Indiesystem Shoulder rig/Follow Focus/Matte Box

Jon Furtado

Jon Furtado

Well-known member
I found this online:

http://indisystem.com/products/areeba_package

Indie system seems to make a decent light weight shoulder rig with an inexpensive follow focus and matte box. Does anyone have any experience with their gear? Seems like you'd be hard pressed to find that much kit for $700. Seems like it's a pretty good value for the cost.

Sure, i'd LOVE to buy a redrock mattebox and follow focus and deluxe and Zacutto shoulder rig. But since i'm going in the hole for an AF100 plus a set of lenses, I'm looking to cut costs where I can and still get by.

I plan on getting better gear in the future if I can get paid! Anyone else feel this way? It seems like everyone just says: Buy the expensive stuff or you'll regret it.
 
I'm very interested in this as well. I really want a baseplate, follow focus and mattebox, but can't afford to spend over a grand on each, let alone one of them. Of course as I get more money I plan to get expensive lenses but serisouly why do matteboxes cost so much?
 
I'm with you. It's hard to get unbiased opinions because theres such a mix of people on here. Whats appropriate for a DP that shoots $100K commercials is certainly outside my price range.
 
I bet its great but I have a basic problem with most of these rigs: the viewfinder is in the back of the camera in all cases except EX models and ENG shoulder cameras. If the line from the shoulder is straight how can you use the viewfinder without getting a bad neck and lots of chiropractic fees? So you would need to work only with the lcd monitor and with closed irises...look at where the viewfinder sits on an ENG camera, now take the rig as the shoulder camera substitute, what do you look at for monitoring/focusing? only the lcd monitor right? the rig must allow you to move the cam to the middle....just my opinion.....
 
I don't know about the shoulder rig, but I'm a previous owner of an IndiFocusPro a few years ago and bought/returned the matte box only a few weeks ago. I was thinking the same thing as far as trying to save some money.

IndiFocusPro: There was a decent amount of play in the gearing, and if there was enough friction on the lens the wheel of the follow focus would spin. Maybe mine was defective or something, but I'm guessing not because it didn't seem like that great of a follow focus. I currently also own a Cinevate Durus (awesome but expensive) and a D|Focus. If you want to save some money, get the D|Focus, For $165 shipped it was an awesome deal for me and I think a steal at that price.

IndiMattePro: Mine was definitely defective, which was the primary reason it went back. However, 2 other issues made me decide to return it for a refund. 1) the matte box moved around a little bit. My concern was that it would move when on the shoulder rig, which would make the filters move in front of the lens, which is not a good thing. It wasn't a result of the defect either. 2) If you want to move the matte box forward or backward on the rods you need to use an allen wrench to loosen it. They give you a thumbscrew to adjust the height, but a allen screw to adjust the location on the rods. To me, that's backwards because you'll adjust the height once and move the matte box a lot. The last thing I want to do is go hunting for or grab the allen wrench to move the matte box.

I do have an IndiRailsPro and don't like that much either. If your tripod plate has a registration pin, the baseplate of the IndiRailsPro likely will not have a hole that the registration pin will fit in. There's a bunch of holes, but they are so small I can't imagine what they'd be used for.

That's just my personal experience with those. Hope it helps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top