Hi everybody, my name is Jason with MDI and today we're going to give you an in-depth
review of the Moza Lite made by Goucin.
Now this is the second gimbal that they've had on the market and as the name suggests,
this is more aimed towards the lighter cameras like the mirrorless all the way up to a Canon
5D Mark III depending on what lens you have on it.
So without further ado, let's give you a nice walkthrough of the features of this new gimbal.
The basic comes in at 1099 and basically all you would get is the gimbal.
We go to the premium tier at 1299 and what that's going to give you is the gimbal unit
as well as a wireless remote control.
And then at 1599 is the pro version where you would get the gimbal, the wireless remote,
wireless monitor kit and you also get this Pelican style hard case to store and transport
your gimbal.
Now one of the things that you can see as far if you're familiar with the original Moza
is that it is much smaller than before and basically what they've done is they've kind
of thinned everything out a little bit so that it can carry just the weight of your
lighter camera.
Now the one cool thing is that it still remains tool-less which is great and the one thing
that I do enjoy is that you now have a much longer quick release plate than before which
makes adjusting your lenses on the go much easier instead of having to disconnect the
quick release, slide it to one particular spot and then lock it back down.
Now you can basically just kind of generally attach it to your camera body and you should
be able to accommodate from light to heavier lenses.
Another feature that we have is if you take a look we have on the pro version this wireless
receiver transmitter unit and basically what this allows you to do is you can transmit
to a wireless monitor.
It's an SD but at least it gives you an idea as far as framing your shots.
Now if you take a look at the back here right now we have a Canon 70D attached and what
we're able to do is we're able to go from the USB port in the back to the USB port in
the side and if you get either the premium or pro version what you can do is you can
use your wireless remote to either stop and start recording and a really cool thing is
there is a little wheel here on the back and depending on which way you turn it you can
actually focus your lens just make sure your lens is in manual focus mode.
Now that cool feature only works on Canon cameras and unfortunately it does not work
on Sony and or Panasonic.
Might be something that they might be able to do later in the future but for now you're
pretty much just stuck to Canon if you want to be able to focus from the wireless remote.
So once you connect your Canon camera onto the Moza you have to make sure you use one
of the supplied USB cables to go into the USB port.
You're going to long hold on the options to bring up a second menu go down to camera
click right to enter that menu we're using a EOS DSLR and this is an actual fairly heavy
lens it's not one of the plastic EFS style lenses so we're going to go to heavy it's
going to recalibrate itself and once it's done you can hold the option menu again to
go out of it and from there you're able to start moving and from there you're able to
start moving the lens focus mechanism.
Now as you can see here it is slowly stepping each time and at no fault of its own that's
just kind of how these lenses were built now I'm not exactly sure what would happen if
you put an STM lens in front of it but at least for now each click is its own step as
far as how the lens is focusing.
One thing to keep in mind with this setup here as far as the pro version and all the
other versions it does not actually come with a stand so what they've done is with the Moza
light you're able to actually calibrate and balance your gimbal without the need of a
stand you just need a flat surface.
So for people that don't have a stand what you would do is first you got to remove the
top handle, okay and as you go you're going to set it out to its top and then you're going
to rotate your handles, lock it down, now the one thing about this setup is you can't
actually have your wireless remote in the correct upright position you're going to have
to make sure you push it down that way the gimbal can remain flat.
So at this point you're basically able to get to all your controls as far as how you
want to balance it pretty handy if you don't want to have to set up a stand while balancing
your gimbal.
So once you have it in this inverted mode you're basically able to balance.
Now while this is very convenient where you don't have to bring a stand everywhere you
go the problem is is this is probably only very plausible if you're in a studio environment
and here's what I mean.
So you obviously need a very flat surface to do the balancing.
Now when you're done the problem arises is that your handles are not exactly where you
would like them to be if you were operating in inverted mode you would actually have to
try and actually have someone hold it for you unscrew these knobs and then face it the
right way.
Now say you do want to operate it like this the problem is is it kind of limits certain
movements that you can do it's not terrible but what I would say you shouldn't do is hold
it out here because it's actually very top heavy right now and it causes these attachment
points of the handles to become the weak spot so you're probably going to have to palm
it like this.
However when you do it this way and you want to use your wireless remote I'm going to try
to do this all by myself here as if nobody was actually with me on a shoot all right
you'll end up probably using your left thumb generally speaking.
It works okay but again it's not exactly the way we're used to operating gimbals in inverted
mode.
Now as far as actually balancing your camera everything is done with a tool list design
which is great so you don't actually need any screwdrivers.
Now it's actually fairly simple everything has its own little adjustments and there's
clear markings to help you remember exactly where each parts are if you are going to be
changing lenses on your gimbals often.
Now we won't go through this all together but we have done some balancing videos before
and it's very similar you have your QR plates to slide back and forth you have this rail
here to go left and right and then you also have these side screws here to adjust for
up and down and then of course lastly you have a yaw bar adjustments back here so we'll
send you a link here if you need help learning how to balance your camera.
Okay so to show how quick we can actually rebalance from a Canon 70D to a GH4 I have
my assistant Keith over here.
Now he comes from back in the day where we had to use screwdrivers and all it was just
a nightmare to balance so this is his first time working with a completely tool list design
minus a quarter for the QR plate so I'm going to use a stopwatch to time him and just see
how fast he goes and I'll stand by in case he has any questions.
So here we go 3, 2, 1, click.
Johnny are you just going to kind of fast forward through all this?
Okay I wasn't sure if I can say random sh** right now and you okay this is for your voice
over track then.
Alright so the first thing he did was he took off the QR plate from camera number 1.
Now still the only part of this is that's not tool list is the little quarter 20 under
the QR plate so you'll still need a quarter of some kind but you can easily exchange it
for a D ring type setup.
Once he's got the QR plate onto the GH4 he's now putting it onto the moza.
Right now he's balancing the front and back end of the camera to make sure the lens.
Okay now he's got the camera balanced as far as
front and back but as he said before it still has a tendency of swinging down so what that
means is it's bottom heavy so now he's got to raise the camera up and we're at 250.
Part of it might still be this, you have to take that off because we don't need it for
the GH4 taking off the Canon cable here and easier way to do this portion is if you
do on these bigger gimbals is you would actually just go this way and then adjust from there.
Once you find the happy medium it should just stay there on its own so still bottom heavy.
Do you have another test?
Yeah.
It's confusing when it's on the other way.
These are ratcheted on the bottom so you can actually pull and give it an extra rotation.
So that's also cool, but that was too far.
See, here's the problem though.
If we do it this way, there's no way for us to really actually calibrate the yaw bar.
But if I do it this way, when the yaw...
Yeah, because if you hold it this way, it's gonna cut this part out.
So this is the beginning, you do it, you go this way, if it doesn't move, then you're
in the right.
If it moves this way, then you just go back a little bit.
That doesn't make sense to me because doing it that way, the weight will naturally swing
that way.
Go forward, go forward, right?
That's really weird.
Physics.
There you go.
No, we're just gonna use that part.
It already took us five and a half minutes to get this far.
Four less five minutes.
I think it's slightly top happy.
There you go.
Okay.
Are you still rolling?
You're still rolling.
Okay.
All right, so the one thing is, is when you're gonna be testing out if your yaw bar is actually
in balance, what you're gonna do is you're gonna place one hand on this side and you're
gonna slowly lift on the other.
If it's balanced, it won't actually swing anywhere.
You can do it, oops, you can also test it on the other side as well.
All right, other than that, that's pretty much balanced in just under 10 minutes.
All right, so now that we got the camera balanced, let's go through the three shooting modes
that we can do.
Now one quick note, when you're going in between these shooting modes, sometimes, especially
if you're going from invert to regular, you're gonna need to power off your gimbal before
turning it over.
So, first things first, go into your regular mode, all right, power it on and as you can
see, because of the way you had to balance, these handles need to be moved over.
Once you find a spot that you're happy with, lock everything down and there you go.
Okay, same thing, if you're gonna need, if you want to go into inverted mode, turn off
your gimbal, oops, sorry, turn off your gimbal, grab the right handle, here, there you go.
Now, if you want to go into briefcase mode, I'm gonna have to go back to the regular
mode here real quick, so I'm gonna turn off the gimbal, turn it back on.
And what you're gonna need to do is you're gonna have to pull the handlebar to you and
rotate and now you're in briefcase mode.
Same thing if you want to go away from it, rotate, then bring it down.
Okay, so now you're in briefcase mode, you're gonna have to pull the handlebar to you and
rotate and now you're in briefcase mode, you're gonna have to pull the handlebar to you and
rotate and you're in briefcase mode, you're in briefcase mode, you're in briefcase mode,
You
You
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So there is some test footage that we did with the moza light now when you're operating it in just the regular shooting mode and
But inverted shooting mode you can see that it's actually really really smooth
There's pretty much no no dip or wobble at all
So the moza light definitely does a really good job there now for the running test
We did it in three configurations. The first one was run
The gimbal was operated with the top handle the second run
We ran with it in inverted mode and then the third one we ran with it in briefcase mode now
All three shooting styles. They're not perfect
But they're not bad either because if you take a look back at our came 7800 video
You would see that when we ran with it. There's this huge horizontal shake that would happen
When it got really unsteady
You don't really see that with the moza light which tells me that the yaw bar is actually very solid
Which is good. What you do see is probably more of just a little bit of a roll
That being said it doesn't do bad at all as far as the running test goes
As far as the moza light goes the performance is admirable. It does a really good job, but
Where the moza light seems to be having the most problem is actually in the physical design of the gimbal itself
Now as I had already said before it doesn't come with a stand
You either have to already have a stand or you could purchase one for additional cost and
What happens is is if you are not in a studio environment where you have a nice flat surface of any kind and you're actually shooting on location
It's going to be a pain because you're trying to level off the handlebars just so you can get the gimbal set up
Completely balanced, so that's one
Now as far as independent filmmakers go chances are you're probably shooting by yourself
So if that's the case and you have it balanced
You'd have to single-handedly
Finangle with all these screws by yourself to move the handles to where you need them not to mention
You can't balance the gimbal with the top handle installed
So that's another thing that you have to go ahead and attach if you if you're planning on using the top handle
another couple things here is
Some of the screws are just straight up regular thumb screws
Whereas the only ones that seem to be ratcheted are the ones out over I think back here these silver ones
These are ratcheted so you can pull it out and readjust
It would be nice if they were all you know just consistent and the same
Yaw bar is a little bit hard to adjust
But the one thing that I found is instead of trying to move the entire unit
It seems the easiest if you just take your thumbs and really push on
These two notches out here, but even then it's not a smooth motion. You actually have to put quite a bit of force to it
now
For the test that we did we decided to go with the Rokinon 14 millimeter with a speed booster
Traditionally all our videos we would use the Voigtlander, but
The Moza light does better with heavier lenses and heavier cameras because what happens is if you have the Voigtlander
if you tilt
If you take the take the gimbal and you tilt it this way
You're going to start hearing a rather horrible motor noise coming from I think the yaw motor
So having the heavier lens kind of negates that
Now for people that are shooting with Sony a7s's or maybe you don't use heavier manual primes
Maybe you use some of Panasonic's
Lenses which are much lighter
Well, especially if you're using a prime
What happens here is is you have to raise
the bottom part up to compensate and what happens is is
This screw right here on the bottom ends up actually hitting this notch
so it's
It's just one of those things that it's going to affect as far as if you're going to be doing any extreme movements
Or if you're kind of an angling about it doesn't have enough clearance
So usually a heavier camera is going to do a little bit better
Now this gimbal that we have here is actually part of the second production run the first production run had something wrong with this piece
Right here where most people could not balance their cameras properly
But that seems that their second batch seems to have fixed the problem because we were as you saw able to balance a Canon 70D
As well as a GH4 with no problems
Now as far as the remote control goes it's actually not bad, however, there is a slight little quirk
Now if you're going to move the the camera right left up down, that's fine
However, if you're deciding that you want it to kind of pan at a diagonal
This remote does not allow you to do so if you go at a diagonal, whichever sensor it hits first
It's either going to go up or
Horizontal I'm not sure if that's something that can be fixed in a firmware or if it's actually just a limitation of the thumb controller itself
But otherwise I really do like that
We now have an LCD screen that your menus are accessed through this LCD screen
There's even a battery readout for what the gimbal is currently at as well as the remote
Other than that this is definitely a nice improvement compared to the first remote
Now one thing that we did notice as far as the focusing wheel here on the Canon cameras
It's a little bit finicky as to when it actually works
Sometimes when you calibrate it to the to the camera it works right off the bat and some other times it doesn't
We're not exactly sure why it doesn't work a hundred percent of the time
But it's probably a firmware issue that can be addressed at a later date
Now another thing by design is the screws that it comes with you have screws that go on the qr plate
You have screws that go
Into the back of the remote you have another screw that goes
Into your monitor the problem is is some of these screws
either require something as thick as a quarter or
As thin as a dime they're not consistent all the way across
So that is definitely something that should be unified so that you wouldn't have to have a bunch of coins with you
But at the same time, I'm not sure why no one has done this yet
But these are I believe these are all just quarter twenties or something similar
We should really honestly just have d-rings already instead of using still having to use a screwdriver for these little parts
They come with pretty much every
Every quick release plates out there. So I would say just switch over to d-rings. They'll make it a lot easier
So in conclusion is the moza light something that I would recommend
At this point in time, you know
There was a lot of high hopes as to this being the next version because if you're familiar with the first moza
That one was that one performed really well
But between the firmware issues and some of the physical
Design of this I would actually say wait if you don't have a gimbal yet
I would say wait for the third batch as they start remedying all these problems because we've seen them
We've seen them put out a really quality product before and I would say by the third production run
We should be seeing something that everyone will be happy with
