Too light to fly on a gimbal.

B

bob'slaststand

Member
I’m looking at rigging a gimbal onto my steadicam but I’ve not really used them much before and had a question about weight. Different gimbals have different weight capacity's based on the strength of their motors and if the payload is too high there will be problems but what happens if it’s too light?

I just presumed that the further from the capacity of the motors, the lighter the camera, the better the system would operate but I’ve come across some comments is videos and posts saying that the camera can be too light and this brought it’s own problems.

I can understand how problems arise with a steadicam when the camera is too light but it seems strange to me that a gimbal would behave the same, inertia being the enemy not the friend of a gimbal.

Can anyone out there clarify for me if this is true, can a camera package be too light for a given gimbal and if so why? How dose it effect the performance of the gimbal?
 
If the motors are too large and the load too light, the motor simply can't be driven lightly enough to control the feedback loop. It's range of power is too large and the useful range of power is down in the very bottom of its range. The limited useful range of power would make the PID tuning parameters too coarse for the load.

I'm guessing that in some cases too light a load is actually not an issue. Rather, people are not able to successfully tune the PID for a light load. Let's assume that the initial PID settings are set for the average load the manufacturer expects the gimbal to handle. So for a light load, the P is going to be far too large initially. So then unless a strict protocol for tuning is followed, poking and hoping with the 3 variables will end up not being successful. Another variable is the Power variable (Basecam), which should be set as low as possible for the load. There is no guidance as to what value to set the Power variable with a given load. So there you have 4 variables poking and hoping. It can be very difficult. But there are some procedures that have been written to simplify the guessing that hopefully lead to success.
 
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Seems like a pretty theoretical/academic question though. Surely you can easily add weight to the camera, no?
 
Thanks Paul, good explanation of whats happening. I was looking at the Came Tv Prodigy and I think a good understanding of how to tune it correctly is essential to getting these gimbal to work correctly. Thanks for taking the time it's put my mind at rest knowing whats going on.
 
Yes I can but I like to understand exactly how things are working before investing time in trying to build something, it could have knock on implications for how the rest of the rig is built onto the steadicam.
 
I've thought of using a heavy quick-release plate system to increase the weight of small cameras to use them with my Crane V1 gimbal. ( Kessler make a very heavy QR plate system )
 
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