Tag Archives: Motorized Gimbal

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One of the concerns with shooting on micro four thirds is with it's cropped view. In addition, shooting at 4K on the GH4 camera will further crop your view. If you follow the blog, you would have seen me testing some de-fishing techniques using a Rokinon 7.5mm Fisheye Lens. Though not perfect, i've been able to use this for some smaller projects with acceptable results. Check out the video below for examples.


[Tip: When using this technique with a person, keep a distance and place them in center frame whenever possible. Side distortion is not always flattering..]

Though not a perfect solution, this sub $300 dollar lens defished is still capable of capturing a wider field of view than the $1K 7-14mm F/4 Lumix. Of course with the defish technique your project will look it's best at a final output of 1080p. Here are a few screengrabs showing how much view is lost during the defish process.

fisheye
Original Fisheye View - GH4 7.5mm MFT Fisheye

defish
4K Defished to 1080p - GH4 7.5mm MFT Fisheye

fisheye-master
Original Fisheye View - GH4 7.5mm MFT Fisheye

defish-master
4K Defished to 1080p - GH4 7.5mm MFT Fisheye

The small form factor and light weight also make it easy to carry and perfect for small stabilizers. So if you're shooting with a GH4 and have to work with interior or tight spaces, defishing from a 4K file is an interesting option to be aware of. Definitely a lens GH4 shooters should have in their bag, and available for just under $300 (click here).

Rokinon Fisheye MFT Micro four thirds fish eye lens cheesycam GH4 defish lens
find-price-button Rokinon 7.5mm Fisheye Lens for MFT Cameras

Panasonic GH4 order stock inventory
find-price-button Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4 MFT 4K Camera

Here's another example of a video shot with the GH4 and the Rokinon Fisheye Lens (de-fished).

FCPX has it's own fisheye plugin, but may not work very well for some corrections. You can also check out the FCPEffects Plugin to remove the Fisheye Look (found here).

Fisheye-Removal-Plugin_mediumfisheye plugin video
find-price-button FCPX Fisheye Removal Plugin


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A few weeks ago, I had a comment-chat if a BMCC can fly on a CAME 5000 gimbal. So four of us guys spent over half an hour trying to stuff the BlackMagic Design Cinema Camera into this CAME 5000 Gimbal, but clearly it was not meant to work. The BMCC is just too wide from the center mount, and to compensate we tried adding a quick release plate sideways. After failing, we decided to give it a run with an unbalanced setup. Here are the results.

Surprisingly the horizon stayed just about perfectly level the entire time, but you can see how it struggled with the panning stabilization. Of course if I really wanted to, I can add post stabilization to the footage and it may not be so noticeable. Had I disabled the pan stabilization, I think this would have been a perfectly acceptable run. On lighter camera setups like the GH3, the results have been very good, but I can't suggest the CAME 5000 3 Axis Gimbal with anything more than an average DSLR.