ZHIYUN Smooth 4 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer YouTube Video Vlog Tripod For IPhone

 Researched many YT videos that compared handheld gimbals vs steadicams. Attempting to use more mobile phone shooting moving forward (instead of my DSLR), and wanting an affordable yet effective unit on my first gimbal, and glad ZY Smooth 4 caught my attention. It beat DJI’s Osmo due to price point, functionality and availability.I’m glad I picked up the ZY Smooth 4 about a couple of months prior to my first commercial production with it, which was purely unintentional.My local client, who’s a speaker, who’s also a very active person, felt uncomfortable/nervous sitting in front of a camera. To give her peace of mind, I suggested a walk on the river, while we talked and I would shoot the video on the gimbal. She loved the idea and settled on a date and early morning meetup at the river so we would have less foot traffic at that time.Both of us preferred this “walk and talk” video style. For her, it was natural to do this as an active person, much like speaking to a girlfriend while out for a walk. For me, I knew this would get her blood flow moving, reduce nerves, and the natural morning light (vs afternoon harsh light) was good for the shoot.Believe it or not, we shot 2 videos (one was a Welcome video, and the other was an About video), both only required 1 take each! LOL! We produced the first video walking the river one way, then turned back and shot the 2nd video going the other way 😁Here’s some insights on the Smooth 4:- The ZY Smooth 4 build is impressive. Has weight in your hands, but not so heavy to strain your hands/arms on a longer shoot.- The ZY company is consistently working on upgrades to the ZY App, which is good to see- ZY does provide information in the booklet on setup and usage, however, I found most value in YT videos from other users showcasing functionality and use cases- Key Tip: Balance your iPhone in the bracket BEFORE powering on the Smooth 4 unit.- Recent News: Filmic Pro app now works well with the Smooth 4. Check out YT for how to use it with Smooth 4.- Battery life is solid and long-lasting. Since my first charge of the Smooth 4 unit, the battery has held strong. In fact, my iPhone battery dies much faster, naturally due to shooting video. If you can, get the lightning cable to connect your iPhone to the Smooth 4, so you can keep your iPhone charged while shooting video.- I appreciate the screw on tripod legs that come with the Smooth 4, for laying on a flat surface. I’m about to get an Insta360 ONE panoramic camera, and I can envision sitting my iPhone in the Smooth 4 phone bracket, and setting the Smooth 4 on a taller tripod, so I can shoot the 360 away and out of sight. This way, I have both my Pano camera, and my ZY for video shooting if the client calls for that added service.Here’s some insights on the videoshoot with the Smooth 4:- Until I started playing with the Smooth 4 video quality settings, I didn’t clue in that my iPhone 6S could shoot in 4K.- Tried shooting in 4K, but its a storage hog. Will shoot 1080p next time.- The video footage will store in the ZY app, and you’ll need to then transfer it from ZY app to your iPhone’s media library. As such, I highly recommend dumping as much “stuff” off your iPhone prior to the shoot for more storage room.- In shooting with 4K, I only had room for 2-3 videos before I ran out of room and phone battery. Hence no B-roll in the above videos.- Had troubles exporting from ZY app library to iPhone Photo Library due to space shortage. After dumping more media and apps, I could transfer 1 x 4K video, import to Macbook Air, delete it off ZY & Photo Library, then transfer/import the next 4K video. May also try shooting 1080p next time. Or a bigger capacity iPhone. 😜- Highly recommend you get the lightning charge cable to continually charge your iPhone while shooting.- Bring along your laptop or external drive to dump footage off your iPhone, so you can continue shooting more footage. Unless you only care about a short shooting window.- My Zoom audio with Sennheisser wireless lav was unusable due to fabric shifting sounds from walking. So what you hear is my iPhone audio, not too shabby.Hope this helps you in your decision whether to grab your own unit of the Smooth 4 🙂

This Gimbal worked well with my sons iPhone, but not my Nokia. my larger phone was too big to keep it stabilized for long. It was unbalanced with my larger phone. With the smaller iPhone it worked great once you figure out how everything worked.

 I’m a fan of supplementing your photography with a gimbal. Whether it’s to take timelapses or smooth cinematic videos, the Smooth 4 gimbal by Zhiyun has certainly raised the bar on smartphone video capturing. It’s become pretty essential to incorporate this device into my photography workflow. The video I’ve put together experiments with a few key features of the gimbal. Let’s have a look!Unboxing – Zhiyun Smooth 4 gimbal – Instruction manual – Mountable tripod stand – USB-C charging cableZY PLAY APPThe first thing I did apart from charging the gimbal was download the latest ZY Play smartphone app. You use this app to connect to your gimbal via bluetooth and then you can control the various functions and modes of the gimbal. The app serves as the user interface to the controls of the gimbal. The company has been making frequent updates to this app so be sure to install the latest and greatest.TIMELAPSE / MOTION TIMELAPSEEasy to film in these modes. I especially like the motion timelapse feature, whereas, traditionally, I would use a cheap kitchen timer and mount a GoPro on it to capture motion timelapse video. Motion timelapse is just like the regular timelapse mode only the gimbal will simply rotate during the timelapse capture. The app makes it easy to set several way points so you can have the timelapse go from point A to point B at a specified duration.180° PANORAMA MODEAs the name suggests, this mode let’s you take a photo in 180º panorama. This mode works best if you simply have the gimbal mounted to the tripod stand and press the photo button on the gimbal and wait for it to take a succession of photos from left to right.3×3 PANORAMA MODEImagine a scene as a 3×3 matrix. Like the 180º panorama mode, this mode allows you to take a panorama photo where the scene is made up as series of 3 photos at the top, 3 photos in the middle and 3 photos at the bottom all stitched together. I see myself making use of this mode over the 180º panorama mode due to it’s vertical coverage.VERTIGOAchieving a vertigo effect (or sometimes referred to as dolly zoom) is not trivial and requires a little bit of prep work. Via the app and like the motion timelapse mode, the vertigo mode lets you specify multiple waypoints and how long to shoot the video.BATTERYImpressive battery life. I took it to a hiking trip and used it for several hours on and off. The battery indicator right at the grip of the gimbal showed that it was down only 1 indicator light out of 4. Rest assured that it outlived the battery life on my iPhone 8.IMPROVEMENTS / WISH LIST – Integration with Filmic Pro smartphone app – Better image quality for the various panorama modes – Additional intervals in timelapse mode (2 minute, 3 minute, etc)

*Please keep in mind, with this gimbal, I am using a Samsung Note 8*The build quality is nice and I was actually quite impressed with the packaging and presentation of this gimbal. I was looking for something to use with my Note 8, and if you’ve used it, it’s a quite tall device and I have noticed this poses a bit of a problem when it comes to balancing. In landscape mode, balancing isn’t too tough once you’ve been able to get the settings correctly, but in portrait mode…. it’s a night mare. I like to use portrait mode for IG TV and live streaming on Instagram, but if the phone is tilted too much forward or backward, the motor really struggles and can’t set itself back to default.I tried to use the included app, and before using it, I made sure that I did read and note that it’s not quite calibrated properly for Android….that warning was 100% correct. The zoom dial is very clicky and is not smooth at all. It almost reminds me of that drama filter for instagram that zooms in on the focus of your video and zooms in quick sections.Other features work ok, but I haven’t found many reasons to actually use the app.All together for $99, it wasn’t a terrible purchase, but typically you don’t buy a product to use only a portion of it, but 80% of the time it works without issue. The hardware is impressive, but I’d urge Zhiyun to focus on perfecting the software.

I purchased this product after reading a lot of reviews. I was torn between this gimbal and the OSMO Mobile 2, but was swayed by the thought of doing the “Vertigo” move and the plethora of controls easily available in the handset. The product itself appears well built and comfortable in my hands. Calibrating my iPhone X was painless and being able to immediately work with the device was quick.Then I started to use the software. Wow, was that disappointing. The main reason I went with the Zhiyun was with the ease of doing panoramic photos and the Motion Time-lapse. The Motion-Timelapse never worked. Ever. I kept getting an error after selecting two way points that said “Your Camera is Too Close”. Not sure what that means. Perhaps my way points were not far enough away from each other? So, I did a 180 degree pan across. Same error. I searched high and low for ANY information on this error. I was multiple tutorial videos, mirrored them exactly, and could not get past it. Perhaps I needed to update the firmware? Did that. Same problem. I spent several hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when I realized that I didn’t do anything wrong–the software didn’t work and why should I spend so much time researching an issue.The more I worked with their software, the more I realized how limiting it was and frustrated me further. Taking that Panoramic shot took several minutes. Didn’t know that. I would take a photo and just sit there for about 7 seconds. I thought I had, once again, not set it up correctly. Finally, I just left it alone and it very painfully took the 9 photos I needed. The results were impressive, but far too cumbersome and slow to be really effective.After sheer frustration, I purchased the OSMO Mobile 2 feeling I was having to downgrade my expectations. Couldn’t have been further from the truth. For the same price I have (almost) all the same features, it works beautifully, takes panoramic photos much faster, and works with the Filmic Pro app that is THE app to use.If you are serious about your videos, steer clear of this Gimbal. On the surface it feels great, but once you dig deeper and have to depend on their software, you realize that it doesn’t fulfill its promises. And that Vertigo effect that seemed so cool? Eh. I can still do it with Filmic Pro by setting the zoom and physically moving. I just don’t have a big wheel I need to turn.