DSLR RIG REVIEW

by Sebastian WöberJanuary 23^rd, 2010

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As of now this follow focus isn’t compatible with small lenses on a DSLR, because it is too wide for small setups, but there might be a solution soon, when the new gear rings arrive. We’ll have to wait and see.

This follow focus only attaches to one of your two rails. You can articulate it by twisting the knob part, but you need a lot of force. You can open some “L” wrench screws a little to make this movement easier, but you will lose stability in return, and would then have to close them again.

We did like that the marking needle was very easily adjustable, just by the twist of a knob.

Cinevate says they even have hard stop markers for sale that you can add afterwards, like the Arri follow focus. These are good when you have a lens that doesn’t have a hard stop at either side of their focus range, so your marking points don’t get messed up. On the Cinevate homepage they say, “Just pop off the marker ring, attach the hard stop and shoot.” Are we getting this right? You can only use a hard stop when the marking disc is off? We don’t think there is a point in using a hard stop without a marking disc, because a hard stop is a tool to keep marked focus points consistent. They work in tandem with each other.

Unfortunately Cinevate didn’t supply such a hard stop marker to us, so we’ll probably never find out for sure weather our assumption is right.

The marking disc is a little too thin for our tastes. A thin marking disc makes it harder to actually, mark. What we liked, was that it is mounted with two magnets, so it will always stay in place, and allows for a quick mount, and dismount. Unfortunately we didn’t find additional marking discs on the Cinevate homepage, probably they are available, and you’ll have to contact sales, much like on the Redrock site.

The Cinevate matte box is much smaller, but has the same weight as the large and heavy Arri matte box. It has a swing away system, that makes the matte box open like a door, to make the lens accessible.

The “door” is locked down with a magnet. Unfortunately, this magnet is not very strong and can accidentally open on a shaky handheld camera very easily. We see that as a big problem.

Quality is very poor on this matte box.

There are two 4×4 filter trays that rotate as one.

When we tested how well the matte box cancelled out the light, we realized that some of the metal parts inside the matte box although painted black, had a reflective surface and caused some flare, as you can see in the picture. We tested this with a 11mm lens at 2.8 and ISO 6400 in complete darkness, with a Mini Mag lite flashlight pointed at several parts of the matte box:

Although this is an effect that might only appear when sunlight goes deep into the mattebox, we still feel that this shouldn’t happen. It is the purpose of a matte box, to cancel flares. In many sitautions you will be able to shoot without a matte box to get a flare-less image, but in those situations, the Cinevate matte box may not be as safe as others.