DSLR RIG REVIEW

by Sebastian WöberJanuary 23^rd, 2010

What we found very convenient, was that the gear can be swapped to the other side of the unit, as mentioned before this is practical when there is little space. You don’t need any accessories to do this and it can be done very quickly by twisting a red screw with your fingers and securely locking it on the other side.

Another feature the Vocas follow focus offers is a hard stop range of 370 degrees, or 180 degrees of rotation. The hard stop range can’t be adjusted, as on the Arri unit.
Bas Ladru from Vocas put it aptly when he said:
“…Designed for professional film and video lenses, and for those lenses this limit range is usually enough. But for photo lenses with a very limited focus ring rotation (30 degrees is no exception) our rotation limit might be too much. This means that you can only use the hard stop at the infinity end of the focus range, and be very careful not to rotate the follow focus past the MOD distance, otherwise you will lose your calibration.”

This follow focus might be a little to small for hardcore camera assistants, a bigger knob with a wider marking disc, is a little more up to the task of performing difficult handheld focus pulls.

This follow focus has weaknesses, but we like it for it’s compact design and quality.

We liked the Vocas matte box a lot. It is very lightweight (300 grams) and sill rugged enough for a matte box. You wouldn’t want to sit on it, but it feels like it could bear some abuse.

After it’s weight, the second thing you notice is the front filter tray. It’s good for 4×4 filters and it allows for a very quick insert/removal of the glass. We haven’t seen this design before, and we think it’s very awesome. It even allows two people to work two filters at the same time, since the second filter tray is in the usual filter stage, accessible and rotatable from the top.

Donuts or adapters get locked in with another, with one of those neat clips. The strength of the clip can be adjusted. This is done by opening it and twisting it into the locking or loosening direction.

There are two additional hot shoe mounts. One at the top, the other is at the bottom of the unit. You can use these to mount a dedicated French Flag. We didn’t have that one available for testing.

The grey matte material this matte box is made-of, cancels out most light but also reflects a small portion since it is not entirely black. We tested weather this could be a problem: With an 11mm lens at 2.8 and ISO 6400 in complete darkness, with a flashlight pointed at several parts of the matte box that could reflect into the lens. This test resulted in no flare at all, so the matte box surface does a perfect job of cancelling out light.

We really like this matte box. It’s lightweight, it’s simple, extremely fast, is high quality and has a good price. It’s cheaper than the Genus matte box, which we didn’t recommend.