Camera Slider

Commercially Available Options

A camera slider is an essential part of any film maker’s camera kit because it allows you to make tracking or panning shots. These types of shots make the viewer feel more connected to what they are seeing because the motion tricks their brain into thinking they themselves are in the scene. Panning into someone or moving the camera to track focus can also help to convey the story being told by helping to highlight key features in frame.

As a photographer, camera sliders make moving time lapse photography possible. Without a slider, if you wanted to take a time lapse where the camera moved it would require constant active participation of the photographer picking up the tripod and moving it over between shots. The final result would be choppy and rough because the uneven ground and moving tripod would make consecutive frames fail to line up properly. With a motorized camera slider, you can set your path and know that you will get a smooth time lapse while you are busy editing your other photos.

Another use for camera sliders is to increase the depth of field in macro photography. When you are taking photos of incredibly small subjects, you may only get a fraction of your subject in focus because depth of field is directly related to distance from subject and magnification ratio. With a camera slider, you can change your distance from the subject by small increments and use software to combine the photos, getting your whole subject in focus while retaining the incredible background blur that you would lose by zooming out.

A large factor influencing this project was commercial value. Camera sliders with similar belted gantry mechanisms to ours are quite costly, with a 16” track running at approximately $800, and comparable track lengths (around 4 feet) generally ranging from $500 to $5,000. A motorized pan mechanism alone can cost upwards of $600. Thus, creating an affordable camera slider without sacrificing functionality presented a unique challenge.

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Our Budget

Our camera slider was developed on a 250 dollar budget. We were able to find or recycle some materials, most notably the 10ft of 8020 rail that we used, which allowed us to allocate funds towards prototyping while still producing a 250 dollar end product. For the benefit of anyone looking to recreate this project, we’ve included every material used in the final product and it’s estimated or actual cost (camera not included).