Just a quick follow up on my post about the new Red Rock Micro Nano Rigs announcement. I receive an email from Brian, and he is not too happy about my comments on the announcement. Well, I would not be either if I was in the RRM gang.
I wont go into the details of the email exchange (dont worry, everything was very civilized and polite!) but I think it would be fair to RRM to state a few points.
First, these rigs were build around two restrictions: cost and weight. They receive a lot of requests for lighter rigs and wanted to have an offering for the market segment. Now they do, I just wished they put the rigs weight on the product page (!). Also, they should use lighter bodies for their product page too. Regarding the cost, well.. it is cheaper than Zacuto for sure and I doubt anyone is complaining on that front!
We also talked about the lowdown handle not positioned correctly: it should be pointing in front of the rig instead of at its back. Brian told me the handle direction can be configured to fit what ever the owner wants, so that is a good thing. Still, I think they should have shown it in at least one of the picture. He did not comment on the use of the hot shoe mount, which is a bad thing if you are using heavy lenses.
Also, I told him about a bad experience I had with a Captain Stubling where the knob of an handle got loose and made the rig tip over and fell off the table on a concrete floor (the lens survied by miracle!). It seems like they recently improved the knobs, which is a good thing:
and my guess is you were also probably using an earlier version of our handgrips, which we’ve really improved over the past few months including all-machined clamps and lift-and-lock knobs
Could anyone confirm this?
While this exchange did not change my mind about the usability of the Grippit and Low Down for users of heavy HDSLRs (7D, 5D, etc…) it provided more info on the products.
By the way, if you are in the Montreal area and plan to buy one of these rigs, I would love to steal it from you for a day to test it out.