It can be tough for some of us camera nerds to admit, but the iPhone really has revolutionized the game. There’s no need to drop hundreds or thousands on camera when that phone you already carry in your pocket can shoot in 4k anyway and get some pretty good results. But if you’d like to shoot high-quality, smooth video footage on your phone, you need a high-quality, smooth gimbal, like the DJI Osmo Mobile.
This compact, hand-held gimbal allows you to turn your phone into a cinema-ready camera, eliminating shaking and jittering and allowing you to get super-smooth, easy footage every time. You can hold the phone in a variety of different ways with the Osmo, such as portrait mode, underslung, flashlight, or straight-standard, and the gimbal is controlled by a joystick, allowing you to pan, tilt, or move only in specified directions. There are even buttons for Shutter, Record, manual ISO and shutter and white balance. The 3-axis stabilization makes it easy to capture long exposures at night, as well as slow-motion videos, without too much blurring.
The Osmo Mobile is more than just a gimbal, as well, and comes with some fancy features for improving your video. Active Track technology, as DJI calls it, keeps your phone facing you automatically as you move, allowing for the perfect selfie-stick experience. It’s sort of like your own camera-man following you, except that you have to carry the stick yourself. It also has Beautify Technology, which uses auto-detect features and “intelligent processing” to touch up your selfies make them look that much more polished.
The DJI Osmo Mobile fills a nice gap between lower-end, fixed gimbals and stabilizers that provide some stabilization, but no features, and the more expensive, high-end gimbals meant for serious professionals. It has all the features and tech you could ask from a phone gimbal, in a convenient, handheld kit. Battery life is listed at 15 hours tops, which is actually pretty good, too.
