Aerial Cinematography testing with the new H3-2D gimbal and Phantom quadcopter has begun at TVS Pro. Here is the first test video and keep in mind it was shot at 24 fps and the YouTube playback adds some additional hesitation (will depend somewhat on your graphics card and download speed) and frame skipping that is not there in the actual file but it will give you an idea of how smooth this gimbal really is. Take a look:

You will also see a lot of other H3 videos out there but what you have to keep in mind is that this is one of the first with the integrated gimbal controller on the new upgrade board that we just received and installed. This new board gives us two very important advantages over the previous separate controller system. One, we have eliminated the weight and space required by the separate controller module and two, we now have the tap for the live video feed for our real time monitoring of what the camera is seeing through the Go Pro Hero 3 lens as we fly and all through the same single cable used to control the gimbal.

As you will also notice from the test video we have complete control of the gimbal and camera direction from the remote control. In other words if we put the Phantom in a GPS hover, for example we can point the camera anywhere from straight down to slightly pointed up. Of course we can also control the gimbal during full motion flight as well. This next image looking down is a still taken from the 1080p video while the quadcopter was in hover above our parking lot. As you can see I did this very early in the morning before work and the sun is very low in the sky hence the very long shadows but we moved the gimbal by remote to get a near straight down view. It is also fun to even start with the gimbal facing straight down and go straight up like a rocket launch and then when at altitude move the gimbal to point in the directions you want as we did in the first video above,