Filming Nabilah Kariem in Dubai With The DJI Ronin-S

Fashion content creator duo, Nabilah and Sulaiman Peck took the DJI Ronin-S 3-Axis Handheld gimbal on their latest trip to Dubai. In today’s generation of creators, the quality of production is ever-improving with technological advancements. But of course, as we know, gear is expensive and not something to be bought into lightly. Orms’ rental department is here to smooth the bridge over when it comes time to upgrade your gear so you can take it on a test drive before investing.

Let’s hear how Sulaiman found this powerful gimbal for seamlessly capturing Nabilah’s outfits and adventures in Dubai…

“So the Dubai trip was quite something. After creating content with Nabilah for 3 years, we finally had the opportunity to get out of Cape Town and create in a completely new environment. It felt like we were releasing years of creative frustration all in one 3-week trip and having the right gear was essential. I shoot with the Canon 6D2 and my main lens is the Sigma 35m 1.8. Orms was generous enough to give us the Ronin-S for the entire trip which literally made all the difference.

In the social media space, video content has now become king. It is absolutely essential. In many categories, this is easily done and smartphone footage will suffice. However, for Nabilah and I, we operate in the fashion space, one of the few categories on social where quality and level of production will always play a big role. Thus we’re tasked with creating high-end content, in short periods of time, with significantly smaller budgets and resources than our TV and Magazine counterparts. This is were the Ronin-S comes in.

It is the perfect device to create run and gun content that has that cinematic and expensive look that gimbals bring to the table. It is also very versatile and I found that we ended up using it for our more editorial content as well as our vlogs and short little clips we wanted to make. I have used almost all of the handheld gimbals at the top of the market right now but I don’t think anything really compares to the Ronin-S. The way the triggers are set up and the features it has make it the most user-friendly and intuitive gimbal of it’s kind. Set up and balancing is quite easy, the battery lasts for ages and the app that supports it is quite handy. You can pre-program shots as well as change the sensitivity and pre-set modes of the device, all functions which I made use of immediately. You do need a good, strong arm to carry it around all day but this is manageable as it has feet which allows you to put it down at any point.

One thing I wish DJI would do is to create functionality to shoot in portrait with the Ronin-S. Currently, I either have to shoot in landscape, and crop most of the frame out to” 1 give me the 4×5 ratio I require for Instagram, or I can shoot in portrait mode by using the gimbal in “Torch Mode” which isn’t really comfortable to shoot an entire video in. The issue with the first option is if you don’t have a camera that shoots in 4K and you shoot in 1080p, when you crop the footage, it gives you a 864×1080 result which is smaller than the ideal 1080×1350 size that Instagram allows. You then have to artificially enlarge your footage, of course reducing the quality. In a world the smartphone is the primary media device and vertical video is the most watched form of video, it wouldn’t hurt for DJI to add that simple setting.

To all my OG filmmakers who hate everything I just said, I love you and I get you. I too prefer landscape video obviously, but the world is changing. Other than that, I can’t find any faults with it. I look forward to future updates and will continue to use the Ronin-S for all of our video content. Have a look at instagram.com/nabilahkariem to check out some of the content we made with it and head over to Orms to try it out for yourself, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.”

Want to try the DJI Ronin-S out for yourself before making the decision to purchase? Head over to Orms Rentals!