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

I love the Helix Jr, but it is almost $2k more than the pistol grip gimbals. So not in everyones price range.

I got a reply from SturdyShots FB page, Here is that they said, confirming a sensor goes in the hot shoe slot for calibration and interestingly if you tell them what camera and lens you plan to use they will do they PID settings for you prior to shipping it out (not sure how i feel about them saying they priced it high so fewer people buy and therefor they can provide quicker and better customer service to those that do, bit odd charging for customer service and saying it) also slightly worried that photos suggest the cable leading to the battery is loose and sticking out of the device:

SturdyShots' SturdyCam Hello! Thanks for writing us! Actually we're so busy with preorders... the battery is placed just under the controller, it's extarnal so you can replace it in 30 seconds. OIne 2200mAh battery lasts more or less one hour and 20 minuts (continuos shooting), but it can changes a bit depending on camera weight. In the kit you receive 2 batteries and you can buy more on hobbyking.com for few euros (8-9 euros more or less). We use to place sensor in the flash shoe because it goves more precision, so when shooting insert the sensor in the flash shoe. Yes it's possible to remove the battery, but we also have to know which lens you're gonna use in order to prebalance the gimbal for you. We're making tutorials for users, please me patient Our gimbal is more expensive than the others because it's tested before shipping and we make prebalance before shipping (if customer uses a common lens). We don't want to sell a bunch of this minigimbal because in the price you also pay a customer service and if we sell a bunch we cannot offer such a good service anymore. Btw more picture are coming but first we have to ship the preorders Cheers!

 
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One thing to mention - Some have commented on 'loose wires'. Heres the thing, these gimbals are adjustable. Every axis has moveable parts. The wires need to be flexible and have slack to accomodate the possible adjustments.

The Nebula 4000 had all its wires cable tied tightly, and this actually caused faults for some people...
 
question to all the pilotfly users. i know the nebula has mounting points for an external monitor. does the pilotfly h1 also have a mount for external monitors? the motors look like they would restrict visibility of the screen. can you see the screen well and shoot well without an external monitor?
 
Hi:
I am having the same problem you had...serial corrupted. I am on a Mac like you. So far I have not seen anything in the Blue tooth drop down that says nebula. I seem to have connected with dev/tty.SLABtoUA. It says Board version 1.0m Firmware 2.40B7 . It says the Accelerometer is not calibrated. I am no longer getting any beeps when I push the red button on the handle. I am just getting a high pitched screech. Hitting Calib.ACC doesn't seem to fix the problem. I also tried Use Defaults.

At first all was well, until I connected to simple BGC. It appears I have corrupted or erase the installed software. Any idea what to do?
 
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clivemcl said:
How did you go up along with the climber and then above the roof? Very nice though.
Click to expand...
Inspire 1.

In this sequence you see N4000 with Gh4, Sony Fs7, BMC4k, and Inspire 1 camera. Edited in 10 minutes at 3:30am AM after filming for 19 hours after having One and a half hours sleep the night before after working 17 hours after working 19 hours. Last week was a 138 hour week for me. I average 125 hour weeks at least 40 weeks out of the year. The remaining weeks are 100 hours or so. I'm gonna go take a well deserved nap now.

Also, the slo mo shot is being X'd out. The director, a friend of mine over a beer but never a friend on set, is obsessed with slo-mo. I told him it would look stupid in this sequence. So I put the slo-mo in this "TEST" to prove it. It will just be the inspire footage through the whole climb.

I will say this... The N4000 SAVED this shoot. It was pretty guerrilla style and we had the idea of the Fs7 on the Ronin. But there was a chase scene inside of Lacy Studios that was was too narrow for the Ronin. I told the director to let me shoot it on the N4000 with Gh4. After he saw the result, the rest of the video with any chase footage was shot using that combo. The next day was chase scenes through Santee Alley (those in LA will understand what that is or just google it). Absolutely ZERO way to get those shots on a full gimbal like the Ronin.

This is Santee Alley downtown LA. We ran as fast as we could through this crowd. The only thing on the market that could pull this shot off without having ALLLLLL those people involved was the N4000. The shots from this are AWESOME! We did it 4 times and not one person batted and eye.
City test.jpg

My N4000 works well, or at least well enough. I hope to see more gimbals based on the design of the N4000. I even hear that there will be a successor to the N4000. As these small cameras get better and better (think of the BMC micro) this is the way to go.
 
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This might be a deal breaker for some.

Sturdy shots confirmed to me the sensor that goes on the camera is WIRED from the gimbal. So you will have a wire running from the gimbal to your shoe mount sensor..... i will 100% wait now for videos of how this done before ordering.

They did state if i wanted they could place the sensor under the camera. They said it makes the camera much more stable.

Looking forward to seeing how this goes. I do Love the fact that you can see the GH4 screen, so no need for an external monitor.
 
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I've tried both, and I find that my brace attachment works a lot better than the two-handle attachment. Like, A LOT better.

Also: I finally got my vintage primes working with the N4000 with a7S and quick release, by adding some weights at the bottom of the plate. The full thing is actually heavier than the spec (around 1100g) but it works, finally. Which made me return the 35mm f/2.8 FE.

This is shot mostly with the Leitz Elmarit-R 24mm f/2.8 on an a7S+N4000 (summilux-R 50mm f/1.4 on MagicRig for maybe 20% of the shots):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb7PH0Ayvp0
 
Ok more news on the Mini Sturdy Fly one handed gimbal.

There is a cable that runs from the back of the unit into the camera hot shoe slot, the cable is a flat type and dangles there.

The battery is NOT enclosed, it sits visibly under the control board enclosure on the back with a cable attached thats not cancelled.

If you have an A7 they suggest removing eye peace to allow more movement for the pitch as it hits the back of the construction of the device pretty easily.

There is some good news, they have a couple of counter weights on the construction making it easier to balance, just slide the counterweights around instead of screwing and unscrewing the many screws.

The screws are tool less..... but they suggest using a tool to tighten the screws to avoid micro vibrations.

This part got me worried, they say when you turn it on for 5 seconds you need to keep it flat somewhere for 5 seconds so they gyros can calibrate....... for run and gun this won't work, especially in busy environments or outdoors where you might not have a perfectly flat surface to sit the device down... every time you turn it off and on.
 
TylerH said:
Ok more news on the Mini Sturdy Fly one handed gimbal.

There is a cable that runs from the back of the unit into the camera hot shoe slot, the cable is a flat type and dangles there.

The battery is NOT enclosed, it sits visibly under the control board enclosure on the back with a cable attached thats not cancelled.

If you have an A7 they suggest removing eye peace to allow more movement for the pitch as it hits the back of the construction of the device pretty easily.

There is some good news, they have a couple of counter weights on the construction making it easier to balance, just slide the counterweights around instead of screwing and unscrewing the many screws.

The screws are tool less..... but they suggest using a tool to tighten the screws to avoid micro vibrations.

This part got me worried, they say when you turn it on for 5 seconds you need to keep it flat somewhere for 5 seconds so they gyros can calibrate....... for run and gun this won't work, especially in busy environments or outdoors where you might not have a perfectly flat surface to sit the device down... every time you turn it off and on.
Click to expand...
Then they need to redesign the unit. Every time you turn it on you have to calibrate it on a flat surface? My N4000 will be sitting under my passenger seat for weeks at a time and all I do is mount my camera and go. Sorry Sturdycam, not interested based off of what I'm hearing.
 
I asked them about that, i asked if it need re-calibration every time and they replied "all gimbals need that calibration when turned on, it's possible to disable calibration at startup but if temperature changes gyroscope might not work properly".


 
TylerH said:
I asked them about that, i asked if it need re-calibration every time and they replied "all gimbals need that calibration when turned on, it's possible to disable calibration at startup but if temperature changes gyroscope might not work properly".
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Like I said, the N4000 and my other gimbals can be sitting for weeks, and upon balancing the same camera package, I'm off and running.
 
Hi guys,
My friend recently bought a nebula 4000 paired with rokinon 12mm on a bmpcc. It works very well for walking but when running he gets vibrations. Are there any recommendations for helping this?
thank you!

https://vimeo.com/127327110
 
dustylense said:
Shot over the weekend using the N4000. Just a quick grade so nothing final.
https://vimeo.com/126713751
Click to expand...

Wow I am impressed with that. Now if only it was possible for the D750 to fly on this. That plus hearing some people in the original parts of the post saying they had issues puts me off a little. Plus I'm leaning towards picking up a C100 for my main video camera anyways and I dont see any one handed gimbals working well with that.
 
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