Laowa OOOM Cine lightweight zoom is the first professional cinema style zoom lens offered by Venus Optics.
The lens features a wide 25-100mm zoom range, making it a one-size-fits-all lens for different types of productions.

Unlike some cine lens in the market which were re-engineered from a photo zoom lens, Laowa OOOM Cine series is designed for digital cinematography in the first place. It is truly parfocal, meaning the focus will never shift when you zoom in or zoom back out. It is designed to have nearly zero focus breathing throughout the whole zoom range. The aperture remains fixed at t/2.9 at all focal lengths.

It is built with the true cinema level mechanics. It comes with a stepless, t-stop independent aperture ring with an industry standard 0.8 mod /32 pitch gears.  The 270° rotation flow provides room or precise focus pulls and the iris is clickless, enabling smooth iris pulls. The lens weighs only 2.16 pounds, which is fairly light for a cinema zoom that holds focus and aperture throughout the focal length range.

For this reason I'd like to look into getting a smaller travel tripod for my video shoots. The only one I can really find that seems decent is the Benro Aero 4, but it's quite pricey.

Does anyone else know any other alternatives?

I hope to avoid still lenses for mechanical reasons and also to get that "warmth" and organic nature one might get from older cine lenses. I might consider older still lenses that are all manual and have good mechanics.

Versatility, size and weight are my major concerns. I'm not trying to find optical perfection here. In fact imperfections (low corner sharpness, flaring, etc.) are welcomed as I prefer older glass with digital capture anyways if it gives me good center sharpness.

Modern cine zooms are huge and bulky and expensive and I'm not looking to rent. That's why I've been thinking about older lenses mostly. Ideally something that could be converted to EF mount. Flexible budget depending on the lens.

I've been digging the net for some days now and I've come mostly empty handed. Only option I found was this small 1kg Optar 25-80 T3.4 but I was hoping to widen my options. (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?31664-Optar-25-80mm-PL-mt-Lens-for-sale)

Any suggestions?

The way we were using the "Beginner's Rig" was different than typical shoulder rig. The camera operator often pressed the shoulder padding into her stomach or chest area, and that combined with 2 hands on the handles, gave us 3 points of contact for stability. I needed to replicate that. What you'll see in the picture below is the final Weightless Rig, which I covered with black gaffers tape. It consists of 3 parts: a cheap quick release plate ($7 on amazon.com), a sponge typically used for painting ($3 at Home Depot), and 2 round/cylindrical wooden sticks ($2 at Home Depot). I tied the sticks to the bottom of the quick release plate with duck tape. I then used scissors to cut holes in the sponge and inserted the sticks. Then taped everything with gaffers tape. The whole thing weighs maybe a 1/2 pound max, and really worked to give us stable shots without adding any weight that a rig typically does with it's metal parts.

I'm sure we're not the first to do something like this, but I hadn't seen anything like it, and thought it might help someone who needs something really super lightweight for stabilizing shots. Hope this is helpful.