Camera slider – test video montages with my Canon 7d

I’ve managed to make 2 more “into” montage movies now, using my Canon 7d with my Nissan 200sx s13 as the subject to shoot, going pretty well and I’m getting into this videography quite a bit now – and enjoying it.

I’ve managed to make msyelf a fairly good camera slider now too, as per my other post, so pictures & more info of that will come soon. Anyway, without further-ado, here’s the 2 videos…

This one was done on my “first version” camera slider – worked OK, but not perfect

And this one is done on my second version of my camera slider – a big improvement I think

Thinking about building a DIY Camera Slider…

Got an idea about making myself a camera glide runner / camera slider / mini camera dolly or something similar for my Canon 7d when using video. For those of you who don’t know a camera slider (or whatever you wanna call it) is a relatively simple system whereby you can pull or push the camera along some rails or something equivalently smooth to create a professional-looking motion scene. These scenes will often last for only a couple of seconds, but they are really nice fill-in scenes, particularly when using a shallow DoF on a dSLR body.

For a better understanding check this video out, most of which was filmed on a camera slider from the awesome blog The Edit Man

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13440520&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Albeit the above video was (as far as I’m aware) shot on a professional camera slider.

What I intend to do is make my own one. A DIY camera slider Why? Because camera sliders are damn expensive! I’ve drawn a little crappy diagram to help explain what I am hoping to achieve here. To be honest, looking at it on screen now I doubt anyone else will be able to understand what the hell this all means, but it makes sense to me. And don’t worry – you can be rest assured if this does work then pictures/videos to show how I’ve made it will be found on this blog-right-here!

Stay tuned for part 2 where I will hopefully build and create my own camera slider. Using mainly wood and collyflowers…!

First attempt at “proper” videography. My s13 in video

Just spent the past 45 mins or so playing/creating this little video. Finally found my Canon 50mm f1.8 lens (hiding under my bed) and thought I’d take advantage of its massive aperature and shallow DoF!

Also found out on the 7d that when in video mode, anything other than M mode (full manual) you can’t adjust aperture. This greatly effects DoF, so this was all shot on full manual stopped all the way down to f1.8. Anyway, here’s the vid…

Cut it a bit short I guess, but any comments? I’d like to get some feedback on this, improvements / comments / things I need to not do, etc.

And yep, I know – I need a camera dolly/slider. Don’t worry, there will be another post later today/tomorrow regarding this. Should be a laugh