Hey guys!
This is my DIY steadicam.
You've probably seen it on my channel.
I've been using it for about two years now and it works really well.
I've been using it for work and my hobbies.
Stuff like that.
But recently I bought a three axis gimbal.
I kind of splurged on it.
But I wanted to do this video to give you the pros and cons of the steadicam and the
gimbal and kind of tell you my thoughts on each and then I'm going to give you some sample
footage comparing the same shots with the steadicam and the gimbal.
So if you're not familiar with the steadicam, it uses gravity and weights and balance to
keep the camera up top and keep it steady.
That's the whole point behind these two things is to stabilize your video.
The gimbal has 3 motors that keep the camera level with the horizon.
I'll turn it on for you....
So however you move, it will keep the camera pointing straight forward.
So the main reason that I'm thinking about switching to the gimbal is wind.
Wind effects the steadicam quite a bit and when I'm working, if it's windy, it's just
a big pain and sometimes I actually have to come back to the location to get the shots
that I need.
That's really time consuming and that's the big reason that I'm thinking about switching.
The second reason is that I want to run filters on the GoPro.
You can run filters with the steadicam but you have to balance it with the filters on
and then if you take the filter off, it will be unbalanced.
With the gimbal, it doesn't care about the weight.
So you can put it on, take it off, and it really doesn't care.
Some of the other big pros and cons are: The steadicam is much cheaper.
You can build these and buy them for relatively in expensive these days.
The gimbals run from $250 to $350 or $400 so their really expensive in my opinion.
The steadicam, some people don't realize but they can be difficult to balance.
A lot of the questions that I get on my DIY how-to build thread is how do I balance this
thing and that's one of the hard parts.
And the pro of the gimbal are that you just attach your camera and power it up and it's
done.
You don't have to balance it at all.
Lastly I would say that a con for the steadicam is that they're just harder to use.
You've got to really concentrate and keep very steady.
You still need to concentrate and keep steady with the gimbal but it's much more forgiving
and easier to use.
Over-all it may be a good idea to start out with a steadicam and get the feel of filming
and it will show you where you need to be steady and how to do that.
And then maybe progress to the gimbal fi you're sure you're going to be shooting a lot of
video with the GoPro.
This particular gimbal is made by Zhyiun Tech.
It's called the Z-1 Pround or Z one Pro.
I'm not sure how it got that name but I decided on this one because it's motors are more powerful
than ones made by Feiyu or companies like that.
So it's supposed to just hold the camera steadier with camera or wind so one reason I wanted
to go with that.
One warning: It looks to me like all of these gimbals are made overseas so they may have
questionable support and customer service.
Just something to be aware of.
This seems to be good quality but you just don't really know.
Anyway, we're going to roll right into the sample footage and let you see what these
things can do.
Now when I filmed these scenes I tried to be as smooth as possible with both the gimbal
and the steadicam to give the best results.
There are times in some of these scenes where the gimbal and the steadicam don't look that
much different.
I think that's especially when there's distracting scenery or a busy background.
But sometimes they look very similar to each other.
Here you can see a little bit of wobble in the steadicam footage when you look at the
vertical fence posts.
The gimbal does not have that wobble.
If you didn't have the gimbal footage to compare it to, you would probably think the steadicam
is pretty stable.
These clips weren't shot at the exact same time because you can't operate both stabilizers
correctly at the same time.
You really need to hands to operate each one.
In this clip watch the edges of the screen compared to the vertical posts and you can
kind of see where the movement is.
It's a lot more pronounced in this clip since you've got all of the straight lines to compare
to.
Both stabilizers have a small amount of up and down bob to them but that's minimized
by holding them steady with two hands and walking as smoothly as you can.
Here's just a little footage of me running with the gimbal.
In my opinion it's pretty impressive.
It's steady and just pretty amazing for somebody who's running at a medium pace.
But anyway, thank you guys for watching.
If you have any questions, please let me know and if you like my videos, please consider
subscribing.