New Support Rod and Belt

[Chris Harding]

Hi Guys

This is mainly for Pete who has ordered one of the Cine City support rod and waist belt as mine arrived today and it does need a couple of adjustments.

The rail fitting and pin/flexible spring all fit well but like my last rod the tubes are a bit sticky so one does need to give them a quick rub down with 1200 grit water paper abrasive which takes off the high spots and makes them nice and smooth.

The ball joint at the belt is very sticky and not finished off very well ... to fix it I just undid the tiny grub screw and unscrew the ball joint and then take out the ball and give it a good polish again with 1200 paper again. Mine was also screwed down way too tight so when you replace it screw it down until the ball has no play then undo it one full turn so the ball is nice and free and it works great (don't forget to put the grub screw back) The round plastic plate under the ball joint slips into the pouch and as far as I can fathom it rotates as well in the pouch to give more movement ... There is a little strap on top of the pouch with a buckle on it but I have no idea what it does!!! Anyone know ??

I found the belt a bit of an overkill but it's pretty comfy!! I'll shoot with it on my Friday and Saturday weddings and see if any improvements need to be made!

Chris

[Peter Rush]

Cheers for that Chris - mine will take a couple of weeks to arrive - looking forward to using it - I'll post my thoughts when I get my hands on it

Pete

[Don Bloom]

Chris,
Can you post some pics of the various parts and pieces and especially the mounting plate. I'd still like to figure out something for my 700. The only thing I can find is a mounting plate from Cavison and that's about $65 US. Even though 99% of what I'm doing is on tripod (sit down interviews) I want to be like a boy scout and "be prepared" and as I said before my ENG rig by DVTEC won't work on the HM700. In their wisdom, JVC changed the front foot mounting to the camera so I'm stuck as a lot of people were.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Don

Probably easier to just give you the eBay link as they have photos. It seems to need a rail to work (I have one) but you may be able to attach the rail piece they supply to the JVC camera somehow??

Camtree Shoulder RIG ROD Adapter Waist Support FOR Camera Weight Upto 11 LBS | eBay

I dunno how tall you are Pete (I'm 5'10") but I have found that the waist belt needs to become a "bum belt" as the rod really seems too long ... I used to also use the other belt around my backside but I think I would prefer it around my waist (better comfort) Since I have 2 support rods, I'm playing with cutting down the tube lengths and springs to make the whole thing 4" shorter which allows the belt to sit around my belly now but it get complicated cos when you take 4" off the bottom tube you have to cut the spring too and then that affects the top tube which bottoms out on the now shorter tube so that needs to be adjusted too....I think I have it right but will post details after some trials

Chris

[Don Bloom]

Chris, thanks for the link. The rig doesn't look like it will work on my camera so I think
I'm just going to bite the bullet and get the Cavision plate and work it in with the current ENG rig for the rods and whatnot.
Thanks anyway, appreciate it as always.

[Peter Rush]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

I dunno how tall you are Pete (I'm 5'10") but I have found that the waist belt needs to become a "bum belt" as the rod really seems too long ...
Chris

Same height as you Chris so I may need to make them amendments as well - sounds like it's made for a giant!!!

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Pete

I ended up cutting down the lower tube so the belt sits right ..I'll try it out Friday and Saturday before passing on any info but it feels right now. I'll do a more complete assessment on Sunday during recovery time!

Chris

[Dan Eskelson]

Hi Chris,

I just received my CAMTREE Shoulder Rig Support Rod.

The flexible rubber piece that fits at the top of the rod has a threaded shaft just on one end...the other end has an unthreaded rod. If I screw the threaded end into the top of rod, how does one attach the other end to the camera? The unthreaded end of shaft doesn't even slide into holes in camera bottom.

Either I'm missing a piece or am quite mentally handicapped (which could be the case).

Please let me know if you have a solution. Thanks for your time!

Dan

[Chris Harding]

Hey Dan

It should have arrived with the top fitting as well that slides onto your standard rails under the camera. It's a aluminium (black) casting about 3" long and 1/2" wide with two 15mm holes in each end that slide onto your camera rail system and in the middle of the fitting is a single hole that the non-threaded end slips into.

First of all, though, do you have rails under your camera??

Chris

[Dan Eskelson]

Hi Chris,

Yes I received the rod adapter, but don't use rods. I made a quick adaptation yesterday. A 1/4" metal sleeve fit tightly over the smooth shaft and was glued there with epoxy at same time a 1/4"x20 threaded rod was glued into the other end of sleeve. Tried it out this AM and it works great. Never to fully trust glue (even epoxy), I will always have my hand(s) on the camera. See photo.

[Peter Rush]

Well it's arrived and yes Chris - seems just a little long and the top shaft is not nearly as springy smooth as the bottom one - I'll be trying it at a wedding this weekend - my only concern is for the plastic tighteners - I had 2 Lastolite tripods and they used very similar to these - they all had a very limited lifespan :/ very easy to overtighten and then wouldn't work at all!

[Chris Harding]

Hi Dan

That will work fine but how are you attaching it to the camera under the lens hood?? I'm now puzzled. On my old system I had a little aluminium frame under the camera with a ball head fastened to it and the pin slipped into a sleeve in the ball head.

Surely you are not screwing the rod into the camera's tripod thread hole??? That would make the support angle way too steep

Chris

[Chris Harding]

Hi Pete

Yep the plastic connectors are a little cheap but I didn't expect classy ones for that price. My old rod has much the same fittings and I've had that for 5 years already and they are still in one piece. If they did fall to bits Cine City will always mail you spare ones if you ask nicely!

Now, on the support rod. The very first thing you need to do is loosen the fittings and open up the support tubes. remove the springs and wash out all the thick grease that has been put in there. Once that's done get a Stanley knife/box cutter and carefully trim around the plastic end stop in each tube so it's the same diameter as the tube ...I find they foul in the tube. Finally get some 1200 grit wet/dry abrasive and rub down both tubes until they are smooth. Put it all together and THEN try it!!

CineCity have great ideas, great products but very sloppy engineering and tolerances which have to be attended to!!

Chris

[Chris Harding]

Just a little thought here about the support rod.

Mine does work fine and does it's job which is mainly holding up the camera so I'm happy with that.

The smoothness flaw in the whole system is the fact that compression springs are used inside the tube and compression springs never compress really smoothly. All stedicams normally use tension springs which are far more predictable and linear and above all very smooth in operation. I used to have a flycam from the same guys and their single spring arm was a very simple affair that essentially is a square aluminium tube parallelogram with a single (but adjustable) spring going corner to corner so if provides lift to the camera and sled.

I wonder if one could make a simple rectangular frame with a diagonal spring (with tension adjustment) out of say 15mm aluminium square tube and use that instead of the support rod? It would be really smooth and would allow a lot more travel vertically with more even tension too.

It would certainly be a lot more versatile and less "crude" than a compression spring.

Any physics boffins out there care to calculate what size frame/tension spring would be required to do this???

Chris