I'm going to mount the Panasonic TC-7WMS1 7" monitor to the sled of the series II Magiqcam, which is due to ship in just 3 days!

I spoke with Rob Dubree at Nebtek about converting it to work with Canon batteries. (I use the XL1) He was really helpful, saying they can hard wire, center mount the battery right on the back of the monitor. Sounds good, but I got to thinking that it might be better to have the battery seperate and mount it on the rear of the sled to try and balance the rig better. Canon XL1's are front heavy to start with, so I didn't want to compoound my problems.

As I haven't even received the rig yet, I'm in the dark as to the best method. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
Rob

Rob:

The front-heaviness of the camera is not necessarily the issue that it might seem--you just have to be able to mount it on the camera plate so that the center of gravity of the camera falls roughly over the center post of the rig. With a clip-on mattebox, filters etc. you could potentially max out the plate and still be a bit front heavy with an XL1; the worst case scenario is that you would have to have an intermediate plate machined that would allow you to offset the camera even further back. The easiest way to test for the CG of your camera is to place it, fully loaded onto a round dowel or even a pen and move it back and forth to find the fulcrum, then mount the Magiqcam plate such that you have a bit of room to adjust fore and aft around the CG.

You would definitely want to place your battery at the back of the sled. The rig will require fore and aft weight to balance properly. If you were to have it mounted to the back of the monitor, you would still need rear weight. If you were to use another Canon battery, you would end up with a slightly front-heavy rig, but assuming you wired the batteries in parallel you could run the rig all day. Having two discrete batteries is going to be a bit of a pain in that you double your chances of having either one go on you at an inopportune moment.

Thanks Charles,
That was exactly what I needed to know. I'll definitely mount the battery on the rear of the sled. The balancing and idea of a second battery were all new to me.

Thanks again
Rob