Bonn in the summer. There’s something happening all the time and if it’s not in the Rheinaue it’s in the town center, or both at the same time. We took our new gimbal stabiliser out for a run on Saturday and picked up the good feelings of summer in a series of short videos. A gimbal, by the way, is a motorised stabiliser that works in three axis. It can’t stabilise the vertical movement of the camera so some care is still needed when using it but it’s perfect for follow-videos, panning shots and as you can see below, great for recording bands.
All the videos are up on our Facebook page. Scroll down to see them embedded here.
We took a few smartphones out with us starting with a low cost Honor 5X. Unfortunately this smartphone camera doesn’t include optical image stabilization (OIS) so while biking across the bumpy grass of the Rheinaue we saw some micro-shaking. Switching to an older Lumia 1020 we saw big improvements although there was evidence that some software stabilization was working against the gimbal. We’ll be trying a Lumia 950 XL soon and expect to have more manual control with this camera. It can also record at 30 fps in 4K and has an excellent high frame rate slow-motion 1080p mode that should be a lot of fun to try.
One advantage of the Lumia 1020 is the set of high quality, high dynamic range mics that can take high sound pressure levels. We were too close to the bass speakers at a big band recording on the Marktplatz but a test with a local band in a fire engine bay was much better. Acoustics were not optimal but if you take a look at the stable image and smooth pans you’ll see exactly how much of an advantage the gimbal is.
While we were touring Bonn’s Rheinaue, Rheinufer, town center and Popplesdorfer Allee we had the pleasure of bumping into a wedding couple in a Messerschmitt 3-wheeler ‘bubble’ car. Take a look at the video below to see how the gimbal got on with biking along a bumpy cobbled road.
With the addition of the smartphone gimbal we’re even more prepared for creating effective and interesting event videos quickly and efficiently. If you’re interested in using our videos services for your event, contact us on the form below. We work in and around Bonn and are happy to talk in German with you. You’ll find more about our web video services here.