10
votes
Guidance on using my camera
Hello,
I have had the Sony ZV-1 for a while, and i was wondering if anyone had any experience with it - namely video stabilization.
I feel like even with Active SteadyShot turned on in the settings, the footage is relatively shaky, and I like to think I have a relatively stable hand. Would using a gimbal of some sorts eliminate most of the shakiness of the footage without having to apply the in-camera stabilization?
A gimbal is going to give you more stable footage that's its whole job. The ZV-1 is pretty small for shooting hand held but it also depends on the length of your lens too. If you're shooting with a 200mm lens without a tripod for video you're gonna have the shakes.
So, if you want the 'shaky' look of a handheld camera without the excessive (jarring) shake, get a gimbal. Otherwise look at your current equipment. Are you trying to shoot running shots with a 55-135mm lens or should you just be using a mono or tripod? I can capture pretty still footage at a jog with a C100 but on the 5DMkIV I can hardly keep a stable shot at a walk but that's mainly down to that sick top carry handle on the C100.
The only current accessory I've added so far is a 18 mm wide angle lens by NEEWER. I do plan to get a SmallRig cage in the future.
As for what I'm shooting, it's very simple, I mostly plan to just be walking and panning around the area around me, and maybe focussing in and zooming in on things at a distance. That's about it.
Well, as it was drilled into me "Zoom with your feet!" Of course, that doesn't work for bridge demolition or artillery so in those cases use a tripod. As for panning around and walking you can try to focus on your hold, I tend to go close to the body and rotate my hips slowly but I would also look into a tripod for super smooth turns.
Hell, I think I'm just a sucker for the tripod but they've certainly come down in weight and up in features in the last decade - I used to lug around a 20lb tripod with hydraulic lifting head for shoots!
But, back to your question, I think that the cheapest investment you could make would be to just get out and practice a variety of holds and see what gets you the most stable. Next, for zooms, get a tripod or use a stable platform like a rock or stump. A gimbal isn't going to do much zooms, in my opinion. The gimbal would be a huge boon for moving shots though and it's much better than in-camera, in-lens, or in-premiere stabilization.
I use my ZV-1 with Zhiyun Crane M2. They go very well together, almost as if made for each other, if but for one issue: the battery door is covered by the gimbal mount. This is an issue because, as you probably already have experienced yourself, the ZV-1 runs out of battery pretty fast. Swapping it is tedious if you have to keep removing it entirely from the gimbal, and when you do remove it, you'd have to rebalance it every time you mount the camera again.
You could get a plate (the Uurig one is popular) and a quick release adapter which would offset the battery door just enough so you could remove the camera from the gimbal, open the battery door, swap the battery, and remount without needing to rebalance the gimbal, like this. I'm using a Smallrig full cage and the gimbal motors still manage it. But on my next trip, I plan on doing something else.
The Crane M2 has a USB port on the gimbal head. This port provides power to attached devices, and the ZV-1 can charge over USB while in use. I fashioned a short micro-USB to micro-USB cable to connect the camera to the gimbal port while mounted, and it can indeed charge while the gimbal is powered on.
I haven't yet tested to see how long both the gimbal and camera would last when sharing power this way, but in a preliminary test of recording for 20 minutes straight, neither the ZV-1 nor the Crane 2 dropped to less than 3 bars. Granted, the gimbal was stationary the whole time so very little power was being used for its motors, but that's still a big improvement over the stock ZV-1 battery life; it would have been nearly depleted by then.
This method would allow you to use the gimbal and camera without a cage, which cuts down on weight (though it is very light already) and is in my opinion the most hassle-free way to shoot with the ZV-1. It's become my favorite travel camera, with which I shot footage for what eventually became one of my most beloved videos: a family boating trip to celebrate my twin daughters' birthday. Almost all the shots were taken with the ZV-1 and Crane M2 gimbal, without Active SteadyShot.
If you're squeamish on soldering your own micro-USB to micro-USB cable out of two spare regular micro-USB cables, these are sold pre-made on B&H and AliExpress.
Edit: fixed imgur links
Thanks so much for the thorough response!
I was looking at the same gimbal (except it's called the M2S, I am unsure of any changes made between that one and yours), I hope to purchase it in the future. I was however thinking of using this SmallRig cage, do you think it would still work with the same gimbal?
Your video looks amazing, thanks for sharing. It feels assuring to see that quality of video with no post-editing involved regarding stabilization and no Software in the camera needed either.
Is the micro-USB cable needed if you have multiple batteries ready to be used as spares?
The M2S is an upgrade over the M2, but overall it's made for the same class of cameras so it should be similarly compatible with the ZV-1 and even heavier. I use the same SmallRig cage with my own ZV-1 (I linked the non-wooden grip one but I actually have the one you linked), so it should be fine.
Thank you, I'm quite proud of my edit. Some of the scenes linger a bit too long, but it's just a family video and it's my family so I'm giving them all the airtime, haha. I didn't do any color-grading, only added some transitions. It turned out alright.
The cable isn't really needed, but I personally find it much more convenient than constantly swapping batteries. Like I mentioned in my top-level post, it's very tedious especially since every time you swap, you'll have to rebalance your gimbal. It'd easily take from 45-seconds to a minute to adjust every time you swap batteries, which if you plan to take a lot of video footage, will happen a lot. Moments can be missed during much shorter windows than that.
However in your case, it looks like the Zhiyun Crane M2S comes with two cables: a USB-C to USB-C, and a USB-C to micro-USB cable. This might be exactly what you need to do the same thing I did, without needing to hack your own cable together.