Using a spider dolly outdoors?

[Mark K.]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering if anyone's ever shot with a spider dolly outdoors over uneven terrain, and if so how you setup your track?

Would running the standard spider dolly flextrack over long planks of wood provide the level grounding you'd need for smooth moves? Or would conventionally leveled metal/PVC straight track be necessary instead?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Christopher Barrett]

While the Spider Dolly is designed to handle side to side unevenness in your track, there isn't a suspension that would handle vertical irregularities. I think you would be best laying and leveling conventional track for uneven surfaces.

I've used a friend's and I like it quite a bit on steel track, very portable and really smooth.

 

[Rob Macey]

I've had my Spider Dolly for 7 years. It needs an even surface for a smooth ride.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

The Spider Dolly as well as all other Dollies with any type of Run flat hard core rubber tires, need to run on smooth surface or trucks, otherwise your results will suffer greatly, some of which might be stabilized in Post if you are shooting 5k for a 2k finish with enough look around area, but if your finish is intended for 4k then it will not have enough look around area to stabilize in post and it will make your footage likely too shake to be usable, especially so with longer focal, starting at 65mm with a really bad shaking going on from 100mm on.