Chrosziel Mattebox
 

So I decided to part with a little "stupid money" and bought a Chrosziel Mattebox 450-01 for my FX1, thought I'd fill any prospective buyers in on what I've found.

As we all know, whoever at Sony decided that was the best place to put a microphone should be beaten to death with his own shoes. The rotating filter stage stops on the mic as well as the stage locking screw. I have found that if I attach the Mattebox on the furthest edge of the rails I can rotate the stage about 340 degrees if I remove the locking screw and replace after rotating it or you can move it to the hole on the opposite side of the rotating stage.

You can load the filters in from the top or the bottom. Preferably you'll want to do it from the bottom as you don't have to slide the box forward to do a quick filter change. Once again you'll need the box mounted on the furthest edge of the rails otherwise you'll have to remove it.
But if you have to or want to do it from the top, you can loosen the back bolt on the rails to slide the Mattebox forward.

Overall it's well built and functions great, no vignetting at the widest angle. I can't speak to how it does with the wide angle adapter though as I don't own one. Perhaps a later "stupid money" purchase.

I noticed the Petroff Mattebox loads filters in from the side which is probably the best way to do it with the Z1/FX1 because of that mic but the Chrosziel box is doable. Just annoying sometimes. However the Petroff rotating stages would also suffer from the 340 degree rotation because of the stage handles. What bugs me is that Choszeil could have used a flatter locking screw for the rotating filter and it would clear easiy without having to remove it.


It's a little nose heavy so a tripod with a slide adjustable head would probably be of great benefit instead of the crappy pod I have mine on.

Here's some pics. In the second you can see what I mean about the mounting it on the edge of the rails and sliding it forward to clear the mic and shoe. With it like this though you can just remove them from below.

http://207.44.158.19/~admin3/images/Camera%20004.jpg
http://207.44.158.19/~admin3/images/Camera%20013.jpg

I had the same problem with the onboard mic, on my XM2... Although, I only wanted to use a cokin filter holder.

Anyway, here is how I solved the problem:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ighlight=cokin

If chrozeil had made the adapter ring 1 or 2mm longer it wouldn't be a problem

Nice fix for your issue, btw.

John:

Is that the same Chrosziel mattebox model which appears in this clip ?

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/media/Jody.wmv

I think this was shot by DSE.

Looks to be the same

I take that back, looking at the still in the video it looks bigger and the connection adapter looks different.