Like everything else, sliders are a compromise: too big and bulky and you may as well hire 3 people to lay down tracks; too light and small and you can't put a decent camera on it; too complicated to set up and you lose 20 minutes of talent.

We've settled on the edelkrone Sliderplus series, and we're starting with the medium, which can hold a whopping 30 pounds. That's a tripod head, a Red Epic, an angenieux zoom, a mattebox, a follow focus, a teradek and a pix240, all at once. We'll add some more bits and bobs (like the Target Module, Action Module and maybe the Large and XL sliders), but we're starting with what we've tested to work: a small, light slider than can punch well above it's weight.

Movement caps out on the Medium at 19", which is more than enough to give exactly what you want in a compact slider: the FEELING of movement, not 6' of cumbersome movement that ends up getting edited down to 2 decent feet anyways.

We threw it on a 100mm halfbowl so that you can put it directly on sticks and throw a head on with a twist of a coin. When you're done and moving onto the next location, you can just lock it and throw it in your backpack and keep going—no messy breakdown or figuring out how to fit 5' of steel into the back of a crown vic cab.

• Maxiumum Slide: 19.2" • Maximum Weight: 30 Pounds • Included half-bowl size: 100mm

• Edelkrone SliderPlus Pro Medium Slider • Manfrotto 100mm Half Bowl