Spider Dolly?

[battistella]

Hi,

First post on a fantastic site. What a great resource. I was wondering if anyone has some real world, up close experience with the Spider Dolly.

http://www.porta-jib.com/spider_dolly.htm

Any feedback on the flextrack and the quality would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[jollo]

Re: Spider Dolly?

Charles Papert has one. You can read what he had to say about it here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13461&highlight=spider+dolly

I checked out the Losmandy web page, it looks schweet. ;D

 

[battistella]

Re: Spider Dolly?



Thanks you for pointing me there. it looks like a great system that will handle all kinds of camera sizes and weights. 400lb in the four legged model. I love the idea of the flex track, but as usual worried about how smooth it is.

 

[Brett_Erskine]

Re: Spider Dolly?

I've used it a few times and it has its purpose but definately isnt a replacement to the standard steel track in all situations.

Flextrack is good for:
1)Tight curves in equally tight sets
2)Situations where a unique path needs to be made for the camera to follow.

Flextrack is bad for:
1)Straight runs when on a med. to long lens. The track usually doesnt lay straight enough unless its supported by the extra steel braces
2)Uneven ground that it needs to lay down on. But once again this can be fixed with the steel braces and some wedges.
3)Perfect circles around a subject

Steel track is good for:
1)Heavy dollys
2)Perfectly straight runs or perfectly curved runs (ie. 360 around a product)

Steel track is bad for:
1)Extremely tight sets
2)Flexibilty to fine tune a dolly move's path