Slider Hack for super fluid moves

keylight

keylight

Veteran
By adding a weight on the crank end of a slider (assuming your slider has a crank!) you can really help control moves. The momentum from the weight helps to prevent the slider from jerky starts and stops. FYI, first saw this on cheesycam.com

 
Key, you might of missed my thinking. If you have a counterweight strung up to oppose your direction of movement, and you let go of the crank or carriage, you have a run-away freight train on your slider tracks. It will probably stop when it gets to the end of the slider, but it could be ugly. Did I miss something?

Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Key, you might of missed my thinking. If you have a counterweight strung up to oppose your direction of movement, and you let go of the crank or carriage, you have a run-away freight train on your slider tracks. It will probably stop when it gets to the end of the slider, but it could be ugly. Did I miss something?

Grant
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think you missed the way this works. The weight doesn't pull the camera in one direction or another. It acts like a flywheel. In fact, that's what it is. You have to apply force in order to put/store energy in the flywheel. When you stop the camera, the flywheel looses all the stored force. It won't start on it's own. So if you start to push your camera down the slider and let go, it will stop. But it won't stop suddenly, it'll stop smoothly. It's a bit different if you mount all the weight right under the camera and then push the camera. There you would have a lot of mass that needs to stop and it would be a bit like a freight train and take longer to stop.
 
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