so ive been running a GoPro Hero 12 on a basic 2-axis gimbal for about a year now on my 5" freestyle build and honestly its fine for what i do but i started messing around with longer range stuff and the footage is just... not great when theres any wind at all. the horizon drift drives me insane and i know thats partly the gimbal being 2-axis but im wondering if its worth just going full 3-axis or switching to something like an Insta360 SMO with the built in stabilization doing the heavy lifting.

the thing is i dont really want to build a whole new platform around a heavier payload. my current setup is already pushing 450g AUW and adding a proper 3-axis gimbal puts me well over 500 before batteries. not sure if thats even legal in my area without a waiver situation.

has anyone actually done a side by side with a properly tuned 3-axis payload vs relying on EIS post stabilization in something like Gyroflow? because on paper Gyroflow seems like it should close the gap but ive seen some footage that still looks kinda mushy in fast yaw moves

gyroflow is genuinely impressive but it cant save footage that was already blurred during exposure ? thats the thing people miss. if your shutter speed isnt locked in and theres physical vibration causing micro-jitter youre going to see it regardless of what the software does in post. ive used it on Hero 11 footage shot on a 7" long range wing and it handles slow panning stuff really well but any fast yaw like you said and you can see it kind of smearing. 3-axis gimbal solves a different problem than EIS does, they're not really competing.

if weight is the actual constraint id look at the Caddx Walnut or similar ultralight 3-axis options before writing off the whole category. some of those are sub 90g now which is a lot different than the heavy broadcast payloads people used to associate with proper stabilization

i went through basically this exact thing last spring. ended up sticking with the GoPro and just got way more obsessive about my PID tune ? turns out a lot of my horizon drift was actually coming from prop wash during deceleration and not the gimbal itself. once i tightened up the tune the gimbal had way less work to do and the footage cleaned up a lot. might be worth rulling that out first before spending money on a new payload setup