Test of 4 gyro stabilised action cameras - Git2, Fireflys6, SJCam x5000 Elite and M20

Nice video.

It is obvious to me and probably others, digital image stabilization is a must on a action cam, it can impact on the image quality
but I still think you can ignore that compared to the advantages of stabilized image. Add a gimbal or stedycam rig to that
and your video will be ultra smooth.

Will save you a lot of time on post production, also the bonus with the gitup2 that you can have a external microphone
that also gets you great sound, perhaps a comparison of that. It too saves you a lot of time in post not having to
sync the audio and get much better quality that you can with a tiny internal microphone.
 
Nice video.

It is obvious to me and probably others, digital image stabilization is a must on a action cam, it can impact on the image quality
but I still think you can ignore that compared to the advantages of stabilized image. Add a gimbal or stedycam rig to that
and your video will be ultra smooth.
...
A gimbal does a different job to a gyro stabiliser, it's job is to keep the camera pointing in the correct direction, it can stabilise the image as well but a good gyro stabiliser will do a better job of that. If you want your video to look like you are floating through the air then it is best to have both, but if you are walking and you want the video to look like you are walking instead of floating then you don't want the gimbal.

A steadycam rig can make the job of the gyro easier, but normally it is sufficient just to put the camera on a monopod and let the monopod act as a pendulum to keep the camera vertical, the longer the monopod the better and it is also good to have a bit of weight to it (carbon fibre is not an advantage!), the gyro stabiliser will take care of the rest.
 
It's not digital image stabilisation though, these are mechanical devices as far as I know. anti shake as seen in a lot of cameras is software based. I did an external mike test with the Git2, the internal mike isn't really that bad.
Nice video.

It is obvious to me and probably others, digital image stabilization is a must on a action cam, it can impact on the image quality
but I still think you can ignore that compared to the advantages of stabilized image. Add a gimbal or stedycam rig to that
and your video will be ultra smooth.

Will save you a lot of time on post production, also the bonus with the gitup2 that you can have a external microphone
that also gets you great sound, perhaps a comparison of that. It too saves you a lot of time in post not having to
sync the audio and get much better quality that you can with a tiny internal microphone.
 
It's not digital image stabilisation though, these are mechanical devices as far as I know. anti shake as seen in a lot of cameras is software based. ...
There are no moving parts in a Git2. Unless you want to count the buttons, the vibrating quartz crystal for the clock and the vibrations of the gyro sensor.
 
There are no moving parts in a Git2. Unless you want to count the buttons, the vibrating quartz crystal for the clock and the vibrations of the gyro sensor.
You forgot the battery and battery door lol

Course if you want to be truly pedantic, there's lots of microscopic moving parts inside all the chips inside. :p
 
You forgot the battery and battery door lol

Course if you want to be truly pedantic, there's lots of microscopic moving parts inside all the chips inside. :p
The battery may be replaceable but I wouldn't say that it was a mechanical part, maybe the contacts are as they are sprung.
Moving electrons are also not counted as mechanical, for most chips the only other movement is thermal and undesirable.
The microphone sort of moves, but it is electrostatic, it does not really have a moving diaphragm.

Anything else? :)
 
The battery may be replaceable but I wouldn't say that it was a mechanical part, maybe the contacts are as they are sprung.
I meant that the battery and door are moving parts, similar to the buttons, in that they only move when the user moves them. And I can't believe I forgot the mic! Lol
 
Well I appear to have got that wrong, I was under the impression that the Sony Exmor IMX206 senor must have had moving parts in a gyro? To sense movement. My understanding was the sensor actually moved to compensate for violent movement. Totally different to software based image stabilisation which shifts pixels around.

However it works, it works very well anyway!

This explanation calls it hardware based?

The Git2 uses hardware digital image stabilization with the help of a gyroscopic (accelerometer) sensor. When this feature is enabled, the working techinque is based on shifts of the electronic image from frame to frame of video, enough to counteract the motion or at least minimize it's presence. This is done by using pixels outside the border of the visible frame to provide a buffer zone from which to crop the motion but this will also reduce the resolution in some cases. To have noticeably good results this systems uses the input of a accelerometer to "measure" the needed movement and thus selecting the correct regions for cropping based on the movement or shaking of the camera. In most of the cases the gyro works so well that even hand holding the camera without any kind of monopod or handle generates much more steady images and prevents annoying shake. This Gyro function can be observed in the following videos.

http://techtronic9000.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/gitup-git2-action-camera-sony-exmor.html
 
...
However it works, it works very well anyway!

This explanation calls it hardware based?
...
There is an extra chip on the circuit board which contains a microscale gyroscope capable of detecting roll, pitch, yaw, and acceleration horizontally and vertically. The gyroscope vibrates instead of spinning but it works on the same principle as the toy ones.

The explanation you copied is correct, the image is moved by software based on the movement detected by the gyro sensor, it is much better than standard software stabilisation because it knows how much movement there is instead of guessing based on the contents of the image so it is far more accurate and can even work in the dark.

As you say, the important thing is that it works very well :)
 
Thanks for explaining, I had wondered. As you will have seen I have tested 4 different 'gyro' based, action cameras and the Git2 is easily one of the best.
 
Nigel, yeah that was my point.

A gyro can only take so much shaking and so on, using a stedycam or at least some sort of stabilization system to remove most of the shaking etc will
do wonders, and the digital image stabilization can take care of the rest.

I am a bit disappointed that there are not more cheap tools to have a much better stabilized image, or for mounting. It does do a lot
for the video but you can build your own.
 
Here's one I made myself! Haven't tried it with a gyro stabilised action camera though. Made it some years ago. (Before most of them existed I should think!)

 
I'm also testing two gyro stabilized action cams, the Dazzne P2 Plus and the Elephone Explorer Pro. One odd thing about the Elephone is that the menu calls gyro stabilization "RSC". Any idea what that stands for?
 
The side-by-side testing was great and the 4-way split screen is an excellent idea. In my opinion the Firefly was best and the Git 2 was close behind. The M20 was bad and the SJCam was terrible. It would be interesting to see the two SJCams side by side. It almost looks as if the 5000X Elite doesn't actually have gyro stabilization at all!

Thanks for the great comparison.
 
Really Super Cool! Obviously.

Reactive SemiConductor?
LOL! Now I want to get out my thesaurus and dictionary and look up every clever combination of RSC I can think of - but I'm too lazy!

R*** Stabilization Control?
Robots Suck Coconuts?
 
The RSC is explained on elProducente site which is keeping lying about 4K specs. as manufacturers are doing. Maybe internet traffic is more important than the truth for Mr. elProducente which is advertising a camera which have the greatest feature a fake.

RSC
Roll Stability Control for image stabilization. There is a second option Anti-Shake but I still have to conduct some test to find out the best settings for which situation.

enjoy,
Mtz
 
The RSC is explained on elProducente site which is keeping lying about 4K specs. as manufacturers are doing. Maybe internet traffic is more important than the truth for Mr. elProducente which is advertising a camera which have the greatest feature a fake.



enjoy,
Mtz
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that his claim that RSC stands for Roll Stability Control is a lie?
 
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that his claim that RSC stands for Roll Stability Control is a lie?
Try it out, roll the camera side to side and see if the image stays level and the horizon horizontal...

I think Mtz is pointing out that the article doesn't point out that the 4K is fake 4K, however I do see it says "(4K resolution is interpolated like on the SJ5000X elite, SJ8000, EKEN H9, Firefly 6S and Git2)" and "max. 20MP .jpg – seems that the photo is upscaled from the 12MP sensor", but maybe it is not made clear enough, it is easy to miss that it is fake 4K.

It almost looks as if the 5000X Elite doesn't actually have gyro stabilization at all!
It was worse than that, it was making any roll of the camera worse than the original!

However they have fixed it in the later firmware, now it works OK, although the Git2 gyro gives a more natural movement and is nicer to watch.
 
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