Outside of looking cool, and recognizing the lens flare issue, I've never really understood the cost/benefit ratio of buying a mattebox. Nonetheless, since most 35mm camera lenses come with a hood, or can take a rather inexpensive aftermarket hood, would those eliminate most of the value of a mattebox?

Now when I think about the greatest photographs of all time I actually don`t quite associate those with ultimate light control trough frenchflagged and side winged mattebox, lens hood (inc bellows hood) for sure but ...

In the other hand matteboxes can speed up the production in certain ways like all the filters can remain in the mattebox while changeing lens on the set, no unscrewing or double filter sets, slide-in slide-out filters etc.
Also only matteboxes and Cokin filter holders enable the use of gradual filters for example.

One more thing comes to mind, cinema and broadcast lenses are much bigger in diametre (starting at typically 85mm) than 35mm still photography lenses (82mm max diameter) so it makes perfect sense to use a $2000 mattebox with cine primes costing about $100000 a set.

And be sure not to buy those copied-in-India matteboxes those are waste of money. Look on the net other than eBay, the prices have come down quite a bit and you can get a 4x4 mattebox for about $500 that could accept cheaper Cokin Z-Pro system filters. Also be sure that is has at least one rotating stage and one fixed filter stage therefore you can use a grad filter and polarizer effortlessly. Better jet if both stages rotate independently but haven`t seen those for as cheap. Oh, one more thing Be sure you buy HD compatible (or photography) filters as some of the gradual cine filters show the grain in the grad, specially Cavision`s.

Cheers,
T

Thanks Toenis.