the first thing you're
gonna see is a confusing screen that says tilt 50 roll 50 pan 50, just ignore
that for one second. What we're gonna do is press and long hold the center button
to get to the menu, we're gonna go down to gimbal, we're going to push the right
button to enter that menu, we're gonna go to motor, and push the
right button we're gonna go to power and push the right button and we're going to
go to Auto Tune. We're gonna push Auto Tune and sit back for a second and the
gimbal is going to try to self-tune itself for the appropriate weight of
your camera setup. So after that's done you're gonna see a series of numbers and
it says that the tilt motor is at 92% the roll motor is at 94% and the pan
motor is at a hundred percent. Now I find this a little concerning
because this camera setup as I mentioned is just over a thousand grams, but just
over one kilo, which is apparently only 35% of the max payload of this aircross gimbal,
and the pan motor needs to be at a hundred percent. Imagine if I had a
camera set up that was around three kilos which is what they advertised as
the max payload, can you imagine how hard these motors would have to work? Now I'm
going to take you through all of the different Aircross 2 modes, so by default the Moza
Aircross 2 comes in pan follow mode, meaning if i pick up the gimbal and I
pan to the left and I pan to the right, the camera will follow. You can see that
if I tilt down or tilt up the camera does not follow, that's
because that access is locked, the tilt access is locked and if I roll to the
right or roll to the left you can see that the camera does not follow, and
that's because the roll access is locked, so if you look at your screen on the
main screen where it says tilt roll and pan that's what those
letters mean. L is for locked and F is for follow and the number is the speed
so tilt 50 L means that the tilt motor is locked and it's at 50 percent. So what
I love about this gimbal is that you can use this dial wheel to quickly adjust
any of the modes. You don't have to take out your phone and connect the app to
the gimbal to control it you can quickly do it with this button so now if I tap
the top of the scroll wheel I just changed tilt from lock to follow meaning
that if I tilt the camera down it's gonna follow I tilt it up it's
gonna follow again. If I tap it one more time I'm gonna lock that axis so now if
I tilt down and I tilt up the camera does not follow if I tap the down button
I'm going to lock the pan so now if I pan left and pan right the camera does
not follow when I have every single access locked no matter what I do to
this gimbal you can see that the camera is gonna
stay facing forward and that's the beauty of these gimbals is that it can
adjust for all of your movements if I tap the left button I'm gonna go into
role follow so now when I roll left and I roll right the camera follows. The max
you can do this is 45 degrees you can see that the gimbal sort of starts to
freak out after I go past 45 degrees. And if you needed to go more than that you
can enter first-person view, and you do that by triple tapping the left button
one two three. Now I'm in first-person view mode so even if I tilt more than 45
degrees the camera is following.
If I push if I push the right button I'm going in sport gear mode and what that
means is simply that the camera follows my movements more quickly, so if I
quickly pan left and I quickly pan right, the camera follows much quicker, if I
push the right button 3 times 1 2 3 the camera goes into Inception mode, what
that means is that I can point it forward and I can use the joystick to
rotate the camera, so now to get back into the center position I'm going to
double tap the trigger and the camera goes Center. If I triple tap the trigger
the camera turns to selfie mode if you push the center button once and your
camera is connected to the gimbal it'll start recording video if you push it
twice it'll take a photo and if you long hold the center button that's how you
enter the menu of the gimbal. Now you will notice that there is a rod on the
base plate of a gimbal and what this is for is to mount a follow focus motor.
I've never liked using the follow focus motor it is extremely impractical it is
almost impossible to walk with a gimbal in one hand and look at this small
monitor on the back and correctly pull focus. So I don't know anyone that uses
the follow focus wheel to actually pull focus on a gimbal. It's sort of to me
just like a nice sales gimmick that they add on these gimble's to try to outdo
each other. But what I do like about this gimbal is that you can reassign the
follow focus wheel to some other function and what I like to do is have
it assigned to the tilt motor so that if I rotate counterclockwise it goes down
if I rotate clockwise it goes up. And how you do that is by going to the menu so
I'm going to press and hold the center button go down to gimbal go down to
operation go down to wheel go down to function and put it as tilt. And you can
also adjust the sensitivity, I like to have it at 80 so that when I rotate the
wheel the camera tilts. So now that we have the aircross 2 gimbal setup, let's go outside
and take a look at some real-world footage from the aircross 2. All right so we stepped out into
the cold dark Swedish winter to get some real-life footage with the Moza air
cross 2. And I have a 24 - 105 lens on and I have it cranked up to the 105
millimeter focal length so that way all of the shakes and jitters are
exaggerated. And I have my girlfriend / assistant here to help. And one thing to
note is I have the optical image stabilization on the lens turned on and
yeah I'm gonna aim the aircross 2 right up at this backboard of the basketball court and
walk slowly towards it. So this is it walking can see does a pretty good job.
okay so now I'm gonna do a fast walk towards the backboard. so for this last
one I'm gonna run as fast as I can straight at Julia. you can see that the
gimbal actually drifts down as I run. I don't know why it's doing that,
so one thing you'll notice about this moza gimbal is that it's very well built, it
just feels very solid and sturdy especially compared to the zhiyun gimbles.
So this gimbal does feel very well built and it's ergonomic with the trigger and
the handle. And I love that the battery pops out quickly so that you can charge
it in a hurry you don't have to unscrew something and pop out the batteries.
Another thing I noticed about the moza Air cross 2 is that it's very noisy so
if you are recording audio for your video then the noise of the motors might
interfere with that especially if you have a mic mounted right here on the
gimbal and not on your subject. Overall this aircross 2 gimbal is pretty impressive for its
price, although I'm still a little bit out on the verdict, as you can see in
some of the test footage you do get shaky footage and it is quite loud so I
still think there is room for improvement. But if you're working on a
budget then this is a great gamble for you!