DSLR RIG REVIEW

by Sebastian WöberJanuary 23^rd, 2010

Once the DV balancer is setup correctly, you can indeed balance the camera on your shoulder without using your hands, but this doesn’t have a practical use.

A left right balanced rig will help you shoot smoother. That’s a good thing.

If you move, you will eventually always have to use your hands and since there are no handles on this rig your hands will get tired very quickly. As you can see you will have to hold your arms out front at all times and cannot rest them on your hips, as opposed to other setups. We don’t like this, in fact we think it makes this rig quite impossible to use professionally.

As we mentioned in part one of this review. The Chrosziel base plate is not compatible with the Zacuto Z-finder, so we used the LCDVF.

Although the LCDVF is longer than other viewfinders, the rig itself is still bulky enough to touch or squeeze most peoples chin. This is neither pleasant nor a very pretty sight.

There is a chest rest and a waist rest included with the DV balancer. Their purpose is to transfer the camera’s weight to the front part of your body. Since the Chrosziel rig is quite front heavy, there is a lot of force on these rests. We found the chest rest, (the one with the ball at the end) to be very uncomfortable. It really hurts your chest and stomach area.

While the DV balancer might work for DV camcorders we found it impossible to use with this kind of DSLR setup. The waist rest is more comfortable, but still not very enjoyable.

Another downside of this rig, is that you can’t put it down easily. To un-mount you will have to separate the balancer from the base plate first unlike all other rigs we tested.

Chrosziel offers a top handle, which we liked. Unfortunately, you can only use this instead of the balancer since they both access the same quick mount shoe.

The biggest problem we see about this rig is the dangerous rod sticking out the back. You might want to think about getting insurance for this rig. This one can really hurt. Also, you will have half a meter less space behind yourself in all situations. This can considerably affect your concentration while shooting and we suggest Chrosziel address this issue immediately.