Leading up to (and inspiring) the launch of this site in February 2015, there were a few viral videos that folks found useful across the Interwebs. Since these videos have never gotten their own back-to-the-future debuts at this permanent residence, let’s use Throwback Thursday (TBT) as an occasion to see what they had to say.
This one was a short little test run of a product that eventually never made it to market. Soon to be covered in a forthcoming review (and already featured here in a sample video), the Nebula 4000 Lite arrived with that critical additional third axis of stabilization, and all else was left behind at this form factor. It remains interesting to compare the performance, and see how design decisions have evolved (and should have).
From August 11, 2014:
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.