It’s no secret that having professional looking footage is down to lighting and movement in your shots. Movement in your shots, can be dolly shots, jib, crane or any other kind of shot. Another one of these, which is very common is the slider shot.
Sliders were for a long time, big bulky things, that if you were working on a limited budget (or indeed have a limited amount of space in your car) to transport it, the slider was something you 1. couldn’t fit into your mobile kit back and 2. always regretted not having it with you.
Enter the Edelkrone Slider Plus. It’s not new on the market, and there are numerous video blogs dedicated to them. There is a reason for that, they are awesome. No other word for it. They take the basis of a Slider and a dolly, and combine it into something which is half the size of regular slider – but still travels exactly the same distance. In other words, it means you don’t have to think about leaving it behind, because it neatly fits into a bag – or can remain on your tripod all the time, which is what I do.
The version I got is the Slider Plus Small, and it is a beast compared to my old Opteka slider. It is solid, and feels like it could take on an armoured tank and win. I can now finally rid my shots of the “jerkiness” that I get from old Opteka slider shots. As while you thought you were getting a smooth shot in camera, you would bring it into Premiere Pro, and find that its got more jerk than a used car salesman. With the Edelkrone Slider Plus, I’m getting some of the smoothest shots I think I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to be honest, it takes a while to get used to the slide motion itself, but then if it’s something you are willing to work towards and develop, your shoots will not suffer. If anything they will be elevated to new heights.
A lot of the reviews you see online are of the Medium version as opposed to the Small one. My reasoning for going to for the small over the medium is that, while the medium would have given me more freedom in some shots, my job requires to be as mobile and small as possible, jumping from shoot to shoot without having to continually pack up and move on as it is very “run and gun”. That is something which I really like about it, but that extra weight of the medium version would have been a problem.
I am very impressed with the Slider Plus. It doesn’t come cheap, but if you don’t invest in your gear, you won’t progress into higher paid projects. It also means for corporate clients, I’m not in the way as much, I’m compact and on the tripod. Completely mobile and able to capture more shots than ever before. Now I’m not limited by the huge slider problem, I can go “this will be a good shot” and slide away.
I will be posting many videos of the Slider Plus in action, so keep an eye on the blog for more videos.