Sony A7S II lens for gimbal use?

Make sure your choice of gimbal can carry enough weight - from people's experience it seems it's highly advisable to stay well below the upper weight limit specified by the manufacturer, like 50% under. Remember, the upper number they give is under the most optimistic and least demanding circumstances - but throw in real life conditions such as wind, momentum from movement (such as a car) or any number of adverse factors, and those numbers quickly prove to be illusory. So stay well below! Therefore when you pick your cam + lens combo, keep that weight limit in mind (and don't forget those "little" things like adapters, filters, hoods and so on). As to which to pick - it all depends on what you want to shoot and under what circumstances and what other gear you'll have access to. Are you going to have focus control, and are you going remote? Will you have an external monitor? If you'll be using follow focus and external monitor, then you can use a greater number of lenses. But if for whatever reason you need to go very minimal, and are not going to work the focus too much, then your lens choices shrink. Obviously, one way around is to simply use a lot of depth of field and a wide lens, that way you don't have to worry as much about focus and staying in focus - if that big depth of field + wide lens look is acceptable, obviously go for a wide lens. Supposedly the autofocus has been improved and some people claim they can use it - if you feel brave and want to use autofocus then you should probably look into native lenses as that will be least hassle. So your options are: (1) follow focus remote control external monitor (maybe a dedicated focus puller too) - the greatest choice of lenses, whatever you want for the look (maybe minus some very long lenses) (2) stripped down to only the cam + lens - wide lenses predominantly (3) autofocus - native lenses, more toward the wide end too.
 
I love the canon L serie 50mm f1.2 on the aputure NEC follow focus on full frame. Because the more narrow field of view makes the movement more magical with big depht, especially wide open. With the Aputure follow focus there is manual control over the focus instead of auto focus, wich I like.

On the Ronin M this is.
 
On my hélix standard gimbal, A7RII with Zeiss Batis 25 and 85 are wonderfull (AF is good, far better than A7SII and i can choose FF or APS-c for lense focal).
there is the 10-18 from sony who can be a good choice too but it is not full frame (so 15-27) or wait for the new Zeiss Batis 18mm
 
I have a Came Argo gimbal (max 3kg load) so A7S II plus any lens will work, even with something like a metabones adapter mounted.

My guess is I'll use the gimbal mostly to follow people with a wide angle lens. Have considered Sonys 16-35/4 lens as this will work in both full frame and S35 size or even my Canon 16-35/4 IS with metabones adapter. The Sony 16-35 is lighter and will probably utilize full use of the 5-axis thing.

I just want to get some insight which lenses you guys use with the A7S II on a gimbal to avoid purchasing the wrong lens?
 
We've been using the MoVi M5 with the A7SII and the Canon 16-35/4 IS and Metabones Speedbooster, and it's a fantastic combination.
 
rudo_fr said:
On my hélix standard gimbal, A7RII with Zeiss Batis 25 and 85 are wonderfull (AF is good, far better than A7SII and i can choose FF or APS-c for lense focal).
there is the 10-18 from sony who can be a good choice too but it is not full frame (so 15-27) or wait for the new Zeiss Batis 18mm
Click to expand...

This is my favorite combo on both a Ronin and Helix. Just did two shoots in the past week and the footage is night and day better autofocused with the Batis lenses. I was already planning on the 18mm but now thinking about the other two after renting them.
 
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