As a hybrid real estate photographer and videographer, speed and efficiency are the name of the game. Anything I can do to save time can add up over the course of a long day.

One of the pain points in my business is the setting up and breaking down of my gear. Specifically the time it takes to breakdown, put away, reopen and rebalance my gimbals.

Does the site of an unbalanced gimbal make you quake in your shoes? Me too! That is until the Manfrotto 300XM — set up is a breeze and I no longer leave my balanced gimbal to the perils of the trunk of my car.

All these extra steps are time consuming and cause a lot of stress. More often than not, I’ll find myself folding up the balanced gimbal and placing it in the back of my car. The back of my car is where gimbals go to die. There, they get tossed about, scratched up and usually damaged.

I go through the average gimbal in less than a year because breakdown and setup are such a pain point for gimbal shooters like me who move from place to place throughout the day. Setup is so time consuming it’s almost worth it to me to replace my gimbals once a year. There has to be a better way.

Bring on the MVG300XM, with it’s super fast and easy set up

Moving from job to job, when it comes time to shoot the video, I’ll waste 5–10 minutes or more balancing the gimbal. I’d often wished someone would come up with a more efficient way to balance my gimbals. I’m so glad to say with the MVG300XM, Manfrotto finally has!

So simple, yet such a game changer

If you often use the same camera/lens combo, these memory dots are a life saver. It’s such a simple idea that you wonder why no one thought of it before.

In order to get setup and balanced faster, Manfrotto included “memory dots” on two of the three arms of the gimbal. The pan and the roll axis have these adjustable red memory dots that insure gimbal balancing is quick and efficient.

If you’re anything like me and you use the same setup frequently, the memory dots are a huge time saver! All I have to do now is set the two axises on the dots and then only balance my pitch axis. It’s not always perfect out of the box, but I’m averaging around three minutes from opening up the case to balanced and ready to go. If I have to balance all three axises it takes me 5–7 minutes or more. I recognize this may seem trivial, but when I’m shooting three, four or five properties it can make all the difference.

Setting it up

  • The first time setting it up, you’ll want to laboriously go through the process of balancing the gimbal and finding the perfect center of gravity.
  • I always “auto tune” before I start filming. It only adds 5–10 seconds to setup, but it’ll eliminate any unwanted gimbal shake/buzzing
  • Once you’ve found your center of gravity for a given camera and lens combo, set your memory dots
  • The next time you take your gimbal out of the case, two-thirds of the process will be pre-balanced and set up will be a snap

Simplicity!

That’s it! I almost wish it were more complicated. One of the main reasons I risked my gimbal to the perils of getting tossed around was because I didn’t want to deal with long set up times. Manfrotto has made gimbal setup so quick and easy with the 300XM. These days it’s my go-to gimbal for real estate because 300XM saves me so much time!