Camera and gimbal systems
Designed to help produce smoother handheld footage, gimbals still operate as third-party devices
Amateur Photographer is primarily about stills photography, which means that sometimes technological advances from the moving-picture side of the image-making business pass us by.
Recently, I found myself investigating gimbals, because I was in need of an remote mechanism for aiming a camera. In the past such equipment was called a ‘motorised pan-tilt head’, and these are still available, though I would guess of limited use to most still photographers. As well as these devices, my search uncovered a range of devices generically called ‘gimbals’, designed for video production. The advent of DSLR video, and the consequent availability of very high quality video production at much lower cost than before, led to the production of ‘gimbals’ designed to help produce smoother handheld footage.
My knowledge of these gimbals was limited to those that I’d seen video producers using. Mostly they were mechanical affairs, essentially a weight with a spring and a damper, which slowed down and damped any hand movement. In a few years they have evolved into something completely different, with all three axes motorised, internal gyroscopes and acceleration sensors and a processor controlling them. They are even equipped with remote controls. In effect, they are fully duplicating the action of image stabilisation in the camera, though on a larger and slower scale.
Filmmaker’s kit
However, these gimbals are still third-party devices. So far as I know, no camera manufacturer includes a gimbal in its own-brand, system-specific accessories. Recently, Nikon has announced a ‘Filmmaker’s kit’ for its new Z 6 mirrorless camera. Included in this kit is a gimbal, a MOZA Air 2 3-axis motorised rig, which appears to be a particularly powerful example of the species. Priced in the mid-£500 range, it includes many intelligent modes for keeping track of a moving subject, including follow-focus and follow-zoom modes. These require a follow-focus accessory, which connects to the appropriate lens ring (focus and zoom) and allows motorised movement.
All of which began a train of thought. When attached to an AF DSLR, the follow focus is duplicating the function of the autofocus mechanism within the lens. Would not a better solution be to connect together the systems of the camera and gimbal, and use the motor in the lens to do what it was designed to do? But this doesn’t happen, even for this accessory, which Nikon has chosen to include within its own kit. Another item in the kit, the Atomos Ninja V monitor/recorder has included some integration between the two systems. Nikon has collaborated with Atomos to furnish a new interface that allows the recorder to collect and record 10-bit raw video (that means ‘raw’ in the same sense as a still raw).
Unfortunately, this is rare. The digital photographic world does not seem to deal in standardised interfaces that allow efficient interworking between different pieces of gear. The basic standards such as EXIF soon degrade into manufacturer-specific ‘Maker Notes’ which according to the EXIF standard is ‘a tag for manufacturers of EXIF writers to record any desired information’ – that is, there is no commonality between manufacturers. For translating data to and from cameras, and for remotecontrolling them, there is supposedly the standardised ‘Picture Transfer Protocol’ – but unfortunately few camera manufacturers seem to adhere to it, and it has not been updated since 2008, and so cannot begin to cater for the functionality of modern cameras.
Which all in all, is a pity. Modern cameras’ AF systems are remarkably good at tracking subjects, if they could be coupled directly to a gimbal, we could have a system that not only tracked and kept the subject in focus automatically, but also kept it in frame. I can imagine that being a real boon for action photography. Bob Newman is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton. He has been working with the design and development of high-technology equipment for 35 years and two of his products have won innovation awards. Bob is also a camera nut and a keen amateur photographer