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If you’ve tried shooting Open Gate on your iPhone and ended up with wobbly, “jello” footage even on a gimbal, you’re not alone.
I spent over a month testing a small “cinema-style” rig:
an iPhone in a 58 mm case, a variable ND filter, mounted on a Crane M2-S gimbal with an extra 100 g SmallRig counterweight. On paper, it should look amazing. In practice, every walking shot in Open Gate came out shakier and noisier than regular 4K.
Here’s what I learned, and what I use instead.
The Setup: Case, ND Filter and Gimbal
I use a 58 mm lens case so I can screw on a variable ND filter. Any decent ND will do, but it’s crucial for video:
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In bright light, without ND, the iPhone pushes the shutter speed very high to avoid overexposure. That creates harsh, “video-game” motion.
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With ND, you can keep the shutter around 1/50 for 25 fps or 1/60 for 30 fps, so motion blur looks natural when you walk.
With variable ND, don’t twist it to the max. They’re just two polarizers stacked together; if you push them too far, you get the classic dark X pattern across the frame. That’s your warning you’ve gone too far. If you constantly hit that point, you need a stronger fixed ND instead.
For stabilisation, I mounted the phone on a Zhiyun Crane M2-S, a lightweight mirrorless gimbal. An iPhone alone is too light for this kind of gimbal, so I added about 100 g of counterweight to bring the centre of gravity where the gimbal expects a heavier camera.
It works, but it’s fiddly. Each axis needs manual balancing:
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Tilt (so the phone doesn’t fall forward or back)
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Roll (so it doesn’t lean to one side)
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Pan (so it doesn’t swing on its own)
It’s slower and more demanding than a simple phone gimbal, but when Open Gate is off and iPhone stabilisation is on, this rig gives very smooth walking shots.
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What Open Gate Is (and Why It’s So Tempting)
Open Gate comes from cinema cameras. The “gate” is the part of the sensor that’s exposed. Shooting open gate means using the entire sensor area, not just a cropped 16:9 slice.
On the iPhone, that usually means a more square / 4:3 frame (e.g., around 1920×1440 or higher, depending on app and model). The promise is simple:
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Shoot once using the full sensor
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In editing, crop a horizontal version for YouTube and a vertical one for Shorts/Reels from the same clip
Combine that with ProRes or Log, and on paper it looks like the perfect pro workflow.
But on my iPhone 16 Pro, in the apps I tested, Open Gate is locked to Rec.709 – no Apple Log, no Log 2 – so grading flexibility is already reduced. And because the phone reads more of the sensor at once, some of the usual computational tricks (strong denoising and digital stabilisation) don’t behave the same way or are reduced.
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Real-World Tests: Handheld, Gimbal, Ronin and Pocket 3
This is what actually happens when you walk with Open Gate enabled:
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Handheld Open Gate: unsurprisingly shaky, with visible rolling shutter “jello” on vertical lines. Not cinematic.
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Crane M2-S + Open Gate: better than handheld, but there’s still a wobble in buildings and lamp posts. The rolling shutter bend is very noticeable once you start walking.
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Bigger DJI Ronin + Open Gate: heavier, stronger motors… but only marginal improvement. The wobble never really disappears.
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DJI Pocket 3 (normal 16:9): built-in 3-axis gimbal and standard 4K video with stabilisation fully active. The same walk looks butter smooth.
So the gimbals themselves are not the problem. The real issue is that, in many apps, Open Gate either disables or severely limits electronic stabilisation, and you’re asking a small sensor with rolling shutter to do more work with less digital help.
After finishing my own tests, I saw other creators reporting the same thing: Open Gate looks fantastic when the camera is locked off, but falls apart the moment you start walking.
Why Open Gate Shakes and Adds Noise
So why does Open Gate behave so badly in motion?
1. Less room for digital stabilisation
Normal 4K 16:9 leaves a margin of pixels around the frame. The software uses that margin to shift and rotate the image slightly to smooth out movement.
When you shoot Open Gate, you’re already using almost the whole sensor. There’s little or no extra margin, so digital stabilisation has far less room to work—or is turned off.
2. Longer sensor readout = more rolling shutter
The sensor is read line by line. When you ask it to read the full, taller frame instead of a cropped 16:9 window, the readout takes longer. Any sideways movement during that readout bends vertical lines into that classic “jello” effect.
3. Less aggressive denoising
Open Gate often keeps the image more “raw”, which sounds good, but can mean less built-in noise reduction. Even outdoors, skies and shadows can look grainier than in the standard video modes.
Does that make Open Gate useless? No.
It can look beautiful for:
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Tripod shots
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Locked-off talking heads
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Static scenes where you want to reframe for multiple aspect ratios later
But for walking B-roll, travel videos and vlogging, Open Gate is fighting both physics and phone processing instead of helping you.
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