Overhead Butterflies - what's good?

[Mark Kenfield]

Hey guys,

I've been looking into overhead butterflies recently, and trying to find a good starting point. Matthews Quik Corners or the Avenger Foldaway frames seemed the most readily accessible units - but there's nowhere I can take a look at them locally before making the investment.

Then today I stumbled across the Lastolite "Skylite Rapid" system in a stills photography store. And it looks like a brilliant system, far and away the quickest overhead butterfly system I've ever seen - it packs up and down super fast, and the frame is very rigid and secure, and it uses customised Avenger D200 grip heads to hold the frame (which makes it rather less fuss to manoeuvre than some systems I've seen.

The 'big' lastolite is only a 2m x 2m frame (6.6' x 6.6'), but I think that's the size I want for my kit anyway as it's easier to get indoors (i've been tossing up between 6'x6' and 8'x8' until now).

So on the whole, it looks like a great system. The only downside is that you're kinda locked in to the Lastolite fabrics (unless you customised some regular silks/grids to mount to it).

So it seems like a good choice, I'm just wondering if anyone has encountered the Lastolite 'rapid' systems before? What people have thought of them? And whether anyone has any suggestions on which route to take?

Cheers,

Mark