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