The Smartta SliderMini 2 is a compact and portable motorised slider for mirrorless and
DSLR cameras, as well as smartphones. The motorised nature of the slider allows your
footage to have movement and motion, without needing to be behind the camera.
The slider is formed of an aluminium alloy construction, which feels very nice and of
good quality, with the entire unit being coated in black paint. As the name SliderMini may
suggest, the slider is extremely compact and lightweight, making it easy to use in a variety
of places and chuck into a camera bag at around 26cm long and weighing 570 grams.
There’s not too much to the design, across the top is the slider rail which gives you
up to 20cm of horizontal movement for your shots from left to right. The left side has
the power button, which can also be used to perform some basic slide manoeuvres without
the need to use the phone app – which can be extremely handy on a shoot as well as a
battery life indicator which uses some very small LED’s which can be difficult to see
in bright daylight, I found that they were easy to see indoors.
The front side is home to ports, there’s a USB Type-C port for charging up the slider.
The slider can also be charging when it is active, so if you have a particularly long
shoot you can keep filming. There’s also a shutter release port, the slider can trigger
your camera shutter for time lapses or when you begin a slider motion, there are a collection
of shutter release cables included in the box but third party cables should also work
as long as there is enough clearance for the slider to move above the cable.
I think it could’ve been beneficial to have the ports on the right-hand side as this would
prevent any worry about cable clearance with third party cables when using the slider.
On the base of the slider is a 1/4-inch tripod thread mount, the slider carriage shares the
same thread in a male variation which allows you to place a tripod head on the slider.
This does mean that a camera cannot be mounted onto the slider without a tripod head, but
luckily Smartta has included a low-profile head adapter with orders, so if you don’t
have your own tripod head you’re not out of luck.
You’ll want to make sure any knobs and dials on your tripod head have enough clearance
to rotate, luckily my Manfrotto tripod heads worked without any issues. The slider carriage,
like the rest of the slider, is metal, which has led to some of my Manfrotto tripod heads
scratching the paintwork on the slider. Overall, the design is very nice and compact.
If you want to use a large camera such as a DSLR on the slider, you’ll likely find
yourself, like I did, needing to mount the slider on a tripod due to the camera throwing
the balance of the slider and is unable to hold itself up – but other than that I’ve
had no problems with the design. I have found the SliderMini 2 to perform well,
one of the biggest things with a piece of filmmaking gear is learning what shots the
piece of equipment will and won’t work for, I’ve been capturing a collection of different
shots in different orientations and focal lengths to see what does and doesn’t work
as well. Smartta claims the SliderMini 2 can transport
a payload up to 15kg when it is level, as the incline the slider needs to traverse increases,
the weight limit drops to 1kg. The maximum payload I’ve tested was around 2.4kg consisting
of my Canon EOS 90D, Sigma 18-35mm lens, which is quite a heavy lens, and Manfrotto video
head. I found that with my heavier 18-35mm lens,
some of my clips would sometimes have a little bit of shaking in them. This was most noticeable
at zoomed-in focal lengths as the focal length exaggerates small movements, shots that used
a wide focal length looked best. This only happened on a couple of shots, with most of
them looking smooth and turning out well – but I did think it was worth a mention.
Luckily, with a bit of editing magic, I was able to easily remove the shaking in Adobe
Premiere Pro using the Warp Stabiliser effect. This is reassuring as it means that even if
one of your shots does turn out to have some wobble, it can be resolved in the edit.
If shaking is a worry, I found that lighter lenses such as the Canon EF-S 24mm and Canon
50mm lens to work well and there was no wobble as the slider did not have to work against
the weight of the lens. Aside from the few shaky shots, I managed
to capture some genuinely nice smooth and fluid shots, I’m very happy with how the
footage turned out. I think it’s very impressive how a motorised slider can be in such a small
form factor so it can be easily be transported and set up and rolling in around a minute.
The slider supports a wide range of speeds that can be set within the companion app,
the fastest speed is 10mm/sec, it can slow all the way down to 0.1mm/sec. It is fantastic
to see such a wide range of speed support as it means the slider will be great for both
time-lapse and regular speed shots. I only experienced one hiccup where the slider
was not able to identify it’s position but this was easily resolved by restarting the
app on my phone and turning the slider off and on.
The slider’s companion app isn’t required to make use of the slider, but if you want
to set up custom speeds, time-lapses or tweak additional settings, the app makes it easy
to get full use of out the slider. The app is intuitive and simple to use, the
initial options allow you to remotely begin moving the slider and setting a custom speed.
I quite like how you will be informed how long a certain move will take depending on
the speed, I can easily find out a move at 100% will take 20 seconds and a move at 37%
will take 53 seconds, being able to find out this information can help ensure that shots
can be planned and thought out. The app also has a variety of modes built-in,
allowing for custom speed curves, time-lapses and stop motion. There’s a collection of
pre-sets for different time-lapses or you can create your own, this works in tandem
with the shutter release cable, the slider will trigger your camera when appropriate
at the interval specified, allowing you to capture time-lapses that may last multiple
hours over a single fluid motion. Additionally, there’s also a loop mode which
will keep the slider continuously moving left and right, I can imagine this being quite
useful for an interview or if you need to leave the camera to capture footage over a
long shoot without needing to man the slider constantly.
The app is available for both iOS and Android devices and it is well polished, it’s extremely
easy to use and get a grasp of. The battery life with the slider is very impressive,
with a claimed 52 hours of normal use and 14 hours of use when it is sliding. It will
take around 1½ hours to charge up the slider, but it can also be powered over USB Type-C
and still function, which is certainly handy. Of course, there are variables to battery
life so it can depend on your shooting environment to how long the battery will truly last.
The Smartta SliderMini 2 is a compact piece of filmmaking and photographic gear that can
be easily taken on the go to get footage with movement and motion. The slider provides a
good experience for making it easy to get sliding shots without too much hassle.
The only issue I would highlight is the experience of using heavy lenses with the slide, so I
do think that would be something that you would want to be conscious of when using the
slider and ensuring that your camera isn’t too front-heavy.
That’s been it for this video, if you liked it, please consider subscribing. I will leave
a link to the slider in the description if you’re interested in picking one up for
yourself. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one.