The DJI OM4 is the best gimbal that you can get for your phone
that money can buy, and it's actually very affordable as well.
You can use this with either your iPhone or Android to get some amazing cinematic
looking shots when you're doing your vlogging or youtube videos.
This is now DJI's fourth generation gimbal and it comes with some amazing
features including foldable design using quick
release magnets. Of course it's got its own fully
featured app which is just great and you can use gestures which means you
can really turn this into your own camera person just for you for when
you're doing your vlogging videos. Now, DJI burst onto the scene about 10
years ago with their groundbreaking drones and they've carried their
technology through to gimbals and other camera gadgets. Now
behind me we've got the DJI Ronin S which
is great for getting professional cinematic shots with either your DSLR or
mirrorless cameras. I absolutely love it, but i want to do
some more YouTube videos, which is why I wanted to get out
and grab one of these to use with my phone. Speaking of doing professional
looking vlogging videos, if you're going to go out and grab yourself one of these,
I definitely recommend you upgrade your audio as well by grabbing something like
a Boya BY M1 which you can check out in
the video i've done here, or even a Rode Wireless Go if you really
want to be mobile. Okay enough chit chat, let's go ahead and
open this one up, and i've got my favourite cheese knife here, I thought
it'd be good for the occasion and let's just slice that open
and oh it's like christmas all over again
see my birthday is on christmas day so i get two sets of presents so i know we're
a long way off christmas but that doesn't matter
okay here it is big moment
all right so we've got a little info on the box here
use your magnet unfold use the app plug it in away you go lovely
okay so we've got ourselves a little pack here no doubt with
manuals and a little baggie that's nice
gee they've made this hard to get out oh here we go okay just put that down over
there um so we've got a stencil here to show
you where to put the magnet that's handy we've got
the magnet that goes on the back of your phone which you can probably put there
permanently it's pretty cool and then of course
some manuals we don't need to go into that just yet
and then what do we have here just a cleaning kit okay don't need that
just yet and then here we go we've got ourselves
a little mini tripod a couple of extra magnets and then the
unit itself check out the magnets it's a riser
to make the phone a little bit thicker and then this
is the magnet that you can clip onto the back of your phone
just put that over there for now got the little tripod
and a charger cable which looks like a usbc
so that's going to be nice and easy to charge up
and then
here it is and let's just put that box away for now
so first impressions it feels kind of plasticky but that's not too bad
considering the price range it's not too heavy but definitely know
what's in your hand and then of course it's got that classic
dji finish quality to it you just know it's going to be a good unit
so yeah the folding up feels quite nice and solid
nice so we can just put the tripod on there
and feels like i'm about to fly a spacecraft or some kind
of fighter jet great all set up so i'm
going to choose my iphone and i'm going to grab for now this one
that just clips on and off and it's got a little icon there to say
which way has to go up and then it's asking me to line up
the dot on here with the dot at the top so let's just clip that on
all nice and at the top i need to make sure that the dots are lined up
and they are so that's all good to go now i'm just going to
turn it on here we go and nice
okay so oh it's nice just like it's big brother
except way lighter and way more portable i like
that
okay so i'm going to go ahead and read the manual so i know how to use this
thing and i'm going to go out and test this out and get back to you in just a
minute first you'll want to download the native
dji om app it's called dji memo you don't need to use the app to use a
gimbal but you'll be missing out in a lot of functionality if you don't
then go ahead and log in or create a new dji account
you'll then be taken through a getting started tutorial giving you an outline
of all the controls and you'll want to go through this a few times because it
is hard to remember the red button takes a photo or video
and the m button will flick between video and photo mode and then double
press the m button to go from landscape to portrait i
recommend not using the zoom unless your phone has a built-in optical zoom the
trigger has your most useful functions including lock mode
active track re-centering activating sports mode and switching between the
front and rear cameras and of course you can charge your gimbal
up right here and we are ready to go and move on to the getting started guide
for the on-screen display so down the bottom you can choose
between camera modes up the top we have shooting settings in addition to using
the trigger you can change between the front rear cameras with this hotkey here
and then we've got access to the story mode which we'll look at real quick
later on and then you can see your battery level
and other information here and lastly you've got some other
settings you can change from this menu and the guide finishes by prompting you
to use the active track feature which we'll get to a little bit
later on let's get into some footage over to my local beach putting this into
action here we are using the gimbal in freestyle mode using the rear camera
and i'm not walking very carefully here just demonstrating what it's like
walking casually here again still shooting freestyle but this time in
selfie mode when shooting landscape the gimbal wants
you to have the camera on the left so here i'm holding the gimbal with my
right hand and it feels natural walking that way
when it is in my left hand i have to really reach across my body to get the
camera in front of my face so i prefer to walk
around with it in my right hand i think it's a good idea to get good at
using the gimbal with both hands though i've now activated active track and used
cloud as my subject i'm standing relatively still but there's quite a
strong wind so let's see how it works in these conditions she was kind of sad
that she had to wear a bulky jacket to keep warm on her birthday because she
had a beautiful outfit on underneath so it did a pretty good job in strong
winds here is active track in selfie mode it's not too bad
it's good if you don't want to have to think about controlling the gimbal to
make it point at your face i prefer going freestyle and selfie mode
though let's experiment with active track in tripod mode with gestures
so first you'll need to make sure you've activated gesture control
and then you can choose if your gesture will activate shoot only or follow and
shoot so we've selected follow and shoot here
i'm using the p symbol as my start and stop gesture
and i've started it and you can see that it's selected my face as the thing that
it is going to follow because it tracks my face it means that
when i'm up close it frames things nicely
but yet when i'm further back it chops off from my feet and there's a lot of
headroom above it so you can stop recording with the piece
symbol again i did find out later on that after
it has engaged active track you can get someone to tilt the camera down
using the joystick to give less headroom if desired
and here we're testing how it goes with active track when
you are running around back and forth like an idiot
and it actually has a good range of about 20 30 meters which is
pretty good and you can see here as we pop out a frame it loses a track and
it's unable to capture the track again automatically
selfie mode active track actually works quite well
when you're moving about fast it has no problems following you around there
let's compare an orbit in freestyle mode and in active track mode and you can see
here as we're orbiting around cloud in freestyle mode i'm controlling where
the camera centers and it works really well active track in
an orbit move on the other hand is a bit of a bumpy ride
because you're moving around and the gimbal is trying to lock on at the same
time as rotating around and you can see here it's just not that
smooth you have a few options with pano 9 shot 3 shot and 240 degree we had
great fun with the nine short grid pano mode
it took a couple of goes to get it right though sometimes it merged the photos in
an unnatural way and you need to get things
in the background to be pretty stationary but it gives some pretty good
results the three shot pano was even more fun
now you may need to go in and fine tune the horizontal gimbal
adjustment and in general i recommend you shoot in a fairly flat area
this mode is actually called clone me and as you can see it takes three shots
and you want to get yourself inside those reference lines each time
and here's the result you can get really good fun
the dyno zoom mode also gave some fun effects you've got to
swipe over the object you want to do the effect on then move in or out depending
on which of the two modes you choose i found the one where you were walking
out was easy to shoot and gave better results
here you can see the effect i was going for was trying to make the tree look
like it was growing very fast here's another attempt with a different
background and some terrible modeling efforts going on there as well
the hyperlapse mode takes some planning and creativity to get right
for best effect you want to walk in a steady straight line and try to keep the
camera pointed at the same spot as much as possible
to add further interest try and feature a subject that's doing something dynamic
and the result here shows that the recording is sped up
that's why it's called hyperlapse let's just play that out again
looking good cloud nice one holding the dji om4
upside down will enter underslung mode in which the phone can easily capture
videos from the lower position you can see here it's also a great
comparison of how walking with your phone and shooting video compares to
using the gimbal under slime mode is great for shooting
flowers kids and animals especially cute dogs like
these ones we didn't play with story mode a lot but
basically it prompts you to shoot four short bits of video and then it
will automatically edit it together with some effects just like this
i'll mention it again you don't need to use the app to operate the gimbal
that means you can use dji om4 while using another phone app
such as a teleprompter app which you can check out in the video shown above right
here i've had my beautiful girlfriend plow
here as my amazing model and i thank her for that
so the verdict is this is a very good toy it's going to
make your adventures at the beach at the park pretty much anywhere you
want to go a bit more fun you can see there's a lot of great
features and abilities this thing can do we've got some great videos and photos
to check out when we get home let's finish off with a bit of aussie
rules footy willy super's style and enable the sport mode so in sport
mode the dji om4 will respond and follow subjects and
movements faster to add a level of action to the scene
and what better way to finish off this filming session then with a nice
cold beer and a shout out to my mate redder for his cameo volunteering effort
i 100 recommend you pick up one of these guys i also recommend 100
you watch this video next which will teach you all about this teleprompter
app which enables you to shoot social media stories
scripted without it looking like you're looking at the camera and it couples
nicely with the dji om4 i'll see you there