If you’re a photographer, then this is the gadget add-on you really want! Mmmmm…. I’m tempted to buy one.
If you’ve ever shot video handheld with a mirrorless or DSLR, camera shake may have ruined your day. To deal with it, you need a heavy-duty gimbal, but that can cost more than the camera. Another way is to fix it in post-production, but the results can be less than optimal. That’s where the $250 SteadXP stabilizer comes in. It mounts on your hot shoe and measures all the motion with an accelerometer, then uses an included app to cancel it out. The results, I found, are quite good — provided you keep its limitations in mind and have the time and patience for the process.
Stabilizing rigs like DJI’s Ronin can cost thousands of dollars and be complex and cumbersome. Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro X can do the job, but the software might guess camera movement wrong, making stabilization distorted or just bad.
The big selling points of the SteadXP, then, are that it’s relatively inexpensive at $250 ($190 for the GoPro version) and all you have to do is attach it to your DSLR’s hot shoe or the GoPro Hero port. With a built-in motion detector, it records all your camera jitters and movements, rather than guesstimating them afterwards. And using that info, it can, in theory, make everything perfectly smooth.
I tried the SteadXP with both the Sony A7S and the A7S II, using the 28-70mm Sony FE kit and Sony’s Zeiss 16-35 f/4 lenses. (As with any kind of handheld footage, wider-angle lenses are always better.) On the GoPro side, I used a Hero 4 (it’s not compatible with the Hero 5 and 6 at all, unfortunately). As you need a supported lens and camera body and a microphone-input jack, the only supported cameras for now are select Canon, Sony and Panasonic models, including the 5D Mark III, A6300, A7S, A7S II, GH4 and GH5.
In my SteadXP test, I replicated its most typical use — running and walking up and down the street — which is also the trickiest situation for stabilizers to handle. I also tried both 4K and 1080p video.
Source: Engadget
