Testing affordable accessories for RED from AllStar Taiwan

by Sebastian WöberJune 1^st, 2012

It’s important to realize that you have to spend a lot of money on accessories if you want to make your precious RED camera work. A burden many are willing to take for amazing image quality below $20K.

Now would you spend that money on products by a Taiwanese company that has a rather dubious web presence (as seen on the left). Me neither.
Lucky for you they sent us some of their stuff for testing and in conclusion I must say the company with the interesting name AllStar and a strange web address (http://allstar-cine.myweb.hinet.net) sells some good and useful gear.

Many asian companies are in the business of copying gear that exists and selling it at a more affordable price than the original. Not AllStar! The man behind the company is Fan Sheng-Siang and most of his products are unique and innovative.

Their full bundle as seen on the left includes a sophisticated top handle and bridgeplate system that adapts from dovetail to shoulderpad in no time and allows a lot of flexibility due to its gigantic construction. The shoulderpad is one of the softest and most comfortable I have tried. Cool for heavy cameras. That said this is not a lightweight rig.

It’s definitely not Arri grade, not 100% there in terms of ergonomics, but it’s all very rugged and well manufactured with hight quality machining and nice little pro details. At $2550 for the full handheld bundle as seen on the left this is a very interesting deal for people or companies on a budget and those who like AllStar’s designs.

Another very interesting product is the so called
A-Mount. It’s a system that consists of a base that replaces your RED Epic or Scarlet EF or PL mount directly on camera. A-Mount looks like a PL mount but has 3 wings instead of 4.
Now you can put on of their swappable lens adapters onto the A-mount (PL, BNCR, OCT19, Hasselblad) or prepare your (Nikon F, G, M42, Leica R or Contax) photo lenses with the A-mount kits. You will need a kit for each lens, but eventually these lenses will have a rock solid A-mount installed. There is no internal modification to the lenses necessary. No EF mount.

I tested the PL mount adapter. It is very well machined and the PL lenses sit very tightly. Due to its crammed construction going from A-mount to PL mount at the right distance to the sensor the locking mechanism is not as smooth as a direct PL mount. However the lenses sit tightly.

I measured the PL-mount’s opening which is a little too big (54,14mm wide) in comparison to a normal Arri PL opening which has no lens play whatsoever (53,95mm).
You can see there is a difference of roughly 1/10th mm and there’s again about 1/10th mm of play between the A-Mount and the PL adapter itself. When locked the lens sits perfectly tight, but in the worst case it can sit 2-3/10th mm off center.

The A-Mount Base is $180
The PL Adapter is $290
A lens kit is varying around $180 per lens

The original RED PL mount (titanium and has digital connections) is $2,000

So if you’re looking for affordable, well made gear for your Scarlet-X AllStar might be your choice. If you need Arri or original RED grade accessories AllStar might not get you 100% there.

Order via e-mail found on their website: http://allstar-cine.myweb.hinet.net

Here are some of their cool description videos so you can get a better picture of how their gear works: