As a beginner filmmaker on low budget you might be looking for a nice cheap Gimbal, after some reseaches I found on of the cheapest ones on the market that does pretty much a decent job, and I made this detailed in-depth review along with the unboxing, and some footage so that you can compare it with filming handheld. Here's the link if you wanna buy it from the hohem company: iSteady Mobile Plus
You may watch this video review I uploaded to my channel:
The user guide says that it can hold up to 280g/0.61lbs phone weight, which makes it good for most smartphones
costs less than $100 generally, I paid $90 and the shipping was free to the US because of Amazon prime
The unboxing
It comes with a nice professional looking box
Doesn't have many accessories, looks easy to setup.
Content of the box:
* A gift card for a limited offer so won't be in all boxes
* A detailed user guide
* A warrenty card
* A micro USB charger, used both to charge the gimbal and also to charge your smartphone from the gimbal which is cool except that you can't do it while the phone is mounted to the gimbal
* A mini tripod that has a nice rubber base could be used pretty much on any surface
* And the main thing.
The gimball looks nice, Made of plastic so not very strong so you have to be careful with it..the handle fits good in the hand, heavy enough to give you a sens of control but not too heavy to the point that you get tired holding it.
The control buttons:
*On/off button: which is also the button you tap on when you want to start recording or take a picture
**One click when the Gimbal is off: shows level of battery
**long click (3sec): turns gimball on
Once the gimbal is on : one click takes a picture, 2 clicks start recording a video, and 2 other clicks to stop recording.
*Joystick:
it simply moves the phone manually up and down, right and left, but it's made of plastick and may fall off so be careful with it too.
*The zoom/focus slider:
use it to zoom in and out and to change the focus once the gimbal is connected to the app,
*The bluetooth light: illuminates when the gimball and phone are connected
*The Mode light: it flashes a certain number of time depending on what mode you're in at the moment.
*Mode button: each number of dots represent a certain mode:
.PF : pan follow
..PTF : pan tilt follow
...AL : all locked
....AF : all following
(long click: calibration mode indicator is solid green)
Other than the control buttons, the gimbal has:
*A microUSb port to charge the gimball, and a USB port to charge your phone
*A screw port if you want to add an extra accessory like a microphone or a LED light source
* in the bottom there's a screw port if you want to mount it to the small tripod
*And a trigger button to bring the gimbal back to re-center (or to sport mode)
*The gimbal can be used in both portrait and landscape mode, all you have to do is to move the phone holder 90 degrees
*the balancing knob helps you get the best balanced spot for your phone all you have to do is loosen it and slide the arm back and forth until you find the perfect spot then tignten it up again.
*The phone holder can be stretched to fit mostly all smartphones.
The APP:
the app is called hohemgimbal and it works on both IOS and Android. It has some cool features like the filters that you can apply real time while filming
You can also record in timelapse and slomotion or you can records in motion timelapse.
*Another cool thing is the object tracking, you can simply select any object and the gimbal will follow it wherever it goes,
*same thing you can also do with faces, just activate the face tracking and the gimball will follow it,
*You can also take 180° and 360° panoramas
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