One of the things we first cottoned onto was the brushless gimbals for our camera platforms. Originally we were flying servo based gimbals for SLR cameras, it was pretty immediate that we realised brushless was going to be a major contributor to aerial filming – in particular the FreeFly MōVI Systems.
Having built all our drones, the first thing we did was upgrade our original gimbal to a brushless system using the Alexmos GUI interface, it wasn’t until we got our hands on the MōVI M10 we realised that its interface and camera stabilisation was second to none.
What I like most about the MōVI gimbals are that they’re trustworthy. We’ve used several gimbals now and doing what we do, there’s very little time to waste on calibrating or ‘fidgeting’ with the settings. The user interface is very friendly and easy to make changes in between flights to help maximise the stabilisation in the conditions that you’re flying. Being able to save and load various settings to the MōVI for different camera rigs and payloads really helps to speed up our rig time giving us more time in the air for filming and photography.
Another reason we went for the MōVI systems is that essentially, Rob and I are both previous camera operators and know that at the end of the day, it’s down to achieving the shot. The great thing about the MōVI is that if certain shots don’t suit the drone, the MōVI can be switched to a handheld rig to maximise the angle options of the stabilised rig.
To give an example, out in Finland were shooting for a leading tyre manufacturer, the reason we were there was to offering an aerial perspective of the cars using the ice tracks up in Ivalo. Instead of just offering the drone, we were able to switch to the handheld system and offer up some really low angle and various 3 quarter shots via a second tracking vehicle to compliment what had been shot from the air and also what the ground team had been shooting handheld and from sticks, which really helped with shot choices when it came to edit.
If you want to know more about the MōVI rigs check out www.freeflysystems.com or drop us an email and find out the cameras and rigs we can lift.
