The Edelkrone Wing: Compact Smooth Dynamic Video Motion

Those of you who work with video will have heard the name Edelkrone passed around in regards to video and photography equipment, particularly in the compact market that's small in size, easily transportable, and reliable. Recently though they announced the release of their newest piece of gear they call, The Edelkrone Wing, marketed to achieve "perfect camera slides with no rails."

Now when most people think of linear camera movement, they think of things like dollies and sliders to get the job done, even in table top settings, but setting those up can be time consuming. Is this little gizmo going to be the end all for compact professional quality video projects? Probably not, but if you do a large quantity of table top or small scale film projects, this might just be what you need. 

Now as you can see above, the Wing is extremely compact and could easily be stowed away among your other gear for those on the go projects which definitely could prove to to be immensely beneficial. Now if you've watched the video or looked at these photos close enough, you'll notice that at the moment there aren't any real photos of the Wing in it, and that all the images in the video are rendered videos. 

That's because the Wing hasn't been released yet; it's due to release on September 26 of this year. You can however go ahead and purchase your Wing in a preorder for $250 USD shipping from Florida. Now if you've stuck with this article this long it's probably because it looks like a really good deal and you really wanted to get something like this on a smaller scale than what motion control systems are currently running for cost-wise, but there's one more catch that you may or may not have caught in the video.

While the video has shown a lot of smooth, effortless movement of the Wing moving the phone or camera through the scene without assistance from any outside force, the Wing is in fact not motorized. It does have an interior system of essentially pulleys and cables to connect the different sections of the Wing to make them work together and ensure the streamlined movement, but it runs 100% on human power at this point. This could be a good thing or it could render it more difficult to use, only time will tell. What are your thoughts on it? Is the Wing something you would use, or would you wait for it to come out and see what people say? Would you be more interested in a motorized version?