Sony Airpeak drone features Gremsy gimbal

As you’ve likely heard, Sony revealed the first clear look at its new Airpeak drone this week. It’s a high-end unit intended for professional aerial photography and cinematography. But it’s not all made by Sony.

When Sony dropped a video announcing its new Airpeak drone, we looked at some of its more obvious features. The video clearly showed there was obstacle avoidance, a pilot’s view camera similar to that in DJI’s Inspire 2, a battery bay for two largish batteries, and more. But there was something there, right in front of our eyes, that we somehow missed: A Gremsy gimbal was attached to the unit.

Let’s take a look.

Sony’s Airpeak drone optimized for Alpha camera

In the limited information released by Sony, the company did say that the drone had been optimized to work with its own Alpha series of cameras. This makes sense, given the outstanding reputation those cameras have, and their existing marketplace penetration.

Plus, of course, an Alpha was mounted to the drone for the prom. But we didn’t see any branding when looking at this frame:

But wait… what’s that?

An eagle-eyed reader named Tim Macklin saw something else when he watched the Sony video. And he commented: “At 1:32 there is quite clearly a Gremsy logo on the gimbal.”

So, we went to check it out. Not only was Tim correct, but then we started seeing the logo in other shots as well. How many times do you see it in this short video?

As best as we can tell, it appears to be Gremsy’s T3V3 gimbal, pictured below:

What does it all mean?

Well, it tells us (obviously) that Sony didn’t build its own gimbal for this project. That kinda makes sense, given that it’s difficult enough to build a drone. Sony also didn’t try to hide the fact it was using an off-the-shelf product, because the logo is actually visible in multiple shots.

It does make you wonder, however, if there are other parts to this drone that Sony didn’t create from scratch. What’s it using for a flight controller? Motors? ESCs? Batteries?

These are all reasonable questions, and we look forward to hearing the answers at some point from Sony. (Hey – at least we know who built the camera!)

Kidding aside, this looks like a serious entry into the cinematography field – and we look forward to learning more.