First impressions, a well-built and strong rail.
This XILETU LCB-16M portable slider is more than capable of holding a full-frame DSLR/Mirrorless camera and a 100mm F2.8 macro lens. I tested the rail with a full-frame Canon 5DsR camera and three different lenses, including a couple of flash setups.
The three lenses that I tested the rail with were:
Canon MPE65mm lens
Canon RF 100mm F2.8 macro lens
Canon EF 180mm F3.5 macro lens
Plus dual arms with Godox MF12 flash attached.
A Canon EX600RT is mounted on a hot shoe on top of the camera.
The rail has two mounting points. On the bottom, it has an arca swiss plate that will fit any arca swiss mount tripod. On the top of the rail, it has a large screw wheel (see images below) with a normal camera mounting screw thread.
I found it works best to mount the camera or tripod lens collar to the rail using the large screw wheel. The design of the screw bolt does make it easy to mount to a lens tripod collar or to the bottom of the camera to the rail, and then an arca swiss mounting bracket on the bottom for mounting to a tripod.
When I used the rail, I didn't find the camera moving or rotating while on the rail. The large screw wheel does make it easy to quickly attach and remove the camera or lens from the rail. To be honest probably just as quick as a quick release plate (as, after all, a lot of arca swiss quick release plates, you still have to tighten them).
Undoing the large screw thread was a little more difficult, though; if you had tightened it too tight, it was quite tricky to get a good grip to undo the screw.
The bright red colouration on the rail is a nice touch, does allow it to be quick to spot and is a nice change from all the plain black rails. Although it does not offer anything special other than being a red colour :) But it does look neat with a Canon EF or RF lens on top of it with the red ring around the end of the lens. Style and colour are important these days, well, so it seems anyway.
This rail is clearly designed to be used on arca swiss mount compatible tripod. However, you can still mount it to a normal tripod using the screw thread of a tripod or tripod plate. The rail has a very fine rotation movement when using one of the small twist knobs at either end of the rail. One end of the rail has a slightly larger twist knob (larger twist knob on the left < in the image below). Both twist knobs have a good grip and give very fine movement. This, in turn, does allow for brilliant control over fine focus when working with higher magnifications such as the likes of 2:1 or 3:1. This rail is mainly designed for really close-up work, "micro photos" higher than 1:1 magnification, where fine movement is very important for achieving focus, as the higher the magnification you go, the less depth of field you have to work with.
In my case, I used the rail a lot for focus stacking at higher magnifications, such as the likes of 3:1 (focusing stacking is taking a number of images at slightly different focus and then combining them all together to create a photo with more depth of field). I found that this rail worked brilliantly for my 3:1 photographs. So it is perfect for anyone working above 1:1 magnification, above in terms of higher magnification, eg 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, etc., so it is really a perfect combo with a Canon MP-E65 F2.8 Macro Lens or Laowa 25mm f2.5 2.5-5X Ultra Macro Lens
At 5:1x lifesize, you really need to let the camera settle before taking the next shot, so it can be a long and slow photographing process. (add image here) I found this rail is best when shooting indoors or in a controlled environment.
Outside I found the rail to be more of a hassle, particularly when using lower magnification lenses like the 100mm macro lens. When trying to achieve very fine focus on certain parts of a flower outside, I found the slight breeze would move the subject too much to achieve fine focus or focus stacking.
Quite simply, the increments of this rail are too fine a movement for focus stacking with a 100mm macro lens. I ended up reverting to what I am used to, which is handheld focus stacking. So on that note, with lower magnification lenses, this rail gives too fine a movement and is slow to move.
Something to be aware of when choosing a macro rail for certain subjects. That being said, it does give an extra 10-15cm reach, which can be very useful if you have a tripod where the central column can not move or does not exist. Overall this is a well-built macro rail, but it seems to be aimed at people with very specific photos in mind that require higher than 1:1 magnification. Higher than 1:1 magnification image of the outside of rock melon.
The photo was taken at 2:1 magnification using the XILETU LCB-16M Portable Slider.
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