Micro Gimbal for GH4, BMPCC, A7s - $699 USD

metaprofessor said:
Download the SimpleBGC manual in my link above, and pay special attention to the PID section that describes a simple process for tuning the gimbal. In general, you want your P and D values as high as possible, but you should lower the motor power values as those values increase, and vice versa. If you think your settings are close, but one of the motors is vibrating, decrease the D value in increments of 3-5 and see if that alone does it, then carefully increase or decrease the other values to test limits.
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I'm sorry to be annoying but I really don't understand it. I raise it or I lower it and it still vibrates. I only feel the vibrations when I am holding it in my hands. It seems like it's just the yaw motor but if I tilt the gimbal everything starts to shake until I turn the motor off. It lightly vibrates when I have my P settings below 10 and my power settings are between 70-75. I'm sorry, I am a visual learner and this is not clicking.
 
sterlingenuine said:
I'm sorry to be annoying but I really don't understand it. I raise it or I lower it and it still vibrates. I only feel the vibrations when I am holding it in my hands. It seems like it's just the yaw motor but if I tilt the gimbal everything starts to shake until I turn the motor off. It lightly vibrates when I have my P settings below 10 and my power settings are between 70-75. I'm sorry, I am a visual learner and this is not clicking.
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I've had these problems too with the Sony A6000 and 35mm/1.8 I found that turning OFF "Gyro high sensitivity" on the "Advanced" page lessened the vibrations considerably. I currently have
Roll 15/0.01/9 150/30
Pitch 13/0.02/15 150/30
Yaw 12/0.01/8 100/30

limit accel 500

I TOO would love any tips to improve that!
 
sterlingenuine said:
I'm sorry to be annoying but I really don't understand it. I raise it or I lower it and it still vibrates. I only feel the vibrations when I am holding it in my hands. It seems like it's just the yaw motor but if I tilt the gimbal everything starts to shake until I turn the motor off. It lightly vibrates when I have my P settings below 10 and my power settings are between 70-75. I'm sorry, I am a visual learner and this is not clicking.
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Shaking is nearly always caused by high P settings or too high power. If you reduce the power, one axis at a time, at some point the shaking should stop. Are you saying it never stops, even if you bring the power down to zero?

Also, when tilting the gimbal sets off vibration, that's usually a sure sign it isn't balanced right. Better go back through the procedure and be sure it's perfectly balanced before tampering with the settings.
 
The manufacturing quality may have not been as bad as I originally thought. Mine worked fine a couple of days, then gyrated incessantly. I was never able to connect with a laptop and tweak the settings. Knowing what I know now, after buying a used two handle gimbal and working on the settings a couple of days, I probably could have gotten mine fixed.

One thing I miss about the Nebula is one handed operation. Traditional gimbals, even lightweight ones, wear you out quickly as they require you to hold the camera up and our from you.
 
mainstreetprod said:
One thing I miss about the Nebula is one handed operation. Traditional gimbals, even lightweight ones, wear you out quickly as they require you to hold the camera up and our from you.
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Exactly. While I have never operated one, the very first time I saw one in action my first thought was: "Ugh, my back hurts just watching that."
Would it be so hard to build something like the Nebula at a +33% scale with a +33% weight limit?
It seems that would make it a size that would open it up to a huge number of supported cameras - like the ever popular 5D and the new NX1, and with a little more leeway for lens options.
not to mention the size could allow more room for easier servicing and adjustments.
 
I second mainstreetprod, a large part of the problem with the Nebula is by the time you "troubleshoot" problems you barely have the energy to mount the camera--nevermind the mood you find yourself in ;)

A few days ago, I had Frank shoot a video of me getting a haircut, which I'll post as soon as he edits. I shot with the A6000 and 35/1.8 again, but spent a LOT OF TIME eliminating vibrations when still (didn't completely succeed) while not losing so much power it wouldn't straighten. I now believe that there is an optimum weight for the Nebula, and all gimbals. I could never get the GM1 working well with the 14mm pancake (too light) and the Nebula struggled with the GH4 and manual Nikon glass (too heavy).

Like DPStewart, I'd love to see these small stabilizers made for a very narrow set of cameras. They could be made smaller and lighter because they wouldn't have to balance a wide range of weights.
 
Or make a bigger one* and add, under the camera base, a tray for weights, like the one my mouse has (link) but with heavier weights, say 50g each, so I can make sure the load is always around the recommended level.

Which is probably not happening anytime soon... but it made think of this, which I could use to add weight to the bottom and back of the plate...

* N4000 but able to take my a7S with a vintage Leica-R 24mm f/2.8. The weight of that combo is exactly 1Kg, but it's too front-heavy for the N4000. So, bigger motors may not be needed, just bigger brackets. Making every motor like the yaw one wouldn't hurt, though.
 
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Sorry, the Sony 35mm/1.8. I can't tell you how much I love that lens on the A6000. The auto-focus is amazingly smart and the bokeh at 1.8 all I would ask.
 
The first job I used my Nebula 4000 on just went online: http://bloom.bg/1DWGn2G

It was mostly shot on FS700 but for some b-roll I used my A7S w/ 28-70 that lived on the Nebula but there was also a C100 that lived on a jib and a C300 that lived on a Ronin. I'd say most of the wider moving shots were from the nebula+a7s, and most of the slow-mo moving shots were FS700 handheld, but I know there is at least one shot that was definitely from the ronin+C300.
 
nyvz said:
Looks alright, pretty comparable to the nebula I imagine. Looks like you need to work on your roll-step and use a lens that's less wide since I see a lot of walkiness...
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Thanks for advice. Will try it with longer lenses, but really need to make it work with the wider ones. Going to try it on a vest/arm to see if that'll help.
 
sinapps said:
Thanks for advice. Will try it with longer lenses, but really need to make it work with the wider ones. Going to try it on a vest/arm to see if that'll help.
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Well I don't mean use a telephoto lens, but I think one mistake people usually make with small 3axis stabilizers like these is they use the widest lens they can find because of focusing and stability concerns, where superwides help keep everything in focus and minimize the appearance of errors in the 3 rotational axes. The problem is that wider lenses do minimize the appearance of errors in rotational axis stabilization but those are the axes that the stabilizer is stabilizing so it is hardly necessary, and those superwide lenses also increase the appearance of errors in translational axes (such as bobbing up and down while walking) which are not stabilized by the device. Basically for many kinds of movement, especially following shots that push in our out, a superwide lens usually sees more of the scene elements that are closer to you at the periphery of the frame so when you bob up and down it is more visible in the shot.

I generally don't like the look of anything wider than a 16mm lens in S35 unless you are looking for a distorted effect anyway. Even with the most rectilinear lenses beyond that seem to provide a distracting distorted perspective so I tend to stick to 16-24mm for wide angles on S35 (~13-20mm on GH4).

An isoelastic articulating arm and steadicam vest will likely help a lot in eliminating walkiness, though I doubt you'll find one calibrated for that very low weight class, and it would likely not really be compatible with the way you a small brushless gimbal is controlled... In my experience, learning a very smooth roll-step also goes a long way.
 
nyvz said:
The first job I used my Nebula 4000 on just went online: http://bloom.bg/1DWGn2G

It was mostly shot on FS700 but for some b-roll I used my A7S w/ 28-70 that lived on the Nebula but there was also a C100 that lived on a jib and a C300 that lived on a Ronin. I'd say most of the wider moving shots were from the nebula+a7s, and most of the slow-mo moving shots were FS700 handheld, but I know there is at least one shot that was definitely from the ronin+C300.
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That video has one problem regarding image quality and camera motion: I just couldn't concentrate on them, I kept falling back into the interesting stuff they talk about in the video XD
At the end all I got was "this was a very interesting video, and *I think* it looked high-end". I guess that's complete success. Well done!
 
nyvz said:
Well I don't mean use a telephoto lens
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I was going to try it with a 14mm. The problem is that for my ultimate use, I do need to run it with an ultra wide. The 14, with the additional crop of 4K, is just not wide enough

nyvz said:
An isoelastic articulating arm and steadicam vest will likely help a lot in eliminating walkiness, though I doubt you'll find one calibrated for that very low weight class, and it would likely not really be compatible with the way you a small brushless gimbal is controlled... In my experience, learning a very smooth roll-step also goes a long way.
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The arm I have is sized for the Merlin - will try to make it work with some additional weight.
 
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