Tech Wreck

One nice thing about having a blog is that when you have a problem you can’t solve, and you finally find the answer, you can put it on your blog for other people. Then you and they will be able to find the answer later.

I have been trying to set up a Zhiyun Crane M2 S camera gimbal so I can use it with my vlogging camera. It’s a very annoying process. You have to be able to set up the gimbal and the phone, and in the case of my Sony ZV1-M2 camera, which doesn’t fit the gimbal all that well, you have to know how to wire the camera and gimbal up.

I turned the gimbal on, and it told me “axis lock,” suggesting one of the axes on which a camera turns was stuck in the locked position.

Of course, this was totally wrong.

A gimbal rotates a camera, and in order to make this easier, the camera should be balanced, like a drawbridge. If your camera is not balanced, you will get an “axis lock” error, which should really be an “unbalanced” error.

To fix this, you balance the camera. One axis at a time, you turn the GREY levers and move the camera around until it’s NEARLY balanced. If it will fall one way as easily as the other, it’s balanced.

To connect a Sony ZV1-M2, you need to get the Sony Creator’s app, which will force you to consent to various violations of your privacy in order to use the camera you paid for.

You have to connect the camera to your phone (the app) first. The app will let you add more than one camera. You will probably be forced to download a huge firmware update before you can do anything. Using your camera’s screen, you go to your globe icon and then select something like “Connect to Smartphone.” Then you wait forever for your phone to download the update. Then you wait forever for your phone to shoot it into your camera using wifi. Then you wait forever for the camera to install the update.

When all this is done, you plug your USB-C cable into the side of the camera and the rear of the gimbal’s light. Far as I know, there is no way to connect the camera and gimbal wirelessly. The guy who sold me the gimbal in Hong Kong’s electronics district, where the prices are exactly what they are here, had to use a cable.

You set your camera up for something like “PC Remote” input even though you’re not using a PC or a remote.

When everything is working, you will not be able to use your gimbal to zoom the camera, but you can use a Sony or aftermarket remote to do it while you’re using the gimbal. Smallrig makes a better and cheaper remote than Sony. It comes as part of a small tripod. Magnetism makes it part of the handle, you can remove it and use it separately, and unlike a Sony remote, you can charge it instead of changing batteries. I don’t know what happens when the internal battery dies, however.

Guy on the web thinks it’s better to use the camera by itself, with image stabilization activated, and use something called Sony Catalyst Browse to fix any video issues caused by shaking.

This gimbal doesn’t fit the Sony very well as it came from the seller. I had to use a weird angle adaptor to make the camera fit against the gimbal while plugged in. I think they may make a new baseplate now.

That’s it.