Pimping the Camera Pt 1.

Why we all hate DSLR's. They're great for taking pictures but not purpose built for movie making so we have to add all sorts of expensive accessories to create "Frankencamera". After the whole process, sometimes you end up with something that looks a cross between a porcupine and the Tin Man. Often just as functional.


Our cameras had to to pimped to handle five days a week, ten hours a day for six months. No small order.  So I researched the plethora of DSLR cages, baseplates and custom rigs and more often than not, found them lacking one way or the other for pro use. Just about every cage out there, makes the whole enterprise so much  bigger than the camera body itself that it negates much of the fun of having a small camera. Zacuto's cage despite being expensive as all get out, lacks the numerous mounting points you need for accessories. Also, what I really hate about their accessories are the lack of ratcheting knobs. While this may seem minor at first glance, when you begin to mount follow foci, lens braces, monitors, etc, you need every millimeter of room you can get. Non ratcheting knobs constantly butt up against other toys and end up making your fingertips raw in order to crank down on them, especially in cold weather. Next up was Viewfactor, Letus and Cinevate Cages. Again all of them lacked certain vital features. First, they were all considerably bigger than our puny GH2 camera body. Viewfactor, though well designed, I wasn't about to toss money towards a company at that failed to deliver on their follow focus while holding people's money - for over three years! 


Cinevate, although they had QC issues in the past, they now use rock solid RAM mount parts for their cages. Still I wanted more 1/4" and 3/8" mounting points - like what you get from a cheese plate. Now the new Letus cages are much closer to what I had in mind. Milled from a solid block of aluminum, numerous points,  and a decent (non Arri) price point. Unfortunately, they were more purpose build for Canon bodies and not Lumix. 


Enter REWO. Who? They're a German company that makes their bread and butter with those uber high tech Porsche Cayenne Car / Crane rigs. That's big money high end support gear. But as filmmakers, the owners have an obsession with small cameras and channel that passion into making cages custom built per camera design. They're the only ones that make a cage purpose built for the GH2. It's a work of art. Small, simple and versatile. At about 600 bucks, the price is right. Also, I have a weakness for all camera things German. Unlike this country where quality takes a back seat to shareholder concerns, German products by and large, as they cannot compete with the world on cheap labor just go all out and try to crush the competition in quality and design, labor be damned. The only US exception to this Teutonic approach is perhaps O'Connor who remain unrivaled in the tripod world. 

So we ordered two REWO cages at 600 a pop. Now I'm thinking that's cheap for German film gear. Could they've gone the China route? So we waited about a month and literally three days before production, they arrive. Work of art. As you can see from the pic, the cage is barely bigger than the body. The distance of rods to lens axis matches with all standard matteboxes. 1/4" and 3/8" points all around. And ratcheting knobs! They also machined access points to get to your buttons, knobs, batteries and cards. 


Downside? Yes. When we mounted it on the baseplate of our Miller 25 heads, the platform of the baseplate made access to our Oct 19 lens mount support impossible to get too. So to slide away from the plateform, we added a Manfrotto quick release dovetail baseplate to the bottom. No problem. Complete access. However, Rewo's 1/4" and 3/8" baseplate threads are too close together allowing us only to use one thread / one screw to attach to the Manfrotto plate. So we have to crank down on the screw with all our might and pray not to get slippage. We do anyway so have to be careful to lift the camera by the tripod head not the cage. Mild pain in the ass. The solution will be for me to have a machinist drill an extra 1/4" thread far enough away from the 3/8" so we can use two screws. Will do this in the coming weeks. 


Otherwise, for the Lumix, this cage destroys the competition. Smaller, lighter, more versatile and built like a Panzer. Heil Rewo!


Next installment: Hand held rigs, follow focus, etc.