Having now worked with both these handheld stabilizers i thought i would take the opportunity to give a fairly brief summary of the two and how they compare. Both these stabilizers have been used with both the GH2 + GH3 with a variety of lenses plus light when required.

FLYCAM NANO - £85

Initial setup for the Nano took around 3-4 hours, and was not a plesant experience. This would have been exaggerated by my lack of experience at the time with stabilisers but i had researched the concept and watched numerous videos on how to tune one and yet i was amazed at how difficult it was. Having spent nearly 6 months with the Nano, i found myself never truly able to get a perfectly tuned setup. It would work sometimes and then it would be placed on a table ready for the next shot and when picked up again it was out of balance. This would take some 2-3 minutes to sort out and sometimes I missed vital shots and had to abandon and go for the monopod. I must admit that laterally i ended up resorting to a rather crude method of balancing it, due to frustration, and this consisted of banging it until it was back in balance. I realise that this method ultimately knackered the whole unit but i was initially very patient with it.

• PROS - Lightweight & Cheap
• CONS - Difficult to adjust, not well built, weights at the bottom over complicate things (combined with little movement in the main shaft available)

WONDLAN MINI STABILIZER - £205

Of course, this lead to me purchasing a new stabiliser which after reading a lot of good things about Wondlan led me to purchase their Mini Stabiliser for just over £200. Being cheaper than the carbon model and smaller i thought this would be ideal for the GH3 + 12-35 lens. I am not joking when I say this, but from open box to flying... less than 5 minutes. I was amazed at how easily the unit could be adjusted and yet how stiff everything felt on it. I can literally run as fast as I can with this thing, place it down, pick it up and nothing changes. I have combined it with a Calumnet quick mount adaptor (manfrotto copy) and this works a treat at allowing me to jump from monopod to stabilizer and at the very most I have to do about 10-15 seconds of tweaks to get it perfect. The knobs at the side allow micro millimeter precision and with the scale at the side does not lead to subjective changes. What a fantastic bit of kit and it has re-ignited my enthusiasm for stabiliser shots once again!

• PROS - Super easy to adjust, well made, looks fantastic (more professional IMO), massive amount of adjustment in both gimbal, shaft height and plate
• CONS - Twice the price, bag is not padded (i'm scraping the barrel here)

I hope this helps with someone looking to take the leap into the world of stabilizers and not sure where to start.