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If you’ve got a smartphone, you can be a videographer or a director or a video producer. So anyone can shoot, but what can you do to take your videos to the next level? How about a gimbal? I recently had a chance to try out the DJI Osmo Mobile 3 gimbal so I’ll tell you about my experience including what it can do, how to use it and whether I think it’s a good investment.
What Does DJI Osmo Mobile 3 Do?
The DJI OSMO Mobile 3 is essentially a handle that you hold your smartphone with. It helps you get those smooth, buttery-stable shots that you couldn’t get with your shaky hands and phone alone. The gimbal has on-handle controls so you can move, tilt and zoom without touching your phone. It does need to shoot through the DJI Mimo App to use all the controls (it uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone).
The other thing about this hand-held gimbal is that it leaves you a place to plug in a microphone, which most other gimbals don’t. Because of the angled design of the arm, you can plug things into the charging or aux ports without destabilizing the phone. It also folds up nicely for transport.
One of the cooler features of this device is that if you use the DJI Mimo app, you can enable subject tracking. This allows you to identify a person or object and the app and gimbal duo will work to always keep it centre-frame. I found this feature worked surprisingly well and was particularly useful if I wanted to do a walking shot.
How Does It Work?
DJI is one of the biggest manufacturers of drones as well as camera accessories, and through their years of work on DJI drones, they were able to work up mechanical stabilization for cameras. The OSMO Mobile 3 has a three-way axis gimbal that allows it to remain stable even if your hand or arm is moving.
The magic of DJI’s Software
Although the hardware for the OSMO Mobile 3 is very impressive, a lot of the work happens in the software. Not just a gimmicky app for the sake of it, some of the best features like subject tracking and sport mode, come from the app and it really is integral to getting the most from the gimbal. The software that the OSMO Mobile 3 uses also allows you to go through other shooting modes that can add variety to your film or video.
But the best thing that this particular device gets right is the seamless integration of the hardware and software.
The Mimo app integrates with the various buttons and controls on the OSMO Mobile 3 so that you can use them on the fly.
Using the controls
Power button:
The power button on the grip of the Mobile 3 actually has a lot going for it. By clicking and holding it, you’ll power on and off. Double click it and you can automatically change the orientation of the camera from vertical to horitontal. Triple tap to put the camera and gimbal in standby mode.
The record button is for starting and stoping your recordings, naturally.
There’s a flat joystick button or swivel for moving the camera around.
Theres’ a zoom in and out rocker on the left side of the handle.
Trigger button
There’s also a trigger on the far side of the handle and it too has multiple actions. Click it once, you can start or stop active tracking on a subject. Press the trigger twice, and the gimbal will re-center, going into its default position. Finally, a triple tap of the trigger will switch between the front-facing camera and the back camera.
I will say it does take a bit of getting used to, remembering which buttons need how many taps to execute your shortcuts, so fortunately you can also do all these things by just tapping on the camera in the Mimo app.
Using the DJI Osmo Mobile 3
The DJI OSMO Mobile 3 is designed for portability and to be easy to use. This gimbal is very comfortable to hold in one hand, and all of the buttons and controls are easy to access without needing your second hand. While its weight makes it feel durable and rugged, it’s not overly heavy. I will say that with the weight of the gimbal and the weight of your phone it is noticeable, but the way the handle is balanced makes it less of a strain.
So I was all set to show you a video I shot so you can see the stabilization and subject tracking. And while it looks great, you’re probably on edge right now because my audio doesn’t match the video. And that’s because I found a huge problem with the Osmo Mobile 3. When your video is shot on an iPhone 11 using the Mimo app, and imported into Apple’s Final Cut pro for editing… it doesn’t bring the audio track. That is a pretty big problem. You can get around it by using the native camera, but that kinda defeats some of the purpose of having this device. I’ll post a link to a forum about this problem below. This is a pretty big problem for me with this device. Anyhow.. let’s look at some of the other features…
