Matte Box
 

I would like to know of a good, reasonably priced, matte box/image contol for the V1, thanks for input

and when you do, i'd like to know too!

i ended up buying a 'indian' made copy of a century pecision (i'm shooting with the kit wa). it's ok, does the job but close up inspection shows it quality, or rather lack of. my only other 'affordable option was the formatt, but all i was after, and got, was something cheap to hold a 4x4 polaroid filter. the indian one doesn't have a rotating stage, but for my purposes that isn't important. i think under any other circumstances though, you'd need a rotating stage.

both come with flags, so sun screening is no problem....

leslie

I have found them from like $299 to thousands, I hope I can find out more on these

on which in particular?

i had what was generally considered the most practical on my 4:3 sp rig - choiszel. a wonderful bit of engineering, but at $2500 it should have been.

it really depends what you want it for - i'm no cinematographer, just a working cameraman with an interest in making the 'commercial' shot that little bit better. for my doco work it's simply a good sunshade....

leslie

As Leslie said, it really depends on what you want the matte box for. If it's just a sunshade then I guess anything will do. If it's to hold filters then you might want to consider spending thousands. A set of good glass filters is expensive and having one fall out of a cheap matte box can make it seem not so cheap.

A good matte box should also have masks / baffles that fit into the front for different lenses / aspect ratios. You really want it to mount on rods and that means a set of rods and a camera plate. They're not cheap either. The good kit is precision machined so it just works without things binding or slopping around, also Chrozy make one designed so you can easily get the filters in and out on the Z1 and V1s. That mic is a pain.

Keep in mind that a good matte box holds its value, I've seen ancient Arrie matte boxes off 16mm cameras fetch over $2K at auction, so unlike cameras these pieces of kit are an investment. If you can, visit a supplier who can show you the good kit, it's hard to describe the differences between the top shelf stuff and the cheap stuff until you hold it in your hands, that's when you understand where all the money goes.

One thing to watch for, I've seen cheap matte boxes that don't hold the filters properly, you need to slide the filter in and then lock it with a screw, until you tighten that screw it can fall out. The good ones have a spring loaded pin that catches the filter holder so it will not just drop out. And some of the cheap ones don't shield the edge of the filter from the sun, not good at all getting strong light into the edge of a filter.

You also should consider what size filters you'll need to use, the V1 doesn't go that wide, but what if you add a WA adaptor. That can require you to use quite large filters so you need a matte box that'll take the biggest filter you need and maybe then some, one day you'll buy another camera and the same matte box should be usable with it as well.

If you want a cheap system to hold filters you can use the Cokin system, it's really just a filter holding system, it provides no real light control at all but might be fine out of the sun.