After a bad purchasing experience with a NON-bearing DSLR slider I decided to update my post recommending sliders.

I’m not saying NO to inexpensive sliders but to CHEAP sliders in the sense that they are cheaply made and don’t have good quality control.

I got the above slider in the mail with marked and WORSE – scratched rails! The scratches were deep enough to really feel when you moved the camera plate over that section. You would need some serious sand paper or file to get rid of them. Not something I want to do after spending over $100.

Rails need to be glossy smooth especially with a carriage that uses some kind of pads to slide. Actually, if you got a bearing slider with such poor quality control you would have trouble too.

This is my opinion now:

• If you really want to increase the production value of your video you need a reasonable quality ball or linear bearing slider.
• you may save a couple of hundred dollars on a cheap slider but you will spend a lot of time doing retakes.

Click here for Updated post that includes new slider recommendations.

My mission is to recommend only items that I am happy with and would use.