HAND HELD GIMBAL FOR MIRRORLESS: SONY A7R3 WITH ZHIYUN CRANE 2.

New post for this new year,

Things are moving fast, super fast.

  From few years ago when hiring a steadycam operator was the only way to go, to the rise of Ronin and similar gimbals, to the new trend of DSLR only on top of one single hand held gimbal. I feel that every 2 years, a revolution is happening on how we produce moving images.

Being on top of your game means mastering your tools but also looking forward for the new trends. As it’s now almost common for a client to ask dynamic movements during a shooting without the budget nor the time for extra crew member. The first possibility used to be a slider but it’s not so simple to bring and setup; the tripod may be heavy and the movement is also quite limited.

  My second limitation is that I didn’t want to give up on quality so didn’t want to go lower than a video camera. I’m still reluctant to go for DSLR or mirrorless. The lack of functionality and codec always struck me. Last year, I have design a way to put my FS7 on a Ronin-M. This is a great success, but still a bit too slow to setup in some situation where movement is the B roll of the B roll.

  So, here we are in 2018, where I finally invested on a Sony A7R3 and a ZhiYun Crane 2. It was, of course, not my decision, but a client request. The Sony A7R3 with English menus is only available in Hong Kong, so I pick up the crane 2 there. Even if it’s a company from Shenzhen, it was till a bit cheaper to do this way. I have been pleased to see how things changed over the time on the camera side. As usual, I needed some training to make sure I will master the tools even if I’m not supposed to be the cameraman on this shot.

Read more on my blog...

https://www.visionrouge.net/web/2018/01/hand-held-gimbal-for-mirrorless-sony-a7r3-with-zhiyun-crane-2-shenzhen-freelance-cameraman/