I just received the $109 Beginner's Rig that I ordered from the weekend catchit deals here on personal-view.com. It's a basic shoulder rig. First off, the construction is pretty damn solid. Everything is sturdy and the knobs twist well and hold everything tightly. Handle pads are good. Shoulder pad good as well. Only takes 5 minutes to assemble - very easy. Shipping was pretty quick from China - around 10-15 days as promised. Didn't hear from shipper after 3 days, so emailed and got a very quick response with a USPS tracking number.

The rest of what I have to say is probably influenced by fact that I've never used a shoulder rig. I was able to get some pretty stable stationary shots at times, but sometimes they weren't the most stable. That's probably me not getting used to the rig yet. I did get some beautifully smooth panning and tilting shots, and was able to get those consistently. I have one of those cheap $15 dollar "matte box"/shades, and it fit right onto the rails. But that made me have to push the camera closer to my eye, so it felt too close to see LCD properly. So I actually slid the shoulder pad back, and slightly off the rails (1/3 off, 2/3 on), and all seemed good. If I go with this as a working solution, a bit of tape on pad to rails to ensure no pad slippage should work just fine. I also did some shots walking with the rig, and got mixed results, but that's probably just me not walking properly...and I suppose a stabilizer is really the correct tool for handheld walking shots (or proper dolly/track setup).

Bottom line - if you want a solidly constructed shoulder rig and really don't want to be paying a lot of money, I would definitely recommend this, and at $109 including shipping, it's a pretty damn good deal. @Vitaliy_Kiselev Thanks for this deal. That's 2 for 2 with the deals. (Also ordered the 312AS LED lights and they are great)