I love working with video. I have not however loved trying to shoot handlheld video, even with image stabilized lenses. When shooting stills I move a lot, recompose and shooting on the move. With video that has always resulted in footage that looks like it was filmed during a very spastic earthquake. As Clint Eastwood said in some movie one time, a man's gotta know his limitations.
I took the plunge and bought a DJI RS3 gimbal, and decided to pretty much dedicate my Canon 80D to it as a full time video rig. It arrived a couple days ahead of a shoot with Patience, so I thought I would battle test it with absolutely zero practice ahead of time.
I had my buddy JayCee along with me to capture BTS content for my Patreon page and gave him a quick rundown of what I knew with it from the one afternoon I had to chase my dog around with it. Mid shoot on the first look I handed him my main camera to grab some BTS stills while I filmed with the gimbal.
I simply told patience to keep wandering around, moving in the same fashion I have models do for stills, and not really be fixated on the camera. I think she did great for an off-the-cuff effort, this was edited down from about 3 minutes of total footage, and was just enough to make me say, "yeah, this is what I've been missing for video." It truly allows me to film motion in a manner very similar to the way I shoot stills.
Next time out I am happy to say I will have more than an hours worth of playtime with new toys, and also a plan. Plans are good. Sometimes the best things come together in the moment, but I also believe that planning the basics allows the foundation to be laid for the magic to happen in the in between moments. I think there may be a *little* bit of magic going on here, can't wait to make more!
Be sure to subscribe/follow me on youtube for all of the fun new things coming in the form of moving pixels.