Okay, this review has taken a while for me to write up because, it just highlighted to me how much I really don't know when it comes to this kind of stuff. I'd had my time as a camera guy before, a shutterbug, a hobbyist photog...
But I never was a video guy. I mean, you've seen my YouTube videos. But here's an item to level up videos, well a certain kind of video (you'd still need your own camera, microphone etc...).
The item is the Hohem iSteady m7 gimbal. You've seen me unbox it a few weeks back now and I've been playing with it a lot, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do... mostly as it's a lot for those real videographers who knows about 'punch ins' and 'rolling' etc...
For me, it's been a fancy selfie stick/tripod, but I've gotten to learn a little more of how it can work and do more for anybody, not just those 'prosumers' out there.
The first thing to really do with it is to learn the basics of a gimbal, and that is balancing. It makes sense, it can't just automatically know what is 'level'. To do this you put your phone in, take off all the locks on the axes, and you set it down and while in the grip you adjust the arm length so that the phone will be 'level' with the arms. Then you turn the device on and it locks in the sense of level, so that as you then pick it up it uses those arms to rotate and shift to compensate for your movement so that the phone stays level.
Okay, and that's the basic premise of a gimbal. Move your selfie stick around (it even has an extendable 'neck) and the complex arms help compensate for that movement keeping it still.
But there's more. You can, through the settings, adjust how you adjust that compensation, like will it compensate only for up and down or up and down etc... despite a lot of university physics, I find it still a little complex to try to keep in my mind. Videographers, they'd know what they need for this pan and tilt stuff.
To help with that framing you have a joystick control on the unit to adjust the rotating up and down as well as swivelling it left and right (and able to do a full 360°). That control unit is touchscreen, so you can adjust all those pitch/tilt type compensations, as well as a series of other settings (i.e. you can set it to do a 360 photo and it'll just slowly rotate to take all those pictures)
You can even take the control unit off and hold it.
Pair the gimbal to your phone and you can then use it as a remote to start/stop recording. This is handy if you wanted to flip the phone over for selfie and record yourself. Use the joystick control to get just the framing you want and hit the button to start
But there's even more! On the top of the device there's a little light, or at least at first glance you feel it's just a light; but there's a camera there. Hit the little switch on the side of it and it turns it on. Now if you go on the control unit you can then get a live preview of what that little camera sees. Not exactly what YOUR camera will see, but it gives you a good approximation. I love this feature of having a little view screen and control. Great if I was doing self narrated type videos or interviews.
Then to make it even better, let's use the camera for some AI tracking. There's a couple ways to do this. If you're facing the camera you can give like a high 5 signal and close your hands to a fist as a gesture to notify the unit to find a close face and then track to that (a little LED will go from red/orange to green letting you know it's working). It'll centre the face, so you may want to use the joystick to reframe after that. Then, you can move around and the gimbal is told to move around accordingly to keep you in that scene. That is so cool.
You could also just double tap on the little viewfinder on an object and it'll track that (you'll notice a green box now over the item.
I got to use this when we were doing some recording for the pipeband, I'd set up the tripod off to the side of the centre of the room and train it on me, then start recording as the band would March towards the centre of the room and form our circle. I'd share, but the audio was pretty bad, and it was pretty neat watching the gimbal see me and then track slowly as I'd move around in frame. Had been looking forward to using it to record our competition - but a week before the event we got notice it was cancelled. Bummer
For those 2 little bits, a great steadying device and an AI tracker, it's a great tool.
But there's even more. That light up top, it can be white, and various brightness and temperature, but you can even adjust the colour (by degrees, which I wasn't sure).
There's a roller on the side (which you can use to adjust tilt or the light settings), a button in its centre, a trigger, a side button... there's a lot of buttons on it and it can be a lot to try to take in and someone like me can still take another few months to figure it all out. Best is if you actually use those kinds of things then you'll figure it out pretty quickly.
Now, this all takes power (motor in the compensators, the camera, the little control unit) and it charges via USB-C and it should last up to 12 hours of use. You even have an extension cord to plug in your phone from the unit so you can charge your phone while recording (doesn't say if it would do 'throughput')
This is an absolute fun tool, that I don't know if I'm getting to use it to its fullest in my settings, but it's nice to know that I have whatever's needed whenever needed. If you're serious about your videography, well, chances are you've probably gone and bought a fully professional set up. If you're wanting to make your regular videos look that more professional - this is a great option without really breaking the bank.
It's parade season for the pipeband, and our pipe major loves to do those 'psas' for the social media, so I'm looking forward to putting it to fuller use.
Source: https://store.hohem.com/en-ca/products/hohem-isteady-m7-big-phone-gimbal
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