ZY Play 17+

It’s disappointing that this app is needed to get the full experience from my gimbal (Smooth 4), because it lacks certain key features. The Smooth 4 is targeted towards content creators, yet they don’t allow people to have full customization for basic things like shutter speed, ISO, and frame rate.

Frame rates like 24 FPS are only available in 4K (sometimes I want to shoot in 1080 to save space). You can’t shoot slow mow. But perhaps the most infuriating thing: you can’t achieve a shutter speed/ISO setting that’s ideal for the “film look.” When shooting 24 FPS you ideally want a shutter speed of 1/48. The closest you can get is 1/50 (competing apps allow you to select exactly 1/48). But the bigger issue is: in manual exposure mode you can only go down to 100 ISO, when apps like FiLMIC Pro and Moment allow you to go down to about ISO 20.

On a final note: the object/face tracking feature stinks and hardly ever works. I’ve had my Smooth 4 for a few years, and I love the gimbal, but I was hoping the software would be fixed by now, but sadly it isn’t.

Do not install this app!
It seems to be made primarily to gather information about you and your device. I played around with it for about 30 minutes looking for the utility, but at no point did I ever see the utility for operating the gimbal itself. The App wants information and access to all your photos, your location, and your microphone, plus it wants you to sign up for an account. I finally relented to the account signup using a Facebook Account with not much information on it, but even Facebook rejected the signup. I gradually also allowed it access to the photos, mic, and location and that opened up a little more info but still no controls for the gimbal. There are video tutorials, a way to connect with other users by joining some social media thing of theirs, and an operating manual download within the app, as well as information about their other products, but no actual controls to adjust or operate the gimbal. I even tried to download the Mac utility to see if that would work. This package comes directly from their website and not the app store. It was unsigned and not recognized by apple. Very suspicious, and disappointing. I would just stick with the onboard controls built into Gimbal and forget about being able to do more with this thing. I also uninstalled the app.

Just installed it... used for 30 minutes.. had to swipe up to kill the app when it lost communication with the gimbal and locked up...

Editing a custom setting is crazy bad User experience... rather than tap/hold/anything to edit it, with it selected you go into custom again (who would guess?), and when you save, give it the same name (OMG I had to type the name in again!)

Then you find it didn't save the changes..

I finally got it to save after about 3 tries..

Moving the camera doesn't seem to work smoothly (from UI), it can lock if not in the right mode (I guess you set the mode on the device... as the app doesn't talk to the device??? Oh, wait it does! Oh, maybe it needs to be set there because the app was written by someone else and they have no control over the app and device? no, that isn't it... just stupid I guess...

Gave up on using this thing for the night...

Will try out the device on a shoot...

Didn't seem to come with the cable to control the camera, wanted access to EVERYTHING, GPS even... why? Photos? Why? Need to use to control gimbal...

And the gimbal doesn't seem to stabilize the camera enough to turn the zoom by hand without spinning the roll... so, yeah, I want to just lock the roll hard, using the thumb screw... they didn't provide... no way to lock it for a pan/tilt (say if using at s theater to film?)

May not be useful at all to me..

-Traderhut Games / Traderhut Photography