"skater dolly" for tripod?

[Joel Arvidsson]

Is there any good "skater dolly" but for tripods where you lock thevwheels at certain degres to orbit in circles. If it does. Do you have any samples where you used it.

If your indoors I would think this could give some intresting shoots with superfast setup.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I've never used it, but CAMDOLLY.com has this.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Digital Juice has OrbitDolly - needs a very smooth surface.

 

[Robert Hart]

Out here in the West ( of Australia ) we initially modified a P+S Skater dolly with coke bottle screw-on caps for tripod foot-sockets fastened onto the castor swivels and a centre tie from the tripod head to the dolly centre. You should not use this arrangement single-operator with the tripod extended as the width of the Skater dolly across the wheels is quite narrow. Subsequently the owner had metal arches with tripod foot-socket holes made to fasten via the existing motor-mount threaded holes in the castor swivels. The arches bridge over the castor wheels and the elastic bands run from the upper hooks on the tripod feet, through the arches and back onto the hooks. It is fine for the tripods which have spear feet. We secure them with stout elastic bands cut from automotive or motor-cycle inner-tubes. On smooth floors it is adequate when using lenses of the "normal" to wide-angle field of view range. The Skater has very little body-to-ground working clearance, a few millimetres only. It therefore is not suited for rough paving or outdoors on road surfaces. It works best if you have two operators, one to control the dolly movement with a tethered stick, one for the camera. With a degree of uncomfortable contortion, a small skinny camera operator can "ride" on the Skater when it is pushed but I would not recommend this practice.