The Internet’s Cheapest Motorized, Belt Driven, 48″ Diy Camera Rail

Opteka’s GLD-400 47-inch slider is pretty cheap at around $80, but if you want to add a motor to it ,things get a bit more pricy.

Chris of Midwest Lenticular needed something a bit more motorized so he cobbled together one of the nicest (and cheapest) motorized sliders I’ve seen to date.

I hear you…. using a readymade slider can barely qualify as a DIY, to this I say: 1. see if you can source the individual parts any cheaper and there is still a hefty bit of DIY with adding a motor.

You can find a complete parts list here, but let me just say that the heart of the system is a $12, 30RPM motor and a $10 PWM Motor controller. The most expensive part is a $30 battery, which you may already have or don’t need, depending on your usage.

Here are two short videos to show how smooth of a footage you can get:

Chris was kind enough to provide step by step instructions in this link, they are very easy and definitely can be done as a Friday or weekend project.

While we usually talk about motorized sliders in the context of shooting timelapses (see slower motors here), Chris, being from a lenticular printing business, has some great tips on using the slider for lenticular printing.

[DIY camera Slider | Midwest Lenticular]