I’ve been meaning to develop some ideas in video content (part of the reason for the purchase of my D300), and have recently built a rig to make the more cinematic approaches possible. Most of the problems I’ve had are with predictable camera moves and changes while shooting. So I’ve decided to solve those problems (and some others) by building a rig that has the following:
– follow focus system
– matte box with barn doors
– rail system to support these
– and a camera slider
The trickiest part was cutting gears for the follow focus on the few lenses that I’d like to shoot video with. I did this with a simple CAD design and cutting them on my CNC. As were the rest of the plastic bits such as the folding Matte Box parts and the long lens rail supports. The rails system is aluminum rod and rectangular extrusion material. The only purchased bit was the slider mechanics that I found at a local distributor. I will post some test footage soon as I’ve scheduled a fun little side project to test this on. Though some things are already posted in my video projects gallery.
