Big Balance are heading to market with their Gibbon, a 2-axis gimbal stabilizer for small cameras, and I figured that this neighborhood dog park would be a fun place to test it out. We’re all looking for that killer app, combining discreet size (much smaller than a Movi), with effortless smooth action. We’re still waiting, because that 3rd axis is crucial: up-down + tilt stabilization (2-axis) isn’t enough to get good shots, so really, adding left-to-right (3-axis) is the final frontier. Smartphone and GoPro 3-axis gimbals this small have hit the market, but nothing yet for camera weights in this ballpark: at 440 grams, I used a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera for this video with a Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 lens stopped down for wide depth of field.
Any device that keeps the camera level to the horizon and looking straight ahead is useful, though. For this Big Balance Gibbon, I applied Adobe Warp Stabilizer in Premiere Pro afterward to account for that lack of a 3rd axis, setting its smoothness to a nominal 1%. It requires extra processing time, but for now, it’ll do.
“The Creek” music is by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena, from the royalty-free YouTube Sound Library.