At the weekend I did a test with an Arri mounting plate. I needed to make sure that I could go from the gunner, to a tripod, to a steadicam seamlessly before some potential jobs.
I have the camera mounted on the DSMC Quick Release Platform Pack with 19mm rails, follow focus and matte box. This is then mounted to the gunner with the red 100mm dovetail plate allowing me to balance the camera fairly perfectly.
The problem came when trying to slide the quick release plate onto the Arri plate used by the steadicam. It went half way on and then jammed. It took a huge amount of effort to remove it, I even considered a hammer! When I managed to remove the platform on the underside there was paint that had been scratched off of the Arri plate. I then tried again with another DSMC Quick Release platform and the same thing happened. Even if I had been able to get the platform on it would have been impossible to use it. There would have been too much friction to allow me to balance the camera precisely on the steadicam.
Has anyone else had this problem or is it just the two quick release platforms that I own that are incompatible?
