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Tripod dollies with pneumatic tyres?


Mark Kenfield

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Hey guys and girls,

I'm looking for something fairly specific here. A heavy duty tripod dolly, compatible with Miller HD sticks, but with larger pneumatic tyres that will work outdoors and in a range of environments.

I want it to be able to function like a normal tripod dolly, but I'd also like to be able to pair it with my little Ronin-S gimbal. Mounting the gimbal on top of the tripod head to stabilise quick and nasty dolly moves that I make with the dolly in whatever random environment I encounter.

I've been getting remarkably usable results from simply mounting the Ronin-S (or sometimes a Ronin 2) on my Inovativ cart, and pushing that around. It's a nice, cheap and easy path to get (surprisingly often) usable dolly shots, when I don't have a dolly grip or proper crew around me.

However, pushing a large camera cart around is not a particularly nimble process. And having to pull most of the gear off the cart to do so, is equally painful. So I'd like to give it a try with a tripod dolly - which will give me some degree of height adjustability, and a considerably more elegant rig to push around.

Miller make their 480 Studio Dolly, which is well made (as it should be for the price!) but it just has regular caster wheels on it, which are no good off a perfect studio floor.

Does anyone know of some good pneumatic options that would be compatible with the Miller sticks?

Or any good alternatives for achieving the same sort of thing?

I'm really just looking for something with a reasonably wide wheel base, beefy pneumatic tyres (with brakes), and the ability to adjust the height at which I mount the gimbal.

Cheers,

Mark


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I think you'll run into problems with a 3 wheel dolly on rough terrain-even with pneumatic tires.



probably be ok on cement sidewalks and parking lots but with low boys and an HMI head, using stands with pneumatic wheels, it is still precarious when moving those lights. I can't see it being much different with a camera on a wheeled tripod.

just my thoughts.



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I wonder which is the lower-cost solution in general, pneumatic tyres on boards carefully laid down and levelled, or tracks with wheels that fit. Depends on the situation no doubt. Obviously in a rough, bumpy location tracks would be cheaper I'd say.

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I think you'll run into problems with a 3 wheel dolly on rough terrain-even with pneumatic tires.

 

 

 

probably be ok on cement sidewalks and parking lots but with low boys and an HMI head, using stands with pneumatic wheels, it is still precarious when moving those lights. I can't see it being much different with a camera on a wheeled tripod.

 

just my thoughts.

 

 

It's not a solution for rough terrain obviously, there you'd just handhold the gimbal.

 

I'm just wanting a quick and easy solution that can leverage the gimbal's stabilising abilities to provide smooth moves at a constant (and therefore seemingly more dolly-like) height, over flat, hard surfaces.

 

I imagine you could mount 3 Pneumatic casters to a piece of plywood and then secure the normal tripod sticks to it- to see if it would even function the way you want.

I'm leaning more towards that as the simplest option. I'd probably go with four castors (for stability) two fixed, and two rotating.

 

Possibly just hard mounting a Miller ground spreader to it, would be the way to go.

 

I wonder which is the lower-cost solution in general, pneumatic tyres on boards carefully laid down and levelled, or tracks with wheels that fit. Depends on the situation no doubt. Obviously in a rough, bumpy location tracks would be cheaper I'd say.

I'd never be laying down boards, or expecting to use this on rough terrain. That's what dolly track is for.

 

This is really just for adding stability over flat surfaces - primarily just taking footsteps out of the equation, and keeping the camera height constant.

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