El Cheapo shoulder support arrived today

Steve Shovlar

Steve Shovlar

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Phil Bloom recommended a shoulder support over on his blog, and doing a bit of research discovered it for sale on ebay at a bargain £29 inc postage!

I ordered it from the Chinese seller ( who has 99.9 feedback on over 2000 items) and it arrived here in the UK in less than a week. Excellent.

OK now I dind't expect much for the money. Certainly nothing high quality. But I was pleasently supprised. Its made of a very hard plastic and comes with straps.

So I tried to mount the EX 1 onto it and hit the first little snag. The screw comes out through the plate too much and needed to be be shortened. Five minutes and a hacksaw later it was job done.

No instructions come with it but it doesn't take any brain power to work how it goes together. There is a good quality adjustable strap which clips on and goes around the body for extra support, and the support is spring loaded so you adjust it to your size and tighten the screw to keep it at that size.

Tried it out and it completely solves the side to side imbalance of the EX1. With everything in place you can go completely hands free and let your body take the weight.

Now there is a small caveat which I am going to mention. You are placing a £4500 camera on a £29 piece of plastic from China. All that is supporting the camera is a screw supported by brittle plastic. And that is supported by a screw and some more plastic. If one of those gives way, it could happen in a split second and your camera and a piece of the shoulder brace could be smashing against the ground before you can react. This though is easily solveable.

Buy a small adjustable strap, run it through the handle of the EX1 and attach it to the clips on the bracket. If the impossible happened, the camera would just fall a foot or so and dangle without hitting the deck.

Here's one on ebay at the moment.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230225131012

Well worth getting.
 
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i did a drama shoot yesterday, 2/3rd on letus extreme using zacuto rails, 1/3rd clean. When shooting clean I used the above support. Worked very well. Here is a photo showing it in use
 

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Steve Shovlar said:
Buy a small adjustable strap, run it through the handle of the EX1 and attach it to the clips on the bracket. If the impossible happened, the camera would just fall a foot or so and dangle without hitting the deck.
Click to expand...

Whatever support I'm using my camera with, it's also with some sort of strap around my neck :)
 
yes it is. I put a manfrotto base on it and the plate on the camera. Making it easier to take on and off. Also gets past the long screw issue
 
Thanks. I think I'll grab one too. For the price, can't go wrong!


About how long did they take to ship it to you?
 
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Basspig, thats the seller I purchased mine from. I paid on the Friday and it arrived the following saturday morning from Hong Kong. So from KK to the UK in a week is excellent. Well wrapped.

And the seller may be part of your extended family by the look of your name!
 
I bought two Manfrotto 357's (also knows as 3273's) and put one on the "El Cheapo" and one on my fluid head.

This lets me change over quickly from one to the other and also lets me slide the camera forward and back on the El Cheapo.
 
True. We should shut up.

I'd love to see someone copy that design in aluminum or some other lightweight metal.
 
You know what else is nice about the El Cheapo?

The bottom is curved so that you can use it to place the camera on the ground and do reasonably smooth tilts.
 
When you use a device like this do you have camera stabilizer switched on, or off? I would think ON for any handheld shooting with the camera.
 
It's not really necessary to have OIS on because the El Cheapo squeezes pretty tightly to your shoulder. It is a bit smoother with OIS on, but the "shoulder mount" look (solid but a little bit unsteady)is well established and accepted by audiences.

I actually find it disconcerting to have OIS on because it adds an apparent softness or a delay to your operating and makes it harder to pan quickly to an accurate target.
 
got my El cheapo today. It arrived in the mail at the same time as my Vortex Mastering EX1 Dvd. Its xmas . Love this thing. Thanks Phil!
 
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