PhilippN Posted at 9-17 06:14
I have the same feeling about the stiffness. The higher settings clearly helps, but I dont think the wobble disappears completely (and too high stiffness makes the motors shaking and unusable). And I get the worst results exactly with 25mm 1.7 lumix lens (on GH5S body).
And what I can not understand at all - the auto-tune stability function is completely unusable shaky mess.

I did one full day shoot whit higher stiffness settings and I had way les wobble. The next day I was doing a real-estate shoot and the wobble was back. I was in a bit of a hurry so I just shot what I needed and fixed it in post whit warp stabilization.

Here are some things I notice while reviewing my materials:
1. It seems higher framerates capture more of the wobble. I have way less visible wobble when shooting on 25fps than whit 50fps. Maybe some of the wobbles are high frequency jitters that higher framerates capture more clearly.
2. It also seems that wider field of view also makes wobble more visible. 10mm (20mm full frame equivalent) 4K 25fps footage whit a bit of extra crop wobble is not visible. I can see some micro jitters sometimes if I view it on full screen, but that is just nit picking and does not ruin the footage.
8mm (14mm FF equivalent) 1080p 50fps on the other hand is terrible. The wobble gets magnified the closer you look to the edges of the footage.

I never had these kind of problems whit glidecams.  Glidecams have 3 axis of bearings in the handle to exterminate all the hand jitters and no electronics to introduce new jitters so it's clear that mechanical stuff is better in that respect. I will still probably use Ronin s whit my real-estate shoots because gimbals win hands down whit keeping the horizon level. It's annoying if I always need to apply warp stabilizer to all of my shots. But well I have done more weird stuff to get the end result looking good.
Also talking head shots whit more tight lenses and base framerates are probably fine. I still need to test some more. Talking heads are a bit longer shots compared to B-roll and the ergonomics whit gimbals win over glidecams. So I really want to use gimbals.

Overall, I'm disappointed whit Ronin-S, but it's just really hard to believe that these problems are not just my operation flaws. On YouTube most people seem to still recommend Ronin-s in 2020 over most other gimbals for semi professional work and seem to not have these problems whit way heavier setups.

John12345 Posted at 9-24 22:56
I did one full day shoot whit higher stiffness settings and I had way les wobble. The next day I was doing a real-estate shoot and the wobble was back. I was in a bit of a hurry so I just shot what I needed and fixed it in post whit warp stabilization.

Here are some things I notice while reviewing my materials:

Thats interesting. My experience is that wider lens means more stability (except of micro jitters, longer lenses have more of a "smooth" wobbles - idk how to describe it). Also I am shooting only to 50p - which has nothing to do with stabilisation - but in movement the footage is way more fluent (no "jumpy" verticals etc). I have not noticed any difference in the jitters by switching to 25p but I havent even tried it, I will do so.
Last thing - it seems that the setup (lens especially) weight can do alot in means of jitters. On my M with superlight 25mm I have got the worst results while with my heavy sigma 18-35 it is much smoother.
I get much better results with a lot of stiffness tuning. What is still weird thou is that with autotune stability function the footage is really mess. With all of the setups I have tried. I can not get it.
I am talking about my ronin M but I think the issues are pretty much the same acrooss all types. Before I got the M I had the S 2 times from rental and I was not experienced but I do not remember having any issues and I only autotuned it.

I have the same issue.Ronin s bought only a month before RS2 launch.
But I believe it’s all in the fact that the handle is under the height of the camera.
When I mount it in my ronin m ring grip, it’s buttery smooth, but when used with two handles it’s hideous. Even standing like a static shot.
With my ronin m I never used post stabilization, with ronin s single handled I have to every time. Except in the ring grip. (but thats almost 8kgs)

I think Ronin S is more stable with a latest firmware - ver. 2.4.1.30 from January 2021. What's your experience?

So, very late reply, but people might still stumble onto this topic ever so often.

I haven't used my ronin-s for a year or so due to lack of events since covid, but recently started using it again and i had these jitters especially on the tilt axis. My solution was to reduce the motor stiffness, to under 20, on all axis. Ever since, my camera has been buttery smooth, except outside when the wind blows pretty hard, the lack of stiffness means the wind can push the camera quite a bit.
My setup is quite medium on the weight side, i have a nikon Z6 with a fixed 24mm and a Rode mic on top, so it seems like the high stiffness ( around 30-40 since auto-tune ) makes the micro adjustments too aggressive, so if the camera is tilted -1°, the motor will twist too hard and it would actually go to positive 1°, then it twists back and it ends up in -1° again, and so on, resulting in vibrations / jitters, or at least that's my theory. ( also, 1° of error is a lot, but it's just an example to explain my theory )

I haven't seen this in any posts so it might be something slightly different to try, but from a lot of reviews i've read, just don't use auto-tune