Rhino Camera Slider Field Test

One thing I noticed immediately when I was walking through Melbourne to meet Jimmy for shooting in Union Lane was that the Pro version of the camera slider is very heavy. 10lbs (5kg) may not sound like that much, but if you have to carry the camera slider with you for a longer period of time, you are likely going to feel it in your arms.

The weight really became an issue when I tried to set up the slider on my tripod using the center mount. Due to the length of the slider and the fairly even weight distribution, even Jimmy’s fairly sturdy Manfrotto tripod could not hold the slider horizontal when we started to move the camera from side to side.

In order to use a single tripod you’d likely need something like a Manfrotto 028 Triman – basically a set of professional tripod legs, but that can cost you an arm and a leg. As an alternative (if you value your limbs) is that you can mount all models of the Rhino slider on two tripods, one on each side. Weswitched our configuration over and ended up with a very sturdy setup using 2 tripods to hold the camera slider horizontal. With this setup, there was no issue at all with the stability of the camera slider.

We proceeded to shoot some amazing shots of the street art in Union Lane. I then took the slider off the tripod to get some low angle shots and try out the stability of the legs.

I soon noticed that that the hole for one of the legs was not properly drilled through and I could not properly tighten the screw on one of the legs. This made this test a little bit tricky, but I think the weight of the camera slider was actually beneficial in this situation. Due to the heavy weight of the Pro version, the slider was nice and solid on the ground and did not wobble, shake or jitter during my shots, even with one leg not fully tightened.

Finally, I decided to try out the pulley system and connected everything up to get a few almost vertical shots. mounted my slider with only one side on a tripod and the other side on the ground, connected up the pulley system and tried to get a few vertical shots. I like the idea of using the pulley bag as the handle for the cable, but it did feel a little awkward at times. I think I would prefer a smaller dedicated handle just on the end of the cable. However, the idea with the bag is that you can put counterweight into it to make the movement of the pulley smoother.

The pulley system worked surprisingly well even though I failed to add any counterweight into the bag.
I did notice though that when I tried to add counterweights at home, the pulley did not work as well as expected.

The pulley guide has an opening at the bottom for the cable to snap through. This however means that you cannot pull the cable in any downwards direction as it will simply slip back out of the opening. This can, depending on how you set the slider up, make it tricky to use the counterweight properly as too much counterweight will simply cause the pulley cable to slip back out of the lead.

Other than this rather strange oversight, the pulley was super easy to install (takes about 1-2 minutes to set up) and worked very well.

Verdict

I have to say I am very, very impressed with the quality of the shots we got with the Rhino Camera Slider! The movement is silky smooth and the final shots look very professional. All the parts are very well designed and nothing about the slider feels cheap in any way.

I was a little surprised that the threads for the screws on one leg and for the pulley system on one side of the carriage weren’t drilled through properly. Given that I was one of the last ones to have their Rhino slider shipped and they discovered this issue fairly early in the delivery phase, I would have expected them to have this resolved by the time they got to send my order.

Also, it’d be great if the pulley lead could be closed so that you could add enough counterweight and let it fall vertically to pull up your camera without risking the pulley cable slipping out of the lead.

In terms of the different versions I would recommend going with the carbon fibre model. Unless you can afford a very professional set of tripod legs you will likely not make any use of the centre mount and the extra weight of the Pro version of the camera slider will get in the way more than it will help.

The Rhino camera slider might not be the cheapest option out there, but you do get quality for your money and if you want beautiful slider shots for your video projects, it is definitely an option worth considering.