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Samsung galaxy S5
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  • @markr041, thanks for posting the 3-Axis stabilised clips above.

    I thought I was seeing a few micro jitters slip through, however, upon reviewing the Washington Square Park clip, I started to think again. Have I been seeing the effect of lens breathing as the S5 occasionally changes focus during it's search for a focus reference point? For example, at 1:24, 3:30 and 3.42, is that the effect of lens breathing of the S5 in auto focus mode? Are you shooting in auto focus mode or manual focus mode? I recall reading (a long time ago) that you can set the S5 to manual focus mode, however, it was cumbersome to change the focus point by touching relevant part of the LCD while recording. With a gimbal, not sure if that makes the manual focus process easier or interferes with stabilisation...

    Really amazing what you're producing with the S5. Well done.

  • @WhiteRabbit, Thanks. You have a good eye.

    Sometimes I used manual focus and sometimes not, which is when (sometimes) you may get the pulse. For manual focus you must start the recording, press where to focus and then it will lock the focus there. Interestingly with a soft touch on the gimbal it has no effect on stability. You can do focus "pulls" that way while shooting too. It is clear for most shots one wants to invoke manual.

    A while ago I shot this 4K test video (on a tripod), assessing the autofocus and manual focus and trying focus pulls. The description under the video at the Youtube site describes the test sequence. It did ok:

  • @markr041, I started wearing glasses in the last 12 months. A real pain to adjust between general viewing and removing glasses and viewing via a viewfinder, grrrr.

    Pulling focus, above, very good. The S5 lens breathing is pronounced, nothing you can do about that, save resizing and keyframing scale to try and counter it visually, if desired. Curious if, say, the Sony 4K phone camera suffers similar pronounced lens breathing.

    Not sure if the S5 camera allows for video shutter control. If not, perhaps adding an ND may prevent the camera automatically increasing shutter speed to compensate for strong daylight. The resulting staccato video may reduce some of the S5 (and other auto cameras/phone cameras) slight shimmering look in footage, such as the first 5 seconds of your Washington Square Park clip. Alternatively, what I think I may be seeing is the gimbal making micro adjustments to stabilise, and the rolling shutter, which appears to be quite a slower read in most lower cost 4K CMOS sensor devices, may be affecting the image. Or, there is fine focus adjustments happening and causing the said shimmer. Thinking too much mode, now set to off...

    Impressive combo, the S5 and gimbal. Going to wait for something like the Sam S6 and review again. My current mobile is almost 4 years old and has a cracked screen, main function button rarely works (children playing games) so using the virtual button activated in the OS. Holding out until I absolutely need to replace. Keep up the good work with the 4K video phone camera. 4 years ago, I would not have thought of such a device as being available and reasonably affordable today.