You guys have been asking me for more
behind-the-scenes stuff on how I shoot these videos.
And MOZA asked me to review their latest gimbal.
So, why don't we blend those two ideas together?
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and hold on to your butts.
Alright, this isn't gonna be a typical gimbal review
because let's face it, you know what a gimbal does,
and you'd expect a premium gimbal to gimbal well,
and I'm happy to report that the MOZA Air 2
gimbals with the best of them. But what I do wanna do
is look at the user experience with the app,
and how easy it is to program camera movements,
because that's something I've been wanting to make
a tutorial on for a while now. But I feel like more of you
probably have gimbals than you do expensive motion hardware,
so I'm gonna show you how to do it on a gimbal,
and to make it even harder, we're gonna do a macro video.
[steady electronic music]
So, there's a couple reasons why combining
camera movement with macro video is hard.
And by the way, when I say macro video,
I mean 1:1 reproduction ratio.
Anybody can just throw on a macro lens, but to really
challenge yourself, try and get as close to 1:1 as possible.
And when you do this you'll notice two things.
One: even the tiniest movement forward or backwards
can cause you to completely lose focus
and two: any raised areas, like even small ridges
on a product can be soft if not managed correctly.
So, in order to overcome those obstacles we have to build
the idea of our product by assembling a sequence
of it's details bit by bit, shot on a flat plane
with camera movements that follow that plane.
And if you wanna give yourself a real challenge,
don't allow any wide shots of the whole product
until after you've assembled all of your macro detail shots.
This will help you mentally find a way to motivate
your shot choices knowing that you have to convey
your product or subject without having a wide shot to rely on.
But let's go ahead and do some example shots
and I'll show you what I mean.
[Batman transition riff]
So, first up you need to put your gimbal on a tripod
or you can use the tripod feet that are included
with the MOZA Air 2, or whatever gimbal you're using.
Just make sure that you put it on a stable surface.
[light upbeat pop music]
♪
Keep in mind you'll need to get really close to the subject,
so both the gimbal and the product will need
to be still and stable. Then throw on a macro lens
and balance the camera on the gimbal.
I usually use my DJI Ronin-S for this,
but this is one area where the MOZA Air 2 really shines.
It's one of the nicest gimbals have ever used for balancing.
You can lock off this motor here
which makes it easy because it's not rolling,
and then the rest of the adjustments
are really smooth and easy.
♪
Alright, so now it's time to think about
some of the features that stand out to you
on the product that you're gonna be shooting.
I'm gonna be using this original Nintendo Game Boy
and to me some of the features that stand out
are the controls like the iconic A and B button
and obviously the text that says "Nintendo Game Boy".
So, we're not allowed to use any of that
because it's too obvious.
We wanna create curiosity with our first few shots.
Something that I think is interesting
that isn't too obvious is this grill on the front.
And also because this Game Boy as well-used,
there's quite a few scuffs
and wear and tear and debris all over it.
And because of the colour of this is pretty iconic,
it's like the Nintendo grey colour, I think showing some
of the wear against that colour could give it a fun look.
So, let's do a couple shots of those to show you
how to deal with the issues that we mentioned earlier.
♪
OK, so let's start with this grill.
But first we'll have to load up the app,
so that we can program the movement that we want.
For the MOZA Air 2, it's called the MOZA Master app.
It works pretty well.
Often gimbal apps can be a little bit buggy.
But I thought that the MOZA app held up quite nicely
compared to the others that I've tried.
So, we'll pair the app to the gimbal.
And then we'll go into Creative Video mode.
Now the MOZA app doesn't have a dedicated
function for camera movement,
but it does have the Motionlapse feature,
and we can use that to make the same motion,
and we'll just completely ignore the time lapse function.
Now we just need to set our start and end points.
And I recommend setting them wider than you think
you'll need and also setting the duration
longer than you think you'll need as well.
Because when you play this stuff back even small movements
can look like they're covering a lot of ground with macro.
And we need to make sure that
we're not covering that ground too quickly.
We also need to make sure that the product
is perpendicular to the lens, or close to it,
because too much of an angle will look weird
when we move across because of the shifting focus.
If that's the look you're going for though.
Feel free to give it a try, but I prefer to build
an assemblage of perpendicular shots
and just suggest the depth in the viewers mind.
Now when it comes to focus you'll either wanna focus
at 1/3 of the way through the movement or 2/3 of the way.
But don't focus at the beginning or the end
or the middle because it'll just look kind of weird.
But make sure you put the best part of whatever detail it is
that you're trying to show on that 1/3 or 2/3 focus spot.
So, for this shot, we're actually just going
to tilt up along the grill lines.
This will give a pleasing logical flow to the shot.
So, we'll start just below the grill, and then we'll set
our first point, and then we'll move about
1/3 of the way up and set our Focus.
And then set our endpoint to just above the grill.
And we'll give it about 15 seconds.
But when it comes to the edit, we're only gonna use
a small portion of this, just that period
where it crosses over that 1/3 focus section.
So, we can preview the motion
to make sure that it looks good.
And then we start recording on the camera.
And initiate the motion for real this time.
♪
Now whenever you're this close and you're panning and tilting
you have to be concerned with your focus.
Because with such a shallow depth of field
the small changes in distance that occur
between the planes can have a huge impact.
So, for example, when we're tilting like this
maybe right now the subject and the camera are 20 cm away,
and it's tack sharp. But if we tilt down
just a little bit more, well, maybe now it's 21 cm
between the subject and the focal plane.
And that one centimetre can be the difference between
being sharp and completely out of focus when were this close.
And the same is true for panning, but there is one
movement using a gimbal that doesn't have
an impact on the focusing distance,
and that's that Inception rolling mode.
And the MOZA Air 2 is actually the best candidate
for doing this with macro, because remember when I said
that even small movements forward or backward
can completely ruin the shot?
Well, luckily the MOZA Air 2 doesn't require you
to put any joystick input into the gimbal
in order to control that Inception mode.
On the DJI Ronin-S, the other gimbal that I like
that has that, you have to hold the joystick to the side
all the time in order for it to do that.
And if you even slow down a little bit
when you're shooting macro, it might look like
a complete stop, and you can actually
put sometimes a bit too much forward pressure
just when using the joystick that can cause you to make
the image soft and sharp as you lean in and out.
But luckily with the MOZA Air 2,
you can just program it to roll at whatever speed you want
and it just does it until you tell it to stop.
♪
Also don't be afraid of getting pretty intense
with the lighting. You want those highlights
to stand out and to creep into all the little textures.
So, experiment, but it's OK to get in real close
or to cut a sharp angle.
And you can definitely create this look by using other gear
like sliders and motorized heads.
But like I said, it seems like gimbals are pretty
ubiquitous these days. So, I felt like this was
the right piece of equipment to do this tutorial on.
Then just continue programming and recording your shots.
My concept for this Game Boy will be to slowly add more
obvious features intermixed with the wear and tear
until I finally reveal the words,
and then end on a wider shot displaying the whole product.
Try and use traces or edges or even colour patterns
from a previous shot, in a subsequent shot
in order to connect the images
and complete the puzzle in the viewer's mind.
And then add in some sweet retro synth music
and a moody colour grade
and you should have something like this.
[dynamic synth music]
♪
If you wanna see more details on how the MOZA Air 2
functions as a typical run-and-gun stabilizer,
there's plenty of solid videos out there already,
so I'll defer to them.
But overall, I like it. I'd say it's pretty comparable
to the Ronin-S, which was my previous favourite.
There's a couple things that I like better
than the Ronin-S. For instance, the better balancing.
I like the motor lock in the back, and I like
the larger set of accessories. The MOZA Air 2,
for instance, comes with two quick release plates
and both of those plates work perfectly on Manfrotto tripods,
where the Ronin plates are a little bit finicky.
Now, I know I'll get lots of questions about compatibility,
but here's the thing: I'm kinda done trying
to get gimbals to work perfectly over USB.
I did have this one working on the Sony using this cable here,
but even the cable that they recommend to use
with the Sony a7 III doesn't work right,
and you have to use the older micro cable.
And every gimbal seems to have all kinds of issues with
different cameras and different cable configurations.
And for the most part, I'm just kind of annoyed
with trying to get it to work all the time.
And luckily though, with these gimbals you don't really need
to have the cable connected to use 90% of the features.
It's really just sort of a start-stop recording.
But you can easily start recording on the camera.
And focus by wire is junk anyway,
so really other than the passive power supply,
which I kind of like because it makes your cameras last longer,
There's not a lot of reason to, you know, forever battle
getting the USB connections to work on the camera.
Now the Ronin-S probably does have the upper hand
right now when it comes to camera compatibility over USB,
but it took them months to get there,
and I'm sure the MOZA Air 2
will get to the same level pretty soon.
But again, I wouldn't make that the make-it-or-break-it feature
because I don't think that you'll be perfectly impressed
any gimbal's compatibility with any various set of cameras.
And as for a couple things that I didn't like
about the MOZA Air 2 as much compared to the Ronin-S,
I actually liked the internal battery design
on the Ronin-S, and I like how you can charge it internally.
I didn't really like having to take the batteries out
of the MOZA Air 2 and charge them externally
because despite what some reviewers have said,
you cannot charge the MOZA Air 2 batteries
while they're in the gimbal. I also liked the grip a little
bit better on the Ronin, and I also liked that you can
take it apart which makes it more compact when packing.
But overall these are pretty minor are details
and both of these gimbals are capable
of a heavy payload and both perform excellently.
So, if the MOZA Air 2 sounds like a good fit for you,
I think you'll be quite pleased with its performance,
and it's a little bit cheaper than the Ronin-S as well,
so you're getting pretty good value all the way around.
Overall it's a very gimbal-y gimbal.
And I give it 4.5 gimbals out of 5.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining,
and if you did make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
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feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.