hey everyone it's norm from tested and today i'm going to be reviewing and sharing with you
my experiences of a new piece of kit that i've been using for the past couple months
that you may have actually seen uh footage from on our videos recently but we haven't actually
had a chance to talk about it we've been putting it through its paces and it's actually been one
of my favorite pieces of camera gear i've used all year this comes from ifootage they sent over
their new shark nano slider actually it's been it was announced about a year ago but because
of supply chain constraints it hasn't been really available but they said there's finally some stock
and so now is the right time to talk about it uh if you're unfamiliar this is a you know
motion control system offers two axes of control lateral movement as well as rotational movement
uh in a really compact slider package one of my favorite things about this is how compact it is i
was able to take this in a carry-on bag and fly to seattle when i previewed the valve steam deck
this was what i used to get my wide shot of a slow moving camera as i was interviewing those
developers at valve and we've used it in the studio i've taken it on location for short film
production as well as some time lapse photography and the portability i think is what makes this
so appealing so i'm gonna run through exactly how it works all its features and how it might compare
with some of the other sliders and motorized sliders that you may have seen in the marketplace
so this is the whole unit right here and it runs on either a standard sony battery which gives you
about four hours of usage or actually has usbc power as well which also charges the battery
pretty slowly and you have your standard either quarter or three inch mounts uh on this carriage
here now one of the cool things about this is that it is compact so you can see the movement here
isn't that much it's a very comparable to edelkrone has a motorized slider as well
that offers just one axis of lateral movement and both of those uh have about a 20 or 21
centimeter if you're talking about from the center to center so movement basically goes
from here to here but something you may also notice is as i'm moving the carriage and sliding
it across you can see there's actually additional movement on the bottom because this not only works
if you set it on a tabletop surface like this but you can also mount it onto a tripod way down
of course uh and then you can basically double the lateral movement it moves it the whole unit
actually slides along with the carriage uh while the this mount slides in the opposite direction
to get 40 to 42 centimeters that's how i measure 42 centimeters of movement so over well over a
foot not quite a foot and a half but let's run through exactly how it works i'm just going to
use this with my phone and it's really made for either filming with your phone or a small
mirrorless camera you can put a dslr in here but its maximum capacity is uh on the tabletop mode
uh two and a half kilograms so just over five pounds and if you melt it uh vertically and
want to do some type of diagonal vertical movement it's carrying load only is about two pounds which
is short of that of like the outer chrome slider i believe that one has a nine kilogram payload
capacity almost 20 pounds but even with that relatively limited capacity i found this to be
the versatility of this the portability of this to really be its strength so it's just
dead easy to use a single person can operate this and be front of camera at the same time i have my
battery plugged in uh the important thing is to unlock the carriage so it actually can freely move
and i'm gonna hold the power button and it turns on i'll do a little bit of a calibration
at first to make sure it's level and there is a built-in little bubble level here so if you
have it mounted on a tripod very easy to tell how level is so there you go it's doing some
calibration and technically i should actually have the camera balance on here ahead of time
uh not that big of a deal because i'm using my iphone you do want to make sure that
you have a bigger camera it is centered so you have the lens not sticking too far forward or else
it will be um it won't move as smoothly so let me screw on this tiny uh iphone holder
and on the carriage there are actually two points of adjustment there's a tensioning dial uh if you
find that it's a little bit loose as you manually move it along as well as a way to lock of course
uh lock the mount so it does take both a quarter inch as well as 3 8 and it's a nice single point
that can recede so you don't have to swap an adapter in and there's an app that you can connect
this to so ifootage has an app that you can load up and you can do some manual control there but i
actually prefer using the on-screen touch screen control so i hit quick start and it's really dead
simple i hold both the power button and the function button down and then i'm literally
just physically moving this to set my end points so let's say i have my camera here and we'll go
this way which is a little bit funky but we'll do that so i can see you and i framed up a shot
here and i say let's say i wanna it's two axes so i can rotate and let's say i want you know
uh we'll have this light be my focus point here i'm going to have that center and i literally tap
an end point that's my a point and then i physically move this over and rotate a little
bit the other direction it's been really fun to experiment over this 21 centimeters of movement
using different focal lengths you know whether the ultra wide the wide or the telephoto on a phone
uh the different types of footage you can get with just that much movement i'm going to confirm here
and then click standby you can see that's the movement that's actually probably the fastest
it moves so pretty good it turns out you don't need a lot of movement to create some effects
especially if you're shooting telephoto and then i can have this in about a different mode i can
have it it's kind of cycle go from a to b and say want you know let's say a 30 second interval i can
set my interval from point a to point b or i can set based on speed uh activate it and then over
here i've set it for 30 seconds that 30 seconds time it will go from point a to point b i have it
doing a cycle so kind of bounce back and forth which is really convenient if i want to just
set this up forget it and and then get in front of the camera and do an interview
or something uh or or run a time lapse um there's also a actual time-lapse setting here so i can
again set the duration set the interval uh and it comes with a bunch of uh time-lapse trigger cables
that you plug right into the carriage and then you can plug it into whether your canon nikon
or sony cameras to trigger those individual photos i use this to great success with a resin lapse so
time lapsing a 3d print and i knew based on the slicer that my print was gonna be about
eight hours overnight i set that manually on the slider here and then got a really cool two axis
uh time lapse over that resin laps triggering the camera with the printer and not the actual slider
itself uh one thing you can notice though is as you're watching this if i speed this up and down
it's not a continuous speed it slows down as it gets to each of these endpoints and
some other sliders in an app you might be able to configure that ramp up speed you may have
like a graph that you can drag the the ramp points how fast it speeds up or it might slow
down toward the center that's unfortunately not something you can configure here with the sharp
nano slider it is a fixed ramp up whether at that standard 21 centimeter or the double 42 centimeter
length so the time lapses tend to tend to look very similar in terms of how they ramp up
and ifoota just told me that in the future they're hoping to integrate the ability to change those
ramping profiles in the app but as we're recording this that still hasn't happened yet so this is
just kind of going back and forth right now and like i said with uh this sony battery will run
for about four hours and we've you know put micro four thirds cameras on here i've run this with an
iphone i run it with my uh dslr my 5d uh and we've actually put like lights on here we've
used it as a way to motion control and and have you know a panning light that will go and rotate
back and forth for an effect for a scene and it works really well uh it's been really reliable
i've only had the tension increase the tension once since using this for the past three months
and the ability to quickly set these endpoints and change my manually change
how i want that that um that rotation to look and where my start and end points are is just
invaluable if i'm in a you know a fast-moving production environment i just really need to drop
our tripod down and get this rolling and throw a camera phone on there or throw a camera on there
i can have this set up in under 10 minutes honestly five to ten minutes uh and it's
works you know i usually have a usbc battery plugged into it just give it some extra juice
and i can just really set it and forget it and if you've seen through some of this
b-roll footage whether it's through macro footage wide-angle stuff um it's just it
enhances the look of our videos just a bit um and feels like i have an extra person on set
helping me now it's not going to be great for you know a walk and talk scene uh or a scene
where you need a big dolly movement a handheld stabilized gimbal camera might be better for
that but you just need something to you know shift your foreground a little bit of parallax
and foreground and background getting some b-roll of some six scale products for example
that i like taking photos of or videos of this has really been a wonderful addition
to my photography and videography kit and the fact that it packs up really nicely
really compactly uh and can fit this whole case in uh not necessarily my camera bag but in a carry-on
suitcase for flying anywhere has made this an essential part of my not everyday carry
but my travel kit my travel photo and video kit uh let's give you a quick demo of what it's like if i
have this on at an angle as well so i'm gonna power this down for just a second remove this
uh iphone holder by again holding that lock button and then we're gonna put it on a actual tripod
okay so i have my phone mounted on a small one axis uh tripod mount here so i can have
it level with the horizon you can tell that i have the shark nano slider here mounted at a
slight angle actually don't have a sandbag right now to anchor the tripod down
but the same thing i can hold down my uh power and function button and set my a and b points in this
case i'm going to film the camera i'm filming with right now and here goes my a point uh move
this all the way up and you can see this is that full range of motion now that full 42 centimeters
here i'm gonna go b confirm and then again let's do a 20 second interval we have it on standby
and you can see uh the way the iphone no problem for this i'm going to start
recording and then have this run and then you can see you get a little bit of
linear movement along an angle here and if i wanted to add rotation rotation as well
uh and you can do this vertically as well again the payload capacity isn't that impressive at
two and a half kilograms when it's on the table and down to 200 kilograms mount and
everything included assuming your camera's balanced if you're going to go vertically and
if you stress it too much you will get jittery movement on here so i find that it's best with
a phone a micro four thirds camera or if you're using a heavier dslr maybe not a massive lens
using a more compact squatter lens for and finding that balance when you have it on the carriage
or on a plate but there you go that's a bit of movement right here super easy to set up
didn't have to run the app at all i love the on-screen controls the time-lapse mode just the
standard uh little dolly this little jib mode as well as there's a stop-motion mode so i can
set my a and b points and manually click next next next over that interval i can say i want
you know over the span of a and b uh 2000 photos and if i plan a 2000 shot stop-motion animation
with each frame i can then hit next and it will move exactly that interval so it
works for stop-motion animation as well for some motion control shots that is the shark nano slider
from ifootage i think they're they're finally able to ship this out because of the supply
constraints the price has gone up initially i believe this launched that 600 now it's at over
seven about 750 eighty dollars and uh compared to other sliders on the market the edelkrone
one is five hundred dollars has a higher payload capacity uh but that's only one axis of movement
that's only lateral movement uh no rotational movement in fact that again two axis super compact
uh reliable um this is something that like i said i've made as a part of my essential
travel kit if you have other experiences with sliders i know there's been a bunch of launch
motion control camera systems launched on crowdfunding campaigns and other camera
companies let me know your experience uh in the comments below but you'll for sure be
seeing footage from uh cameras mounted on the slider in future tested videos i've been loving
using it so i'll leave you with some more b-roll shots if you have questions about it
please post them in the comments below until next time i'm norm and i'll see you then happy sliding