(soft music)
- This is the new Zhiyun Weebill 2,
and this is a small compact lightweight gimbal
that's perfect for adventure or travel
and I'm gonna go through 10 reasons
why you would wanna get this gimbal, let's get into it.
(Upbeat music)
So I just want to say a special thanks to Zhiyun
for sponsoring this video and to start off,
let's do a little test and I'm actually gonna
hand it over to Jesse and he's gonna do a little
follow walk and talk so you can see how smooth it is.
Jesse doesn't have a whole lot of experience using a gimbal,
so here.
I'll take this, okay so first let me show you
how to do a gimbal walk so we can get it a little bit
smoother 'cause we don't wanna have that bubble.
So, what you wanna do is kind of go down a little bit lower,
kind of like a little squat and you're gonna walk that way
to try and keep your hands as still as possible.
Got the gimbal walk, let's see it, nice look at that.
Okay, number one is the size and weight
this gimbal is super small and compact,
which makes it perfect for any sort of like travel
or like adventure and one of the best things is that
I could just slip this in the front of my backpack
and with the design of the Weebill 2,
you have a back handle and you have a tripod on the bottom,
but both of those come off so you can make it fit
in pretty much any type of camera backpack out there.
So the gimbal is around three pounds and it could hold
just between seven and eight pounds of camera gear,
so I think 7.6.
So my setup that I've been using with this gimbal
is a Sony A7S III with a 20 mm 1.8,
which is perfect for getting that wide lens look.
I've also been using my 85 and I've actually been able
to mount some heavier lenses like this 24 to 105.
So you can use heavier cameras and heavier lenses
on this gimbal, even though it's super small and compact.
All right Jesse, I'm gonna take it from here.
- No.
- Number two is the design.
Now the Weebill 2 looks very similar to the original Weebill
however there's been some massive improvements
that make it a lot easier to use.
For the motors, the gimbal now has this kink design,
so the roll motor doesn't block the screen
and that means when you're looking at the monitor,
nothing is obstructing the view,
you can actually see the back of your camera very easily,
and that alone is a great improvement
but now there's also a monitor that flips out
that also displays what you're filming.
This gimble has the back handle design
just like the original Weebill
and also you have the tripod on the bottom.
Now the original Weebill, you had to move this tripod
up here to use it with this two handed grip
but now on the Weebill 2,
you have an independent back handled that actually has
its own quick release.
So you could pop this on and off and it's easy,
you don't have to twist it on like you originally had to
with the bottom tripod.
Now for the tripod, it's just a screw on the bottom,
I've added one of Zhiyun's quick releases,
these things are great just for anytime you need
something simple to be able to pop gear on and off
and between the tripod and the back handle,
you could strip this down and make it much smaller,
but having the back handle and having the bottom tripod
does make this gimbal easier to use
because of the two handed grip shooting.
All the buttons have been moved from the back
where they were on the original Weebill,
where you ended up hitting them when you're operating
to now on the left side.
So on this left side here, you have your joystick,
you have a record button, you have a manual switch
that switches between tilt lock, all lock and all follow
and then you have a jog wheel which can switch between
follow focus and different camera settings.
Everything is on the side and it's accessible quickly
with just a flip of a button.
The joystick is right where your thumb is
so you can easily use the joystick,
but if you don't want to have your finger on it,
you can just wrap it around the handle
and there's no chance of you actually hitting it.
The big addition is the flip out screen
that just swivels and then flips
and you don't actually have to mount your phone
like you did on the original Weebill
and it goes away super easily.
Now on the front you have a trigger
that when you double press it,
it resets the camera back to center, you triple press it,
it goes into vlog mode.
Hi, pop off the back handle and now you can start vlogging
and then if you hold the trigger, it puts it into POV mode.
So most of the features that you're gonna use
are actually on the gimbal itself as a physical button,
and then everything else is just
on the flip out touchscreen.
Okay, so now I'm doing a walk and talk,
there might be times where I want to vlog using a gimbal
so that I can get that like super smooth footage
and this is what it looks like.
So number three is the built in battery.
Now this gimbal has no removable battery,
there's a USB C in the bottom of the handle,
and you can charge the battery through that.
The old Weebill, you had to pull out these spare batteries
and you had to use a separate charger
and that charger would then have to come with you
wherever you go and it was kind of a pain to work with.
With the new design you have an internal battery
that lasts up to nine hours and it takes less than two
to actually charge which for most situations
is more than enough battery because nine hours
will get you through the day
and even if you do need to charge throughout the day,
USB C makes it super simple to plug in anywhere.
Number four is this flip out screen.
This flip out screen is awesome for a few reasons.
Right now I'm using it with the wireless video transmitter
and it allows me to see what the camera sees.
Now with the A7S III, I can flip out the screen,
but I don't have to because I can see the image here
and if you have a camera that doesn't have
a flip out screen, well,
now you do have a flip out screen when you use this gimbal.
Now beyond the actual screen being able to see
what's going on, the screen is used to change your settings
and what's great about this screen is that
it's a touchscreen, but it's really easy to navigate
and use and basically all of your controls
to be able to operate this gimbal can be found in this menu
and if you don't need to access it, just tuck it away.
So if you're not using the screen and you don't need to see
any of those menus, you tuck it away
and you can't hit any of the buttons.
And what's also awesome about the screen
is that you can kind of use a two screen setup.
So when you're filming like this,
you're looking straight at your monitor on the camera,
but say you go down low,
well, you could have the screen set up
so that as soon as you drop down low,
you're looking at the screen, so in a way,
you're using a two screen setup where
you have one setup for when you're looking straight ahead
and then you have the other one when it's down low
on the ground and it just makes it easier to use.
Number five is the new
transmount video transmission transmitter.
The big feature that a lot of you will end up using
is the ability to actually see what the camera sees
through the flip out screen.
Now to do that, you just connect one USBC to the gimbal
and then you connect an HDMI to the HDMI
on this wireless transmitter
and you swipe down on the screen and then you can actually
start seeing what the camera is seeing,
it's as simple as that.
And then if you use the other USB C
that's on this transmitter, you can connect it
to your camera and control some of your camera settings.
Now this transmitter can also send a signal to an iPad
or your smartphone and then one new addition
to Zhiyun's lineup is a full on wireless monitor that has
all of your gimbal and camera controls built into it.
Now, I don't have one of these master I wireless monitors,
and it's definitely something that
I wanna check out in the future, but this will give you
the ability to have a second operator pulling focus
or actually controlling the gimbal
while someone is physically moving the gimbal through space.
So it opens up a lot of possibilities on how
you can use this gimbal in a more professional setting.
Number six is the ability to control
all of your gimbal settings by this touchscreen.
Once you've gone through and balanced each of the motors,
you go into the touchscreen
and you click the Auto Calibration button
and then it does some fine tuning that makes it
perfectly balanced and if there's any issues,
you go into the menu, you click balance check
and it displays a screen where it shows you
if any of your motors are off balance.
So between these two functions,
you'll be able to get the gimbal perfectly balanced.
Now diving deeper into the menus,
you can adjust all of your parameter settings.
So you have your motor settings, your smoothness,
your follow speeds, your joystick responsiveness
and your deadband settings
and each of these could be set to low, medium or high,
or you can customize it to dial into specifically
what you need for the style of shooting that you're doing.
Now this feature is great because different shoots
will call for different settings.
Sometimes you want the gimbal to be super responsive
and move fast with your subject where other times
you want it to be super smooth and cinematic.
You might think that this touchscreen is kind of
a gimmick for this gimbal to kind of do something different,
but it actually works super well
and it's easy to navigate in the menu
and be able to change your settings super fast.
Number seven is the locking motors,
so every motor on this gimbal locks when it's not turned on.
Now there's a few reasons why this is good,
the first thing is that it's easier to balance.
So when you're going through and balancing your tilt,
your role and your pan, you do it one motor at a time
and you get it perfectly balanced
before moving onto the next motor,
it just makes the whole process much faster.
Now, another reason the locking motors are great
is for just stowing away in your bag.
When you have a gimbal that doesn't have motors that lock,
the gimbal kind of flops around
and when I take a small gimbal like this out,
I want something that can go in the front of my backpack
or the top of my backpack.
I'm typically shooting in a running gun setting
so I need a gimbal that packs down small
and that I can just slip in the open spots in my bag.
Now the third reason the locks are great
is when I'm actually just walking around,
because when I'm using a gimbal,
I don't put it back in my backpack every time,
typically I'll hold onto it and grab a few different shots,
but when I'm going from shot to shot,
I'll be holding the gimbal and I'd usually
want to turn it off to save some battery
and when I'm carrying it, it's either down by my side
or up on my shoulder or something like that
and having the locking motors
lets me just keep the camera on and keep the gimbal
balanced and I could just carry it wherever I need to go.
And this back handle is actually super useful
for just resting here on my shoulder
and I'll walk around like this just to give my arm a break,
especially on those long days where I'm using this all day.
Number eight is underslung mode
and what that means is being able to grab this back handle
and drop it down low so you can operate
with the gimbal straight out front like this
or you can drop it down by your side
and get those super low shots.
And that's one thing that's really awesome about
the Weebill design is this back handle
and the style of operation.
So you don't have to use this back handle,
you can use this as a traditional just like
lollipop style gimbal.
However, having two hands on the gimbal
does make it more stable and then you have that ability
to be able to drop it down low
and get those low profile shots,
or even just drop it down in front of you
and be able to get stable walking shot.
So the back handle gives you more stability
to be able to get smoother shots.
Now you don't have to use this back handle,
you can actually take the tripod, unscrew it
and screw it in up here and use that as your back handle.
So if you need a little bit smaller footprint,
then you could just take the tripod with you
and leave this section at home.
However, when I'm out shooting,
I typically like to have both.
Now, number nine is the built in follow focus,
on the side of your gimbal here,
you have a follow focus wheel and Zhiyun made this
small little follow focus motor that just hooks
right on the front of your camera plate
or on the top of your camera.
Now I use Sony cameras which all have good auto-focus,
but if I am using like my Vespid Prime Cine lenses,
I don't have the ability to use auto-focus
and this just goes easily right on the front
and now I can control all of my manual lenses
with a follow focus and I could do it as I'm solo shooting.
Now if I had more of a crew,
I could get the master eye and then I could have someone
pulling focus while I'm actually just operating the gimbal.
Number 10 is motionlapse and timelapse, so in your menu,
there's an option for both timelapse and motionlapse.
I typically just use the motionlapse setting
when I'm out shooting because it allows me
to be able to create a smooth motion with the gimbal
pointing up here and pointing down here
and then I can just have it do that
in a certain period of time.
I'll either use the style of function when I wanna get
like just a moving shot and I'm not actually holding
the gimbal or if I wanna get an easy timelapse,
I leave it in video, do a motionlapse,
let it run for a longer period of time
and then speed it up and post.
What's great about both the timelapse
and the motionlapse design is that you just point the gimbal
where you want it to start,
point at where you want it to end, set the amount of time
that you want it to go from point A to point B
and then now you can have these moving shots
and you could put this on a tripod
and be able to do motion control style shots
without actually having to control the joystick yourself.
I'll include a link down below in the description
to where you can learn more about the Zgiyun Weebill 2
and next I highly suggest you check out this video here,
It goes through a series of gimbal moves that help you
get better looking footage and I'll see you over there.