When I first started making videos for a living back in the late 80s, my video production team used two long, smooth pieces of wood as tracks for the wheeled ‘dolly’ that was attached to the base of our chunky video camera’s tripod. This enabled us to add smooth camera moves to shots, such as dollying forward towards an actor, or tracking (crabbing) left or right to add a bit of motion and life to a static scene. When not in use, we kept the two wooden tracks in a plastic body bag (I’m not sure where my video unit got that from!).
Fast forward to the 21st century, and I’ve just tested a descendant of my primitive 80s camera tracking system - the Andoer L4 Pro. This device is a small, battery-powered camera slider (or as it says in the manual - an ‘autodolly’) that can dolly, track, or pan the attached camera or smartphone - as long as you find a smooth, flat surface for it to drive on. Lots more about that limitation in the Performance section of this review.
