These are rig wheels, a great new multi-purpose camera wheel that you can use for a variety
of different dolly and slider applications, and I want to show you just a few of the things
that you can do with them, from the simplest of setups for a hobbyist or amateur to some
more complex ones that you would use on a full-scale production.
First up is I have three rig wheels mounted to my CPM Film Tools DSLR cage 3.0.
You can mount rig wheels to camera rigs from just about any manufacturer using standard
15mm rod gear, but here I have the wheels mounted with three bolts to this rig and I
get a clean, smooth roll on any flat surface.
Now another method that most of you are probably familiar with is using PVC pipe as a dolly.
That is going to turn our wheels 90 degrees, and then you have a camera rig that will run
on any pipe between 1-8 inch and 2 inches.
Here's another camera rig that I mounted rig wheels to using standard 15mm rod to
2-4 inch adapters, same thing, rig wheels can drop right on top, roll on your pipe or
any smooth surface, and then we're right back to our tripod.
So those are just a couple options using professional support gear, but rig wheels are really easy
to use for hobbyists and amateurs as well.
Here's a camera rig that I built using an 8x8 piece of press board and four rig wheels,
one hole in the middle for your tripod head, and same thing, on any flat surface you get
a clean, smooth roll or any pipe between 1-8 and 2 inches.
A friend of mine Spencer gave me this tip, rig wheels will run on curtain rod, and as
actually surprisingly smooth and effective.
So this is a great little camera rig for a hobbyist or amateur using materials that you
probably already have in your home.
You can go even simpler, I just pulled this ruler out of my drawer for this point and
shoot, drilled three holes in it, and get cute little dolly moves with that too.
Now let's take a look at some of the bigger dollies and sliders that we can build using
rig wheels.
There's three larger setups that I'm going to show you.
A lot of people are familiar with this one, this is just a platform dolly on pipe, but
the difference when you do this with rig wheels is that all you have to do is drill four holes.
That's a lot easier than doing it with skater roller blade wheels.
Another question that people ask me a lot is how much weight will rig wheels hold, and
I wouldn't recommend doing this on a regular basis, but let's jump on board.
You can use rig wheels with just about any size camera.
And while we're here, since our rig already has wheels on it, let's jump it off the tripod
and get a nice shuttle on the ground.
Okay now we're getting into some fun stuff.
This is a seven foot camera slider made from rig wheels and box track.
Box track is an industrial construction material and we have it available in lengths of six
and eight feet on rigwheels.com.
Some cool stuff about this, it's strong.
This is steel track so you can put just about any camera out there on it.
It's portable.
If you're familiar with standard dolly track, this collapses the same way.
You loosen up the ends and it'll fold on itself so it travels nice and easy.
It's really versatile here.
This camera carriage is built out of the CPM film tools DSLR cage 3.0 that we saw just
a little bit earlier.
By configuring the slider this way you can do some cool stuff by adding follow focus
map box and other accessories but all this additional expense and gear isn't necessary
to make a slider like this.
All you need is the box track, four rig wheels and a hard piece of steel, aluminum, plastic
or wood like we have here that you can drill four holes in for the rig wheels and one hole
in the center for your tripod head and you have a seven to eight foot camera slider that
you can do really cool moves with.
Of course the main advantages to using rig wheels to make a slider like this are cost
and length.
This is very inexpensive for an eight foot solid smooth camera slider and at eight feet
you can get much more dramatic moves than you can with a one meter or four foot slider
like it's commonplace.
This stuff is very easily configurable.
You can easily go from standard to low mode in just a few seconds and get some nice tracking
shots along the ground.
Another advantage is that rig wheels use high quality bearing wheels so you get really
nice smooth moves and stops unlike a lot of the friction based sliders out there.
Another cool configuration that you can do is if you own a high hat you can mount the
high hat directly to the wood and then you can use your ball head, tripod head on this
slider.
It works pretty slick.
Here's the last setup I'm going to show you in this video.
This is a ten foot pipe slider using eight rig wheels to make up the top and bottom of
this camera carriage.
Two important things that you need to know about using rig wheels to make something like
this.
One, you can use it in any angle, vertical, horizontal, slanted, any way that you can position
the two pipes you can run a carriage like this on it.
Second thing is that rig wheels run on any pipe between one and an eighth inch and two
inches.
So what that means is you can find pipe to make a slider at just about any location that
you go to.
Just travel with your carriage and the ends that you use to connect your pipe to your
tripod or light stands and you can have a great little slider on the fly.
A couple examples, C stands.
Rig wheels will run in the bottom section of C stands giving you about a three and a half
foot move with gear that just about everybody has.
Speed rail.
You can run rig rails on speed rail.
If you travel a lot to convention centers or hotels with meeting rooms, most of them
have pipe and drape.
You can use some of that pipe to make a setup similar to this.
Obviously there are a lot of possibilities for what you can do with rig wheels.
We love seeing all the cool ideas that users send us.
I keep a set of them with me and my backpack all the time.
You never know when the opportunity for a cool shot might present itself.
We have a lot more information on rigwheels.com.
Check us out there.
And if you like this stuff, please share, post, tweet it with your friends so we can
keep more cool stuff coming.
