This week at WPPI I did a bunch of filming for my bro, and I was using his Nikon ZR completely handheld—no cage, no rig, no gimbal, nothing. And it reminded me how enjoyable it is to just pick up a small camera, stay nimble, move around, and shoot what’s actually happening in front of you. There’s something about handheld that feels closer to why most of us started filming in the first place. The bigger takeaway for me was intention. When I’m on a gimbal, I think I sometimes move around just because I can. But shooting handheld—even with IBIS—I felt like I had to be way more intentional with framing and shot choices, and I honestly think the content ends up better because of it. So I decided I’m going to shoot this way for a while and take my 5D Mark IV out of the rig. It’s a 10-year-old camera and I still use it for like 80% of what I do, even in 2026. Because most of the time the camera is irrelevant—lighting, composition, story, and even the lens matter way more than the setup.