The Canon R5 has managed to get off to a really strong start amongst the community with it proving to be a huge hit amongst both the photography and videography communities and earning a great reputation pretty much from its initial launch. This has lead to very strong continued sales that just keep on increasing as each month goes by with more and more videographers and vloggers turning to the Canon R5 as their camera body of choice.
Due to this, we have noticed more and more people reaching out with a number of different questions based around various camera accessories for the R5 to ensure that they are capturing the best video footage possible during use. Today, we are going to be taking a look at what we feel is the best gimbal for Canon R5 cameras on as we have noticed more and more people reaching out about gimbals for the camera over the last month or so.
Although there are an absolute ton of handheld 3 axis gimbal stabilizers on the market these days, when it comes to the R5, we feel that there is one clear winner and that gimbal is the Zhiyun Weebill S. Our regular readers will know that we feel that the Weebill S is the best gimbal stabilizer ever made for mirrorless and DSLR camera users and judging by the outstanding reputation of the gimbal, it would seem the majority of the videography and vlogging community who have tried it agree with us.
The Weebill S offers everything that you could ever need from a gimbal for your Canon R5 and will make an excellent addition to your collection of camera accessories. We will be taking a more in-depth look at the gimbal as well as what it has to offer in our article below to try and show why it should be your gimbal of choice as well as how it blows the competing gimbals out of the water.
Performance And Functionality
With the Zhiyun gimbal range being a dominant force in the gimbal space for so long, its not surprising that their Weebill S has managed to blow the competing gimbals out of the water due to all of the experience and knowledge that Zhiyun has managed to build up over the years. In addition to this, they have also taken all of the constructive feedback from the community onboard too and implemented as much of it as possible into their Weebill S gimbal to innovate as much as possible and push the gimbal space forward.
Although the Weebill S is very small and lightweight compared to the older gimbals from the Zhiyun range and even some of the more modern gimbals from competing brands, it offers a massive 6.61 pound maximum load capacity. Although the Canon R5 is a heavy camera body coming in at 1.62 pounds of payload weight, this still leaves you with 4.99 pounds of free load capacity for all of your camera accessories that you need to use with your camera when recording.
This ensures that even if you are using some heavier camera lenses or video lights when capturing your footage, the Weebill S should still be able to support your camera rig and offer its excellent levels of image stabilization without having any issues. This is due to the new gimbal motors on the Weebill S that are not only smaller, lighter, and more power efficient but also offer you four times the torque of the previous generation of gimbal motors from Zhiyun.
One of the main points of feedback that Zhiyun seem to have been determined to work on is the noise created from their gimbal motors when stabilising the users cameras. Some microphone setups were able to pickup the sounds of their older Crane range of gimbal resulting in a contaminated audio track for the video. We are pleased to report that this new generation of gimbal motors are almost silent when adjusting the axis of the gimbal meaning that even a sensitive microphone can be used with your Canon R5 without it picking up and of the sound from the gimbal motors.
Although the older Zhiyun gimbals offered some excellent battery life, the engineers at Zhiyun have been innovating away on the new batteries in the Weebill range of gimbals making them smaller while also being able to hold their charge more efficiently. This means that the Weebill S is able to provide you with around fourteen hours of battery life for a full charge of its batteries. In addition to this, even if you are running your camera rig close to the 6.61-pound maximum load capacity of the gimbal, you can still expect around fourteen hours of power out of these batteries without the drop off that some of the compeating gimbal brands have.
The levels of image stabilization provided by the Weebill S really are next generation too with general stabilization, panning, tilting, and pre-programed movements all being very smooth offering superior image quality. The wireless options offered by the gimbal also allow you to possition it with your Canon R5 mounted in one location while you control the pan and tilt from another. This can be useful for something like wedding videography so you can set your rig up before the ceremony and then get out of the photographers frame for his photographs but still having full control of your gimbal for the vows.
This is why we feel that the Weebill S is the best gimbal for Canon R5 cameras on the market and in all honesty, the best gimbal for any mirrorless or DSLR camera. This means if you use additional cameras when working you can use the quick release plate on the Weebill S to hot swap your cameras as required too. This great versatility of the gimbal is one of the main reasons that it has managed to earn such an excellent reputation amongst videographers in such a short period of time.
User Interface And Control System
Although the Zhiyun user interface and control system on their gimbals has been leading the way forward for a few years now, they have taken the system one step further for their new generation of handheld gimbals. They have increased the sensitivity of the gimbals joystick while also slightly tweaking its position to make it much easier to reach while ensuring that it offers maximum control over the gimbal head with your Canon R5.
Although they have only changed the position of the joystick on the gimbal by a small amount, it makes a surprisingly big difference. You can easily keep your grip on the gimbal handle while using the joystick now giving you the confidence that you won’t accidentally drop it due to the lower level of grip like the older gimbals on the market when using the joystick.
The joystick offers some of the best control possible and both the tilting and panning on the gimbal is extremely smooth. Although using the gimbal in manual mode is going to depend on the type of videography or vlogging that you are doing, the manual mode on the Weebill S is great. That said though, both the lock and follow modes on the gimbal are great too and the new Zhiyun tracking technology is excellent although it is much easier to use if you do use the Zhiyun smartphone app than the control system on the gimbal.
The navigation menu on the gimbal is very user friendly and Zhiyun has done a great job of improving it over their older, confusing navigation menu. The new system lets you quickly and easily fly through the menu and tweak or adjust settings to improve the performance of the gimbal for your specific situation without having any issues.
Smartphone App
In all honesty, the old smartphone app for the Zhiyun gimbal range was terrible. It was a total pain just to sync it to your gimbal and then it would randomly drop its connection and you would have to start everything from scratch again. Although we don’t know if Zhiyun have put a ton of work into their old app or just made this new one from scratch but they have totally overhauled it and produced a free smartphone app that is a great little gimbal accessory.
It lets you change many of the gimbal settings much quicker than doing it via the navigation menu on the gimbal and it makes the tracking mode much easier to use. You can literally tap the subject on your smartphone screen that you want the gimbal to track and it will correctly track them the majority of the time. Although the Zhiyun app is not perfect, it has definitely come on a long way and the only competing app from another app that comes close to it now is the DJI app but the Zhiyun app offers more functionality.
Build Quality And Design
Zhiyun have always been known for having the best build quality when it comes to gimbals and the Weebill S is just as tough and robust as all of their older gimbals. That said though, they have started to use the newer polymers on the market that have seen a drop in price over the last two years or so allowing them to keep their gimbals tough and robust while also making them lighter.
As we touched on earlier, the Canon R5 is a pretty heavy camera so having a lighter gimbal stabilizer can be a blessing for those longer recording sessions. This ensures that it is as easy as possible to hold your gimbal without getting any aches or pains and capture all of the video footage you need without having to take a whole bunch of breaks to let your arms relax.
When it comes to the actual design of the gimbal, the Weebill range from Zhiyun are the first gimbals on the market to offer a native overgrip to support your Canon R5 when recording. Although there are additional grip accessories on the market for the other gimbals on the market, they are usually from third-party companies and not build to the same standard adding an element of risk. With the Zhiyun grips that come included with the gimbal, you know that everything has been built to the same high standards to all work seamlessly together from the very start.
Conclusion
That concludes our article going over why we feel that the Zhiyun Weebill S is the best gimbal for Canon R5 cameras on the market. It blows everything else on the market out the water right now while also having a lower price point than many of the compeating gimbals too. As we have mentioned, it has an excellent reputation while also having some excellent third-party, independent reviews from the community too.
We really do think that the Weebill S will make an excellent addition to your collection of camera accessories. In our opinion, it blows the DJI Ronin out of the water and the only real competition that it does have on the market right now is the Moza Aircross 2 but its higher price tag pushes the Weebill S out ahead of it. Although there are a number of other gimbals out there, when it comes to the Canon R5 we don’t feel that they are worth looking at due to the higher payload weight of the camera meaning they may not be able to provide you with decent levels of image stabilization.
