okay so background: i fly a Mavic 3 Enterprise for most of my work but i also have a custom 5inch freestyle build that i use occasionally for getting into tighter spaces on some inspection jobs, bridges and that kind of thing. right now i just have a fixed naked GoPro 11 mount on the freestyle rig and the footage is honestly pretty rough even with the electronic stabilization maxed out

been looking at some of the smaller lightweight gimbals, the iFlight GOCam gimbal came up and also seen some people using the RunCam Thumb Pro with a tiny printed mount but im not sure thats really going to solve the stabalization problem

the thing is for inspection work the clients actually want to see detail, like they want to be able to zoom into the footage and see cracking or rust and right now the shake from the freestyle frame just destroys that. so im wondering if a 2-axis or 3-axis gimbal on something that small is even worth the weight penalty or if i should just accept that platform isnt the right tool and use the M3E for everything

would love to hear from anyone who has actually tried running a small gimbal on a 5inch or similar, not just theory

honestly for inspection detail work a 5inch freestyle frame with any gimbal is probably not your answer. the vibration profile on those frames is just brutal for gimbal IMUs and unless you have really dialed soft mounting the gimbal is going to fight itself constantly. the M3E with its native gimbal is going to give you way cleaner stills and video for showing crack detail than anything you can strap to a freestyle build

that said ive seen people do okay with the iFlight solution on a 3.5inch with softer props, the smaller diameter reduces some of the harmonic issues. but on a 5inch i dont think the juice is worth the squeeze for inspection

i tried a 2-axis gimbal on a 4inch build last year for some similar work and yeah the weight killed my flight time and the footage was still not great in any kind of wind. ended up just using reelsteady in post and actually got decent results for most shots. not perfect but for inspection clients who are looking at structural stuff frame by frame reelsteady with a good 4k source is surprisingly usable. might be worth trying before you buy hardware