How To Balance A Gimbal - 3Axis Camera Gimbal Balancing Tutorial

Jan 8

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How To Balance A Gimbal - 3Axis Camera Gimbal Balancing Tutorial - In this video, Will teaches you how to balance a 3-axis camera gimbal and breaks down all the necessary steps to achieve a proper balance that will allow you to capture smooth footage with any gimbal.

🔴PRODUCTS USED FOR MY GIMBAL BUILD:
➜DJI RS3 Pro Gimbal https://bhpho.to/3MWUICZ
➜Digitalfoto Powerbase with Nato https://bhpho.to/3MWehv0
➜Dual Handles https://bhpho.to/3qxGctQ
➜Battery (Provides Dtap power) https://bhpho.to/43GfHR8
➜Belt Clip for Battery https://bhpho.to/3NmZ5Zy
➜Monitor https://bhpho.to/43Ma9EN
➜Short Plate for RS3 (Used to connect monitor) https://bhpho.to/43TdoKy
➜Friction Arm (Used to connect monitor) https://bhpho.to/3qELGTu
➜Dtap Cable for Monitor https://amzn.to/3MZ0CDE
➜Thin HDMI Cable https://amzn.to/3J1klRZ

In this video, we're going to talk about how to balance a camera gimbal. I have an older one here and a newer one, but the same principles apply, and the same techniques. So we're going to cover all three axes and what to do in order to get a proper balance so that the stabilization is as good as it can be. I'm going to put these down because they're kind of heavy.

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This one is the DJI RS3 Pro. Now, over the years, I've used quite a few gimbals. My first one was the Freefly M5 gimbal in 2014 when gimbals first came out on the market. I've also had the RS1, I've had several phone gimbals, and beyond that, I've rented and been on set where there's been higher-end gimbals like the MoVI Pro or previously, the M10 and the M15. Those are for larger body cinema cameras, but they all get balanced pretty much exactly the same.

The first thing I want to point out is the RS3 Pro does have locking points, which is super convenient. That way, when you're done using the gimbal, you can lock all the motors, and you won't have your gimbal bouncing around in your camera bag or case. On my old Freefly M5, once you turn it off, you'd put it down, and it would just be bouncing around in the luggage. You'd always have to strap it down. This is a much better design, a lot more modern.

So I've taken off the pan axis lock, and that allows the gimbal to be rotated. That's our first motor. Our second motor is our roll motor, so that introduces sort of the horizontal movement. And then our last motor is our tilt motor. This controls tilting up or tilting down. If you're new to gimbals, as you can imagine, between the three, you can move the gimbal pretty much any direction you want. And that, mixed in with the motors' abilities to stabilize the camera, which is the purpose of a gimbal, you can get some incredible shots.

To balance your gimbal, you might be wondering, "Can I just open my phone, connect the phone to the gimbal, press Auto calibrate, and then it's done?" To a degree, yes, but you need to set up the center of gravity for all the motors so that it can best calibrate. Yes, it's possible to calibrate without doing this, but you're not going to get anywhere near as good of a result as you will if you were to actually properly balance and then calibrate. Calibrate is sort of like your 10% final step in order to hone in on the best capabilities of the gimbal you're working with.

If you were to balance your phone, you put it too far on one side, it's just going to fall over. So it's about trying to find the balance on each motor. The first step I always do when I'm balancing gimbals is I do the tilt. As you can see, this one is very front heavy because we're using a 24-70 lens, and it's quite heavy.

Once you have your camera plate onto the camera in a forward enough position that it's somewhat center but not forward enough where you lose control of the lens itself, mine is just a little further back. Otherwise, it's going to start rubbing on the area that controls the focus. Once that's done, I'm going to loosen the position here. This way, the camera can slide back and forth. In this position, be very careful because the camera could just literally fall off. So at this stage, you want to always be somewhat holding it, maybe sit down when you're doing this over a couch or something so that if it does fall, your camera is not going to break.

The idea is to roughly, by hand, move it forward and back ever so slightly until you have a rough idea of the camera center of gravity or the center of balance. For me, this is about good, so I'm going to lock that off. That is one of the motors sort of done. There are a few other adjustments, and you'll notice now that the camera doesn't tilt forward. That means it's close to the center of gravity.

Next, you have this vertical bar, and if you loosen that up, you can move the gimbal up or down. I'm just going to move that up again ever so slightly. The goal here is to position the camera in different spots, and if it stays in one spot, then it's pretty much good to go for that one motor. I'm going to loosen the back here a bit, bring it back again just a little bit. Again, it's a little front heavy still, but you know what? I'm actually going to keep it like that because I do have a lens cap on, which is something you have to consider. For the purposes of this tutorial, that is good enough. Make sure everything's locked off fairly tight.

Next, we'll go to the other motor, which is the one that controls the horizon, and it wants to go to the right. That means we need to move the whole gimbal this way, back to the left. It's going to be just a very subtle movement, and then just like that, that is essentially what you're trying to get. So those are now balanced, and then the last one is the pan. This one is the trickiest motor to balance because you can't actually do it with the gimbal upright like this. You need to pick it up and just basically see what the gimbal does by itself.

It seems to be a little bit heavy on the back, so I'm just going to bring it forward just a little bit. As you can see now, it doesn't really change depending on the orientation. It stays in the position that I want it to. If you find it doing that, that means it's probably still a little bit front heavy. You can make really subtle adjustments. The first time you do this, it's probably going to take 10 to 15 minutes, maybe even longer, as you get used to identifying when something's about to go off balance and countering it.

Once you do that a few times and get the hang of it, you'll get it down, and you can probably do it within 2 minutes every time. Once you feel that the camera is balanced on your gimbal, you can then power up the gimbal. I'm using my custom-built battery belt. If you want to learn about the custom build that I have, I have a whole video on it. It's been getting great feedback. Basically, it just saves your back, makes the gimbal lighter, and you can shoot for many more hours because you're using a larger battery supply that's offset with the weight being on your belt instead of actually on the gimbal.

And it also allows you to power the monitor. I also have a clever way of mounting the monitor in that video, so check that out if you're interested. Once you have the gimbal powered up, it's always good, once you do a new balance, to calibrate. For me, I'm inside the Ronin app. You go to motor parameters, and then you hit the auto-tune. It's going to go through the procedures of auto-calibrating your gimbal. It'll do each motor, it'll say on the back calibrating 80%, 100%, and complete.

Now, normally I have handles set up, so it's a bit awkward for me to grab this without the handles, but that is how you balance a gimbal. Alright, that's it on how to balance a three-axis gimbal. Again, basically, every gimbal on the market balances this way. There might be a different app for calibrating, but you have to get it close before you calibrate and before you use it. Otherwise, there's sort of no point in using a gimbal. If you do not balance your gimbal properly, it basically will be slightly better than going handheld. Like I said, there's literally no benefit to not balancing it. So definitely make sure you balance it. That's how you do it.

Thanks so much for watching. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more videos from us in the future. We have over 200 videography-related videos on the channel, so lots of other content for you to learn from. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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Alli and Will https://alliandwill.com

How To Balance A Gimbal - 3Axis Camera Gimbal Balancing Tutorial

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