Blade Mantis super light hand held setup

[Maicol_Borghetti]

Hello guys I want to share with you my set up for hand held shot
a friend of mine work with carbon and composite material and we design toghether this setup.
the blade mantis is in full carbon and is super rigid and very light

http://www.maicolborghetti.com/files/blade/1.jpg
http://www.maicolborghetti.com/files/blade/2.jpg
http://www.maicolborghetti.com/files/blade/3.jpg
http://www.maicolborghetti.com/files/blade/4.jpg

comments are welcome!
Maicol

[Paul Nordin]

Looks OK, although I like slightly longer handles.

You might want to revisit the product name though. It's pretty derivative, ripping off of the E.T. Mantis, and the Action Products Blade; both handheld rigs.

[Maicol_Borghetti]

The name is just a code name becouse my friend produce since 1980 custom boards for windsurf and kitesurf and his company name is blade, mantis is just becouse when we figure out the rig we found it similar to an insect :) in any case this is not a produtc or a serial production, this is just a single custom work for my red one, of course if anyone need a similar job my friend can do it.

[Jaakko Rinne]

Why is it centered on the sticks? Looks really uncomfortable to hold.

[Maicol_Borghetti]

as I say this is a custom build designed to fit to the operator, in this case to me, I tried severa hand held setup with adjustable alluminium rig
and I prefer this mode. Also you can put your monitor to the left or right and the camera to the left or right shoulder :)

[Joey R.]

Maicol,

You have a very nice design indeed. As Paul already noted, I too (being part of the original ET side and now 3ality Technica side) HIGHLY recommend you do NOT use the word "Mantis" when naming your competing hand-held offering. I would hate to see things go south quick just because you couldn't pick a better name for it.

Joey

[Ned Wilson]

Carbon fiber is cool in terms of weight but you really should consider making the width offset (wider on the leftside and just about even with the camera on the right). With you current design, my arms are not directly in front of my shoulders, making it less efficient in terms of transferring my body's strength to support. With an offset design they are. Until they put eyepieces in the middle, nothing other than an offset handheld makes sense. Wooden Camera got it right. You may want to look at their design.

Also, you need some kind of angle adjustment for the handgrips if you want pros to buy it.

[Maicol_Borghetti]

about the offset and angle settings we have the simple idea to do the stick separate from the part that go under the camera (2 pieces)
so you can disassemple the rig to trasport better and set handle angle and offset as you want.
but again keep in mind that this is "my rig" so I really like it. I try to explain:
you don't have the hand in front of shoulder but you have the camera weigth the same to the left or right handle and consider that usually I do the focus myself using the rig with just one hand (the right one)
and this is better for me, If I have the rig moved asymmetrically to the left shoulder when I operatate just with the right hand would be very unbalanced....
please come to try it! anyway the best caratteristic that I found out is the rigidity.. its awesome, very very responsive, I assure that you feel the difference from an alluminium rig.
Maicol

[Ned Wilson]

Actually, when you pull with your left hand, it seems the rig would be better supported with your right hand closer to the camera axis instead way out to the side. Less leverage. Take a look at news style ENG cameras. All of them balance far better than any Epic rig for a few reasons: weight is in the back, eyepiece is as far forward as possible and support hand is just right of the lens. Or take a look at an Aaton. No need for any over engineered rig - just one handle to the side (close to the lens).

When I look at your rig, the moment you let go and use your left hand to pull or zoom, that's a lot of torque on your right with that outrigger design. As you said, you often use "just one hand". Wouldn't it make sense to have that hand close or under the camera. I just finished a month of all handheld on an SR 3 with the classic Arri "Bull Horn" grips. Since we had very long takes and I often would pull or "correct" focus, I ended up losing the right grip and actually just grabbing the 15mm rods with my right and using the left grip for stability.

I figured if you post here you'd welcome some design feedback.

[Maicol_Borghetti]

Hello Ned your advice are welcome
In my experience if you want to walk o run with a camera is better a larger off axis setup. with that large setup you can use a little force to stabilize the camera, if your hand are close to the camera you need a very hi force and every little movement can roll the camera over is axis. this is true for a very heavy camera like the red one
I don't know if the ENG cameras weight as the red one. but red one with the hand over the lens will be very unstable. anyway that just my experience
I remember the time when we worked with the xl1 canon cameras and no problem with hand over the lens, but the xl1 is very very light.
Maicol