(gentle music)
- One of the best ways to make your videos
more moving for your audience is to add moves
to your different camera shots.
There's an almost endless variety of tools
to help you make your shots more dynamic,
but one of my longtime favorites is the camera slider.
My name's Tom, this is the Enthusiasm Project,
and today I'm gonna share with you
why I think a motorized slider,
why I think a motorized slider is a worthwhile investment
to your camera gear setup.
I just gotta wait for it to get to the other,
to move all the way over here now.
So before we slide on in to the main topic,
I do want to point out that this is not a sponsored video.
There are a lot of different motorized sliders out there.
I'm talking today about the edelkrone SliderONE.
The reason I got that slider is
really two reasons, three reasons.
It gets good reviews.
I've had edelkrone stuff in the past.
You might even remember, I did the 3D printed
edelkrone tripod head.
This slider takes the same Canon LP-E6 batteries
as my EOS R and my 6D Mark II,
so both of my cameras and the slider
run off the same power source.
I love having a simple setup in terms of batteries.
Same batteries, same charger,
for as many items as possible, is awesome.
And then, last but certainly not least
is the fact that about four months ago,
it was just on like a deep discount at B&H Photo,
and I thought that was a great time
to jump into the world of motorized sliders.
And I really wish I had done so sooner.
Up until then this is what I had been using,
which is my Konova K2 slider.
And this thing is great.
So, if you want a manually controlled slider,
this is one of the best ones out there.
It's very affordable.
It comes with the legs.
It's just a great slider.
After going into the world of DSLR film making
way back when with like the canon T2i and stuff,
this was probably the next thing that really
leveled up my production quality.
Because it's not just letting you get
those cameras moves, it's letting you do so really smoothly.
Your camera is staying in one spot,
and moving back and forth, or you can have
your camera move in and out.
Depending on what head you're mounting,
you can even do like jib shots.
Sliders are incredibly versatile,
but I don't know if it's just because
either I'm getting pickier in terms of my standards,
or I'm getting older and it's harder
to just keep things from shaking.
But what I have found recently is that when using this,
I was spending so much time taking and retaking shots
because I was messing up like the speed,
or I was adding in some camera wobble.
And it just, it was getting a little bit frustrating.
And I realized that a lot of those problems
would be solved with a motorized slider.
When you're using a slider, one of the most important things
is that your move is smooth and consistent.
And so it's a good rule of thumb anytime
to do the move a few times.
Just to make sure everything works,
the camera doesn't get bumped or tilted in a certain way.
But I was really having trouble
keeping things as consistent as possible.
What you would notice is I would have my shots,
and they would like kind of speed up and slow down.
And lately with my YouTube videos
I've really been focusing on like products
and tabletop product photography.
And a lot of the stuff I'm filming is smaller.
And so if you have something like this battery,
and you're trying to get a shot of it,
every little camera move really jumps out at you.
And so I was just noticing
those imperfections more and more.
And the time it took me to film my B roll
was taking longer and longer.
So, a motorized slider is gonna keep the same speed
every time no matter what.
Plus, I don't like to just do static sliding shots.
So, I'll use this camera as an example,
but when I film with a slider,
I don't always like to just use a sliding shot
that goes around the subject, because you can
lose the framing of your subject.
And there are motorized slider heads
that will track your subject.
I don't have one of those, so what I actually like doing
when I'm moving the slider is I like
to turn the tripod head to kind of give
a nice little parallax effect, parallax effect,
while keeping the subject nice in the center of the shot.
But that gets tricky on a manual slider like this.
And so by having a motorized slider,
I don't have to worry about the speed, and the movement.
I can just focus on the movement,
and because it's motorized,
that movement of the slider itself
is going to be exactly the same every single time.
So with the edelkrone SliderONE,
the load capacity is 20 pounds,
which is way beyond pretty much anything
I'm going to be putting onto my slider.
Usually it's just a tripod head and my EOS R.
Sometimes the R has a microphone put on top of it,
but that's really about it, and different lenses put on it.
But I've used it with 70 to 200s,
I've used it with battery grips,
and it works great, so 20 pounds is a lot of weight
in terms of cameras, at least for the stuff that I do.
The size of the SliderONE is only
about 10 and a half inches.
And the travel length is about eight inches.
So, it's not nearly as large as my old Konova Slider is,
but even still, with that smaller size,
you can still get a lot of movement in your shots.
Especially if you have objects in the foreground,
like closer to the lens, or you're filming smaller things
and the camera's really close to them.
So I haven't found any limitations
by going to a smaller slider from a larger one.
In fact, what I actually like is it's way easier
to travel with, because this thing is very tough
to pack up and travel with, and it gets kind of annoying.
The edelkrone slider is about really the size
of a 70 to 200 lens, and so it fits
in most camera bags pretty easily,
fits in your luggage really easily.
And it's just sort of a rectangle,
so it doesn't take up any extra space.
It's very small, very sleek, very compact.
Now, I did mention that it is modular,
and that's one of the reasons I like edelkrone stuff,
is you can kind of build on it and add to it.
They have a motorized head.
They just came out with a jib.
You can kind of like piece together
all their different parts.
I don't have anything else, other than the slider,
but it's cool to know that you can kind of build
and expand your kit as time goes on.
And that actually plays into the app
that you use to control the slider.
When you open up the app, it's really easy.
You get the option to manually pair
or smart pair your device.
I use smart pairing, even though I only have one device.
But what that means is if you do have more than one
edelkrone motorized thing, it will detect
all of them at once, and then pair them together
as one group, which is really cool.
So if you have like the motorized head and the slider,
you don't need to jump back and forth
between like two different pages in the app.
All of the possibilities and all of the controls
are in one configurable spot.
There's a big slide button that lets you slide the slider,
I guess manually, automatically manually.
You have controls down at the bottom for speed.
This is as slow as it will go.
And then this is as fast as it can go.
So it's not like a racer.
On the manually controlled slider,
you can whip the camera back and forth as much as you want.
There's also the option to ease in and out.
So when you start going, is it just gonna go at full speed?
Or, is it going to kind of gently start
and then get to full speed, and then ramp down?
I usually have it easing out a little bit.
And then to set your poses, basically what I usually do
is just push the slider all the way over to one end.
And then you just do a long tap on Pose One,
and it's gonna set pose one.
Then I usually push it all the way
to the other end of the track,
and then I set that as pose two.
And when I'm doing my B roll footage,
I'm pretty much just tapping between those two poses.
And now I can set that as pose two,
and now all I have to do is double tap on either of those,
and the camera's gonna move automatically
to those positions.
There's three slots, so I could set another one.
You do have some other more advanced options.
There's some time lapse settings,
so you can use it to create some motion time lapses,
which is really, really cool.
That's something I haven't played around with
much with this slider, but I'm excited to do.
And there's even options to setup stop motion.
So again, because this is a motorized slider,
your movement is not controlled by a human,
it's controlled by a computer, essentially a robot.
And that means it's going to be precise and exact.
So doing things like effects shots,
stop motion, time lapses, becomes a lot easier
because of the consistency
between all of your different takes.
To be totally honest, when I'm filming B roll footage,
I oftentimes have my phone connected to my speakers
playing music, and then I like that
because I can control the volume and the tracks
with my watch while I'm filming.
And so I usually use my iPad to control the slider.
The edelkrone app works on iPad or phones.
If I'm not in this room, and I'm out somewhere,
or back in the day when we could like leave our houses
and actually go places into the world,
then I would just use my phone and it works terrific.
I found it to be very reliable.
Usually I'm not a huge fan of things
that require apps to use them.
But this seems to be reliable.
I haven't had any issues with it.
It's easy to figure out, it works great.
So the build quality's outstanding.
I think that it is a little pricey.
Usually I think this retails for about $500,
which is way out of my price range.
But B&H had it on a deal of the day
for like three something a few months back,
and that was worth it to me.
My Konova Slider was I think $250 about eight years ago
when I got that.
And I know in the land of camera stuff,
those aren't really high prices.
But in the land of like my wallet,
$500 on a slider is pretty expensive.
But it really has just streamlined my workflow,
and I love using it.
I have noticed an improvement in the quality of my shots
and my videos since I started using this slider.
But of course it's not perfect.
I do have a couple gripes with it.
The fact that there is no power switch
is a little bit annoying.
I know it's kind of simple, but it would be nice
to be able to turn it on and off,
so that way I don't have to always remember
to take the battery out.
I also wish that there was a switch
to put it in automatic or manual control.
It does come with, where is it?
It's magnetic, so I actually have it on my desk.
But it does come with these little Allen keys.
And there's a way to disable the motor
by turning a screw with one of these Allen keys.
But I haven't really messed with that
in the four months that I've had this slider,
and I don't really think that I'm going to,
because I don't want to risk messing anything up.
I'm pretty sure it's foolproof,
but if someone's gonna mess something up,
it's definitely gonna be me,
and I just don't want to risk that.
I wish, just like lens.
Just like lenses have automatic
and manual switches for focus,
I wish there was an automatic and manual switch
on the slider, so that way you could use it manually.
Not because I would want to very often,
but in those times where I don't have a battery,
or the battery dies, being able to quickly switch it
and use it manually would be great.
If you're traveling somewhere,
or you're not in a studio environment,
knowing that your slider is gonna work
no matter what easily is just kind of peace of mind.
And I wish that's something that this offered,
but it doesn't.
One of my favorite things to do,
which was not possible before this,
is to put the slider itself on my normal tripod head,
so I can tilt it down and now it's at an angle.
And then put a ball mount on the slider,
and then put my camera on that,
and I can kind of create a makeshift jib shot.
Which I love, because it's something
I just couldn't do before I had this slider.
It just wasn't possible, and it's really simple,
really quick, and I've been using it
in a lot of my videos lately,
and for a lot of like the tabletop product photography.
And it really adds an entirely different level
of dynamicness to the footage that I really love.
So, by adding this tool to your toolkit,
you are opening up some more creative possibilities.
And that's really when I know something is worth adding.
When it doesn't just burden you and frustrate you,
but it actually makes your life easier,
and opens up creative options.
Those are the things that you want to add
to your production kit to help you level up your videos.
And I did put together a whole playlist of videos
that I think are the ones most likely
to help you level you the overall quality
of the projects that you're working on.
But before I end this video,
do you know why the Panasonic GH5 was diagnosed with ADD?
Because it had a lot of trouble focusing.
(gentle music)
I'm really sorry, Panasonic people.
We know the GH5 is a great camera,
I just thought that was like really funny.
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