New Zeapon Micro3 Slider & Pons PT Review - Amazing Cinematic Video Machine

foreign [Music] foreign [Music] guys so here's what it looks like when it comes in the box and these are the hardened carrying cases that come with it and these are really well made they you know they're like I said they're hardened so they're not going to like squish on you which is nice and uh this smaller one here is where the motor is so let me just show you what the slider case looks like all right so as we open up the lid there is the slider and it just pulls right out like so and you can see below it there's like another compartment and this is where and it gives you a little diagram so you know how to put them back in which is really nice this is where the support struts are they're in the bottom there which is just awesome so it'll support the unit on a tripod and because it extends so far left and right double distance it really needs these supports to ensure that it doesn't sag you know what I mean and they're really well made good design also comes with an extra belt and some Allen keys in here just a closer look of this strut you can see how it has like a ball head on the top of it and on the bottom it has a clamp that's also flexible you know so it's very easy to clamp it to the legs of the tripod no matter what position it's in all right guys so I got the slider out of the box now and here's what it looks like just to give you a little closer look looking at it from the end here you can see how it has that cool angled design so it's just stronger and uh looking at it from the bottom you can see it has the mounting points it's got a bunch of them here in the middle and then on each side it has the mounting point for that special brace and then these things come out as well these legs which is quite nice but what's cool about this slider is you don't have to use it with the motor so first thing I want to do though I want to bring these legs out and give this thing a little more stability so we're just going to swing these guys out so now this thing's pretty stable now it has fluid in there so it's like dampened with fluid so that's what makes it so smooth and it also has an adjustment here for the fluid so it's like some kind of vacuum design they call it so if you loosen this up all the way and you know just put your hand on the slider so it doesn't slide on the desk you can actually just push this by hand and it's perfectly smooth it's not like one of those friction based sliders where you know when you slide it it's like Herky Jerky like this one's not like that because it has that fluid in there so it just is like butter and you can actually change the speed of it well it's actually the resistance you're not changing the speed it's the resistance so if you raise the resistance to like three for example and now you push it with like x amount of effort it'll go much slower so if I just push like you know a little bit it'll go nice and slow nice and smooth again if I put it back to one and I push with that same effort it's going to go a little bit faster as you can see here now this is also important because uh when you're in the extreme cold for an example the fluid inside is going to get a little bit thicker like the viscosity will change and you might want to lower this if you know in the very cold so another thing worth noting is if you want to use this in like a gravity fed scenario so for example if I put this up at an angle you see how it's just sliding on its own so now if I had a camera there it would slide a little bit faster for the extra weight so you can have this mounted at an angle and just use gravity and the dampener to control the speed so you don't have to get the motor for this so that's really what I wanted to show you in this section you don't need the motor to get perfectly smooth slider footage now and again you don't even have to use your hand if you have it at an angle gravity will feed it so you can get some nice swooping pans with just gravity and no motor if you wanted to now if you want to go uphill of course you're going to have to hoist it or get the motor for that purpose now one other thing I wanted to show you here is uh this thing how it locks so you can turn this to the right and that will lock the slider down so now the slider will not move if you try to move it so this is good for stowing if you need to Stow it you know for travel and things like that but you definitely want to make sure you unlock this when you go to use it because otherwise the motor is going to be straining or you're going to be straining if you're trying to move it yourself you know so this is the motor unit as you can see right here and that's what it looks like you got a bunch of buttons on the one side there and on the other side is where the battery goes now this is the release lever right here for the battery so you can take that battery off like so and that's what it looks like now this battery is the Sony npf 550 style I also have the larger batteries for the other unit which I'll show you in a moment the battery just slides in here like so it's got two little holes on the one side of the battery there you can see so those little holes go into these little pins right here so it just kind of goes in there and then locks into place and then again you have this release lever here to take the battery off if you want to so that's what that's for I also just wanted to note here on the side of the motor you can plug in a PD power source two amps is what's required and then you can run the one motor off of the power supply which is really convenient especially if your battery goes dead on you now what's a really cool design is how it has these dual screws so if you look at it from the top here you can see you have these dual screws and it's so easy to turn on and off this is a really really slick intuitive design you can see here on the top of the slider how it has these two holes and it has these other holes for the pins and if you look at the bottom of the motor you can see the pins and the screws so it just lines up perfectly for you so all you got to do is place that down right there like that now it's loose at the moment of course and then all you need to do is turn these screws like so and and it's just like a matter of doing that or do this to unscrew it so now if you want to unscrew it you just go this way take it off screw it on go this way and that's it so now the motor is locked on there so now we got the motor and the battery on there and I want to show you how this thing works the first thing you're going to want to do is hit the power switch actually you know what I'm going to do I just want to show you this while it's on so I could show it with the overhead rig here so this button here is the power button you hold that button to turn the unit on and off so if you long hold it it'll turn off if you hold it it'll turn on like so this button here if you hold long press this button it'll Flash and that will allow you to move the slider manually with the motor on there that's what this button does so if you want to move the slider manually to set a waypoint for example you just long press that button and it'll flash that will disengage the the motor so you can actually slide this thing manually just going to put that back to how it was now you have your left and right here that's just going to move the slider left move the slider right then up here you have a power meter that will go green if your battery is pretty full it'll actually get yellow if the battery starts to get low just so you know it'll give you an indicator the app also will show you the battery life of all your different Motors depending on how many you're using in your system so another thing that the power button does is it sets the speed and it also sets waypoints so if you just press the power button once you could notice those blue dots that's the speed indicators those blue dots are changing so that's the slowest speed that's medium speed that's fast speed so if you want to set a waypoint you just double click and that'll set a waypoint if you want to clear your waypoints you have to hold left and right at the same time it'll beep like that that will clear your waypoints so now that I just showed you that quickly let me put this back on and I'll show you how it works in practice if I double tap on the left directional the unit is going to go left just like so now if I double tap it again it'll stop or I can just press it and it'll go so if you double tap it it'll go on its own if you just press and hold it'll just go normally now to change the speed you just hit the power button again and now it's in slow speed so you can see how much slower it goes and then if you double tap it'll just keep going on its own so I'm just going to double tap again all right so let's say I want to set a waypoint right here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to double tap the power button and you'll hear a beep hear that so now I'm going to move the slider to a different spot let me just change the speed so it's a little faster and now I'm going to double tap the power button again to set another Waypoint see that so you got the double beep now if we want this to loop back and forth between the waypoints what you got to do is hit the power button and one of the directional buttons so I'm just going to hit the power button and the left button you hear it beep and now it's going to cycle through the two the waypoints from one to the other and you can change the speed by just tapping the power button so if you want to go fast or you want to go super buttery smooth and slow like that now guys you have much more power when you use the app to control this stuff but I just wanted to show you that if you don't want to use the app I don't blame you at all it sucks using apps and stuff like that but you do get a lot more power with this slider if you use the app now to stop that you just hit the power button and one of the directions again and it'll stop and then again to clear the waypoints you just press both left and right and that clears the waypoints all right guys so I did go ahead and buy myself this ponds PT motorized pan head top and this thing goes for about 600 so I did spend my own money on this because I really wanted to try it I've always wanted one of those pan tilt head units for a sliders now zippon did send me this slider so I didn't pay for this slider they sent me the slider and the one motor but that ponds PT unit like I said I bought with my own money just so you're aware now the ponds PT comes with a couple of different parts here it's got this bottom plate which you can see here then it has this part here which goes on top of the bottom plate and it's pretty heavy this thing's got like some weight to it and then there's this part here which goes on the top yeah just spin it on there to work all right so now that we got that tight make sure you cinch that down nice and tight then we can throw this unit on here and it just threads on right on top of that like so and also note this battery here this is the larger battery I'll have a link for this below and it has a release button right here similar to the other battery so this is the larger unit as you can see here it says it's the 960 and it's much fatter it'll just give you much more battery life and I got this power extra one on Amazon pretty affordable and that just snaps on just like the other one does it has the two pins on one side and it just snaps right on there so this arm came separate like so but one end just goes in here and you just tighten it it's very very simple to do here and then this guy here you can see it's got the same Notch right here so that's going to slide onto this notch like so and then it's going to torque down so the pan head also comes with a quick release plate I have on the bottom of the camera right there so this is my a74 so that quick release plate will just slide right into here and it is like an ARCA Swiss style so I'm just gonna slide this on now you are going to want to try to balance this a little bit like where you think the center of mass would be so I'm going to put it like right about there I feel like that's about the center of mass you know as best as it could I really should take this wrist strap off too but I'm just going to put it up top there for now so that's what this looks like when you have it fully set up which is pretty sweet right so I can turn these guys on these motors they have power buttons all right guys so I'm just going to open the Z Pawn lab app here and if I go I already have the app open but if I go back one page here by hitting that arrow on the top left that'll show you the different equipment that is configured so you just got to make sure you have Bluetooth on and you're going to want to connect your slider if you just have the slider if you have the pan head also then you can connect those as well so also on the top right there is an option for firmware upgrades you might have to go in here and do some upgrades it'll prompt you though and here we go so here is what the screen looks like so this is what you got guys you got a joystick you basically got two joysticks you got the pan and zoom on the left side and so that's why I have up down and left and right on the right hand side the joystick looking thing with the green circle as you can see here I'm moving it and the slider is moving you can also do this at the same time so now I'm going up and sliding for example now I'm panning and you can also control your speed for example so I'm just going to leave it like right around 46 for now what's really cool about this is the ability to set the waypoints and you can see how you have a through F on the top there so what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to have your stuff in a position where you want to start all right so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have the camera set in a specific position here so I'm going to aim it at like the monitor that I am using for reference so I got it aimed at the monitor right there so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the a button on the top left to set that Waypoint you just tap that so that's the a waypoint so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to slide the slider over slide it to the left a little bit now I'm going to turn it to the right I'm going to square it up right in the middle there where I want it like so perfect now I'm going to hit the B button for the B way point so now I have both waypoints set so now what you're going to want to do is if you wanted to go from Waypoint to Waypoint back and forth nice and smooth which is what I recommend doing you're going to want to hit this button on the bottom left it looks like two little arrows going in a circle so select that and that will make it so it Loops so this way it Loops when it plays so now I'm going to hit play and here goes the slider so now you can see it's going to go from Waypoint a to Waypoint B and that's absolutely incredible how cool this is the applications that you can use this for are just remarkable I'll show you some sample footage in a second obviously you saw some already but this is so cool isn't it now if that's too slow for you what you can do is you can hit stop then you can drag the speed up put it at like a hundred percent or wherever you want it and then hit play again and now it'll play at a faster speed so depending on what you want to do it's just restarting so it's going to start from the beginning now it's going to restart so it's always going to start from a in your sequence so keep that in mind and now it's just going at a faster speed doing the same thing so I'm just going to hit stop and then on the top right there's a little like reset button it looks like a circle with the arrow I'm going to press that and also on the top right notice how it'll show you how long it's going to take for the slider to complete the sequence that you have programmed in which is another really nice feature so this time what I'm going to do is I'm going to aim it down and I'm going to set this I'm going to go to the right just a little more I'm going to sit this as a so I just tap the a button there then what I'm going to do I'm going to slide it to the left then I'm going to aim it up and that's as fast as it goes when you're using these joysticks by the way you can also use on the pan heads themselves they have arrows so I can control it right here with the arrows on the side of the unit also same thing with the one on the bottom here can do it like either way so it's nice just doing it with the app though if you have it in your hand already so I'm going to set this here and that's going to be my B way point so now I have a and b set once again I have the loop button enabled here on the bottom left I'm just going to hit the play and here we go so now we have a more dramatic amount of movement going on here it works really good I mean it's it's pretty incredible I'm just going to hit stop slow the speed down a little bit all right so now I have the speed on five percent and I'm gonna hit play so it's just going to reset back to a point and now it's going to go nice and slow so you see how slow this is going this is the advantage of using the app because you cannot make it go this slow just using you know the buttons on the unit itself you have to use the app to get it to go like at this speed and this is what's so killer about this I mean you can get such cinematic dramatic footage with a unit like this I mean gosh it's incredible really is all right guys so I have my manfrotto tripod plate mounted to the bottom of the slider and I'm just going to snap that into the top of the ball head there and I'm just going to clamp that down nice and tight and this tripod is pretty strong so it can support this weight no problem now I'm just threading in that strut on the one side loosening the extension arm and now I'm just going to clamp it to the bottom of the tripod leg there and depending on what how you have your tripod set up you're gonna have to you know just figure out where to mount these things but for this basic setup this is where I'm going to mount them now here's the other one I'm just threading it on there quick it's something sometimes it's easier if you leave the top ball head tight and threaded on that way and then I'm just clamping this leg down so now you can see the tripod it's completely set up but it's not the sturdiest due to the legs they're just not wide enough so you have to keep that in mind so I wanted to show you it this way just so you know what not to do I think it would have been fine like that to be honest but you definitely want to make sure that you have you know the weight spread out so there's no way that this unit can flip over because when it's fully loaded with a heavy camera and the pan head you know it could potentially flip if you go all the way to one side or the other all right so now we're in my little uh setup here where I recorded the Frog so this is what it looks like I'm just putting on the uh pan tilt head and I have a set the tripod up nice and wide nice and low so there's going to be no left to right movement and just kind of set the Waypoint so there's the first Waypoint and now I'm going to move this over here and I'm going to just dial it in using the app I'm also checking the focus on the camera making sure that it's focused where I want and now I'm just hitting that looping button so it goes back and forth when it Loops so this way it'll it'll just keep going it won't stop and just double checking the focus and hitting play so there it is so now we have this awesome complicated movement going on while it's sliding left and right and let me just show you what this footage looks like [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] guys so overall I would say that the Z Pawn micro 3 slider system is an excellent value for the dollar I mean when you compare it to other systems that are available you have the Rhino out there for example A lot of people are using that but that thing's like twenty five hundred dollars as you saw the setup here we're looking at about twelve hundred dollars approximately which is what I had total just the slider is a lot cheaper it's like 600 for the slider and the motor just the slider without the motor is less than that so depending on how you build the system will determine what the cost is but again value for dollar I think this is one of the best options out there for sure so one negative to this system however is the size and weight now I got the bigger 700 series so it does have a larger travel distance which is awesome but with that comes the burden of it not fitting in your bag so it comes with the hard cases and stuff but the pan head system those two extra Motors in that angle brace and all that that system didn't come with like a hardened case so I have to like put that in my camera bag and it's like awkward and it's really heavy you know it like has some weight to it so that is a downside if you're you know if you have to Lug this stuff out into the field it's kind of a little bit of a pain but if you're just going to like a real estate location or product photography you know shoot or anything like that or you just have it set up in your studio that's kind of a non-issue but again if you're traveling with it and you're trying to get like you know on the trail mountain bike footage or whatever you're doing you know you have to factor that in because this thing is really heavy uh with the complete system and you also are going to want a sturdy tripod like that manfrotto unit I have at the very least if not like a video tripod with like you know the beefier legs so just keep that in mind as well so one other issue I had was twice the app like wasn't connecting to the equipment it just like wouldn't come up you know what I mean so all I did was close the app and reopen it and then it acquired the equipment so that was a little bit of a negative but I'm so used to apps being finicky like over the years that honestly this one works pretty good the only other thing was occasionally if I tried to drag the speed slider it like wouldn't work so I'd have to like touch it a few times so overall the app worked great and honestly all I need it for is setting the slider speed and setting the waypoints pretty much and then also knowing how long the whole sequence is going to take with that you know with the timer on the top there which is very convenient the app does offer a ton of other features it has like time lapse and all this other stuff panorama mode and stuff like that but those features require you know a shutter release cable and or the zip on trigger mechanism that goes into the hot shoe of the camera and then that will communicate you know when the shutter is you know active and stuff like that so it gets a little bit complicated and I don't have those accessories so I wasn't able to test those more Advanced app features but you know in the future perhaps I definitely plan on using this unit for future videos because it is unbelievable for product photography and stuff so lenses cameras things like that I definitely want to use this for future videos so all right guys so links below the video I appreciate your support and please have a wonderful day okay I'll catch up with you next time take care

Channel: Jason Hermann

Views: 16,312

Keywords: zeapon slider, zeapon micro 3, motorized slider, zeapon micro 3 review, zeapon pons motorized pan head, best slider for video, best camera slider, zeapon micro3, zeapon pons, pons pt, camera slider shots, zeapon micro3 slider, zeapon pan head, zeapon pons pt motorized pan head, motorized slider with pan and tilt, best slider, motorized camera slider, zeapon motorized slider, zeapon micro 3 e700, best camera slider on a budget, zeapon slider micro 3

Id: DBN2YBhlWhU

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023