The Best Gimbal For Canon 5D Cameras!
The Canon 5d is probably one of the most popular professional-level DSLR cameras on the market right now and over the years it has built up a pretty large core customer base of both photographers and videographers who love the camera. We often see people reaching out about picking up a gimbal for Canon 5d cameras but there is often a fair amount of debate about what the best gimbal for the 5d actually is.
Due to the camera body alone coming in at around 1.79 pounds of weight, people are often worried about purchasing an expensive gimbal without knowing that it will be able to support the weight of their Canon 5d setup. When you factor in all of your camera accessories, the total payload weight can easily get up to around the four to five pounds mark for a regular setup. On top of this, there is also the heaver setups where people use a camera cage and/or a battery grip with their camera as well as additional accessories that can take the total payload weight of the rig up to seven pounds or more.
Thankfully, we have settled on three handheld gimbal stabilizers for the Canon 5d that are perfect for use with the camera and have all the load capacity that you could ever want for your videography setups. Our comparison table below shows a quick overview of each of the cameras that we recommend for those of you who are short on time, the rest of the article offers a deep dive into each of the three gimbals and why we feel they are perfect for you Canon 5d.
Comparison Table
Last update on 2022-05-29 / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
As you can see, the DJI Ronin S is our primary gimbal recommendation for your 5d and this should not be surprising. It is without a doubt one of, if not the most popular gimbal stabilizer available on the market right now. In addition to this, the gimbal also has a large number of other Canon 5d users who use it as their go-to gimbal of choice for their image stabilization needs. It has an excellent reputation within the community and at the time of writing, the DJI Ronin S is the king of the DSLR gimbals in our opinion.
Coming in at second place, we have the Zhiyun Crane 3 and although this really is an excellent little gimbal, it is more of a specialist gimbal with its massive load capacity and price tag to match. Due to this, we would only recommend the Crane 3 if you know for a fact that you are going to be using your Canon 5d with super heavy setups that will exceed the load capacity of the DJI Ronin S.
The final 3 axis gimbal that we are featuring for your Canon 5d is the Moza Air 3 that serves as our budget gimbal for Canon 5d cameras. Now, in all honesty, if you have the budget to purchase the 5d then you are probably a professional level videographer so we would highly recommend either of the two gimbals above over the Air 3. That said, we have received feedback from multiple people that we should be including a budget option for all of our articles so we decided to add the Air 3 to our list.
The DJI Ronin S
Moving on to the section of the article where we deep dive each of our recommended gimbals for Canon 5d cameras. We would imagine that the vast majority of professional-level videographers who have already invested in a Canon 5d will have heard of the DJI Ronin S due to its massive user base and excellent reputation within the community.
Although a few competing brands have released their own handheld gimbal stabilizer to try and knock the Ronin S off the top spot all have failed and the Ronin S still reigns supreme. As you may know, the Ronin S also offers some additional functionality for some Canon and Panasonic cameras although the Canon 5d is supported, you have to ensure that the firmware on your camera body has been updated to the latest release for the DJI tech to be able to communicate with it.
Performance And Functionality
The officially listed battery life of the Ronin S is twelve hours but we would expect that you would probably be getting closer to the ten hours of battery life per charge mark with a camera as heavy as the 5d. We would imagine that this is still plenty of battery life for the majority of our readers to get what they need before they get a chance to recharge their gimbal.
If not though, you are able to pick up a high capacity power bank that can help to charge your gimbal while out and about on the go but the recharging time will depend on the capacity of the power bank. When you are able to jack your gimbal into a mains power outlet it can be fully recharged in just over two hours helping to minimize downtime.
The wedding videography video above does a decent job of showcasing exactly what type of footage the DJI Ronin S is able to provide for you. The image stabilization in the clips provided by the handheld gimbal stabilizer are flawless ensuring that you are able to capture the very best image quality possible for your work.
DJI also push out regular firmware updates for the Ronin S to help improve its performance with updates to the balancing algorithm as well as a number the popular gimbal modes to ensure that you get the absolute best performance possible out of the gimbal.
User Interface And Control System
The whole system on the gimbal handle has been designed so that you are able to control it using nothing but your thumb meaning the rest of your hand can focus on supporting the weight of your Canon 5d setup. With the camera being such a heavy bit of kit, this is great as you don’t have to change the level of support that you are providing to the gimbal when tweaking its performance via the control system.
The DJI Smartphone App
This ensures that you have a quick, easy, and reliable way to tweak your gimbals settings to ensure that it meets your needs for your session. Additionally, it also provides you with some great wireless remote control functionality too.
Build Quality And Design
The build quality of the gimbal is excellent in our opinion and really is a testament to how much time and effort DJI put into their gear. We have seen a few people mention that the Ronin S is pretty heavy for a gimbal but you have to remember that it can support just under eight pounds of load capacity as well as provide you with twelve hours of battery life along with absolutely flawless performance.
There are definatley lighter handheld gimbals out there but none that offer you all of this in the same package. If you compare the weight of the Ronin S to other gimbals that are able to offer all of this, it just under the average weight of the other similar gimbals but with the better performance that DJI provides.
Our Verdict
Although it should be pretty obvious why we feel that the DJI Ronin S is the best gimbal for your Canon 5d by now, you can read a number of independed reviews for the gimbal. We like to share these with our readers as it offers a totally indpendent opinion on the performance of the gimbal and why the community like it so much.
We feel that the Ronin S will make a great addition to your Canon 5d camera accessories and will help to improve the image quality that you are able to capture with your videos.
The Zhiyun Crane 3
Next up we have the Zhiyun Crane 3 and although we have placed this as our second place recommendation, if you are using a heavy setup with your 5d that exceeds the load capacity of the Ronin S, this is the gimbal for you. That said, there are a large number of Zhiyun users who have chosen the Crane 3 over the Ronin S due to its dual-handle setup that makes it more comfortable to support larger payload weights for longer periods of time.
Only you know what you will be using the gimbal and your Canon 5d for so you will have to think of what you get up to with your 5d and if the Crane 3 would be better for your needs than the Ronin S although we do feel that the DJI gimbal will be the better option for most of our readers. Anyway, the Crane 3 has been on the market for a few months now and has earned a great reputation amongst videographers in this short time period.
Performance And Functionality
Now, in our opinion, the Crane 3 only has two main downsides, it high price tag, and its low battery life. At the time of writing, it has a maximum battery life of seven and a half hours and for a modern gimbal, this is almost half of what we would realistically expect. That said, there are some people saying that Zhiyun has updated their balancing algorithm on the Crane 3 to make it more efficient and require less power for the gimbal motors to stabilize the setup.
There is no official news from Zhiyun on this but we are looking forward to the next firmware update for the gimbal to see if this is true. When the gimbal does run out of battery life, you can charge it back to full in around four hours although we have seen some people say that they have been able to recharge the gimbal in as little as three hours.
The Crane 3 also supports the same modern gimbal modes as the DJI ensuring that you are able to enhance the performance of the gimbal as required in a number of situations. One thing that we would like to mention is that at the time of writing, we do feel that Zhiyun has the best intelligent motion tracking technology available right now and it does a great job of helping provide you with some great natural looking footage.
User Interface And Control System
Smartphone App
The connectivity issues that the app had previously suffered from are largely gone now, additionally, you are also able to push modified configs directly to your gimbal from the app without it crashing. Although we would like the navigation menu of the app to be overhauled to make it easier to use, Zhiyun are definatley going in the right direction and their app will be onto a similar level to the DJI one soon.
Build Quality And Design
The build quality is everything that you would expect from Zhiyun and it holds true to their reputation of providing their customers with a great gimbal that offers the best performance available that is also as lightweight and robust as possible. All in all, a great bit of kit but we feel that it is a shame that it is so expensive.
Our Verdict
If you know that you are going to be using a camera cage, a battery grip, and a bunch of other heavy accessories on your Canon 5d then the Crane 3 may be the gimbal for you. It is an excellent gimbal and if you have the budget available then we have no doubt that it will help to improve the image quality you can capture and make a great addition to your camera accessories.
There are also a number of third-party, independent reviews of the gimbal that you can read if you like. They offer some great insights into the performance of the gimbal stabilizer and show why the Crane 3 has quickly managed to earn such a good reputation amongst videographers.
The Moza Air 3
The final gimbal stabilizer for Canon 5d cameras that we will be featuring in our article is the Moza Air 3 and although it is a solid little gimbal that performs well and has managed to earn a well deserved reputation within the community this is our budget gimbal option. As you would expect from a budget option, it does have a lower price tag but it also has a lower level of performance when compared to the two gimbals featured above.
With the Canon 5d being such an expensive camera, we would imagine that anyone who owns a 5d will be a professional level videographer so we would recommend the DJI Ronin S over the Air 3 any day of the week to ensure that your clients are getting the very best performance and image quality from you. That said, if you do own a 5d and are more of a hobbyist videographer or a vlogger then the Air 3 could be a decent gimbal for your camera. As the Air 3 is not a primary recommendation, we will just be quickly skimming over this section to save you time.
Performance And Functionality
The Air 3 does have a pretty consistent battery life of around twelve hours no matter how much of the load capacity of the gimbal your camera rig takes up. We would imagine that this is plenty for the majority of our readers but just like the DJI Ronin S, you are able to take a high capacity power bank out and about with you to charge the gimbal on the move if you need more juice.
User Interface And Control System
Smartphone App
Build Quality And Design
Our Verdict
If you know that you will definatley be using a light camera rig, the Moza Air 3 can serve as a great budget gimbal for your Canon 5d. That said, we would imagine that the majority of our readers who use the 5d want the best performance possible to keep their clients happy. Due to this, we would always recommend that you add the DJI Ronin S to your collection of camera accessories over the Moza Air 3.
