@Psyco : I agree with you a lot, but the thing is that you cannot compete with the Chinese prices.... OK, American gear is expensive, but if I would like someone to build simple parts like rail blocks, I would pay at least three times as much as I can get it from ebay (even with shipping, etc)...

You simply cannot compete with mass produced parts in regards of price...

I don't want to start a new thread...so I'm just posting it here (please let me know if thats ok @brain ):

After...uhg, I think 3 or 4 years from the first idea of making my own rig to a working "prototype", its time to share some pics.

The location (thanks to my grandma, for letting me piss of all her neighbours with very loud noise every saturday for 2 years;-):

Drilling and milling machine, some tools. All parts are cut from solid aluminium blocks. No CNC, no lathe :-(

Half assembled rig:

From left to right: Cinematics mattebox, lens support, railsupport, camera mounting plate, Cinematics battery pinch w/o hdmi (modified: added a step down converter inside and a plug to directly power the GH2 with 9V). All sitting on a fancier tripod with fluid head.

The Beasts:

Olympus 14-35 F2.0 (right) and 35-100 F2.0 (left) with gears. The white plastic gear disk is 120mm in diameter and can easily be milled to fit the focus ring (there is some foam rubber in between to dampen vibrations and to make the gears removable).

Not in the picture: GH2, wireless hdmi transmitter w/ hdmi splitter, DP1x 10" monitor with cinematics hood.

Still to be made: stepper motor box to drive the focus ring, motor controll via the USB back channel of the wireless hdmi transmitter (thats going to be a nasty one!), very strong clamp to get the 10" monitor mounted to the rig. Getting carbon tubes. Painting everything black when finished.

This is all only stage one, as the rig is designed to be the upper part of a steadycam system (battery and monitor will move to the lower part of the system). I'm very close to stage two, but I can't wait,....want to start shooting ;-)

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One word on the design of rail systems. The clamps, baseplates, rails supports,... you can buy are not bad, they are a JOKE! Especially for the price they are asking. There is NO technical design behind it, its just blocks with holes. I can do one of those in about 10min without a CNC milling machine. Thats like selling you a planc with 4 stone wheels, calling it "pro", "dslr",... and charging $10000000. There is a reason behind industrial design - and that divides BS from good products.

My railsystem with support and all clamps is only 20mm high (15mm rods), all parts can go in between others to save space and make more combinations possible, it weights halfe of a "normal" rig but is as strong...and I had only some basic training on how to work with metal parts and how to design them. I'm neither professional in this field, nor do I have the machines you normally need for such a job. But to overcome my "amateur" limitations, e.g. I made a 3D modell of one of the most complex and important parts in Cinema4D, animated it (rotating) and made a stereoscopic red/green video to judge if it will be strong enough (I couldn't be bothered getting into calculating its stability). If you think about it, its quiet an effort for a DIY project....but thats industrial standart.

So, next time you need a clamp, don't order from one of this over priced "pro dslr companys", just ask around your neighberhood for a skilled metalworker. He will need a good drawing and some explanation, but can do those things for you for half the price (and no shipping cost).

(I don't blame those chinese manufacturers, as they usually only copy the design. I'm talking about thoses European/American companys that are getting quiet wealthy...they can even afford big marketing events like "shoot outs" :-P

Hey, guys! Thanks for the replies! Of course we are not using always the camera like this. This photo for our rental part, because it shows everything on it.

In this configuration it is very heavy, but some guys need these things, because they are accustomed to this. especially big production teams who r shooting commercials.

When we use it, we always customize it to our needs.

kronstadt: We reconfigure it, when we going to use it with steadycam, here you can see a video:

WOW... that rig is mighty huge. So far I've spotted black, green, blue and red color knobs ;) How much did your rig cost?

Is it practical in run and gun situations? Can you put it on your steadicam?

My rig, which is mostly DIY has cost me around £150 (including quick releases and follow focus), but I've designed it to be very minimalist (i.e. portable and light), but at the same time multi-functional. I'll post pics when I complete the remaining parts.

^ exactly, the rig won't enhance image quality, at best it's useful to hold a monitor or quickly replace filters. But the main point is to give your camera a "professional" look, which is essential when working in specific circumstances. Once i almost got arrested by the cops, but was saved because i was holding a sony FX 1, and another person had a mic boom.

We had to film a fiction shooting scene (hitman in a car tries to kill another guy in another car, but the other guy manages to kill the hitman), we did this on an empty industrial area (sunday). It was amateur almost semi-pro. The director had informed his aunt, who is a member of the city council, and gotten her permission, plus a supervisor for half the day. But these idiots from the city council had forgotten to notify the local police. So witnesses saw and heard the shooting (we used blank bullets, which rendered the sound of the shooting scene useless), so they called the police, which arrived with 3 cars (no siren, they tried to take us by surprise). From afar, they saw the hitman on the ground, and were calling an ambulance, when they saw me holding the camera, and then they understood, calmed down, smiled, just took note of our identities and left.

Without the obvious camera, this could have turned ugly, you never know how stressed people can react. I don't think a GH2 can have the same impact, to them it's just a photo camera.

A camera will last 2 years, a rig much more than that. The small size can be inconvenient, it really depends on the situation. If you go out alone to shoot your son or the flowers in your garden, it would be ridiculous. If you're shooting a short film or anything close to professional, It can be of great help for many reasons : The steadiness, the monitor, the FF, the filters, the look (trust of the team),...

looks impressive, but what I am asking myself: do you really need all these mounts? You buy a small handy camera with great image quality and tur it into a big bulky thing.