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Gimbal Settings

Lesson 3 from: Intermediate Drone Videography and Photography

Dirk Dallas

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Lesson Info

3. Gimbal Settings

Lesson Info

Gimbal Settings

So next, I'm going to move over to my gimbal settings. I'm gonna click on the top right hand side of the screen where there's those three dots and I'm gonna scroll down and click on the camera icon. And in here I'm gonna go to advanced settings. And on the Phantom, you have three options here, so what I tend to do is have an option for when I'm shooting video, have an option for when I'm shooting photos and have an option just when I need to whip that gimbal really quick. So, I'm just gonna focus on my first tab here and what I like to have my 'Gimbal Start/Stop Buffer' at is 20. Now, you should play with this. See what works best for you. For me, I like to have it at 20 because that means that I can get a nice ease when I let off the dial and it will stop in place nice and slowly. Next, the 'Gimbal Pitch EXP'. I also have mine set to 20. So, the gimbal pitch EXP and the gimbal start/stop buffer actually work in tandem, like you want to try to figure out what's best for you. These are ...

my settings. I just encourage you to try it out. But these might provide a good starting point for you. Next is 'Gimbal Tilt Limit'. I like to keep that on. And you may say, "Why would you do that? "You're gonna see your props." But I will show a situation where if we do get the props in the shots, we could actually creatively think oh, I'll just, in post, I will scale up that frame just a little bit, get those props out of the shot and now what that means is we can move that gimbal past this limit and we can go a little bit higher getting a little bit more of the sky. As a side note, little tip, this is a cool way to also get sky, cloud photos that you can save for your photo library if you do any compositing. And then, the 'Gimbal Pan Synchronous Follow'. I personally have this off. It's not a huge deal. Play with that, but that basically means if you have it on it tries to anticipate the move you're doing with yaw and it tries to move the camera a little bit. I tend to just keep mine off so I'm going to move on from that. Next, you see the 'Adjust Gimbal Roll'. I'm gonna go though, point out real quick, the 'Auto Calibrate Gimbal'. This is a helpful setting to make sure that your gimbal is nice and level so that when you get up in the air, you know, your gimbal is not crooked and all your shots look weird. So, if you are going to go out and fly, just make sure your gimbal is actually nice and level. You could set this drone on a table, run this really quick before you take off just to be certain that it's right. But let's just say you forget to do that. You're up in the air. You're about to capture an awesome shot and you realize your horizons crooked, you could always, as a last resort, go over to that adjust gimbal roll and you can play with the left button or that right button and it will adjust it in the air. So you do have a little bit of flexibility there. But, I like to get it right before I even take off. Alright, so the Mavic drones are a little bit different. So, I'll walk you through that really quick. Just go to the camera icon. Pull up the gimbal settings. Click on advanced settings and you'll see that the menu looks just a little bit different. Again, these are my settings. Use them as a starting point, but you should definitely play with it to see what works best for you. My gimbal pitch speed, I set to 10. I also enable the gimbal tilt to 30 degrees and I like to have my gimbal pitch smoothness set at 20. And I'll just click outta there and the Mavic is ready to go. Alright, so camera settings are set. The gimbal looks good. I'm now ready to take the drone up in the air, so let's get started and put the drone up.

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

There was some good and helpful information here! However he stated that when shooting video he sets the camera focus on a stationary subject and then put it in manual mode so as to avoid the camera re-focusing on a different plane, but I would have liked to have heard his tips for camera focusing on his shots where the subject was moving toward or away from the camera.

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