Newbie to setting up a rig here. I'm a commercial stills photographer serving advertising, editorial and corporate clients. Up to now I've mostly directed and produced shoots with crew, so haven't needed to setup my own kits. But that's changing, so I'm putting together the beginnings of a kit to shoot smaller - meaning very budget conscious and destined for the web - pieces for clients. I'll be using, for the moment at least, Canon 5D IV and Fuji XT-3 cameras. My subjects will be a bit varied, I shoot everything from people, portraits and lifestyle, to documentary work on food production and interior design. But for this more solo video work I'll be keeping movements simple and clean. As a stills photographer the best skill I have has more to do with composition of a frame rather than in camera movements, so when moving the camera, I feel I need very smooth, simple and clean moves. For this type of work I'll often be shooting from a distance or with wider lenses as an observer rather than in the middle of the action. I'll be shooting on sticks mixed with some slider work.
I just purchased the flat mounting Manfrotto Nitrotech 608 to go on stills tripods I already own, but as I've been looking at videos on setting it up, I've seen a number of people rating the 75 mm bowl E-Image GH06 at this price point over the Manfrotto. From what I've read and seen, the advantage of the GH06 is that at full tension it gives a very smooth pan and tilt, one reviewers claim is far superior to what's achievable with the Manfrotto. That seems quite important to me, especially when shooting interiors and portraits. But if the other main platform for my camera will be a slider, I'm concerned a bowl head will be harder to use, even with an adaptor like the Ikan IK-RSR6 Hi Hat, a 6" riser. It feels to me that using an adaptor like the hi hat makes the entire setup talle and top heavy, introducing unwanted camera sway on a slider. And of course I'd need to purchase a video tripod with a bowl for the GH06 as all my tripods are for stills so flat tops, which adds to the expense on what I need, at the moment, to be a budget conscious starting setup.
How much of an issue do you think this would be?
Are there better solutions? I haven't purchased a slider yet and wondering if it might be better to rent a fully motorized one and then simply use a stills tripod head and letting the motorized slider do any panning work or not pan at all on the slider?
Thanks!