i get a lot of questions about how to balance gimbals and so today i want to
show you how to balance any one of these three gimbals the easiest and fastest way possible
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i do lots
of drone camera and lens reviews other filmmaking equipment and i give you tips and tutorials on how
to use them so if that's something that interests you consider subscribing today i want to show
you the easiest way that i know of to balance pretty much any gimbal on the market once you
figure this out and have it down takes a little bit of practice but once you get it figured out
it makes balancing any gimbal fast easy and super simple so we're gonna start with the crane m3
to start off with it's important to have the camera set up exactly the way you're going to
use it on the gimbal because that will give you the best balance so for me i operate with the
screen open so that i can flip it one way or the other i plug in this cable here and then
i'm going to just attach it using the plate this the standard plate no special plate from
juan now the next thing you want to make sure you can find is on each gimbal especially gimbals
later are little lock switches so for like this one here there's one right here you can see that
right there little knob there's also one under here and then there's one right here you want to
locate each one of those lock switches and make sure you know where they are unlock this first
one the tilt axis here and then what we want to do is start with the camera just like this
pointing straight up and you want to be able to get it so that it doesn't move if you're going
to tip it one way or another so it's a little bit heavy toward me toward the top side so we're
going to just lower it down a tiny bit right here and that's this uh this lever right here and open
that up just and make all your movements really small so again that was this lever right here
and then it should be able to sit just like that no matter where you put it so we've balanced it
on the tilt axis in one sense but there's also another way you need to balance it so then this
is where you tip it forward like this and see if it pitches forward that means it's front heavy if
it pitches backwards that means it's back heavy so this is front heavy so what you do is loosen this
lever right here on the top and then we're going to slide the camera back along that
rail to where it doesn't move so we can move it like this and set it pretty much any position on
the tilt axis and it will stay exactly perfectly level so we've got that now this whole tilt axis
is totally uh balanced next lock that again makes it a little bit easier and we're going to balance
this axis the roll axis so again there's a little lock switch right down underneath here if you can
see that hopefully i'm gonna unlock it hold on to the gimbal because obviously it's very
heavy to one side right now so what we're going to do is move this lever here unlock
the gimbal and then start sliding it to where it doesn't tip to one side or the other so
that's pretty close but as you can see it's still kind of tipping to my right a little bit on this
side so when you get that set there we go i'm going to lock that down make sure it still stays
pretty much in place it pretty much does so that's balanced so we're going to lock that axis again
click that in and then click it in place and then the next thing you want to balance
is the pan axis so the pan axis is pretty simple you unlock it and you tip the gimbal to the side
if the camera rotates to the front or to the rear that tells us which direction we need to
rebalance for so we're going to unlock it using this little lever right here and you should do
all this with the gimbal off but if we go like that so if it tips if it rolls to the back or
pans to the back that means it's rear heavy so we're going to move that up just a little
bit lock it down with this lever here this is the lever you're adjusting here right down here
same thing tip so it's still a little rear heavy so we're going to unlock that lever push
the hole see i'm sliding this thing forward and backward push it forward a little more
lock it down and then now we've gone too far so we're going to back it up just a hair
still a little too far again slide it back
that's pretty good so now we can unlock all of the axes here again here here
and here so the whole gimbal is free floating and free moving
and we can turn the gimbal on and it should be well balanced and ready to go
gimbal's on and on the june gimbal at least on cranium 3 here on the screen you can tap balance
and see that it's pretty good bounce overall the roll is a little bit off but not much so we could
we could tweak the roll a little bit i think that's mostly because the screen is hanging way
off the side so it's a little more than it's used to then we're gonna go back out you can also go
into settings and you can do an auto calibration there and that will set the motor strength for
the camera and the payload that you've got on the gimbal so it should have its best performance
by balancing just like i showed you and then set doing an auto calibrate so it
sets all the motor strengths for what you need and then once that says successful we
can back out of that go all the way out and we can check the balance now we can see it's
pretty balanced going on and off but overall the gimbal is well balanced and ready to go
balancing the rsc2 is exactly like the other gimbals and that's why i say once you learn
this technique you can use it on pretty much any gimbal on the market even ones without locking
um locking axes so you want to unlock each axis and get the gimbal set up where
it's set like this so that it's ready for a camera package and the rsc2 has locks here
a lock down here on the underside and then a lock right over here
and so we will uh slide the camera package the camera on using the plate and then lock it down
kind of wherever you think it needs to be locked down you lock this bit down with this lever here
so loosen that we'll be messing with this axis here in a minute so first off the tilt axis
we're going to unlock it right here and then same thing face the camera upward straight up and so
we know that the whole camera package needs to shift up we loosen this knob here on the top and
slide the camera back and forth make sure get it nice and tight and down so all right we're going
to start there now because this whole camera is tipping to the rear we know we've got this balance
pretty well but if we hold it flat like this it tips the rear which means we need to slide this
whole plate this direction so here we're going to loosen this lever and slide the camera package
forward just a bit and then check as we go so now it's a tiny bit front heavy and again these
are tiny motions tiny movements to make sure you get it balanced to where you want it to be
so still a little front heavy loosen that lever push it back just a touch tighten the lever up
and now we've got it perfectly balanced exactly where we want it to be so there we go that's a
good balance because you can put the camera in any position on the tilt axis and it will stay there
so next is the roll axis right here or axis whatever to unlock the roll we're going to
lock the tilt real quick so it kind of keeps the package the roll unlock is here you push this up
and then it loosens the whole camera up and then the same thing we're going to tip it and see if
it stays so we need to slide the whole camera this way loosen that up slide the camera over
pretty close we still need to slide it toward me a little bit and again i go really really
small movements just because it doesn't take much to throw a camera and a gimbal out of
balance as far as when you're getting it really fine-tuned in there okay so if the camera does
this where it's it keeps wanting to tip the center that means we need to raise this whole
camera up a little bit so we're going to take the the tilt the tilt axis right here loosen this and
push it up just a tiny bit so it's still just a touch bottom heavy push it up just a hair more
there we go so that is good right there i'll check this again real quick so it's a tiny
top tiny bit top heavy we'll maybe lower it just just a tiny bit just like that
and then lock both the tilt and the roll axis and we're going to start on the pan axis so unlock it
and the same thing tip the camera to one side or the other and whatever direction it rolls
so for example here it's front heavy so now we need we know we need to push this back we're
tightening and loosening this knob right here so we're going to move it back just a little bit
there we go so now we can unlock all of the axis axes x i whatever turn the gimbal
on it'll go right there and then what we're going to do is go into the menu
and go to auto tune start and the gimbal will start calibrating itself just like any of the
other gimbals did doing the calibration is really important because it does set the motor strength
on each of the axis to whatever the gimbal feels like is best balanced uh at the moment
next up we have the weevil 2 and the a74 so i'm going to set the gimbal here and unlock again the
weeble 2 has locking mechanisms pretty much in the same location you've got one right here on
the side this little bit here you slide it up and it unlocks the axis there's one right here
on this bit and then there's one on top here set the camera on the gimbal
i may have balanced this recently so it may not need much of a balancing but it's the same it's
the same exact process because again you want to make sure your camera is set up exactly the way it
will be when you're going to use it so i'm going to open that up everything's set pretty much and
we're going to start with the tilt axis so unlock the tilt axis face the camera up and if it tips
one way or the other that means you need to move it so if this was lower say like that it would tip
forward and if it was too high it'll tip back so we're going to get it to where the camera stays
perfectly level as i'm balancing right here moving this this piece here up and down so
right this whole bar here using this little knot uh nut here to tighten and uh loosen things so
that's pretty good it's just a hair bottom heavy so again really fine motions if this is balanced
we set it like this it should stay pretty much exactly where it is facing straight up right
just like that so the camera doesn't move but now we need to balance the tilt axis on this uh
this way so right now it's obviously front heavy because it's drooping to the front
and that's where we're going to use this bit here this lever here to change the plate that
the camera is attached to this direction so we're going to slide the camera forward and
back here on this plate here so set that there still front heavy i'm going to push it back
getting closer little tiny bits at a time there now we should be able to move the
camera anywhere on the tilt axis and have it not move at all so that's good the tilt axis
is now totally balanced we're going to lock it and again you lock it unlock here lock it there and
now we're going to balance the roll axis this part here so we're going to unlock right here
and hold on to it because you don't want the camera to smash into anything but so now we know
it's too heavy on this side over here the way to balance this is we're going to loosen this lever
here if i've got the right lever right here this one right here and we're going to slide the camera
left and right on the roll axis so there now we've gone too far we need to come back out a little bit
it's getting closer a little bit more a little bit too far there so now again same sort of thing
we should be able to put this pretty much anywhere and have it stay exactly where it's supposed to be
so all right i think i'm pretty happy with that so we're going to lock that
and now we balance the pan axis which again is this motor here so you have a lock and a lever
right here and see that the lock here and the lever here is loosen and tighten so we're going
to start same thing we're going to unlock it loosening that and then tip the gimbal sideways
let me mess it up a little bit so you can kind of see what happens tip the gimbal sideways and it's
going to the front so that means we need to slide this whole bit back so i'm going to slide it back
now if i tip it it's a little rear heavy because we want just a hair too far
yes i did that on purpose just to give you an example so there
there we are pretty good to go so now we can unlock all the axes and turn the gimbal on
axes axis x i whatever the plural of that is now the gimbal's going
so again same sort of thing we can go down in here do an auto calibration start the auto calibrate
and the gimbal will vibrate a little bit you want to keep it on a nice hard flat
surface while we're doing this to make sure it doesn't you know have any issues
while it's calibrating through each of the axes and setting the motor strength so it
says calibration finished click ok and we can go up here and do a balance check
and you can see that everything looks good there's nothing in the blue now as you move it around
you can see things start to kind of well it's probably hard to see on the camera but you'll
see things if they're off of balance you'll see blue going one direction or the other and you can
adjust and tweak there if you want to see other ways that you can improve your videography and
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