First go with a gimbal!

Because I'm interested in covering events - particularly conventions - where you will be doing a lot of floor-walking and shooting on the hoof, I have invested in a handheld gimbal (a gyro/servo-stabilised hand-held camera mount).

I went with the Feiyu FY-G4 3 Axis Handheld Gimbal Brushless Handle Steadycam Steady Camera Mount for Gopro...

Now, I was thinking about buying the cheaper Osmo all-in-one camera and gimbal - which looks fantastic - but, at the end of the day, the GoPro Hero 4 Black camera is far superior quality (and more flexible in use) that the Osmo's built in camera. For me, it was worth the extra expense so that I could then be able to detach the camera and use it for other kinds of work.

Initial tests with the FY-G4 gimbal and GoPro
I need to put a disclaimer in here to make you aware that my impatience got the better of me! There is a certain amount of preparation, learning and practise one should do before the gimbal and camera are put into use...But I couldn't wait and did some testing straight 'out the box'! So please take this into consideration.

Important note: The gimbal needs to be calibrated in order to work as intended with your GoPro - I did not do this so the camera was not exactly balanced correctly in the following test videos.

Test 1: The difference a gimbal makes...
In this test, I just wanted to see how a gimbal like the FY-G4 smooths out hand-held filming while walking around. So, in this video, the first half is shot with me just holding the GoPro camera in my hand while walking and the second half of the video is footage with the gimbal attached...

Simple Feiyu FY-G4 3 Axis Handheld Gimbal test from Stephen Beat on Vimeo.

Yes, this is a very quick and dirty experiment, but I think it demonstrates the difference between unstabilized footage and stabilised footage adequately enough. I was pleased.

Test 2: A longer example of the FY-G4 in use with added slo-mo
In this next clip, I tried some different movements - some pans and changes in height and orientation - just to see how smooth I could get the shots...

GimbalTest_002-Basic MPEG-4 from Stephen Beat on Vimeo.

After doing these initial bits of filming you soon realise that there is a knack to using a gimbal (and how important proper calibration is). My first attempts to 'float' the shots were too fast and my changes in direction too sharp at times.

You have to train yourself to glide your arm movements and you must 'dampen' the beginning and ends of your movements so that your slowly increase your momentum into a movement and then decrease your momentum towards the end of a movement. In this way, you should get a smoother transition through the camera travel/sequence.

Like most things, practise makes perfect!

That said, I'm very pleased with these initial tests.