This video is all about zooming with the DJI Ronin-S and the Sony A7SIII.
No, not that kind of zooming.
Today I am going to show you how to set up zoom control using the focus wheel of the Ronin S.
I wrote a lot of this video back in 2019 after shooting dozens of weddings, concerts and other events for various companies and clients,
so that’s where I’m coming from in the event videography world.
Last year was kind of a write-off for live in-person events but I did purchase an A7SIII this year,
so my experience will reflect that camera as well as my tried and true A6300.
Now before we continue, please note that DJI only lists sony cameras as having controllable optical or digital zoom.
I’m going to be referencing their compatibility chart a lot in this video and I'll link in the description if you want to check that out yourself.
I have no experience trying this with the GH5, Black magic pocket cinema, or the Canon R5,
but before you ask, it’s not supposed to work with any of these, it's just supposed to work with Sony cameras.
If you have your own experiences with the Ronin-S and some other camera you can share them down below and someone else will find that helpful.
When shooting video for events, you don’t have as much control over your subjects as you would during a staged production.
You could give your second shooter a clipboard and shout action and cut to your clients,
but you’d probably just piss off the wedding planner.
Speed and efficiency are going to separate the good event shooters from the great ones.
Photographers often shoot weddings with multiple cameras slung around their waists to avoid switching lenses for this very reason.
As a wedding and concert videographer I have spent the last few years shooting with my A6300 on a Ronin-S
and I have gradually worked up a system that does what I need it to do, and now I'm going to share what I've learned with all of you.
Before we get started timestamps are in the description for you to skip ahead.
And while you’re down there, be sure to like and subscribe to help grow this channel.
Switching and re-balancing lenses on a gimbal does not happen quickly,
which is a problem in an environment that requires nailing reaction shots on a minute to minute schedule.
If I approached the problem like a wedding photographer, that would mean a second camera AS WELL as second Ronin S.
Instead, my solution was purchasing the 18-105 PZ lens,
as well as a dongle DJI sells called MCC-MULTI. More on dongles later.
Now I can use my Ronin-S’s focus wheel to zoom.
More importantly I can start, stop, and frame my shots all without having my hands leave the base of the Ronin-S.
Of course to some extent, I still need to set aperture, shutter speed and ISO, but it is much faster than switching lenses,
and the fact that the lens is zooming internally rather than extending outwards means no re-balancing as I change my focal length.
It’s also a constant F4 lens, so my aperture isn’t changing the more I zoom in.
Since we are controlling the zoom electronically, it's important to note that zoom can only be controlled with Power Zoom Lenses.
For Sony that includes the 16-50 kit lens that comes with a lot of the A6000 series cameras,
As well as the 18-105 which I mentioned, and a fullframe 28-135 lens.
If you don’t have any of these lenses don’t worry, you can still benefit from clearimage and digital zoom control.
The difference being that optical zoom keeps image resolution and sharpness, only moving the lens further from the sensor,
whereas with clearimage and digital zoom, you're essentially cropping in on the image.
Now I'm not getting into the science of Sony’s clear image zoom but depending on your camera
it should comfortably increase your magnification up to 1.5 times with no major loss in quality.
I found that I didn’t want to push it much past 1.2 times with the crop sensor Sony A6300,
but high resolution, full-frame sensors should fare better.
It’s always a good idea to do some tests before a paid gig to see what works for you.
Alright so the Ronin-S comes with a bunch of little dongle connectors
and we’re not going to be using any of those.
You could get away with using the IR sensor for start/stop recording control out of the box
but you need to buy a different microusb cable than the one that originally comes with the Ronin-S.
I know, it's kinda dumb, right?
What you need is the MCC-MULTI cable.
The one that came with the Ronin-S is the MCC-B cable which is supposed to be
compatible with the Sony A6400, Sony A9, Canon 5D4 and several other cameras.
I will post a link to the full compatibility list in the description,
and while you’re down there consider buying your dongles through one of my links.
Now some of you must be curious about the A7SIII because it’s not listed on DJI’s compatibility chart here.
DJI has a separate page on their website. showing the compatibility of The A7S3 with the Ronin-S2 -
which I have no experience with by the way, don't ask me about the Ronin S2 in the comments -
Please? -
but this page seems to be true to compatibility with the first iteration Ronin-S as well.
The MCC-MULTI cable will control start and stop recording as well as zoom just like it does with the A6300.
And you can use the MCC-C cable, which will also you to control the camera's start and stop recording,
but it pulls the lens’s focus using the focus wheel instead of zooming.
he MCC-C is supposed to allow people with the Ronin-S2 to change the ISO, aperture, and shutter as well,
but there aren’t equivalents for this with the first iteration the Ronin-S, not even in the phone application.
The Canon 5DIII is actually compatible with the Ronin-S as well
but I didn’t bother buying the extra MCC-Mini cable to control via Mini-USB that you need.
And it wouldn’t have gotten me zoom control anyway.
The IR dongle sucks but not because it doesn’t work.
It just makes it a pain in the butt to take the camera off the Ronin-S.
It works when you point it at the right spot
just make sure you turn on Remote Ctrl or whatever your camera’s equivalent is,
on the A6300 it was the 3rd option on the last page of the menu.
On the A7SIII you’ll need to turn on IR Remote Control which you can find under “setup option” on the 12th section of the toolbox tab.
But of course, you can’t control the zoom that way. And that’s why you’re here.
Another point about the dongles is that you probably want to physically balance your camera with the dongles attached.
It will add some weight to the side. I’ve found the Ronin-S to be pretty forgiving though.
Just make sure you do a balance test with it by holding the M-button and the trigger for several seconds.
And then don't touch it until it finishes.
The final point I’ll add on dongles is that
it’s best practice to plug in everything while the camera is off and turn on the Ronin-S before turning on the camera.
If you turn on the camera first it might not work, but after another quick off and on power cycle you should be okay.
Alright now I’m sure you’re quite diligent but you might have missed a firmware update or two.
This control system worked with previous versions, but various bugs have since been fixed.
so make sure you download and install the DJI Pro Assistant for Ronin application on your Mac or PC to update.
The latest firmware at the time of recording is version 2.4.130 (which came out January 28th, 2021).
You're going to want to install this if you want to use the MCC-C cable with the A7SIII.
I'll link this in the description as well.
You don’t need the phone app but there are a few cool things you can do with it
So go ahead and download the DJI Ronin app for your android or ios device.
I think I’m on version 1.4.5
If you plugged in your compatible dongle and things aren’t working, you may need to change a few things up in the menu.
The main thing you’ll need to do is set “USB Connection” to PC Remote.
On the A6300 this can be found on the 4th section of the last toolbox looking tab.
On the A7S3 go to the Network Tab and on the first option, Transfer / Remote, go to PC Remote Function.
I have PC Remote on and PC Remote Connection Method set to USB.
I’m not sure if this next setting affects anything but I’ll show you my USB settings as well.
On the Toolbox Setup tab, go to the 10th option, USB, and set the USB LUN Setting to Multi and I just have the USB Power Supply Setting set to ON.
Another thing I'd personally recommend setting is airplane mode.
If you don’t need wireless camera connectivity this will save your battery life a ton so be sure to turn airplane mode on.
Then you’ll want to specify whether you want optical zoom only, clearimage zoom or digital zoom.
Clearimage zoom will increase your focal length either 1.5 - 2 times depending on your camera,
and digital zoom extends this to quadruple it.
If you have a powerzoom lens and don't want any digital cropping, just go with optical zoom.
The quality and sharpness of the image will take a hit the further you zoom in so be careful, there are only so many pixels on your sensor.
I’ll go more into A7SIII compatibility in a section entirely on its own but be aware that there are a lot of limitations to using this camera.
You can’t crop out the vignetting with digital zoom using the 18-105 before optically zooming
so you'll have to have APSC mode on and this will limit your video formats to 1080p only.
Sony, release an update for APS-C 4k on the A7SIII.
People shouldn't be making workaround videos for this kind of thing, come on.
You could technically record the vignetting in 4k and then crop in post... but why bother?
You’re not really getting much more of a usable resolution than 1920 x 1080 anyway.
Another setting you might also want to shoot with is steadyshot.
This is your camera’s in-body stabilization.
The Ronin-S will give you smooth shots but steadyshot will clean any bumps or jitters up even more.
On the A7S3 you can use either standard or Active steadyshot modes.
Active works a little bit harder, but be aware that these modes crop your image something like 1.1 times.
One cool thing I noticed is that with wide APS-C lenses like the Sigma 16mm F1.4,
I can turn on active shot and even with APSC mode off, there isn’t much visible vignetting.
So I can shoot in 4K and it doesn't even matter.
The final useful settings you might want to try out is the zoom speed
The A7SIII seems to have its own menu item dedicated to this but I'm not going to go over that at all.
What you need to do instead is connect your phone and Ronin-S via the Ronin app and then go to create > camera settings > zoom speed.
I like leaving this at 1 so I can precisely dial-in the focal length I want to shoot at
but you can push it all the way to 100 for faster zoom if you prefer
A lot of people already know that you can control your Ronin-S with a video game controller
but did you know you can control the zoom with it too?
Connect your Xbox or PS4 controller to your phone via bluetooth and open the DJI Ronin App.
With the PS4 you’ll have to hold the PS button and share button at the same time to make it a pairable bluetooth device.
I don't have an Xbox, I actually borrowed the controller, I'm sure you can look up how to do this.
Open up the app and go to create.
Now you can open up “gaming controller” and you’ll have full control of the Ronin-S.
Everything is labeled and can be reassigned: the left stick controls pan and tilt,
the right stick controls the roll or rotation of the camera, the triangle is to switch modes between the 3 custom modes you've set,
square to take a picture, circle is to start and stop video recording
and X is to recenter the device.
What’s not labeled is the ability to zoom.
Holding R2 will zoom you in and L2 will zoom out.
These can’t be reassigned but they're very welcome additions.
haven’t found myself using this mode much since you need to keep your phone on this page of the app
and you can’t put it to sleep, but hopefully you can find some uses for it.
Alright since a lot of people are probably here to look at A7SIII compatibility specifically, so I decided to give this its own section.
As I mentioned in previous sections, you're gonna want to make sure your firmware is up to date Ronin-S
and have either the MCC-C cable in if you want to pull focus or the MCC-MULTI cable if you want to zoom.
One problem I foresee with the dongle is that it’s going to be in the way of the fully articulating screen of the A7SIII.
This wasn’t an issue on the A6300 since the screen could come straight out before being angled,
but I guess I need to just shut up and buy an external monitor to view this properly from awkward angles.
If you want optical zoom control on the A7SIII
you’ll have to use one of the 3 Sony E-mount power zoom lenses.
own 2 of these power zoom lenses and unfortunately both of them are APS-C.
On the A7SIII that means that I can’t shoot in 4K because of the 12MP sensor.
I’ll have to do more tests but the workaround I’ve seen videographers on YouTube mention is not very useful here.
he workaround goes like this: you turn APS-C mode off
and then clearimage zoom crop in and get rid of the vignetting.
For some reason you can record 4K like this.
What happens with a power zoom lens is that the controls to crop using digital zoom are tied to the power zoom,
and I wasn’t able to digitally zoom in before optically zooming.
I couldn’t crop out heavy vignetting until after hitting 105mm.
If I had access to a 28-135PZ lens then we’d be in business.
That’s a full frame F4 power zoom lens that would give me a comparable focal length to the 18-105 on my A6300.
I’ve held this lens before, it’s big, it's pretty heavy.
Not sure how that would balance on the Ronin-S.
It’s also pushing $4000 Canadian after tax so I’ll stick with 1080 @ 120fps
if iI'm using the 18-105 or just use more full-frame primes and zoom digitally.
Alright so here are some of my final thoughts.
The Sony A6300 with 18-105 zoom lens on a DJI Ronin-S
worked wonders for me at a time where I wasn’t ready to upgrade my camera but I wanted the quality of my camera work to go up.
If you have a lot of potential video work and want to start charging your clients more,
invest in something like the Ronin-S.
In certain situations, the power zoom control is very useful
but there aren’t a ton of options for camera and lens support.
I think it would be really cool if we could toggle between zoom control and focus control DJI,
you could even have that as a setting tied to profiles to easily switch between zooming and pulling focus.
A man can dream.
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you can also comment on any topics you’d like me to cover in a future video. Peace.