DSLR RIG REVIEW

by Sebastian WöberJanuary 23^rd, 2010

Unfortunately, the screws pierced the rubber of our lens. We didn’t like that. But we might have screwed it on too hard. This rig keeps making us do things wrong.

When we later tried the follow focus, we realized the screws we chose were too long and wouldn’t allow the follow focus to fully attach. One more wrong. We had to do the whole process again.

The follow focus is really rugged, unlike the rest of the rig. Cinevate also gives a lifetime warranty for this unit. We like that very much.

It is also the heaviest follow focus in the test, at about 500 grams. The Arri and Redrock were about 400g at second place.

The gear runs smoothly, but not as smooth, or as fluid, as the Arri.

The focus knob is very large and heavy, thus making it a little clumsy. It’s weight also sets loose a centrifugal force that will make it harder to quickly and accurately focus to a certain point. A more lightweight knob can be controlled better.

The whole gearbox is so wide, we can’t get the follow focus drive gear onto our Redrock lens gear, we attached earlier. We could have either used a Cinevate lens gear, but it sticks out at the front of our lens, so we can’t use the matte box, or mount the follow focus gear in reverse.

It is possible to mount the follow focus gear in reverse. You need an “L” wrench and have to unlock 4 screws, then you can flip the whole unit 180 degrees and mount the 4 screws again. In the advertisement on the Cinevate site Dennis says, it will take several minutes. Since it took us more than an hour to get this far, we could spare the minutes to set this rig up, but when you’re in an active shooting situation you usually don’t want to spend minutes to adjust the follow focus to a lens. Here is the video by Dennis where he does a review of his products. We’re very sorry that we’re not as excited about his gear as he is.

Unfortunately, when we change the follow focus gear to the other side, we can’t use the matte box anymore, since the follow focus would be too wide on the other side, and block the mattebox.

Dennis Wood from Cinevate commented on this issue:
“It’s worthy to note that we’re investing in a new mold so there will be two gear sizes from Cinevate as of month’s end.”

We’re looking forward to those.