- Gimbals, these things can be kinda
complicated and scary, right?
I mean, there's all these, like, weird cables hanging off.
Sometimes the balance isn't just right.
It starts to vibrate.
They're heavy.
Your arms will feel like they're about to fall off
after you shoot for five minutes.
But we still kinda love them. Why?
Well, once you get it set up, then a total noob
can pick one up and get some pretty cinematic shots
just like that.
Gio, being someone that's never used one before,
he's gonna pick one up and see how long
it takes him to learn how to use it.
- Star Wars, here I come.
It's pretty easy.
You just hold this handle, hold this other handle,
and you're good to go.
- I like how I spent all this time and work
setting up all these gimbals and you can barely see it
because they're black gimbals up against
a dark blue background.
Let me see.
- Not the prettiest background, but, hey,
I'm filming in my broke ass apartment, okay?
Now to be clear, 3-axis gimbals are not new technology.
Technically, there was a 3-axis gimbal in the steadicams
that Hollywood's been using forever.
- A 3-axis gimbal is employed that allows the operator
to pan, to tilt,
and also, on occasion, to roll.
- And technically, these are all 3-axis gimbals,
but what's exciting and new about these
is that they're electronic.
Freefly released the MOVI system,
which was the very first handheld electronic 3-axis gimbal.
So after Freefly released their MOVI,
basically every single Chinese company
and their mom was like, let's do that too.
The beauty of a 3-axis gimbal that's electronic
is that the motors do most of the work for you.
So you don't need years of training to try to make sure
that the roll axis doesn't shift around
and everything wobbles around and you break the camera.
I remember the very first time I tried to set up a gimbal
I was so confused.
I'm like, okay, you try to shift the camera this way
to get the balance here and counterbalance here.
I was like, what the?
And that's the part that freaks out a majority of people,
but to be honest, they're not that complicated
once you know what you're doing.
Obviously, they're all very different,
but at the same time, they're very similar
in the way they function.
So by the end of this video,
you'll pretty much be able to pick up
and set up any 3-axis gimbal that's electronic,
know how to set it up, how to balance it,
and that's the hard part.
So here we go.
We're gonna start with balancing.
Literally the hardest and most crucial part
of making sure that your gimbal runs property.
Property.
Properly.
Without a perfect balance
your camera's gonna be like wobbling around or vibrating.
You're just not gonna be as smooth as it should.
Essentially, what you're trying to do
is take the center of gravity of the camera
and put it in the right spot.
See this butter knife here?
We're gonna try to find the center of gravity
of this butter knife.
So let's start at the center here.
Nope, see how this side wants to drop.
So we're gonna shift it over a little bit this way,
and see it's still a little bit heavy on this side?
So we're gonna slide the knife a little bit more.
Now it's too much on this side.
We're gonna pull it back and right there.
See that?
That is the center of gravity of this butter knife.
We wanna find the center of gravity of your camera.
If you can do this, you can balance a gimbal.
Oh shoot.
So this is the MoVI robot, which is made by Freefly.
Yes, the O.G. in the handheld gimbal world.
And these are very quick and simple
because they're made for phones.
And phones are very lightweight,
so it doesn't take much power from a motor
to make sure it stays balanced.
So it doesn't need to be 100% balanced
on something that's this lightweight.
The motors can kinda counter that
without too much of an issue.
So on here all you have to do is take your phone
and at least center it out over this clamp right here.
So I'm gonna let go of this real quick.
Alright, which side's heavier?
It's pretty obvious, right?
This side's heavier,
so all we're gonna do it try to shift this phone.
Ah, a little bit better and this side
is still a little bit heavier.
So just a little bit more over.
Ha, there we go.
See that? Perfect.
See, this isn't even turned on,
but if it's balanced correctly
you should be able to move it around
and it shouldn't just shift around everywhere.
That's how you know you have a good balance,
and once you turn it on, then the motors,
all they're doing is assisting a little bit.
You're not relying on the motors to keep it stable.
You're just using the motors to assist it
a little bit, and that's the key.
Here's a GoPro gimbal, and the beauty of GoPros
is that they're all pretty much the same size
and very similar in weight,
and the manufacturer already balanced it out for you.
So that as soon as you put in a GoPro,
it already knows where the center of gravity
of that GoPro is gonna be.
So with these, you just turn it on and go.
Unless you're balancing something like a phone or a GoPro,
there's gonna be a lot more X factors.
For example, this Canon 80D.
Right now, the center of gravity
is probably right around here.
If I were to stick a bigger lens on here,
then the center of gravity would shift out this way.
Let's say we put it on its side,
right now the center of gravity is right here.
If I were to take off this battery grip,
then the center of gravity would shift off over here.
So once you start getting into cameras like this,
there's gonna be four adjustments you're gonna wanna make.
You're gonna wanna balance it first this way,
then this way, then on its side,
and, finally, centering everything out
underneath the center.
So step one is to always strip your camera down
just to the bare bones of what it needs.
One is because it's gonna be easier
to balance your camera on there,
and it's also gonna be a lot easier and lighter
on the motors to control your camera position.
Finally, if you hold this thing up
for more than like two minutes straight,
your arms are gonna die.
Some lenses change shape as you zoom in and out,
so if you know what focal length you're gonna
be shooting at, put it at that focal length
when you're balancing it and also take off your lens cap.
The lens cap actually makes a difference.
And we're just gonna keep stripping this thing down.
Do we need a memory card in here?
I guess so.
And we're done with our lightweight setup.
Last thing we're gonna wanna consider
is if we're gonna wanna have this screen
open or closed or tilted or whatever.
I'm gonna set this up on the Zhiyun Crane 2,
which uses a plate just like this,
so I'm gonna screw this on.
Don't get lazy attaching this plate.
Last thing you wanna do is to have everything
perfectly balanced, ready to shoot,
and then the camera gets bumped
or something and shifts over,
and then everything is screwed up.
It's gonna throw off your balance.
You're gonna have to take everything apart
to re-tighten this little screw.
Just crank it in. Just kidding.
Don't over tighten these things.
They can crack.
If you're shooting with a point-and-shoot,
make sure you lens is out because, again,
that changes your center of gravity.
If I had a dollar for every time I said that word,
center of gravity, in this video,
I'd have like $24 probably.
So here is a gimbal and this one's kinda nice for me
to show you guys because it is very simple
to see and understand.
These are 3-axis gimbals
because there's three axes that turn.
A black gimbal against a dark blue shirt.
Change.
There, much better.
Now you can see what I'm doing over here.
So I always like to start at the camera and work my way out.
So I'm gonna set the camera here,
and I wanna balance this guy first.
Make this happy, and then after this is good,
I'm gonna work my way over to here,
balance this, then work my way over
all the way to the final one right down here,
and balance that guy out.
So we're gonna slide this camera in.
The camera wants to sink this way.
It keeps falling that way, so it's back-heavy.
I wanna push it this way, so we're
gonna push it forward a little bit.
Boom, there we go.
Now it's a little bit front-heavy, right?
So I'm gonna slide it just so that
it sits nice and even right there.
I'm gonna lock that down.
So we generally got the camera placed on here,
and we're gonna wanna work our way over
to the next point of adjustment, which is right here.
Right now the camera is a little bit bottom-heavy,
and we know that because if we tilt the camera
upward like this, it falls like that.
We're gonna wanna loosen this axis,
and we're gonna wanna slide the camera up this way.
And now it wants to fall this way,
so we wanna find that sweet spot.
It's still falling down that way a little bit.
We wanna push it over a little bit more.
Oh, perfect.
And sometimes when you adjust the height,
this thing wants to unbalance again,
so you wanna just kinda go back and forth
a couple times, and just get it
so that it's nice and perfect.
Ah!
And again, I'm holding this so that
this axis doesn't move,
this axis doesn't move.
I'm just focusing on this right here right now.
So I just want to make sure
that it's at a pretty good spot,
which it is, and you can tell because when you move
the camera to a certain position, it stays there.
So now this tells me that this axis is perfectly balanced.
Now we wanna balance this guy,
so let's take a look. Oh, see that?
By now you guys have probably figured out that
if it wants to fall this way, you slide it over this way.
So we wanna push this over, right there, ha perfect.
So now we got three parameters set
and generally you can set this camera
at any angle and it'll generally sit there.
It doesn't wanna fall in any direction.
You put it there and it'll generally float there.
That's good. And remember,
like I said earlier,
any little adjustment, like closing that monitor,
is gonna completely throw off that balance.
So, again, figure out how you're gonna be shooting,
I'm gonna have the monitor open like this,
and balance it to that.
Now the final axis is right here.
Now the camera generally doesn't want to spin
if we're level, but what we wanna know is if I were to tilt
the handle a little bit, like that,
see how it's swinging, we don't want any swinging.
We're trying to check this axis here,
so if I'm holding it like this and it dips over that way,
that means this side is too heavy.
And if it dips this way, then it means
this side is too heavy.
Again, we're just looking
at this little motor right here.
If I let go, it wants to fall this way.
So we're gonna slide this guy over this way, right there.
So now even when the handle's on its side
it won't necessarily teeter over this way or this way.
It still stays fairly smooth, even when I move it around,
and that's key because you don't want these motors
to be constantly fighting to balance this camera.
You want the motors to just be there
as more of an assistance.
So now there we go.
The camera is now on and stable,
and we're in good shape.
And these gimbals, even though they're much bigger
and look a lot more complicated, pretty much the same thing.
This is the DJI Ronin.
Honestly, not my favorite gimbal in the world.
The industry standard on 3-axis gimbals
is probably the MoVI Pro by Freefly.
I really want that one, but I am too poor.
So please buy my LUTs and take my video course.
(ring)
So again we start at our camera,
get it kinda nice and centered.
And even with this guy, I like to adjust one axis at a time,
so I like to hold these in place
so that I'm not worried about all this stuff happening.
I'm just looking at what this one's doing first.
To test the height of the camera,
I can kinda tip it down like that,
and if I let go, it wants to fall that way,
which means this side is heavy.
So I'm gonna take this rig and slide it down.
If your gimbal bottoms out like that,
and your gimbal is still top heavy,
there's a few things you can do.
Most gimbals have extenders or extensions
so you can make this a little bit longer.
You're basically trying to take weight off this side
and you can actually add some counterweight to the bottom.
I have velcro down here so I can take some weight
and velcro it on here, just to balance it off,
but you could also take off this handle,
you could take off this monitor.
Another reason why you wanna take off all your accessories
before you throw it on the gimbal is
because it's a lot harder
to make modifications to the camera
once it's on this wobbly little mechanism.
Little bit top heavy, but you could also bend this monitor
over down to here, which lowers the center of gravity.
And what?
Perfect.
So this axis, super happy.
Now, next up, is this gimbal back here,
which is our roll.
You can see that it wants to weigh down this way,
so we're gonna slide this camera back and forth
so that it sits nicely in the center.
That looks like it right there.
Perfect.
See you should be able to put it in any position
and it should hold there, so what up?
Final adjustment we're gonna need to make,
just like the last one, is right up here.
As soon as I add a little bit of tilt,
see how it wants to swing like that?
So I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna tilt it.
I'm gonna tilt it this way, and then we'll see
which side is heavier, the right side or the left.
I'm gonna tilt it right here.
See that?
This side is heavier, so what I need to do
is take this whole rig and slide it over this way.
So these levers here will
slide this whole thing forward and back.
So now I've slid the whole rig over this way,
so I should be able to turn it.
See that?
And it's not swinging in either direction.
I'm gonna try it again on this direction,
and see how it doesn't necessarily swing
because now we pushed the whole rig this way
and neither side is heavier than the other,
so it's not swinging like that.
Quick tip, if you're gonna hook up a monitor to your camera,
like this, then find the thinnest cables you can.
You don't want thick cables
constantly tugging at your camera.
Again, least amount of pressure on these motors, the better.
And there we go, we are set up to go.
Oh God, it's already heavy.
And if you're gonna do a whole day shoot,
make sure you book one of these guys to help you out.
Your arms will literally fall off.
I've seen it happen.
So now you've got this extra line of support,
which is helping you put a lot of your weight
onto your back opposed to your arms.
And now, instead of holding this camera for 20 seconds,
you can hold it for 45.
Every gimbal can be pretty different
from here on out, but generally,
the parameters you're gonna wanna set
in the gimbal itself is the strength of the motors.
For example, this one there's low, medium, and high.
I have a pretty lightweight setup on here,
so I'm gonna just set the motor strength to low.
But if I put a bigger lens on here, it might start bobbling.
That means the motors have to be pumped up a little bit.
So then I would switch it over to high.
On these guys, every time I put a new rig on here,
I'll calibrate it, which basically
tells the gimbal how much weight is on it
and kinda fine tunes everything a little bit.
Another thing you're gonna wanna set is sensitivity,
how fast you want it to react to you.
If you want super smooth cinematic shots,
then you probably wanna have that sensitivity
nice and low so you can kinda do some slow epic pans.
And then if you're shooting sports,
you probably want a nice fast reaction,
so you can dial that in to your preferences.
(upbeat jazzy music)