Michael Carter
Veteran
We had a thread going for a while regarding Jag35 - I purchased their baseplate and found it was really wobbly - having your gear cantilever out on the rods was really unstable. Thing is, it's a decent idea - if you've used a videocamera rail system, you can't get a follow focus to work with stubby primes. It's something like $140.00, so you can really save some cash over Zacuto or RedRock.
After a long runaround of getting them to ship the right part (they sent me every other piece of the system across a few weeks) I finally got a 2nd tripod-to-rails clamp to steady things up. (They did respond quickly and didn't charge me for parts).
The screw positions on the tripod plate have changed since I purchased mine, so I got out the taps & drills. In the photo below, you'll see two risers from the tripod - the stock unit comes with only one. Bad idea.
Above you can see it with two risers from the tripod plate - this killed the wobble and the rails don't droop towards the front like the stock model. (Note the battery hanging down - more on this below).
Above is another angle - you can see where I chopped a corner off - now I can swap batteries without removing the camera. "Adding" this feature alone is huge for me.
Here's another angle on the cut-off plate - this makes a huge difference, and I wonder if there's a cutout size that would accommodate any popular camera without a battery grip?
Honestly, the whole stacked-risers thing seems like a design dead-end; a solid rail block with about 2" of rod coverage, with a solid block for the camera seems like it would be sturdier. There's no reason to have the camera that high (that I can think of), it just raises the center of gravity. But, for the money, this will see me through for a while.
After a long runaround of getting them to ship the right part (they sent me every other piece of the system across a few weeks) I finally got a 2nd tripod-to-rails clamp to steady things up. (They did respond quickly and didn't charge me for parts).
The screw positions on the tripod plate have changed since I purchased mine, so I got out the taps & drills. In the photo below, you'll see two risers from the tripod - the stock unit comes with only one. Bad idea.
Above you can see it with two risers from the tripod plate - this killed the wobble and the rails don't droop towards the front like the stock model. (Note the battery hanging down - more on this below).
Above is another angle - you can see where I chopped a corner off - now I can swap batteries without removing the camera. "Adding" this feature alone is huge for me.
Here's another angle on the cut-off plate - this makes a huge difference, and I wonder if there's a cutout size that would accommodate any popular camera without a battery grip?
Honestly, the whole stacked-risers thing seems like a design dead-end; a solid rail block with about 2" of rod coverage, with a solid block for the camera seems like it would be sturdier. There's no reason to have the camera that high (that I can think of), it just raises the center of gravity. But, for the money, this will see me through for a while.
