Gimbal for a long lens.

Situation; I am shooting tennis, across 5 courts, to court #6, with a 500 mirror lens on my Nikon D7200. The image quality out of a cropped image from a 300mm lens was not doing the job, so I pulled out the longer 500. But trying to shoot sports with a pan head did not work. The pan head had too much friction in azimuth, elevation was difficult to control, and it did not move smooth enough to follow the tennis players.

So I got an inexpensive "Neewer" gimbal. But the grease that Neewer used in the gimbal was so thick and sticky that the gimbal was useless, as it came out of the box. I could hardly move it.

Figuring that I could fix it, I cleaned and regreased the upper bearing, so that it moved smoothly.

But the screw on lower bearing was too tight to unscrew (maybe epoxy or loctite was used). So I softened the grease with lighter fluid, and got it soft enough to move easier. Not as good as a clean and regrease, but usable.

The regreased gimbal worked great. It is so much easier to track the players than a pan head. Much steadier than a monopod. And very much steadier that attempting to hand hold the 500.

I don't know why it took me this long to discover it. Well I do, the cost of a Wimberlly gimbal.