Nothing profound here, just some fun new gear mixing well with some trusty old gear into what for me is a “where have you been all my life” rig.
Pictured here is the Canon 7D with the venerable Canon 50mm f/1.4. It’s sitting on the skeleton of the Redrock Micro “Captain Stubling” rig, handles removed, and slipped into Redrock’s tripod platform plate. That’s sitting on a crusty old Bogen fluid head that I had lying around (the current equivalent in size would probably be the popular Manfrotto 701HDV).
That’s mounted to my new slider rig from Glidetrack. It’s the Glidetrack HD to be specific, and I chose the 1M length, which feels like the right balance of utility and portability for me. I’m more likely to use it for push-ins than for side-to-side motions, and when you’re using it for the “slow creep,” there’s only so long a slider can be before it shows up in your shot. There are a number of terrific options out there for slider rigs, but the Glidetrack was the right choice for me because of its minimal weight and mechanical simplicity.
Hovering above it all on the Noga arm is the Ikan V5600, which is a comparatively inexpensive, lightweight HDMI monitor. It doesn’t have quite the full 720p resolutionthe peaking features of the Marshall V-LCD70P, [CORRECTION, Mitch below pointed out that the Marshal is not 720p—in fact it has a lower resolution than the Ikan!], but it’s still quite usable for focus. The photo above lies in its streamlined simplicity—the power and HDMI cables for the monitor make it quite a bit messier in practice.
Speaking of focus, the Redrock Micro whip makes that a little easier when back-panning on the slider. The whips come in sets of three — shown below is the shortest of the bunch. The build quality on the Redrock whips is very good.
What’s missing obviously is a good set of sticks, or possibly two, to properly support the Glidetrack. I’m still shopping and open to suggestions.
Gear porn shots like these requires bokake, here courtesy of the Canon 50mm f/1.2L on my 5D Mark II, the price of which was recently lowered.
Disclaimer: I contributed to the design of the Redrock Micro Captain Stubling rig, which recently received a glowing review on episode 53 of the always awesome Red Centre podcast.
As always, I am grateful if you shop through any of the above links, or at the ProLost store 7D Cine page!