Ethics Notice: Letus paid my expenses and invited me to the Los Angeles Launch Party so that I could document the event for my blog. I am not being compensated for the shooting, editing or writing of this blog. I was sent home with a working ‘Shoulder Cam’ rig because I was excited to use it straight away and hope to keep it indefinitely. I have work lined up to use the gear in the next few weeks. I highly recommend this rig and only endorse products on this website that I feel work as advertised and are worth the investment.
UPDATE 11/16/11
I was mistaken in this video blog reporting that Shane used the Master Cinema Series rigs on the upcoming film, “Act of Valor”. He did not use the exact rigs that Letus is selling today. Shane did use custom rigs with bits and pieces from multiple manufacturers. Some parts he fabricated himself to create the ultimate rig for use with 5dmk2 cameras on “Act of Valor”. The Master Cinema Series was created because Shane felt that there were no solutions from a single manufacturer on the market that worked for him. Sorry for the error and resulting confusion, it was not intentional. I did not create this video blog as an advertisement, I want to get the to get the word out. I remain firm in my opinion that these Letus/Hurlbut MCS rigs work the best so far for me.
Until a few days ago, the 5dmk2 camera body was uncontrollable, hard to handle and I could not find a good way to shoot with it hand held. Most of my work was limited, because I refused to hold it while shooting and only used it on a tripod head.
Yea…there are many solutions on the market today, but I have tried shoulder rigs from different manufacturers and felt like they were too expensive for what you got or not designed to feel like a real shoulder mounted camera. The pads were wrong, the balance was off and they were just a mess of long rods with knobs or screws that bogged me down. Product designers finally understood that the eyepiece viewfinder needed to be off the shoulder rig, but the support systems were slow to use and painful to operate! In fact, I have been using my 5dmk2 with a monopod to run and gun! I also had to resort to mounting the camera on a Glidecam 4000 Pro just to get rid of the rolling shutter problem when shooting off the hip. High frequency shake (and the resulting jelly-image) is the biggest problem when shooting with these CMOS sensors.
I have never blogged about a shoulder rig on this website because the stuff out there was unacceptable…until now. I have finally found a rig that I can recommend to my readers. The Master Cinema Series.
Letus, the guys who dominated the 35mm lens adapters a couple years ago, are back in the manufacturing spotlight. They have teamed up with veteran cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC to create a support system to tame small form-factor cameras. Shane has worked in the television and film industry for many years and knows what works and what doesn’t. He designed the new Master Cinema Series out of necessity. Just like me, there was nothing on the market today that worked for him as a professional director of photography. This is the difference between Letus and all other DSLR support kits in the wild today, the new Letus gear was built by a cinematographer for cinematographers.
Act of Valor movie trailer
Shane worked on the upcoming Navy Seal action flick, “Act of Valor” and wanted to use a handheld rig to get the audience engaged into the feature film. Over 80 percent of the movie was shot on Canon DSLR using the Letus kit. (Correction: He used a custom kit built from parts manufactured by other companies and himself. Shane later went to Letus to create the ultimate one-shop kit, the Master Cinema Series). He has an aggressive shooting style and understands the value of these sensitive, sharp and small go-anywhere cameras.
I joined Shane Hurlbut, Aaron Pinto, Hien Le, Matt Jeppsen, Ron Dawson, Tim Park, Planet Mitch, Ryan Connolly, Russell Carpenter, Vincent Laforet, Rodney Charters, Freddie Wong and many other Hollywood professionals at the Letus Launch Party near Bandito Brothers Studios in Los Angeles, California. Shane had all 4 configurations of the system set up for viewing and testing. The plan was not to just see the rigs sitting on a table top, but to run them through their paces in actual production environments.
The complete package will cost about $6,500. This includes the power cage, IR stem, Lemo-style cables, matte box, follow focus, rods, handles, pads, viewfinder leveling brackets, quick release plates, screws, Anton Bauer Gold-mount, weight plates and backpack. With all this stuff you can build any of the four configurations below.
Action Cam – $1,450
I am really impressed by the ‘Man Cam‘ and ‘Shoulder Cam‘. These two configurations renewed my love for the Canon 5dmk2. I can now comfortably shoot aggressive handheld with the small camera systems and achieve the results I want. The leveling viewfinder option on ‘Studio Cam‘ is also exciting and will help me when I work off a tripod or dolly system.
I highly recommend the auto ratio adjusting Zacuto EVF and Z-finder as the eyepiece monitoring option. This is sold separately. Letus will soon offer the Hawk diopter for use with the Zacuto EVF so you have a different choice.
The best part of the Master Cinema Series is that it is modular. You are future-proofing your investment. The build quality is excellent and I like the use of solid Lemo-type connectors on the power cage. The quick-release plates making changing configurations fast and do not slow you down during production. Above all else, the system can be used with many small form-factor camera systems, including future camera support. Letus plans on making cages for the new Sony cameras as well as the unreleased Canon that will be announced on November 3rd.
I will use the Canon 5dmk2 and Master Cinema Series rigs in ‘Shoulder Cam‘ mode on a web series I am shooting for National Geographic over the next few months. I will have a BeachTek XLR adapter mounted to the cage along with Sony UWP wireless microphone receivers. I plan on powering everything using Anton Bauer Dionic 90 batteries.
I will be DP’ing a music video and independent horror film in the next few weeks. I am looking forward to using the Canon 5dmk2 with a wide angle CP.2 prime in the ‘Man Cam‘ configuration. It’s gonna be a blast tossing it around with my arms and getting very close to the stories I am capturing. I hope to blog about these experiences with some BTS pictures…stay tuned!
Matt Jeppsen, of FreshDV.com put together a quick edit of the launch event shot on his Canon DSLR. You can see me running around in the background with my Sony SR11 on a monopod! He also has more pictures from the event, you can find them here.
If you are interested in buying the new Letus Master Cinema Series gear, please visit the online store here. The kits plan on shipping in November.
Update 11/16/11: Shot a music video using the Hurlbut/Letus Master Cinema Series. Check it out here.
14 Comments
You put that one together fast, good job Tom.
This is fantastic! Great coverage! It’s good to see Letus back in the game. Too much engineering talent to let go to waste. I will be looking forward to future blogs on how the Master Cinema Series handles in the field. Thanks for all your hard work Tom.
Wow, the fame of the youtubers its so big, freddie brandon, and Ryan!! excelent post men!…
Great run down Tom! I was just talking to some shooters this morning about shoulder rig solutions. There really aren’t many good shoulder rig options, like you said. Definitely looking forward to using this.
Nice video Tom, I had wondered what would become of Letus when DSLRs killed their main market. Watching the video I heard that the pricing would ‘be competitive’ and to be honest I started to doubt these new products. With so many other full frame sensor cameras appearing I have been wondering if the DSLR accessories market would disappear as quickly as it appeared. Seeing the actual pricing however I have to say I am impressed. Lets see what Canon announce in a couple of weeks but together these could be an amazing bundle. Thanks for all the info.
Amazing!
Just another overpriced…OVERPRICED bucket of bolts. When will folks start to RUN from these insulting pieces of raw material clustered together for you to smile, say “Atta boy!”, and then bend over and take the gouge without ever stopping to think how ludicrous and money crazy the whole market has become. I engineer products everyday, and know for certain the markup for profit on this item is a laugh for the manufactuer towards the sheep who buy them….DEMAND value for money spent. This is NOT it.
I disagree. These MCS kits are well built, have a lot of research and development hours behind them and are priced to be in range of other manufactures. There are obvious costs involved to make this stuff. If you engineer these type of products, you would understand that many prototypes are built, which cost money to fabricate, are tossed aside to create the end product.
I think they are good rigs. But yes, very OVERPRICED. There are not research and development high costs because Mr. Hurlbut only has copied the most of the rigs used in cinema, where he daily works.
A rig (a group of irons) shouldn’t cost the same or more than a camera.
there is still research and development required for rigs like this. these have been fine tuned to work perfectly with a dslr. hollywood never had access to such a small camera body until the introduction of cameras like the canon 5dmk2.
Great coverage Tom. That rig looks awesome, I’m looking forward to getting one.
Great commercial Tom!
One question of timing, do you know how exactly Shane used the Letus system to shoot “Act Of Valor” 2-years ago, when Letus made 35mm adapters, and didn’t make anything for DSLRs.
I saw Shane speak live at an event and when he talked about the movie, the Shane “Man cam” was made by Red Rock Micro, the cages were made by ViewFactor.
Thank you for also posting your compensation for the commercial, you are the first blogger I’ve seen do this in connection with the Letus event!
I did not intend this to be a commercial for Letus. I stand by my opinion that these are the first small form-factor camera rigs that work for me. I have made corrections to my blog and apologize for the bad information regarding the use of these Master Cinema Series rigs on “Act of Valor”. Shane did not use the Letus kits to shoot the film, but like you said, had to piece together a bunch of stuff to make his own custom rig. He decided to team up with Letus to create the ultimate system, the Master Cinema Series. The error was not intentional. Thanks for bringing up the point and posting here.
When I get a few minutes, I will make a correction to the video blog.
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