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Camera Dolly

Panasonic PanaTrack is a big bendy motorised camera slider

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Panasonic has announced PanaTrack, an interesting and somewhat unique motorised camera slider/dolly track system. It’s essentially a big bendy track along which you can run your camera. How big? Well, the minimum length is 2 metres. The maximum length is 50 metres, with travel speeds of up to 1.4 metres per second. PanaTrack is targeted to events, concerts, corporate, conferences, cinema and TV shows running on a low budget.

PanaTrack appears to have been developed by Panasonic in conjunction with Waterbird Systems. Exactly how much of a role each company played in the device’s development is unknown, but Waterbird has a pretty solid reputation for flexible camera tracks. Panasonic describes it as a “highly flexible camera track system by Waterbird” So, it may be that it’s been developed by Waterbird and is simply being branded and sold by Panasonic.

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Use these four tricks for cinematic dolly shots on the cheap

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Dolly shots are among the basics when it comes to cinematic camera movement. But if you’re just starting out, buying a proper camera dolly could be a bit of an overkill. So, why not turn to cheap, even free options, at least for a start? Caleb of Wondershare Filmora has a few ideas how to do it and still get those sweet, cinematic shots in your video.

The goal is not only to have your camera slide in different directions but also to minimize camera shake while doing so. Caleb proposes a few options that could do the trick, and you already have at least one of them at home.

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The Rhino Dolly is a portable motorised 10.5ft camera dolly that fits in a suitcase

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Popular manufacturer of motorised motion control camera sliders, Rhino Camera Gear has launched their new Rhino Dolly. Its release is in response to what Rhino Camera Gear says is customer demand for longer rails and higher load capacities. And they sure seem to have satisfied both of those requests with a motorised dolly that provides up to 10.5ft of length and a total claimed load capacity of up to 100lbs (~45kg).

There are some caveats with that load capacity, but whichever way you slice it, it’s way beefier than anything they’ve released before. The whole thing fits inside a single case – if you’re not using the carbon fibre legs to raise it up, and it’s designed to be put up in mere minutes. The team at Rhino says their best time so far is an even 60 seconds. But for some strange reason, they launched on Kickstarter.

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YC Onion’s new Chips 3.0 slider is also a motorised dolly and a 5-axis motion control system

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YC Onion has only been around for a couple of years, but they’ve made some impressive kit since they first launched. Their latest is a new take on a familiar filmmaking tool – the motorised camera slider. This one, called Chips 3.0, isn’t just a slider, though. Oh no, it’s also a motorised tripod dolly, and it can even turn into a 5-axis motion control system with your gimbal on the top of it.

The Chips 3.0 can communicate with a variety of DJI, Zhiyun and Feiyutech gimbals to provide full 4-axis control for videos and timelapse. You get your X linear movement on the slider as normal, but you also get pitch (tilt), yaw (pan) and roll on the gimbal, too. The fifth, of course, is your focus motor. As a still-new company, YC Onion is taking to Indiegogo to launch this one.

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Take a look behind the scenes at the iconic dolly crane from Saturday Night Live

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For most of us, no matter how much fancy kit we buy, no matter how good we think we’ve got it, something comes along that just makes us feel totally inadequate. The iconic dolly crane from Saturday Night live is such a thing. And it makes the cranes that most of us might use in our own productions look like toys.

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This is the cheapest camera dolly hack you’ll ever see for a smartphone

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The humble pizza cutter. Who knew it could be such a wonderful cinematic tool? Well, it turns out that it might be. For your smartphone, anyway. The folks at COOPH have come up with a great way to get a dolly or slider for your phone without actually buying a dolly or slider. All you need is a pizza cutter.

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This camera slider was made out of Lego bricks

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When we were kids, most of us played with Legos. Now, as grown-ups, we play with cameras. Dutch filmmaker Victor Bart brought the toys of his childhood and adulthood together: he created an impressive camera slider almost entirely out of Lego parts.

The only things not made out of famous plastic bricks are the ball head and of course, the camera. The dolly, the slider tracks, and even the controller – they were all made using Legos.

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How to convert a floor dolly into a DIY tripod track dolly

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Floor dollies are fantastic tools for giving your camera some motion when shooting video. The problem with them, though, is that you need a perfectly flat stable surface on which to use them. The slightest imperfection or bump becomes obvious and easily noticeable in your footage. This is why so many photographers and filmmakers user sliders instead. But, what if you could get that same smooth motion with a tripod?

Well, with this fairly straightforward conversion, you can. In this video from ImaginetMedia, our host BobB204 (we’ll call him Bob) talks us through converting a regular cheap floor dolly. It’s a pretty straightforward process, but there are some tricks to help make life easier.

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Build a DIY remote control robot 360º camera dolly out of an old wheelchair

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If there was ever any doubt that Indy Mogul were back in full force, this should help to belay those fears.  In the latest episode of their new Erik Builds the Movies series, Erik Beck builds a remote controlled dolly for a 360 camera out of an old motorised wheelchair.

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