Homemade Camera Dolly Slider

A slider or camera dolly

Using pieces of plastic tubing I made myself a cheap camera dolly which is suitable for rolling along a table or other flat surface. Sometimes though it can be a little difficult to find a handy flat surface to be able to run the camera dolly along in order to get that smooth moving shot. It is on these occasions where you might consider making either a slider or some sort of track that your camera dolly can run along. Here is a video that I just saw on YouTube which shows you how to make a camera dolly which will run along a couple of poles. It is a short video which gives you all of the necessary information about how to construct it.

 

How cheap is it?

In the video he reckons that the cost of this camera dolly is twenty dollars, but realistically you have to also include the price of the roller wheels. You may possibly have some roller skates in the house that you could use although you may not feel that your getting the best camera dolly by you’re using wheels that are pitted or damaged in any other way. In any case it is not terribly expensive to buy a set of rollerskate wheels from eBay or even from your local sports shop.

Doing a proper job of making the cheap camera dolly slider

I did notice that during the making process in the video that there were a couple of things that he could have done before other tasks in the making process. For example the ends of the polls could be cut first so that you don’t have too break it apart in order to do that and then remake it again. You don’t need fancy tools like a Dremel, it is probably more likely that you will have a file in your toolbox that you can use. It looks like that he only used one carriage bolt to secure the aluminium angle to the piece of wood and I would suggest that using two would be better. Also you might get a better looking job if you use a couple of good sized screws rather than the carriage bolts.

How long do you need to let it run

Using this design only gives you about 1 metre of camera run and that might be sufficient for what you want to do. On the other hand what you could do is to use some plastic tubing of the right size and be able to get a much longer camera run.

Off to the shops and then to the workshop

There is a little shop nearby that will have all of the ironworks that I need and I already have bits of wood that I can use. I have already seen that these roller wheels are available in the sport shop, but I will have a look on eBay to see if they are cheaper. When I have all of the bits and pieces that I need I will be hitting the workshop and wielding some tools. Expect to see some examples of what can be done when using one of these home-made camera slider or camera dolly tools.