A good portion of my review videos and posts are for Konova products, because I’ve found them to be high quality while still letting filmmakers on a budget like me make good-looking videos.

Recently Konova sent me their Smart Head, which, used together with the Smart Motion Controller, adds panning and tilting to a motion control rig. Motion control is one of the coolest things to happen to time lapse rigs in the past several years and I’m excited to be able to do it too. So let’s take it out of the box.

One confession first: I’ve already opened it, because I wanted to check it out. Everything that came in the box is still here, so it’s still a fair look, I’ve just saved myself the time of cutting it open on camera.

The Case

It comes in a really nice case, which is pretty darn awesome, and there’s an instruction manual in there too, which is always helpful to have.

The case has foam on the top and the bottom to keep everything secure, and the foam has an actual cutout shaped for the Smart Head, so the thing sits in there very snugly. That matters, because this is a high quality piece of equipment.

The Smart Head

It’s heavy. Not overly heavy, but it feels like good quality, like everything on it is strong, either metal or high quality plastic. Which is exactly what you want out of something that’s going to be carrying a camera and moving it slowly for hours.

Next Up

I’m going to do another video very soon reviewing this properly and showing you how you mount it to an existing Konova motion control system, or how you can just put it on a normal tripod and still use it for motion time lapses and video.

That did happen, so if you’re reading this later, here’s the Smart Head setup tutorial and review. And if you want the piece that drives it, I’ve also unboxed the Smart Motion Pan Tilt Controller.

Thanks a lot, and thank you Konova.