PL Mount Round-Up

S

Steve R

Well-known member
I want to purchase a PL Mount for my AF100 very soon, and was wondering what the consensus was on the respective quality of the available PL mounts.

The mounts I am aware of are the Hot Rod PL ($1,000) and MTF PL ($850) mounts (both with dedicated rod support of the lens/adapter, I believe - which is important to me).

Letus ($480) and Solid Camera ($740) also offer PL mounts, but they must be mounted to their baseplate, which is limiting (I'd like to be able to pick the best baseplate as well).

Are there any others I should be considering? (No cheap eBay / Chinese versions, please).

Has anyone compared the quality of the above-listed PL mounts?

Thanks in advance,

Steve
 
I saw the Solid Camera one the other day and after thinking it looked silly in the pictures I have to say I was totally impressed with it and the baseplate and will be getting it soon.
 
I looked at a bunch and went with the Hot Rod. In fact, Illya spoke with me at length 3 times tO answer all of my questions.
 
Hot-Rod or Denz in my case. In doubt a bit more money spend may save your behind and give you much better dreams.

Came to it through reverse calculation:

Damaged lens - 300 to 2000 $/€ plus time waiting for repair while I can still shoot with camera.

Damaged camera ? to ??? $/€ plus time waiting for repair while I have to rent other camera which is hard when it happens while shooting and team & talent waiting (adding ????? $/€).

Damaged shot ?????? $/€ plus time waiting for another customer.....
 
Last edited:
Mark Smith said:
I have a cieco and just got the letus pl mount for it's adjustability. Both are very solid, but I needed the adjustability of the letus to make my Cooke 20-100 back focus properly.
Click to expand...

The Solid Camera mount uses standard ARRI shims and also provides a centering adjustment for zoom lenses. It can be supported in ultra rigid fashion by our base plate or with iris rods on the base plate of your choosing. With ANY PL mount, it absolutely must be rigid to perform the duty of a lens mount.

Carlos Acosta
Solid Camera, Inc.
Los Angeles
 
I'm back to using the original ciecio7 PL adapter (internally shimable with ARRI shims - if need be) - I played around with rod mounts etc, but there were times when I just wanted to grab the camera and go; no rods, no matte box, no FF etc. But I still wanted the PL mount and camera to be one unit - I'm using PL zooms out front.

So I went out and bought some ⅜" aluminium that's 3" wide, then cut 8" pieces from that. Drilled and tapped holes in the appropriate places; now I have a baseplate that mounts the adapter solidly to the camera. Took an hour and cost less than $6...

IMG_0474.JPG

You can see it sandwiched between the cam and the Zacuto.

G.
 
I'm right there with you, HeavyG. I still use the original Ciecio7 when I want a lightweight rig. Using a long redrock tripod plate it can slide right under the support foot and it gives the camera an internally-supported lightweight rig with no rods, no mattebox, no FF. And to me, that's a lot of the beauty of the AF100 -- it's a small lightweight camera. Once you weigh it down with rails and a mattebox you're giving up some of what's awesome about it. I have the Vocas rig for those times, and there are many of those times, but it's delightful to be able to pop it off of there and use it with a Compact Prime without all that other stuff.
 
I like the letus adapter I bought. For me having a mount that is adjustable without shims is preferable to a pl mount that needs shims. Maybe I developed this aversion to shims because I had a bevel drive Ducati years ago and 50% of the weight of it's motor was shims ...
 
I'm also a cicio7 user

I'm also a cicio7 user

I'm also an original cicio7 pl mount adapter user. I did order a set of shims to get the flange focal distance to be set correctly for my camera+mount combo. I use it with a Zacuto Universal Baseplate v3. HeavyG's idea of getting an aluminum plate made for it is a great one, I'll have to make one for my camera too. I think its decent for the money. Not the best built quality, but it does the trick. If I were buying again I might get something better like a Hotrod, but then again they cost so much more so its a tough call.

Danai
 
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