Varavon Slidecam V800 Slider Review

The first thing that I noticed when I got the Varavon Slidecam V800 slider was it's weight. Or its lack thereof.

This baby is ultra light. And I'm saying this with excitement because I've been carrying the motorized slider quite a bit these past two weeks. So having a light slider is good for a change.




Lemme just get into the pros and cons coz your time is precious.

Pros

• Light
• Sexy - it does look cool, doesn't it?
• Fold-able legs for maximum versatility
• Comes with a carrying bag
• You get a sling follow focus for free
• Threaded holes to mount it on a tripod (in the middle and at both ends)

Cons

• The holes in the rail (even though they shed some weight off) allow grass blades to come trough and you loose the smooth glide. I'm gonna cover the holes with duct tape to fix this.  

Conclusion

This is just great for those on the fly manual shots where you need a slider. Please understand that I'm coming from a few years of using my clumsy DIY slider and lately I've been using the motorized DigiSlider so I'm a bit overly excited to use the Varavon.

The fact that it's shorter (80 cm) than the regular 1 meter rail makes it even better for carrying it around. And most of times, anyway, 80 cm is enough for taking those reveal shots.

But it's clear for me now: you need a ball bearing slider for smooth shots. And this one is great!


Of course, I'll want to combine the smoothness and weightless of this dolly with the high torque slow motor from DigiSlider. So I'll probably use a rope or something to drag the carriage along the rail - the rope will coil on the motor gear and hopefully I'll be able to get dynamic timelapse shots with this setup.

They also have their own versions of motorized sliders called MotorRoid and Timeroid (for timelapse photography). Check them out if you're into this timelapse thing.

Varavon Slidecam V800 is a cool indispensable slider for any videographer (you should get one) and the DigiSlider is a timelapse machine. This is the distinction you must make between these two.

You can also find Varavon products (a South Korea company) on Amazon and Ebay, BHPhotoVideo.

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