Zhiyun Crane v2 – 750 USD Gimbal

The Zhiyun Crane v2 is a expensive piece of equipment for your DSLR, and you would expect it to be up for the task… of not breaking the first day, wouldn’t you?

Well, I bought the Zhiyun Crane v2 on Thursday, had it delivered on Friday and took it to Järvsö Bergscykel Park on Saturday to shoot some downhill mountainbiking. Imagine my surprise coming home on Saturday night and trying it out again, and the motors aren’t working.

Yeah, the Zhiyun Crane v2 I bought either had a manufacturing flaw or something, because I don’t think it should break on the first day of using it, carefully and nervously. Before buying the Zhiyun Crane v2 I Googled it so incredibly much, I researched the workload, cameras compatible, good and bad reviews and malfunctioning ones, but after reading a comment from Zhiyun Tech on a forum, I made my choice, I bought it.

The question they answered was… Does the Zhiyun Crane v2 work with the Nikon D500!
Their answer being: Yes, the Zhiyun Crane v2 can handle cameras up to 1.8 kilograms, and the Nikon D500 weighs 1.5 kilograms with the standard lens, and that shouldn’t be a problem!

Guess what, it was a problem.

Not only is the Nikon D500 pretty big, so I had big problems balancing the Zhiyun Crane v2 gimbal in the first place. But after extensive balancing I got it to where I wanted, and it worked. However, the D500 being to big, the gimbal arms hit the camera in some angles, and I could not use the Crane’s to its full potential. The other thing was, that the camera being so big, I had to reset the gimbal arms every time I changed locations, because the gimbal could not fit in it’s designated case with the arms fully extended and balanced for my D500….

That meant that every time I changed locations, like going to another spot and needed to put the Zhiyun Crane v2 away, I had to redo the whole balancing thing when arriving at the new location. Why? Well, I didn’t want to risk breaking it by carrying it out in the open and risk it getting bumped into stuff. But then again, it broke on me anyway xD

I made a video review of the Zhiyun Crane v2 stabiliser which you can see below, I also included some test footage and my thoughts on it out in the field. So, please watch the video and let me know if you have experienced the same issues.

 

The problems I had with the gimbal was that the motors stopped working, the indicator light on the gimbal lit up as usual, but the motors were not working and I could not connect it to my computer och phone anymore, it was rendered completely useless and limp.

I guess the Nikon D500 does NOT work with the Zhiyun Crane v2 stabiliser gimbal.

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