I really fucking love your rig - I just thought I would bitch and moan about the price of gear for the millionth time ;-)
I'm still trying to figure out what works best for me. I have a tripod, monopod (which i love) - now I'm looking into cage/shoulder mount. I may go with your set up after all.
BTW - how does the rig feel when you have the cage with the chest pad shooting handheld?
Ok saw this at the Apeture booth at the exhibition today. However it was in a glass case and they wouldn't take it out for inspection. Supposedly it will be available for sale here in a day or two for about 40USD. My suggestion is for anyone planning on buying from fleabay wait a bit for me to get one here and review it. Didnt look so good close up but we shall see I guess being the guinea pig for 40 bucks is OK. Stay tuned.
Re: "Note. Contact seller and mention this site name and you'll get DHL shipping worldwide for free."
This was not the case when I ordered. The seller said he did not receive the email in time (?) and that it would take an estimated 4 days to arrive here. After 10 days, I contacted him again and was told that it was important to mention this site in order to have received DHL shipping (!) - and that it was shipped out on the 29th and takes a week to arrive (?). The Canada Post tracking number provided no information until today, when a backdated message appeared saying, "Item Delayed - Temporary volume surge as we resume operations." Based on my experience so far, I can not recommend buying from this seller.
@brianluce As far as I can tell talking to video gear producers in China, worst idea today is to start busness with goal of making budget or middle level gear in USA. As many players are coming and are coming very seriously.
Similar approach. :-) This cage is ok, but not really good (you can't slide top handle, for example, so balance could be problem). Same for matte box, good Chinese ones are much better. Better look at carbon rods in separate topic, good camera support plate and Chinese C mount things with good top handle.
Ok thanks. I will look into that stuff, I had not taken the handle into account, so I see your point there. Ill have to check out the other topic and look into just starting the rig with a plate and some carbon rods and then buying the pieces, as I can afford them, 1 at a time.
Not to drag this on further...but this "Wondlan" stuff looks like nice alternative to Redrock and the quality appears much better than the proaim stuff. I am thinking this may be a better route for me to build my rig.
I wrote directly to Aputure to ask about the V2 and V3. This is their reply: "Thank you for your interests in our products. But I am so sorry that because of the raw material we have to stop producing the items temporary. If any updates information I will let you know asap.Thanks."
So last night, I ordered the V1 rig from the second listing above. I woke up with a Paypal refund and this message: "I'm very sorry, and our warehouse as water pipes burst, we find that this item has been destroyed, we have serious losses, I'm sorry, I can not send a bad Bracket to you, I'm sorry..."
I was going to review this unit as I mentioned before however the assholes at the booth were totally unknowledgeable and wouldn't let me check it out - bunch of dumb ass kids there who had no idea about their product. I passed by later and some of the staff were passing it around playing with it like it was a machine gun - after seeing that decided it wasn't worth it.
I just got one of these. They're very well made relative to the cost. I have the Cowboy also and it's find, Cowboy however is prone to breathing movement, this one is slicker looking too, way more pro looking. The design is good, I think I like it better for walking/running while shooting, Cowboy might be more stable if you just sitting in one spot. I'll do some tests.
Received mine before the weekend, tried out some configurations with my Gini stuff... Not impressed at all, the clamps simply do not tighten enough. Also, it looks much cheaper than the Gini parts, not recommended from me, even for the price.