RED EPIC DRAGON M8 . . . "C h r o n i c l e s "

[Hal Long]

Just a few tips from things I learned when fiddling with sliders.... The high distance you got between the lens and the slider, created the adapter and the rather high ballhead will introduce quite a bit of vibrations. So the lower you get, between lens and slider, the more stable you will be. Best option is a low riding lambda head, and as you level all ready on the tripods you could mount such unit straight onto the sliders mounting screw and by doing so get minimal distance between lens and slider. Also a lambda head can be set in balance also with an even and extremely low resistance which makes pan, tilt while sliding far more easy and smooth then a regular head.

This is 100% correct. I've had issues with top tier sliders (cineped, the slider) down to my personal kessler 3' cine. The tripod head almost always induces vibration and a bit of wag. My favorite approach these days is to put a dovetail on the slider and put the camera directly on the slider with no head, and mount the ENTIRE slider unit on my 7 + 7 Studio or a 2575. Pans and tilts have a bit of a jib feel (which can be nice as the slider can be rotated 90º to accentuate), and it removes most of the wag.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Most definitely agree as I already have with what has been said about hight form base of slider, however when in need of controlling the camera movements with both Tilt and Pan action, there is no other solution but to use a Fluid Head, or a Remote head, be it a actual Head or a Gimbal, yet I did also agreed that my set up was not ideal, but when used with the knowledge of what it induces then is okay to use, and many do use it as such.

However I do advise that better use of a Fluid head would be with a Mitchell Flat base directly mounted to the Slider base it self, and Trost is in fact working on exactly that, an other option for Fluid Head with a Bawl mount adapter is to unscrew the bottom Screw and screw the actual Bottom Half of the Bawl head directly to the base itself, yet here a reducer might the needed depending on the size of the original Screw size of the Bawl head screw it self.

Rarer are the situations were I would only use the slider as a Slide mode only, and more often then not I would Pan and or Tilt or Both as I slide, for this reason I almost never would mount the camera strait on a dovetail fixed to the slider.


In my next project I'll make use of such set up were the Fluid Head weill be much lower to the Slider and no longer make use of the Adaptor I used in this past two projects, simply because there is now an other option which was not there before... And this new options are of course better for the reasons stated by Björn...