Is it the gimbal or the glass? In this write-up, we look at the importance of lens choice when work with a gimbal in your video project.
Gimbal cinematography is the bomb — if you know what you’re doing. These days, it seems like everyone and their grandma has a gimbal. And while the market floods with dozens of different stabilizer options, there still seems to be a gap in quality. I believe this gap is less about the gimbal and more about the glass. Agree? Disagree? Let’s dig into it.
Tools Breakdown
- Glass: Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 prime
- Gimbal: DJI Ronin S
- Camera: Sony A7III
Be Creative
The reason why the combo of a gimbal with a 50mm prime works so well is because they’re both cinematic powerhouses. With the gimbal, you have the movement capabilities of a slider, a dolly, and a steady cam. Meanwhile the beloved 50mm prime is one of cinema’s most-favored focal lengths.
Dynamic background movement is another key player in this setup. When filming on anything tighter than a 20mm, you’ll start to notice more movement in the frame. This is because you’re condensing so much information in one single image. Learn more about this here:
If you pair this stabilizing combo with riding a wheelchair (or some sort of wheel-able system like One Wheel), you’re able to create a kinetic shot worthy of Hollywood. I’ll coin this as the Michael Bay effect. To see this in action, you can watch this music video, where I used this system for nearly every single setup:
Old Tools — New Perspective
I find when I challenge myself with being stuck on a fixed focal length, I stretch my creative reach to achieve new perspectives. It’s less about changing the hardware and more about updating the software, taking a commonly used tool and changing its use.
For the longest time, I avoided shooting anything tight on a gimbal because I thought it’d be too close. So, I just stuck to filming everything ultra wide. The reality is, there are more uses for your gimbal than you think. Experiment with various setups, from shooting techniques to other lenses.