Monitor or Gimbal?

Q

qariman

New member
Hi all,
I need an advice, after months of work I have saved some money. I have my eyes on either an atomos ninja flame monitor or a dji ronin M? but I am confused on whats more important. I already have a shoulder rig but my a7rii has the smallest screen. Need some advice :undecided
 
To me at least a monitor is a must on a gimbal so with that in min you'd better get the monitor first and save up for the Ronin or why not go for the tiny Zhiyun Crane instead?
 
I'd vote for a used Shogun/assassin and Beholder DS1/EC1 or similar gimbal since that what I got given similar options.

Depends what you want to do and what you need out of your gear though. Most likely a gimbal will give you more options on set whereas a recorder will give you more options in post or for delivery. In my mind though, the possibilities opened up by a gimbal are quite a bit greater than those opened up by a recorder since you'll only notice the difference when pixel peeping or grading heavily vs internal 4k recording. However, a monitor with LUTs like an atomos shogun/assassin/flame etc is pretty critical with Sony since SLOG2 is great but hard to judge without a LUT. And it helps to be able to deliver LUTted files for some projects, which the atomoses can do.

Frankly the shogun seems preferable to me vs a ninja flame particularly for its ability to downscale 4k and send it out over SDI to client/director monitor with a LUT, plus it's smaller and lighter (though it also has other downsides).

Maybe it's because I've mostly been using one-handed gimbals, but I don't have too much trouble viewing the camera screen without a monitor. Doesn't help that a monitor doubles the weight. Frankly if I'm traveling I'll probably still leave the shogun at home. And a one handed gimbal is great for throwing on the end of a monopod to get quick smooth handheld jib shots, but you can't really do that as easily with a monitor/recorder hanging off it.
 
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actually I found that the atomos ninja flame give you some extra room with its HDR on top of slog 2. plus you can preview footage on this 7 inch calibrated monitor while editing. It's definitely heavy plus 2 batteries. Also, the reason I wanna go with ninja flame is the brightness of 1500nit vs shogun for 500 nit. shogun flame is another beast and way too expensive for me. thanks for genuine opinions both.
 
What's the point of HDR? Unless you are delivering in HDR formats and atomos supports standard HDR curves it seems like a bit of a gimmick. I'm sure it's cool to get to see your image with a higher monitor contrast ratio than usual but otherwise it doesn't seem that practical yet. They added AtomHDR to my Shogun which maybe doesn't have the FRC for it so it ends up just being an unusual LUT...

I agree 1500nits is tempting but these things are already power hungry as it is and a hood will still work.
 
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