Hold versus Pan Mode

Generally speaking there are two kinds of gimbals, either a hand-held gimbal or one mounted on a flying vehicle such as a copter. As regards the gimbal behavior two situations can be distinguished: The camera should remain stable in relationship to the ground (hold mode) or in relationship to the gimbal frame (pan mode). This decision can be made for each of the three axes independently.

What does stabilization mean?

The term "stabilization" might mean different things depending on the application, and on the axis we talk about.

Imagine you have put your camera on a tripod and are now trying to rotate the camera by 360° for a panorama shot. In "pan" mode the goal is a stabilization in the sense of removing camera shakes but in overall to follow the turn of tripod. In other words, the yaw axis stabilization acts like a virtual tripod. The other type is called "hold" mode, meaning no matter what you do, the camera will hold its current position. Here, no matter what direction you point at with the tripod, the camera will compensate this movement and will remain static, i.e. hold its initial position relative to the ground.

The parameters to adjust all this are found at three places in the GUI, the [Functions], [Gimbal Setup] and [Main] tabs.

Hold versus Pan

Which mode you want for which axis is defined in the [Functions] tab via the [Pan Mode Default Setting].

The standard setting is "hold hold pan" in order to lock the camera in pitch and roll but allow yaw movements. This is, for most situations, the appropriate setting: What should happen if you accidentally tilt the camera forward to the ground? Nothing should happen, i.e. the gimbal should compensate this unwanted movement and keep the horizon in the camera at the same level. Same thing with the roll axis. Just because you do not hold the gimbal perfectly level, the horizon should tilt to one side? No, the horizon should be kept level. For yaw movements, however, a different behavior is normally desired. If you would have turned on the hold mode for yaw and would turn the gimbal by 180°, you would film the gimbal frame since the camera would remain stable relative to ground. Does not make much sense. Instead the camera should have followed the 180° turn, which is achieved by "pan". So this "hold hold pan" setting does make sense for most cases, both for copters and hand-held devices.

Now imagine a hand-held gimbal used in the mountains. Since the pitch is set to "hold" as default, you would either film the ground or the mountains on the other side of the valley, but not your target maybe 15° higher. One way to adjust the pitch would be via the joystick, which however would be inconvenient. An alternative is to enable pan on the pitch axis, and use "pan hold pan" for the [Pan Mode Default Setting] parameter. Then the gimbal would dampen any shakes in the pitch axis but in general you can point the camera up and down by moving the gimbal frame.

A completely different example would be a gimbal mounted in an airplane and to record movies from the pilots point of view. If the plane is pointing downwards the camera should look downwards, when the plane is flying a right turn the horizon should tilt. The only task of the gimbal is to remove shakes and allow the "pilot" to look left/right/up/down. That would ask for the [Pan Mode Default Setting] of "pan pan pan".

Comment: It is strongly adviced against using a brushless gimbal as FPV camera! The purpose of the example was just to explain things.

Fine Tuning the Pan Mode

The obvious next question would be how the controller differentiates between unwanted shakes versus true movements? In the [Main] tab the parameters [Pitch Pan], [Roll Pan] and [Yaw Pan] are found with which you determine the follow speeds in pan mode for each axis. A zero means that the follow speed is zero, which effectively corresponds to hold. A non zero value enables the pan mode, whereby a larger pan value means a faster following.

Importantly, if these settings become active or not depends on the [Pan Mode Default Setting] parameter: If "hold" is specified for one axis there, the axis will be in hold mode irrespective of the pan speed value. The [Pan Mode Default Setting] so to say overrides the pan speed setting.

Buttons for Switching Pan/Hold

Sometimes it might be desirable to switch during a shot from pan to hold or vice versa. To enable this, buttons can be connected to Aux-0 and Aux-1, which allow you to switch through the four preset pan modes specified in the parameters [Pan Mode Default Setting] to [Pan Mode Setting #3].

Let's consider as example these settings:

• [Pan Mode Control] = Aux-01 press (meaning that buttons are connected to Aux-0 and Aux-1)
• [Pan Mode Default Setting] = hold hold pan
• [Pan Mode Setting #1] = hold hold hold
• [Pan Mode Setting #2] = pan pan pan
• [Pan Mode Setting #3] = pan hold pan

If none of the two buttons connected to Aux-0 and Aux-1 are pressed, or switched on, then [Pan Mode Default Setting] is active. In our example it selects the "hold hold pan" default. This means that the pitch and roll axes will be in hold mode.

If only the button connected to Aux-0 is pressed/switched on, then [Pan Mode Setting #1] becomes active. In our example all three axes are in hold mode.

If only the button connected to Aux-1 is pressed/switched on, then [Pan Mode Setting #2] is selected and "pan pan pan" would be activated.

Finally, if both buttons connected to Aux-0 and Aux-1 are pressed/switched on, then [Pan Mode Setting #3] is selected or "pan hold pan" in our example.

Hand-held versus Copter

Finally, there is the [Gimbal Setup] tab, with the [Gimbal Configuration] field where you can choose between "copter" and "hand held". This setting has actually nothing to do with the stabilizing modes of the gimbal, it is a global switch to turn on and off some functionality that does not make sense in the one or the other case. In "copter" mode for example the standby switch is turned off to avoid any mishaps in flight. Also, all keys and the joystick are disabled.

Next step

You have learned now all relevant settings which you need to record great shots in various typical situations. The STorM32-BGC provides however some more possibilities, such as remote camera control or Bluetooth connectivity. Go ahead, explore.