How Does A Camera Slider Work
Sometimes a pan gives you a decent photographic camera movement, and other times you want something with a little more flair in your documentary. At its most basic function, the camera slider delivers a side to side movement that is dramatically different than a pan, in that the photographic camera moves through a space, which changes the perspective. Most chiefly, the slider reveals something as it moves, which makes it an important tool in your storytelling tool chugalug.
For case:
Establishing Shots
Often yous'll meet sliders being used as establishing shots. Perhaps as the photographic camera slides from exterior a door frame and into a room, revealing a subject field. In this manner, the viewer can feel like they're watching the subject from a distance, like a voyeur (just in a good way). If y'all desire to shoot an establishing shot like this, you don't always need to be outside a door frame. You can use whatever foreground, such as a table, or cabinet, or a column.
A foreground is imperative to the slide, especially when you lot use a broad lens: otherwise the camera'south movement may be completely lost to the viewer. And if you utilise a medium to telephoto lens on a slider you'll need to be a niggling more strategic with placing the camera if yous want there to be a foreground. That may involve adjusting your tripod style below your normal operating tiptop, or simply placing your slider very prominently behind an object that can serve as a blurry foreground. I likewise recommend shooting the establishing slide with multiple focal lengths, and in both left and right directions. That will give you the most flexibility in the edit.
When you choose an establishing shot, you also want to think nearly the photographic camera perspective in relation to the subject area. Are yous revealing the subject's back, while they're at work on something we can't see? Or are they facing the camera? A side perspective, or 3/4 profile, can be a smashing medium between the bailiwick facing away or toward the camera. Just imagine if the camera was a person, looking upon the subject area with their face up abroad from you… it kind of feels like you're sneaking up on them. That tin be good, if it makes sense for your documentary story.
Add Motion to Static Objects
Establishing shots are not the only time yous'll want to use a slider on a documentary. In fact, information technology's sometimes not essential to add photographic camera motility to scenes where at that place is already some kind of movement. Just when there's absolutely nothing moving on screen, that'due south precisely when a slider can exist nigh effective.
In many documentaries, a part of a subject's story is all-time told with photos and objects, especially if that part of the story takes place in the past. Looking around your subject's habitation or workplace, or wherever you're shooting, you tin can usually spot a few framed photos, personal objects, posters, refrigerator magnets, books. Have a moment to shoot those pictures and objects at different focal lengths. At present in your edit, you tin easily put together a few footling sequences of slides that help push the story forward.
Also Fast and Too Long
There are a lot of scenarios where a slider tin add together style to your documentary shot list, only information technology'south important not to go also carried away. No matter how long your slider is, or how much activity is in the scene, a slider shot that moves too fast or goes on for besides long is an instant story killer. It attracts attending to itself and away from the story.
How do yous know when a slide is likewise fast or too long? Information technology's an instinctual feeling you lot get when you picket or edit a film, merely trust me, you know it when you lot see it. To me, annihilation longer than 4 or five seconds is also long, and the slower the amend.
Slider Choices for Documentary
Just similar the decision to bring a jib to a documentary shoot, knowing when to accept a slider with you is often based on the portability of the slider you own. Details matter here: the first fourth dimension it takes you a long, frustrating 20-30 minutes to set up one slider shot, y'all'll maybe determine and then and there to never bring one along again.
That'due south peculiarly true if you could be shooting so many more shots during the time information technology takes to setup one slide shot. If your slider takes y'all only a couple minutes to setup, even so, so you may start to get excited by its possibility and desire to use it equally much every bit possible. Information technology's easy to get carried away, so even if you hit upon the globe's most perfect, portable slider, try to keep your slide shots in moderation.
So what makes a slider more than portable for documentary shoots? For one, sliders typically come in at 2 to three anxiety, sometimes longer. But honestly if you can find a shorter slider, or modify or build one yourself, y'all won't miss the actress rail length. Essentially, if you can move a camera irksome plenty on a slider, yous realistically just need about four to six inches of a slide to attain a iv or five 2nd shot. Of course when you lot utilize the entire slide track, y'all have more options in your edit. Yet, you don't need a lot of track. At that place's even a slider out at that place that has 6 inches of travel, marketed specifically to "carry simply the most frequently used role of your slider."
In addition, the very middle of the slider is more than useful than the far ends of the slider. That's because when you place the slider on a tripod, the far left and right side of the slider volition have some "flex." Different components of the tripod, fluid head, and quick release plates all take a picayune curve to them, and when you slide a camera across the slider rails, you'll often run into the horizon shift as the slider bends. So on a 36" slider, if placed on a tripod, you lot may still only utilise the centre 12 inches for nearly of your slide shots.
Simply information technology'southward not just the size of the slider that makes it more than portable and probable that you'll utilise information technology on your documentary. The slider's ability to provide friction, to introduce some kind of drag that slows your slide downward, is the unmarried almost important feature that can make or pause a slider on a documentary shoot. Without friction, it's near incommunicable to reach a consequent speed as you're pushing your photographic camera downwardly the slider track.
If you slide faster, the speed inconsistencies are less noticeable, but as mentioned above, fast slides are quite distracting in most videos (unless yous're shooting in slow mo; more than on that in the adjacent tutorial). The one problem with built-in friction pieces is they oft make sliders heavy, expensive, and cumbersome. And so if you want something relatively lightweight to bring on your documentary, look for sliders that have a "fly wheel" or fluid friction, but at reasonable weights and track lengths.
Alternatives to Using a Slider on a Tripod
If you accept a quick release system, it's quite easy to click in a slider onto your tripod, your camera onto the slider, and you're ready to go. But considering of the propensity for horizon flex, it's sometimes amend to find an alternative source of support for a slider. That'due south where light stands come in. If your slider has the right mounts on the ends, you can simply drib the slider onto calorie-free stands, adjust the heights and then that the track is relatively level, and you're prepare to go, using equipment you'll almost probable already have with you on a documentary shoot.
Alternatively, yous could merely place the slider on whatever flat surface you tin notice, be information technology a floor, table, countertop, etc. For uneven surfaces, sliders that have "all terrain" legs are an piece of cake solution for leveling the slider. One thing to remember is if you're placing the slider directly on a surface, you lot'll want to adhere a fluid head or brawl caput on tiptop of the slider and so that you can adjust the camera's tilt and pan angle.
For me, I prefer to place my slider on elevation of a tripod/head, which allows me to adjust the framing and not have to deport an boosted fluid head around but for the slider. In this way, along with the quick release system, I've been able to add together slider shots on most of the documentary shoots I've been on, without carrying much additional gear. If you are hoping to achieve more advanced slider shots than elementary side to side motion, nonetheless, yous'll need that actress fluid head or a ball head after all. Nosotros get into more than details on avant-garde slider motion in the next tutorial.
Source: https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/documentary-in-motion-sliders-part-one--cms-28293
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