Z Axis Grip For Osmo Pocket - Mini Review

[BTM_Pix]

I'm really fond of my Osmo Pocket but as I mainly use it as a little travel camera, the last thing I want to be doing at my age is having to do some sort of ninja walking so I do have trouble with it when doing walking shots as it is prone to quite a lot of bobbing.

So, I started looking at some of the Z axis add ons for it and found this one from Ulanzi.

For £20 I thought it was worth a go so ordered one and it arrived yesterday.

First impressions are that it is certainly lightweight enough not to be much of a hindrance to carry around. 

You pop the Osmo into the housing and it retracts back into the case to give it far better protection when travelling than the pouch case and you gently push it again to release it and it softly ejects like a decent quality cassette deck of yore. For fans of Alan Partridge, he would definitely declare this to be a "nice action" if he was viewing it privately in a local branch of Tandy.

The base of the case also has a tripod thread which is a handy bonus.

In terms of operation, you are provided with an allen wrench to adjust the tension of the spring and this will need to be varied depending on your natural walking style so its a bit of trial and error.

One thing that bothered me a bit is that there does seem to be a bit of lateral movement caused by the arms seeming a bit loose but I don't think it would be too much of a problem to remedy and it didn't seem to impact performance too much.

So, talking of performance.....is it any good ?

Well I've only had a brief time with it and to say the weather in London was inclement when I was testing it would be an understatement but I would cautiously say Yes.

Because the weather was so shit, I wasn't about to go stopping and starting and pissing about tweaking the spring tension with the allen wrench but even on the guesstimate setting I had it on it definitely took care of a decent amount of the bobbing motion.

Here is a quick video I did to show it with and without and as I say with a bit more tweaking I'm pretty sure it can be improved even further.

Obviously no special walking techniques where used in the making of this video other than puddle avoidance.

 

[Emanuel]

What a combo to add to this device I really love... (well said BTW) Absolutely irresistible : -)

[kye]

Looks good @BTM_Pix....  (the stabilisation, not the inclement weather!)

I'd also suggest that if it makes that much difference then you can probably get more performance by adjusting it further.  I did a series of stabilisation rig tests by having a path that I would walk through the house, so I'd make a change, do a circuit, make another change, do another circuit, etc.  Then sit down and review the footage.  Every clip began facing a mirror so it was obvious what setup was being tested in that clip.