It won’t be exaggerating to say that in the last couple of years we have seen the so-called rise of the handheld gimbals. Starting with the bulky DJI Ronin back in 2014, we’ve gone a long way from there with a myriad of choices available these days. There are premium, top-notch, extra expensive gimbals along with cheap and poorly built ones as well as some big and more compact offerings and everything in between.
In this abundance of choices, Tom Antos‘ voice is like a lighthouse trying to pave the way in the quest for finding the best single-handed gimbal of 2019. Let’s follow his lead and dive into the top three of the best gimbals on the market in the last few months.
The roster in this particular case is made of three participants. They all come in travel cases, have similar functions and operational modes, but at the same time, offer a different payload, size, and weight, meaning you’ll have to choose depending on your needs.
That being said, the top three Antos’ picks include the Zhiyun CRANE-M2, DJI Ronin-SC, and Moza AirCross 2.
Furthermore, all of the gimbals are easy to use and have similar modes, even if they could be named differently such as Generic Free mode, Pan mode, Pan and Tilt mode, POV mode, and the list goes on.
They also have the so-called Inception mode, made famous by the hallway fight scene in Nolan’s Inception – the shot with the camera turning endlessly on its Z-axis, in perpetual slow rotation.
Not only that, each one of the rivals has tracking mode through the compatible proprietary app available on both iOS and Android. Each of the included apps allows users to customize the smoothness and behaving of the gimbals, and in the Ronin-SC and Moza AirCross case, you can even use it to have a tracking of the movements made with the phone.
The gimbal responds in real-time by moving around following the gestures made with your smart device. It’s an amazing feature that really feels like something from the future.
Other than that, it’s easy to set up all of the three devices and find the correct balance: they all have a locking axis. Once you find the spot on the first axis, you can lock it and move to the next.
Overall, that’s a huge time saver in run and gun situations when you need to quickly switch from one lens to the other.
So, without getting deeper into more technical details and differences covered thoroughly in the video above, if you aim for a light setup and don’t care for bigger cameras and lenses, or even sometimes settle on shooting with your phone, then the CRANE-M2 should be your gimbal of choice.
On the other hand, if you have a bigger setup you can move to the Ronin-SC, a choice that stands in between, but if you are ready to shell the cash, you should probably go for the Moza AirAcross 2: there are many more accessories in the box for a similar price, so after all, you’d be better off with it. Whatever may be the case, choose your gimbal wisely, buy it once and simply use it on all occasions.
[source: Tom Antos]
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