Just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction as I’m not really clued up on this stuff.

Managed to get my wife a Hero 5 Black for crimbo as she wants to have a go at creating content and filming stuff. Her first attempt looks ok, but she’s using her dad’s Hero 4 with a chest mount and footage can get shaky!

Is there any chest-mountable affordable (say around £100 max) Gimbals that I should be looking at?

Do yourself a favour and get a hero 7 or 8, you won’t need the Gimbal.

If you must then get a feiyu tech WG2

https://www.cliftoncameras.co.uk/Feiyutech-FYWG2-3Axis-Gimbal-for-Action-Cameras?gclid=CjwKCAiAlO7uBRANEiwA_vXQ-4uHBKPHo2Imk_xb2Ro0JdqHiLPstI23tQwr55gcMopA6uJe9nBmUhoC5lgQAvD_BwE

Also get a Stuntman chest mount, they are more expensive than most, Circa £30, but they are way more stable, if you shorten one of the bolts you can bolt the gimbal to it direct which cuts down the bulk poking out from your chest.

I just looked through my Insta for any footage I took with a gimbal, I didn’t use any but the Hero 7 footage is wicked, so stable.

Buying another Go Pro is a non-starter (whole other story that’ll get told eventually).

I’ve seen the Hero 7+8 stabilization and it looks like it works really well, unless the light is poor.

She had to buy a kids version of the chest mount as the standard one was too big! Cheers for the link, I’ll have a look at that 🙂

As above.

I’ve got the 7 and the 8. They don’t exactly do the same job as a gimbal but they do a decent job (especially the 8) in terms of stabilisation.

Plus, unlike a gimbal they are durable and water proof.

You need a lot of light for the stabilisation to work well.

(Sorry – i Just realised you bought the 5!)

Might as well tell the embarrassing story about why I didn’t get a 7/8 in the first place!

I bought the Hero 5 Black from a ST user (paid £140, and me and the missus agreed that we weren’t to go mad with the Christmas budget).

Only when I sent to money to pay for it, I typed his email and ended it with .com… His email was .co.uk and I used friends and family! Basically, I’ve sent £140 to a stranger with no way of recovering!

So for what I lost, I could have bought a Hero 7! Lesson learned 🙂

I use a feiyutech G5 and gopro 6. I mount it unto a chest mount using a handlebar gopro mount.

You clamp the gimbal in the handlebar part of the mount and then have to hack off one of the 3 prongs on the other end. There are some vids on how to do it on youtube.

Works a treat.

Ah cool, cheers for the info. There’s plenty of mounts knocking about the house, so I’ll be able to sort something.

Only when I sent to money to pay for it, I typed his email and ended it with .com… His email was .co.uk and I used friends and family! Basically, I’ve sent £140 to a stranger with no way of recovering!

I did that once, luckily the funds reappeared in my PayPal account after a few days.

The guy is ignoring my emails, looks like he needs the money more than me 🙁

It happened to my missus, so she phoned paypal to make sure it was legit and sent the money back to the woman (she emailed as soon as she realised the mistake). Sadly, not everyone is honest.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I recently sent you £Xxx as a paypal payment in error to your paypal account. I have tried to contact you unsuccessfully to date. I apologise for my error but I would be grateful if you could please refund me the amount sent, otherwise I will have no alternative but to submit a claim through the Magistrates Court, which I don’t want to do as it was my initial error.

regards

I did read something similar to that, but I wanted to look into it further. I wouldn’t want to go threatening legal action until I knew what I was doing 🙂

Damn, that WG2 is out of stock and I’m having trouble finding a reliable UK site with them in stock 🙁

Any more alternatives I should looks at? Could go up to £150 if needed.

Hi John,

If you have not already started this you can take out a Paypal dispute with him. Linky

wg2 is shit don’t bother.

Oh dear! Fair enough then 🙂

@poah any suggestions for alternatives? I’m struggling to make sense of it all to be honest.

The resolution doesn’t help if you send via friends and family unfortunately 🙁

We’re I not considering the hero 8, I’d be thinking about one of these…

Afaik, it would work best with a ‘stuntman’ chest harness.

I had a Zhiyun Ryder M. I read the warnings about salt water, but it never occurred to me it might be referring to sweat. Killed one of the axis dead in the height of the French Summer this year.

@johnw1984 hoping this won’t be a classic case of answering a different question but do you/your wife actually need a Gimbal?

I take a lot of GoPro footage and have edited them into numerous movies. With a bit of practice you can shoot perfectly usable footage without a Gimbal.

I tend to edit my footage into pop-style movies with many scene changes and short, maximum 20 second segments of footage. If I’ve shot any footage that is a bit wobbly that just gets dropped on the virtual cutting room floor and I use some different footage instead.

The chesty mount is pretty good for decent footage. The secret is to have the straps as tight as possible. Also I found that my original GoPro Hero (GoPro 1 if you like) that i bought way back in 2010 was fairly bulky and tended to bounce around a lot more than my GoPro Session 4 which is much lighter and therefore less likely to move on a rough descent.

So in short, get out there, shoot loads of footage and play with the editing to gain experience. You soon learn what makes a good shot and what doesn’t as well as what the limitations of a GoPro are.

I use a chin cam now. The WGS was a better gimbal than the WG2. There is a replacement for the WG2 now called the WG2X. wither that is any better I don’t know.

@poah That’s definitely an option when she’s using her full face, but it’s hardly used 🙁

@MTB-Idle I’m not sure it’s a “need” thing, more of a toy to have a go with and produce some decent vids. It’s quite shaky footage at the moment with her Dad’s old Hero 4. She’s getting pretty quick these days (came 5th in her age category at the recent Hopetech Women Enduro).

She’s also started racing XC this year and wants to step it up at notch next year. Rocky descents are a favourite, and she doesn’t hang around on them either (paired with a 120mm trail bike). With all that, the footage stability suffers a bit.

I ended up going for the EVO SS Gimbal in the end. From what I could read and watch on YouTube, it seems like most of them aren’t that reliable. I considered the Slick, but just went with the other one in the end.