My Frustration with Camera Sliders! Featuring Edelkrone SliderPLUS & HeadPLUS

So, Elricron hit me up to feature their latest slider module set, the Slider Plus and the Head Plus. And my immediate reaction was, now, don't get me wrong, sliders yield fantastic results and you'll get extremely clean and smooth movement shots. It's just, based on my experience in the past with sliders, my feelings toward them is kind of neutral. To give you guys some perspective, I'm a run and gun kind of guy. I shoot a lot of events, weddings, and travels. So, my main two stability tools are a tripod and a gimbal because it involves the least amount of tools to set up. If I had a lot of time with my shoots, I would definitely consider a slider in my production. And I've used sliders in the past before, including motorized ones. The manual ones are a little bit harder to keep consistent speed when you push it with your hand and it's much harder to perform those trickier parallax movement with a fluid head. The motorized one pretty much solved those problems. However, you have to set it up all within the app. You gotta use the virtual joystick to move them to the position you want it at and then set your point A. And then use the joystick again to move it to your point B. Now, if you have an automated pan and tilt head, well, guess what? You gotta joystick them to the pose that you want them into. And having to wait for the slider to get to the different positions just so it can actually start sliding feels kind of slow. I would often find myself wanting to physically grab the slider and just move it to the position that I want it at. But you don't wanna do that. It's not good for the tracks. And I don't think that's how it registers the different positions because it actually uses math to calculate the distance that it travels when you use the virtual joysticks in order to set the automation. Look at me trying to sound all smart and stuff. So you have to understand my hesitation when I got asked to check this out. What could possibly be different? Outer Crown was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just watch this video. This set is different. Just watch the video. It's the world's smartest slider. And I did, and I was like, wow, that is different. My one problem with a motorized slider looks to be solved with this product. But then my skepticism kicked in. Is it really that good? Or is this another one of those Outer Crown super slick promo video that makes my gas tingle? So I watched Potato Jet's video and iPhonedo's video, and they were raving about how well the whole thing works. So I was like, hey, send one over. So disclaimer now, this video is sponsored by Outer Crown, so I wouldn't call this a review. It's more of a user experience showcase with real world wedding samples. While I do have a lot of positive things to say about this slider, I also do have a lot of heads up to give you guys in case you guys were thinking about getting one of your own. On top of that, I worked out a deal with them to give away a Slider Pro Long, just the slider, no modules, to one lucky winner. So leave a comment down below and end it with the hashtag Can't Go Wrong with Jason Vong, and we will select a winner within 48 hours of this video upload and announce it in the description box below, and that's where you will find more details about this giveaway. Anyways, back to my story. So a week later, this huge box showed up with hundreds of little boxes inside. It looked super overwhelming at first, but after unpacking it and taking everything out and actually assembling this behemoth right here, it doesn't look too bad. In fact, once everything is out of the box, the next time you break this thing down or build it back up again, you'll see it's only four to five different parts to put together before you can start using it again. And everything here actually fits in the backpack. Well, except the slider itself, because the version that I got is the Pro Long one. Anyways, it took me a couple of hours and a few days over the course of the week to figure out how to work the slider. I will link in the description box below their video instruction manual in case you ever decide to get one. Trust me, you will need it because it's a little confusing in the beginning to get this all set up. But for the most part, everything is really intuitive and easy to use. It does require the Edelkrone app to operate, but it connects via Bluetooth really quickly and the app itself is incredibly user-friendly, which you'll see throughout the rest of the video. So I figured I'd take this out to an upcoming wedding I had to shoot to really put it through its paces and gain a better perspective, especially in a professional environment. The obvious big thing for me was the hand-controlled positioning. This was probably the best part of the whole slider and honestly was what made carrying this massive setup worth it. I can frame up the shot by sliding to where I want it and point the camera to where I need it. In case I wasn't clear before, it also registers the position of the head as well when you move it. For this shoe shot here, I wanted to start the scene from the top so it would come down with a curve to show the bride's hair clip and her earrings. So first, I set up how I want the shot to end on, which would be on the accessories. Set the point A on my app. Then I slide over to the right and adjust the position to the top of the shoe and set my point B. By tapping the two positions on my phone, the slider loops the movement. And already the shot is looking damn good. For most of these shots, I was able to get it in one or two takes. If it took more than that, it's usually because something ended up coming into frame and I had to wait for them to go out. But because it's all automated to repeat the same motions, I just let it run its course until I get the shot and move on. The only hard part I would say is transporting the setup around and adjusting the height to where I need it to be on the tripod. Even though I'm not using a big camera setup and the tripod is fairly light, it was still very cumbersome to lug around. But for the shots that I was getting, it was worth it. Again, the setup itself is very easy. Moving on to instant target learning. A feature that they advertise is the laser beam. You can use the laser beam and aim it to your object and the camera will center it. It'll pretty much stay on that object unless you deselect it on your app. This makes these types of circular parallax shot incredibly easy to do because then you would just have to set the slider position instead of having to position the head as well at two different points. And with the laser beam, you can actually build on top of your shot with a live target switching. You can actually have up to three targets in the shot to bounce around. For this shot here, I have three different picture frames of the bride and groom. I laser beam each individual ones and set my slide positions. So as it's sliding back and forth, I can choose different frames to focus on and the transition is smooth and seamless. What do they call that? Oh yeah, production value. But no, seriously, it makes these types of ordinary objects a little less ordinary. By the way, you can also take photos of the different targets on your phone to keep track of what the targets are. But if I have to be honest, I took the photos just to show it off in this video. Most of the times I would just set up the shot, press record and move on. I didn't really need to keep track of which is target A and which is target B. This would probably be a lot more useful on an actual production set. Let's say if you're filming different products in the same frame, it's nice to keep track of what the targets are, especially if you'll be spending a lot of hours on it or just having different crew members working on it so everyone will be up to date as to what target one is and what target two is. Overall, I'm very impressed with the results that I've gotten. But I also feel like I could have done a lot better, gotten more shots or even gotten more trickier shots. It has been a while since I've used a slider so I was extremely rusty with it. However, because it's so easy to operate, it made me look like a pro and feel like a pro. Cool setup. Thanks, man. So, would I use this slider at a wedding again? It's gonna largely depend on the client's budget. If we can afford to have a third shooter like we did for this wedding, then one of us can go get dedicated slider shots. If it's just two video shooters, however, then it would depend on the time. If it's like a 10 to 12 hour wedding day and there's a lot of breathing room in between, then I think we can definitely crank out the slider. But if the schedule was tight, like it usually is on a wedding day, then probably not. If I was soloing a wedding, then for sure I am not gonna be using a slider. Again, in a run and gun situation, it's gonna be tough lugging around such a big setup. I probably wouldn't be flying out of state or out of the country with this slider unless I'm traveling for a gig that specifically requires amazing slider shots. But if you were on a production set and you're being paid to get some amazing slider shots, then this thing right here would make your life 10 times easier. And I can really see this being used for real estate videography, restaurant promo videos, and even sit down interviews. Just make sure you don't point that laser beam at your interviewee or else they'll think a sniper is after them. Now, one last note. Because the slider is so app reliant, make sure you bring your charger for your phone. I was using my GPS a whole lot during that day as well traveling between hotel, church, and reception that by the time I needed to get the ring shot at the end of the night, my phone died. Yeah. So in an ideal situation, if you can have a separate phone, maybe like an older iPhone or something like that, you can use that as a dedicated device to control the slider. If not, just be mindful when you tap out of the app on your phone that it does take a few extra seconds to load everything back up. But the good thing is it doesn't reset any of the settings or the program movements when you tap out. So you can actually pick up where you left off in case you do minimize the tap. I had to tap out a few times because I had to text my teammates and grab some Instagram stories, so. Anyways guys, hopefully this sheds some new lights about the slider in case you thought about picking one up. Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.