Heres a basic synopsis script directly from the video.
I’ve read a lot of good reviews about the Zhiyun Crane and I was after a handheld gimbal to fly my Canon 80D with the Tokina 11-16mm lens for shooting real estate.
Its all about weight – Zhiyun recently lifted the max payload of the crane from 1200g to 1800g, so I weighed my camera and lens combo which was the Canon 80D with the Tokina 11-16mm lens and it came in at 1.311kg or 1311 grams which is within its max payload recommendations.
Great – So I ordered one up and eagerly waited its arrival.
It is a nice piece of kit, its tool-less i.e.. no allen keys or specialist tools required and pretty quick to balance the camera.
I just couldn’t get it to run smoothly and tried making adjustments in the app but to no avail.
It also did this annoying jerky movement when panning the gimbal which I’m not a big fan of.
Can’t run in underslung mode – cause camera too big basically.
In defense of the Crane my lenses didn’t have image stabilzation which I’ve read can help.
I don’t want to bag the crane and it gets plenty of good reviews out there on the interwebs.
I also tried it with my Canon 80d and the much lighter 50mm lens which still had no image stabilisation, and unfortunately it still didn’t cut the mustard.
I’ve got a mirrorless camera coming to test it on so won’t sell it just yet!
However I strongly suspect its just not strong enough for this style of DSLR camera and lens combo.
Makes me more appreciative of how well the DJI Osmo works straight out of the box.
All in all the Zhiyun Crane was a bit underwhelming. I think I’ll try and sell it it, any takers?
UPDATE: April 2018 – I’ve just tested and put up a video on the new-ish Zhiyun Crane 2 which you can see here.