A gimbal makes handheld footage dramatically smoother, and then a walking shot still looks wrong. The reason is that the device only addresses one half of the motion involved.
Rotation and translation are different problems
A gimbal holds the camera's orientation steady using motors on three axes. It corrects tilting, panning and rolling, which is what makes handheld footage jitter at rest.
Walking does not primarily rotate the camera. It moves the camera through space, rising and falling with each step, and no amount of rotational correction can remove a change in position.
The result is footage that is perfectly level and still visibly bouncing. The horizon holds while the whole frame rises and drops at the rhythm of the operator's stride.
Why the bounce is so noticeable
Vertical motion is periodic and predictable, which makes it easy for the eye to lock onto. Random handheld shake reads as texture; a regular bob reads as an error.
Longer focal lengths magnify the effect, because the same physical displacement covers a much larger fraction of a narrow field of view.
Proximity does the same. A subject close to the lens moves across the frame far more than a distant one for the same step, which is why walking inserts are harder than walking wides.
The fix is in the walking
Operators reduce vertical travel by bending the knees and rolling heel to toe, keeping the hips at a constant height rather than letting the body rise on each step.
Moving sideways or backwards is often smoother than moving forward, because the gait is naturally shorter and the operator is already concentrating on placement.
Shorter lenses and greater distance both shrink the residual motion, so the cheapest improvement is usually a wider lens rather than a better gimbal.
What stabilisation in software adds
Digital stabilisation can address translation, because it can shift and warp the frame rather than only rotating it. It pays for this with a crop and with distorted edges.
It also introduces its own artefacts. Rolling shutter interacts badly with correction, producing a subtle wobble in vertical lines that is often more distracting than the original bounce.
Where a gimbal genuinely earns its place
Slow reveals, orbits and long lateral moves are exactly what rotational stabilisation is good at, because the operator is moving deliberately and the residual step motion is smaller.
Handing off a camera, following a subject through doorways and holding a level frame on uneven ground are all solved problems with a gimbal, and unsolved without one.
Treating it as a tool for a class of shots, rather than a general cure for movement, produces better footage than trying to walk normally and expecting the motors to compensate.