If you need to shoot a tracking video, you don’t need a fancy camera slider or dolly. You can do a makeshift version in 30 seconds with things in your home: a thick book and a towel.
Just lay the towel on a flat surface, put the book on it, and place your camera on the book. Start recording video and pull your towel slowly. The book acts as a stabiliser for the movement, according to Instructables user Paige Russell.
Russell’s original method replaces the towel with some sort of powder — corn flour, bicarbonate of soda, icing sugar, etc. But that’s bound to be messy. The towel trick, suggested by a commenter at Petapixel, sounds much cleaner.
This is only a quick fix though. If you use a slider regularly, you can build your own with PVC pipes for $US20 or repurpose old skateboard wheels.
30 Second Table Top Dolly [Instructables via Petapixel]
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