Zhiyun Weebill-S Review

Zhiyun Weebill-S Review

Zhiyun are pumping out gimbals over the last year, to the purpose of confusing consumers about which one is that the right one to shop for. Since the Weebill LAB that was released in late 2018, we’ve also seen Grus 3 LAB and Crane M2—and that’s just watching their mirrorless/DSLR offerings.

Now we've the Weebill-S, the successor to the Weebill LAB. And for many people, it'll naturally be the foremost appealing. The ultra-portable Crane M2 may be a bit niche while Grus 3 Lab is dear and too cumbersome for daily use. The Weebill S is meant to be a travel-friendly yet serious piece of kit.

Some people will question whether or not Zhiyun really needed to update the Weebill LAB so soon after its release. It had been a billboard success and still holds its own against the favored DJI Ronin SC. But if it can bring more-than-superficial upgrades to the table, then I don’t see how it might be a nasty idea. Let’s determine if it succeeds during this review.

New Features

Gone are the times when 3-axis gimbals were considered the most well liked piece of tech around. Most folks are pretty conversant in what a gimbal does now. They stabilize video, and nowadays all of them do a reasonably good job of it.

Zhiyun broke new ground with the first Weebill LAB by moving far away from the quality stock design. Instead, they add a further grip at the rear of the gimbal to form it easier to carry with both hands and also make low-angle underslung shots much easier to perform. In my book, this design has big advantages over the quality gimbal design and I’m glad they carried it over to the Weebill-S.

The most significant upgrade over the Weebill LAB is that the 300% increased motor torque and 50% increased responsiveness. The Weebill S is way more capable when it involves accommodating heavier camera and lens setups. There’s a full compatibility list here and you would possibly be surprised to ascertain the inclusion of not just heavy mirrorless setups, but the Canon 5D Mark IV DSLR with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. This simply wasn’t possible with the predecessor.

They’ve also extended the gimbal arms to form sure bigger cameras are often properly balanced and don’t clip the arms when tilting or rolling. Overall, the Weebill-S is significantly more flexible with camera setups compared to the Weebill LAB, which was great in almost every other way.

The other big change is that the wireless image transmission is now sold separately, as against being inbuilt. This does have some advantages (you’re getting a more capable transmitter which will even be used stand-alone) but a built-in one would are nice as no-one likes having to shop for separate accessories.

Shooting Modes

Switching between the varied shooting modes is quick and convenient because of the dedicated buttons.

• Pan Following: the lean and roll axes are locked, but the camera will follow panning movements. This is often activated by pushing up the PF/L mode switch.

• Locked: All three axes are locked and therefore the camera will keep its orientation and shooting direction. This is often activated by pushing down the PF/L mode switch.

• Following: The camera follows panning and tilting movements. You’ll activate this by holding down the trigger button at the rear of the bottom grip.

• POV Mode: This unlocks all axes, including roll, for a very immersive shot. This is often activated by pressing the POV mode button.

• Go Mode: this is often an equivalent as following mode, but dramatically increases responsiveness to film fast-paced action.

• Vortex Mode: Activated by double pressing the POV mode button, this let’s you're taking one among those spinny shots that are all the craze lately. Gimmicky? Yes. But it’s still pretty cool.

What I Liked

Mirrorless camera gimbals have matured significantly and they’re becoming easier to use and more convenient than ever. The Zhiyun Weebill-S may be a perfect example.

Mounting and balancing the camera may be a breeze. Because of individual locks on each arm, you don’t need to fight with all the arms swinging around when you’re balancing your camera for the primary time. You’ll isolate each axis by locking the opposite two axes and balance things easily.

You get a fast release plate which suggests that you simply don’t need to undergo the entire balancing process again whenever you unmount and remount the camera.

The angled rear-arm means you don’t get one among the gimbal motors obstructing the view of your camera’s monitor. This has become industry standard now, but the Weebill-S has an additional long rear-arm meaning you get many clearance and don’t run into the difficulty of the EVF rubber cushion hitting the arm.

Filming with the Weebill-S feels natural and unhindered because of Zhiyun’s unique dual-grip design. Once I am employing a standard single-grip gimbal, I find yourself overwhelmingly filming eye-level shots as holding it in other ways feels awkward and fatiguing. But with the Weebill-S, I’m far more inclined to film low slung shots.

Last but not least, the gimbal makes it easy to tweak motor parameters and other settings from its own controls and OLED display. On other gimbals, you sometimes need to undergo the smartphone companion app to form these changes.

What I Didn’t Like

To be honest, there wasn’t much that I didn’t like about this new gimbal. My biggest gripe would probably be the short and stubby stock. Unless you've got really small hands, it doesn’t fit quite right and you’ll want to form sure you add the closing mini-tripod on the top of it. To be fair, Zhiyun have designed the tripod to be used as an edge extension. Nevertheless, an extended base grip would are appreciated.

Zhiyun Weebill S vs DJI Ronin SC

While the Zhiyun Weebill-S may be a solid gimbal in its title, most of the people will inevitably want to ascertain how it compares with its direct competitor, the DJI Ronin SC.

Despite the Weebill-S being 164g lighter and having a smaller body, it can support much heavier setups. Those with heavy lenses or DSLRs won’t have such luck with the Ronin-SC and can got to check out the larger Ronin-S instead.

The Ronin-SC also doesn’t include a ¼”-20 hot shoe for accessories like phone holders. This will in fact be purchased separately, but Zhiyun are slightly more generous here.

The biggest advantage of the Weebill-S on behalf of me personally is certainly the dual-grip. It simply makes the filming experience far more enjoyable, especially with heavier lenses. A single-grip is tiring to use and requires more effort on the user’s part to stay things as stable as possible.

But when it involves software, DJI is that the clear winner. ZY Play remains playing catch up with the DJI Ronin app and things don’t feel as refined.

The active track 3.0 on the Ronin-SC is additionally better than the thing tracking on the Weebill S. It uses your smartphone camera to try to the thing tracking rather than the image transmission feed, which suggests the thing tracking is performed with less lag.

In other aspects, there’s no absolute winner. Stabilization quality is practically indistinguishable. The Weebill-S features a 14-hour battery life compared to the 11-hour battery lifetime of the Ronin-SC, but DJI were being more conservative with figures and really they’re very similar.

So overall, the Zhiyun Weebill-S wins on hardware but the DJI Ronin-SC wins on software.

Verdict

Overall, the Zhiyun Weebill-S may be a terrific gimbal for mirrorless cameras. Within the past I’ve felt that Zhiyun rushed their gimbals into production, that specialize in fancy gimmicks rather than perfecting the basics .

But the Weebill-S excels on all fronts. Powerful motors that handle heavy payloads, a stress-free mounting procedure, a dual-grip that’s fun to film with, long battery life, and in fact , great stabilization performance.

Rating: 4.5/5