Camera sliders are a popular build, and properly executed they can make for impressive shots for both time-lapse sequences or real-time action. But they seem best suited for long shots, as dollying a camera in a straight line just moves subjects close to the camera through the frame.
This slider with both pan and tilt axes can make moving close-ups a lot easier. With his extremely detailed build log, [Dejan Nedalkovski] shows how he went about building his with only the simplest of materials and tools. The linear rail is simply a couple of pieces of copper pipe supported by an MDF frame. The camera trolley rides the rails on common skateboard bearings and is driven by a NEMA-17 stepper, as are the pan and tilt axes. [Dejan] also provided a barn-door style pivot to tilt the camera relative to the rails, allowing the camera to slide up and down an inclined plane for really interesting shots. The controller uses an Arduino and a joystick to drive the camera manually, or the rig can be programmed to move smoothly between preset points.
This is a step beyond a simple slider and feels a little more like full-blown motion control. We’ve got a feeling some pretty dramatic shots would be possible with such a rig, and the fact that it’s a simple build is just icing on the cake.
This is so awesome I said right away, “Oh, I want to build one!”
And then my wife reminded me how many other projects I’m already working on.
But this looks like so much fun, it might actually motivate me to finish some other things up to make room for something like this!
your wife is wrong. there is no limit on how many parallel projects you can have.
Insert grumpy father comments on how dangerous table saws are.
A mechanism, rather than fingers, for holding the work down would improve the safety of the crosscut sled.
At first I thought that is was a simple remote control. But the ability to tell the controller a start and end point and let it travel by itself makes it really interesting ;)