08Apr Shape Cameleon shoulder rig.
A few friends have been telling me to checkout SHAPE rigs, so I spent the morning looking at the offerings on their website. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but man these rigs looks ugly. They do have some interesting features like a joint in the middle that allows you to fold the rig in half, and an optional boom arm attachment.
$468 on B&H seems a little high for an entry level model, but thats about $100 lower then the price list on SHAPE’s site. With no rails you might have a tough time attaching a follow focus and mounting locations are limited. Once you get into SHAPE’s higher end lineup the style and design starts to get better.
SHAPE calls this rig the “COMPOSITE FICTION“. It still looks like the baby was dropped on its head, but now at least someone put a hat on it. The composite fiction is SHAPE’s high end model and it does look like they’ve made some upgrades. The mounting square is a nice feature and I do like the idea of the boom arm slash support bracket. But it seems like there are so many things attached to the rails that there isn’t much room for any of your own gear. $1384 also seems like a steep price for this rig when you consider offerings from CPM FILM TOOLS and .
I think this rig might work better with a traditional video camera, but it probably wouldn’t be my first choice for a DSLR.
April 9th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I tried out several Shape rigs at my local camera shop. I found them very uncomfortable, and not easily adjustable. After much shopping around, I chose a “Gini rig” from eBay, which should arrive next week. Very excited.
Great blog. Keep it up.
April 10th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Once the Rig comes in, send me some pictures of your setup and I’ll post them. Might help others out in there search for a rig.