Today we're discussing this thing--
the iFootage Shark Slider Nano, which while not perfect,
might be the best motion control device
available for the money. Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?! I'm Gerald Undone
and it's all in the hips. It's all in the hips.
Alright, for starters, as always, some disclosure.
iFootage sent me this slider free of charge
to make this video, and they're also sponsoring a giveaway
and a special discount for you if you use the code “UNDONE”
at checkout. And just so you're fully aware,
that link will be an affiliate link
and I will earn a commission if you make a purchase using it.
The way the giveaway is going to work is that anyone
who orders using the code UNDONE will be entered
into a draw, and one of you will get your slider for free.
The winner will be chosen at random and not by me,
and the logistics will be handled by iFootage.
And that winner will have their purchase fully refunded.
But even if you don't win the giveaway
and don't get your slider for free,
iFootage has agreed to give you all a 10% discount
regardless as long as you use the code “UNDONE” at checkout
This discount will end on Jan 1, 2021.
So, if you're planning on buying one of these sliders,
do it before the year's end.
OK, now let's actually talk about the slider.
This is a 2-axis, bi-directional motorized slider.
Meaning you can program combination movements
using up to 360 degrees of pan and slides that range
from 20 cm on a table to 40 cm on a tripod
because it does that, you know, double the distance
going over top if itself thing.
The entire thing is solid metal, feels very well built,
and comes in at just over two kilos
or around four and a half pounds.
Now if you've been following my channel for a while,
you might remember me talking about this thing
back at NAB 2019. Since then it's gone through
several revisions to get to this final form
and apparently it's finally ready to go to market.
But let's put that to the test and see.
I think when it comes to motion control
the most important aspect is usability.
As I've complained about in videos in the past,
if the system is a pain to use or unreliable
in its user experience, it's going to make you look
stupid in front of clients and it will likely
just end up collecting dust. So, I figured the best way
to convey this aspect of the Nano would be to actually use it
and talk you through what I like
and don't like about that user experience.
OK, so first up let's actually talk about powering this thing.
So, you may have noticed that there is a Sony L-Series battery
in the side here and this one is an NP-F750
and this actually comes with the bundle version.
I'll give you a breakdown of what comes
in the standard and the bundle in a minute.
But powering option wise, this might be the best slide
I've ever seen for that. I know that some of you
are always concerned when there is internal built-in batteries
in the devices, that-- what happens if it reaches
too many charge cycles and then the battery dies.
So, you'd rather have replaceable batteries,
but I also like the option to be able to run it continuously.
And so, basically, it comes with a...
Well, you can get one with an L-Series battery,
if not, you can use any L-Series battery.
And on this side, it also has a USB-C port
that you can see here, and this can be used not only
to actively power the device
even if you don't have a battery in it,
but you can also charge your Sony L-Series batteries
using that USB port through power delivery.
So, that's pretty awesome. I think that's, like,
the most modern and best combination of, like,
older L-Series batteries and new USB-C.
So, I'm a big fan of that. Now, like I said,
I'll tell you about the kit options.
So, there is one kit option that comes with this battery
and it comes in this case.
So, we've got a little breakdown here.
So, there's two different options.
There's the standard one, which is $499,
and then the bundle, which is $599.
The standard one comes with the slider,
it comes with a USB-C charging cable, USB-C to A.
And it also comes with this smart phone mount.
Then, as far as the bundle is concerned,
you get all those things, but you also get
this carrying case, as well as
one of the L-Series F750 batteries,
this is like the medium size Sony batteries.
And you get a collection
of different shutter release cables.
Which should work for Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Leica,
Nikon, and Fujifilm. I'll put this up on the screen
so you can see, but there's a huge number of camera models
and they have the shutter cables for those.
And then, again, it all comes in a case.
So, you don't get the case if you get
just the standard $499 version though.
But I think for that extra $100, that's a pretty good value
to get all those things. And that's probably the one
that I'd go for. Just because the Sony L-Series battery
is a good value in the first place.
All right, so let's put the battery in and get started.
Now, before we turn it on, the first step
is to make sure that your slide lock is disengaged.
So, it has this slide lock mechanism
which I don't find to be-- you have to kind of adjust it.
-[ringing click] -There, you just heard it,
for it to actually click in.
So, you might think it's engaged. It's not.
Like, put it on and then kind of adjust it.
And then when you take it off, same thing.
So, turn it off and then make sure it's free.
And you have to have that free before you turn it on
because it's part of the calibration process.
The second thing is to make sure that the slider
isn't wobbling itself. So, see how mine's kind of wobbling.
On this side there's little feet adjustments for...
you can raise and lower these little feet pegs.
So, I would just basically...
And there's one on this side too. Raise them up
until it doesn't wobble anymore.
And then there's also a carriage tension adjustment,
there's this, like, belt gap adjustment.
And if you take the carriage and it wiggles, this one isn't,
but if it wiggles, then you see this red wheel here?
You need to move it toward yourself to tighten it up
and away from yourself to loosen it. It works well
to tighten it down, like, it's nice and firm now.
But I do find this thing can be, actually, really hard to rotate
and it kind of, like, wears down your thumbs,
which can be a bit annoying. It's probably the only part
of, like, the fit and finish of this that I wasn't in love with.
I thought everything seems really well polished
and really well built, but this thing felt a little bit rough
and kind of hard to use. But once you set it,
I think you're OK. They do say that if it
changes temperatures drastically or something
you might have to adjust it again. But anyway,
once you have all that stuff done,
you should be good to turn it on, and then
it's going to start the calibration process.
The only other thing that I would say
is maybe a little bit of a pain in the butt
compared to some other devices that I've worked with,
although those are usually thousands of dollars,
is that to put it on your tripod,
you basically just have to put it on
and spin the thing in a circle, which can be kind of annoying.
There is a solution, though, that iFootage offers,
which are pretty great, and it's their Seastars,
which are these, like, quick release tripod mounts.
So, basically, you would put one of these on here
and tighten it down, and then you can pop things on and off
the tripod. I'll demonstrate this when we do
some of the tripod tests, but there is a workaround
that iFootage offers, but these are extra cost optional,
they don't come with it. OK, so once you're all set up,
you can power it on, and to do that you just hold down
the power button here until you see this white screen power up.
And then just let it go. Again, make sure
that it's completely unlocked and then it will do
a whole calibration process. Now this part is OK,
but I do have some issues with it. It doesn't--
It takes a little bit longer than I'd like
and the biggest problem with it is you have to do it
every single time you turn the slider on.
I wish that if nothing changed that either
you could skip the process, or that it would know, I guess,
that nothing changed. Can you see here on the screen
it's going through the process? And it also let's you know
to make sure that it's level. Now, there is a bubble level,
which is nice, right here on the carriage,
and so you can make sure that you're level that way.
But it takes about, I dunno, maybe 30 seconds
to a minute total to boot it up, which is fine, like I said,
the first time, but if I just did a slide here,
and then I powered it down, went and grabbed lunch, and then
came back and turned it back on, I'd have to go through
the whole process again. So, I think that could be
something that hopefully-- I've heard that maybe
they're going to work on skipping that in firmware.
All right, so, the next step is to attach your camera
and/or head. Now, I'm going to attach the head to this one,
but I wanted to, sort of, show you in angle here so that maybe
you could see. I'm actually going to flip it around
this way. So, you see this little lever here?
When you go to attach something,
to stop it from panning indefinitely...
I'm going to put the iFootage K5 head on here.
So, this is just going to spin now in circles.
So, you press this little switch in... push over here...
and then, now, it actually lets you tighten it down
because it locks the pan from moving.
Now, there are some weight considerations, obviously,
when it comes to any slider. Uh, this one,
when you're using it flat on a tabletop like this
it's up to 3.5 kilos, which I think is pretty good.
If you put it on a tripod, it's 2.5 kilos,
and that's because it has to extend past itself, and...
And then when you go vertical it's 2 kilos.
Now, this is the a7S III with a 35mm f/1.8
and a cage on it, and this was only, like, 1.2 or 3 kilos.
And then with this head, I'm still under 2 kilos,
so I should be able to do pretty much anything I want to do
with this combination. And now, once you have the camera
facing forward, if you look down here on the screen,
it'll show you that-- make sure that you have the camera
facing, you know, perpendicular at right angles to the slider.
And then you press Calibrated. And then that's it.
So, that's the longest, most tedious part of the setup,
is that part. Once you actually go to use the slider,
it is incredibly easy to use.
So, I'm going to show you how to do that next.
OK, so, there's two ways that you can control the slider.
One is that you can use the touch screen
and the function buttons here, which is the way that I prefer
because I love using the device itself
and not being required to use an app,
because I have found apps for motion control
to be kind of, I dunno, finicky in the past. So--
But I will say that the app for this one
is actually really good. It connected really quickly
with no problems with connecting.
And the controls are quite intuitive and that--
There's some features that are being added with firmware
that are pretty exciting, like tracking and that kind of thing.
But you can just use it as, like, a joystick.
I'll probably cut to an overlay right now of me using the app
so you can see it. Um, but normally I'd prefer
not to use the apps. The best thing about this system
is how fast and easy it is to operate.
And just by using two buttons, really,
you don't even have to use the touchscreen.
But there is a touchscreen. So, the best way that
I found to use it was just to press both the power
and the function button at the same time like this
and that kind of enters you into the key framing mode.
All right, so, basically all you have to do
is set up your first shot and then press the function button
and that's your first key frame. And then you just move it
to the second key frame that you want... Like this.
And if you need to make any adjustments, go ahead now.
I'm not going to worry too much about this shot,
this is a demonstration. And then you press function again.
And that's it. One place function, second place function.
And then on the touch screen you can control
how long you want it to run for.
So, let's change the time to... let's say 20 seconds.
And then you go back. And so, now you have from A to B
in 20 seconds. And you just press the play button here.
And now your shot is set up. And you can choose whether
you want it looping or not, so I'm going to turn on looping.
And you can choose whether you want to go from A-B or B-A.
And then if you press play again it returns you
to your origin position and, you know, get set up to do it.
Then you have an opportunity to press record on the camera.
And then you just press play again,
and then it goes through the motion.
And I'll be quiet so you can hear
how loud it is when it moves.
[slight whirring noise]
I would describe the sound if you can't hear it--
microphone is just right here, just out of frame--
if you can't hear it, it kind of sounds like
distant running water. It's not very loud at all.
Just kind of like a "Shh" sound. It's pretty good. I don't think
that it'd be much of a problem. And you can see now
that it's looping. And it's just going to continue
through this movement like this until you stop it. When you do
stop it, there's an exit button, or I think you can press
the play button again. I'll do that. And that stops it.
I do have one small criticism here which would be that I wish
that when I did stop it, it would kind of ease into a stop,
instead of being, like, abrupt. But other than that,
it works really well. And obviously if you remember
that I said that the bundle comes with shutter cables
there's obviously a couple other modes.
If you press home there's "Time Lapse" and "Stop Motion."
The "Quick Start" mode is the one
where if you press both of the buttons at the same time,
but there's a "Time Lapse" mode and a "Stop Motion" mode.
OK, I've got the tripod set up here.
This is the iFootage TC7 tripod.
And I've got one of those Seastars on top
so, I'll show you how they work.
But first, I'm just going to attach the tripod.
So, I'm going to move this into the middle and lock it down.
And then... conventionally, this is how
you would have to do it. You would have to, sort of,
twist and screw it on, which...
I've never loved this method, because--
especially when it comes off...
you have to be careful not to throw the...
throw the slider on the ground. So, there. Once we've got that
nice and tight, the cool thing about the Seastars is now
if I wanted to take this off, you can just turn
these things here and it's like a quick release, and you can
just pull it off. And then, I don't know, put your head
on instead. And then you just pop it in here and push down.
And then you're locked back in place.
So, I'm just going to do, like, a similar
kind of parallax shot.
Using the Rubik's Cube. So, we'll move it--
now you can see that it can move all the way over here.
So, we'll set that as position one.
And it can obviously travel twice as far now
over here to position two. And we'll press play.
It'll return to it's original position.
[faint whirring]
And then I'll record.
And press play again.
And so, it's going to be a 25 second full range slide.
Again, I'll let you listen to it, and then I'll show you
the shot on the screen while it happens.
[faint whirring]
OK, now let's talk about the vertical shots.
And I'm also going to take the other part of
that Seastar thing I was talking about
and I'm going to screw it in on the bottom,
which is another 3/8" mounting point.
And then now we can release this
and just pop it in vertically like that.
So, that is one thing where the Seastars are pretty awesome for
is just, kind of, switching stuff around.
So, when it comes to doing vertical shots,
obviously, you wouldn't want to just mount the camera like this
because it doesn't make any sense.
So, you're going to need something like this one.
This is actually from a competing brand.
This is an edelkrone device, but I believe iFootage
is going to make their own, sort of, L bracket.
And then you're going to need to screw this in here.
OK, so I'm trying to get it to work for the vertical slides.
One thing I'm noticing though is that I think
the two kilo weight might be a little bit on the...
"I'm not so sure about that" side.
I think, like, one kilo is safe, a phone is definitely safe.
But I've been trying to arrange this L bracket
in a different way, and with the camera.
And I was only able to get it to work--
I did a test and I was able to get it to work
without the cage on and using a lighter bracket.
But now that I'm trying to push closer to that two kilos
It's having a hard time fighting... I think
the pan motor is too weak to fight against the weight.
You'll see as it starts to go down now
that it's not tilting up. It's not able to fight against
the weight of this camera, and I'm not even using
that long or heavy of a lens. See how it's not tilting?
But if I gave it a little bit of an assist,
you see how now it corrects itself.
So, I want to say that you should definitely
stay below 1.5 kilos for vertical,
and hopefully the iFootage bracket
is, you know, better designed to optimize this.
Because I do think if it was a lighter bracket,
then maybe put the camera on the bottom
and sat it a back a little bit, that we'd be able
to get a better result. But the current bracket that I have,
I can't tweak all those things. But it does
kind of work, though. This is what it looks like.
So overall the user experience is pretty fantastic.
But now let's talk about some of the aspects
that hold the system back a little.
First off, the biggest issue is there's this bug
that exists in the current firmware that prevents
proper looping motion.
Currently, with my preproduction firmware,
if you program a looping slide, when the slider reaches
all the way to the far side over here,
just before it starts coming back,
it does this weird little pan adjustment.
This totally breaks the effect of a continuous loop
and needs to be fixed ASAP.
But good news, I actually received a message
this morning informing me that the development team
at iFootage found that problem and are fixing it
in the firmware currently as I film this.
So, it should be resolved
well before the units start to ship.
The other issue I have is that this system isn't the best
for macro video at longer focal lengths
or even just doing some tight shots
with longer unstabilised lenses.
I found that by the time I hit 70mm
the tiny little micro movements in the slider
really started to show up in the shot.
Here, let me just give you a demonstration
of that longer lens problem I'm talking about.
So, let's start with the Sigma 24-70mm,
which is a pretty heavy lens, but it still keeps
well under the weight, even this whole combo
when you are doing, like, a tabletop slide like this.
I do find that these, sort of,
micro vibration issues are more apparent on a tripod
then they are on the tabletop, so...
You know, your mileage may vary depending on your setup.
So, again, first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to do
a quick little balance here. So, I'll loosen off the plates.
And I'll just try and get this...
So, it's not really tilting forward at all.
And we'll lock that down.
And let me get a shot,
so I'm going to go all the way to 70mm here.
Nice and sharp. Lock that down.
Really simple little parallax shot here
so, you can see just the small little vibrations.
And you can decide for yourself
if they're what you'd be willing to live with.
And I'll show you in post how to clean them up.
In Resolve, the Translation Stabilization
does a really great job without any unwanted effects.
And it's a quick process, so I don't think
it holds this slider back too much.
IBIS on the camera, however, is not the best choice here
to remove those little hiccups because IBIS can introduce
it's own problems where the image looks like
it's drifting a bit at the end of the movement
as the IBIS catches up. So, I'd say
a little post stabilization is the best fix.
OK, I'm using autofocus for these
just to make these faster, so if you see the focus
drift a little bit... It is what it is.
Uh, OK, so, we're going to press play.
Again, I'll do a 25 second movement.
And I'm going to loop it. And let's go with that.
And I'll press record on the camera
once it hits it's position.
And I'll put this up on the screen so you can see.
Just look for those little shakes back and forth
and then I'll fix it using Resolve's
Translation Stabilization afterwards.
[faint whirring]
OK, so that little drift that you saw there
just before it started coming back, that's IBIS.
That's why you don't want to have IBIS on.
So, now I'm going to turn IBIS off
so, we can see what it actually looks like.
So, we can see any of the little shakes
that might actually be there with IBIS off.
So, that's what we're watching now.
[faint whirring]
So, is that any better or any worse
than it was with IBIS just on? You be the judge.
And when we get to the end,
you're not going to see that weird IBIS drift anymore,
but you might see that pan bug that I was talking about.
So, let's wait until we get to the end of the slide here...
[faint whirring]
OK, so, it reached the end. Now watch it.
Pan, and then starts coming back.
So, that's not IBIS, that was the pan.
So, that's the difference between the IBIS drift
and the pan bug. They gotta fix that
because other than that I really like how it eases in
at the end of the slide and eases back up.
It's a very nice movement.
Just got to fix that little pan bug.
But again, I got reassurance that it's...
they're working on it right now and it'd be fixed
in the next firmware before they ever ship
the final product, so...
OK, so the 90mm macro is actually a lighter lens
than the 24-70, but it's a tighter shot, so...
Oh, yeah. Is it ever. So, we're not going to see
the stabilized versions, this is completely unstabilised
with the macro, OK? I switched to manual focus on this one
because I found with autofocus, we were seeing
a bit of breathing and stuff and that might be distracting
when you're trying to see how stable it is.
So, it might go out of focus a little bit
as we get across the centre point there, but just
only look at the stability of the shot.
And again, I'll probably put something up
where I swipe afterwards to the stabilized version
in Resolve if I found that I found
some noticeable shakes here.
We still have that problem with Sony and with some other brands,
I think the new Canon cameras too
where you can't switch the IBIS off on the body
and leave it on in the lens.
It's really frustrating. They need to fix that thing.
So, if I turn it off on the lens, it turns it off
everywhere unfortunately. If this was a big
motion control system that cost several thousand dollars,
I'd be a lot more critical of this aspect,
but because this is a very small,
and significantly cheaper system,
I'm willing to mostly forgive this.
So, if I had to summarize the actual performance
of the slider, I'd say it's a great option for anything wide
and would be a great compact solution for interviews
or for establishing movements with a wider view,
but it will require some post stabilization at times
if you want to use it for any tight detail work,
but that might still be a favourable trade off
vs buying something that costs eight times as much.
The thing I'm most impressed by though
is just the simplicity of the programming.
It seems so obvious, yet no one has ever done it
this elegantly before. Just move the camera
and press a button on the actual slider,
move it again, press the button again,
press start and you're off.
Overall, very good effort.
I wish it was perfect, but few things in life are.
But it's a device I can definitely recommend
for the use cases I mentioned.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
entertaining or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.