I love gadgets. You can’t go through life without a thought of ‘how can I make this simpler?’ ‘What can I do to improve the way I do this?’ ‘How can I get this done in half the time?
And then there’s the – ‘I don’t need that but man it looks cool maybe I should get one!’ Thats what happened to me last week. I am trying to get back to my love of photos, videos of amazing places, people and pretty much anything awesome in the world that would make a decent picture that perhaps would be amazing to have framed and think; ‘I took that.’
Sitting in bed scrolling through Amazon, I saw a suggestion for taking smooth footage using your phone’s camera with the tagline ‘Unfold your creativity’ sparked my interest in what I can only describe as a very expensive selfie stick.
However, this was no ordinary selfie stick, as previously mentioned this would give you the ability to take perfectly smooth footage and awesome dynamic photos at a press of a button. I was in! Attracted to would this could possibly mean for me in terms of adding better content to my blog, potentially open up another avenue by means of vlogging and generally look cool. Well, last sentence maybe a bit misleading as its probably not easy to look cool filming oneself with a selfie stick in public. No matter, I clicked the ‘buy now’ icon and anticipated the delivery of my newly purchased gismo. I also tried to sleep on the fact I had just ultimately bought a selfie stick for £145.00 but no matter it was going to be worth it…. wasn’t it?
So on opening the box, I was filled with anticipation. Pulling out the instructions in the way of the quick guide, I found unfolding the gimbal cumbersome to say the least however once unfolded the stick itself was comfortably ergonomic and nicely weighted. Until I clipped my phone to it whereby this then countered the stick and made it feel awkward. I should point out that I have a S22 Ultra which is stated to weigh in at 229g, below the maximum of 280g advised by the manufacturer recommendation of the selfie stick.
Powering on the device was simple enough but without a hard copy of the manual it was a bit of a task to work out which button did what until a soft copy was downloaded. The app and subsequent manual is not readily available on the Play store at the time of writing and I can’t comment for IOS users but specifically this has to be downloaded from the DJI website directly as an APK (for Android) and was approx. 400mb in size.
Installing the non Play approved app required the setting for the phone to allowing installation from untrusted sources within the phone permissions which I would recommend turning back off after installation should you inadvertently download something which could cause an issue to your phone’s security.
DJI Website below correct at time of writing.
The app itself is great, very user friendly, allowing for some very nifty editing, zoom function via the selfie stick and as described. However, the biggest reason for me buying this was to act as a tool for travelling and exploring including skiing alongside my boy filming him as we went down the slopes together and for love nor money, I could get the gimbal to stablise and lock on to any object as I moved through. It seemed that there could be either an incompatibility with the phone I have (noting that the S22 is supported while no mention of the S22 Ultra) and that the lock on function would drift off of subject. So for this reason I shortly lost confidence in the rest of the ability of the kit, which is a shame as I had been looking forward to using this in my next upcoming trip abroad.
I therefore took the decision to return the unit to the store and for the time being keep my money in saving until a suitable replacement can be found. Saying that, since the time of writing I have searched and seen that an update will soon be available to support the S22 Ultra – this being the case I may well return to the store where I can fully test the unit out before another impulse repurchase but there is no detail of when this may be…
Let me know if you have had similar experience have or do you have a stabilised gimbal which works well with the S22 Ultra or heavier style mobile device, it just may mean that I can get something similar in time for the holidays.