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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Laing Custom Steadicam Group Buy

chommavong somphane said:
Just following up with Tyler and Oje. If it's not too much trouble, please let us know your impressions of your rigs when you receive them. If you feel a new thread is best for that, please post a link back here so those of us monitoring this thread will see it. Thanks, and hope you guys get your rigs soon if you haven't already.:-)

and please add the photo to your impression too.
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Sure. Will do as soon as I get my hands on it. Most likely by the end of this June.
 
Following this thread with great interest. If user impressions tend towards positive, I'm deffo putting my name down for a spot in the second batch... so let's have those user reviews :)
 
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I am also VERY interested in seeing how things develop in this thread and with the product and this relationship. I'm so ready to get a more substantial rig that what I have now. I would like to know the weight range. Minimum to move the springs to the max?

I had a few other questiions I added on the page, but they are answered here. THe open ended concept is cool cause I'm not sure what and how I'll be flying this stuff as I don't have a Red, but I want to have that option to fly it for clients as I"m a steadicam looking to fly more than 10 pounds.

If there's room on the 2nd batch, let me know the details on a deposit, etc.


Cheers and thanks for doing this. This looks every bit as nice as the Zephyr that I flew last year....



Justyn
 
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I received my Rig yesterday ;) Came a day earlier than expected, Shipped Thursday, Arrived Tuesday in Nevada. I am pretty slammed but will do my best to test and give impressions with photos, but with very little to no steadicam experience, please take everything with a grain of salt.

I played around with it last night and am very impressed, especially considering the price point. It's a decently heavy rig but once I got it all rigged and balance, it just seems sturdy now. It came with a boatload of accessories (screws, cables and whatnot) that save me a good amount of money as well. All the cables and junction boxes have worked flawlessly. I have a v-lock plate on the base of the sled with a lemo through the junction box to camera, works as advertised. I then have a D-Tap from the battery to an XLR that went into my Ikan VX7i Monitor and an HDMI from the monitor through junction box to camera. Once again all worked great.

It came with a number of small weight plates too that have helped with balancing.

The vest is decent and has adjustments to help fit to your body size.

Everything is easily adjustable on rig which is very nice. I need to test the arm more still. For you experienced operators, is there an easier way to turn adjustment knobs on an arm, they seem really hard to turn... ? But out of the box, the arm is easily handling a Scarlet with Lens and Redvolt w/ V-Lock and Monitor and Weights on base weight.

Carrying Case fits everything but has no padding so will need to be outfitted better in order to protect everything appropriately.

I'll post again with photos once I further test over the next few days.
 
Thanks for your first impressions, Tyler. Look forward to your further comments after you've had a chance to actually test the rig. I suppose the fact that you've received yours means others in the first batch have or should be getting theirs very soon, so hopefully there will be some good feedback coming in the next week or so.
 
Congrats on getting the rig. I totally want to buy one. Too good of a price. I've been flying steadicam for 3 years now and I teach it. What I would say, and it's just my .02. Buy the steadicam owners manual. The 12 exercises are really great to do. I also recommend doing 20 minutes a day, every day for a month instead of just longer periods of time on a few days. You want to develop a routine and get used to it as just a tool and nothing to be intimidated and this will give you the greatest experience without too much of a time expenditure....

Also as far as adjusting the tension on most arms, it's easier when there's a lot of weight on the rig.... and this will probably loosen up somewhat over time and maybe some lubricant might be needed. My rigs are always still but they tend to get worked out over time...


Please post some videos and photos and again, congrats upon the process. I do also recommend the steadicam certification classes. Even though it's not the same rig, the essence is there...



cheers


Justyn
 
Justyn Rowe said:
Congrats on getting the rig. I totally want to buy one. Too good of a price. I've been flying steadicam for 3 years now and I teach it. What I would say, and it's just my .02. Buy the steadicam owners manual. The 12 exercises are really great to do. I also recommend doing 20 minutes a day, every day for a month instead of just longer periods of time on a few days. You want to develop a routine and get used to it as just a tool and nothing to be intimidated and this will give you the greatest experience without too much of a time expenditure....

Also as far as adjusting the tension on most arms, it's easier when there's a lot of weight on the rig.... and this will probably loosen up somewhat over time and maybe some lubricant might be needed. My rigs are always still but they tend to get worked out over time...


Please post some videos and photos and again, congrats upon the process. I do also recommend the steadicam certification classes. Even though it's not the same rig, the essence is there...



cheers


Justyn
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Thanks for the tips Justyn, that is very helpful. I'll post again tonight or tomorrow morning.

I forgot to mention, that it came with an instruction manual that was all in chinese with some poor pictures. But it looks like the manual is for an older rig anyways, so it was useless from that regard. But everything was pretty straightforward putting together, just took a little more time to figure a few things out.
 
Adjusting the tension on the arms in addition to the tip Justyn posted about having weight on there, I just realized also there is actually a large allen hole on the top of the knobs too, making it easy to adjust with the included allen wrench.
 
Super limited on time today but I snapped a few shots of the rig actually on. I am still playing around with arm tension and balancing the rig but even after just a few short uses, it feels really smooth and solidly built. I'm confident once I get some practice, education and learning under my belt, that this rig will be perfect for my needs. Actual Test and Impressions on Sunday Night probably.

Some photos of the rig in the meantime: http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/bournsproductions/library/Laing Steadicam
 
Thanks for the pics, Tyler. I'm struck in your photos at how large the diameter of the post looks. It looked fairly beefy in the blog photos published for the sale as well, but your photos do a better job than any I've seen of giving a human body frame of reference to judge its actual size. As long as the ends are open (especially on the model without boxes) it should be fairly easy to wire most of what you would want through the post yourself. (I'm leaning towards the version without boxes, though that could change.) As well, the large grip diameter should help with control, as mentioned in previous discussions.

Look forward to your full review, but thanks again for taking time now to post as much as you have.:-)
 
AMMENDED POST:

To re-state the situation very briefly for the record:

I hope that you receive a greater level of respect in dealing with Laing than I have encountered since the involvement of Mr Kisilev.

The conduct of Mr Kisilev as “company rep” has been nothing short of appalling.

The current arrangements for accountability on customer relations are non-existent.

Good luck if you proceed with Laing, as the gear seems suitable for many shooters.

(Note: This post was not amended due to the flimsy threats of legal action by Mr Kisilev, but rather because I have reflected and believe that the situation has had some light shone upon it and it is better to lift the tone. People have enough information to make their decisions.)
 
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Here we go. :-)

Special note to members.

Laing received few mails from Chris.

His demands was to remove me completely and to provide him personally rig for "testing purposes", free of charge. In case we did not comply with his demands he promised to cause as much damage as he could.
As far as I understand it is called blackmailing.

If your company would like to repair its relationship with me, the only meaningful way to do that is to provide me with a full Laing stabiliser system for testing purposes, which I would be happy to perform diligently.
Click to expand...

Interesting method of repairs. isn't it?

Otherwise

I believe that if I make a negative public statement on the Red forum, it will cause a large number of people not to buy the Laing system.
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Laing rejected his demands as inappropriate.

Please note, that Chris never intended to be group buy member (he openly said so) and never provided any help or input that company used.

We did not have any problem yet with any other member who participated in this venture.

Company fully implemented input from RedUser members and few other people we interacted with. We are very grateful to all those people.

Many members from this forum and other places talked with me for long time about Laing rigs.

It is very sad to see such people as Chris doing things he is doing.

Company find this post as having sole purpose to damage reputation and cause financial damage also.
 
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Vitaliy Kiselev said:
Here we go. :-)

Special note to members.

Laing received few mails from Chris.

His demands was to remove me completely and to provide him personally rig for "testing purposes", free of charge. In case we did not comply with his demands he promised to cause as much damage as he could.
As far as I understand it is called blackmailing.



Interesting method of repairs. isn't it?

Otherwise



Laing rejected his demands as inappropriate.

Please note, that Chris never intended to be group buy member (he openly said so) and never provided any help or input that company used.

We did not have any problem yet with any other member who participated in this venture.

Company fully implemented input from RedUser members and few other people we interacted with. We are very grateful to all those people.

Many members from this forum and other places talked with me for long time about Laing rigs.

It is very sad to see such people as Chris doing things he is doing.

Company find this post as having sole purpose to damage reputation and cause financial damage also.
Click to expand...

I rarely use harsh words, but what you wrote, Vitaliy, is total bullshit!

Chris and I were trying very often to communicate with Laing on a serious and professional level, which became impossible the moment you became their spokesperson.

Chris wanted a rig as a TEST unit. That's what you should do do get trust in an unknown product!

Also, while he may not have been interested in buying a rig, I surely was. Remember? I am the guy who STARTED this whole group buy. And I can confirm everything Chris writes about you and Laing.

So, in case some may still consider buying the Laing rig: Don't do it, unless you don't care about customer support and the quality of the rig. If you want to buy a trustful and still cheap product, contact ProLine or ActionProducts. eeMOV and some other manufacturers also produce rigs with good quality control.

Cheers
David

PS: If you, Vitaliy, think that all Chris and I are saying is total BS, you wouldn't mind if we post some of your messages to us, would you?
 
I realize I am late to this thread and I have not read it all, but what's the big deal here?

I mean Vitaliy set up the group buy, and hopefully he'll be rewarded with a free unit, or commission if it goes well. But once U guys contact the company, you should be dealing directly with them and that should be the end of it right. I mean Vitaliy is not an employee.

As for the test rigs, I have to tell you this is sadly common. I've been running group buys with both CAME and K5600 for their HMI lights and neither would provide a test unit. Sad truth is when you are dealing with numbers this small the vendors don't usually do stuff like this. I would suggest you offer to PURCHASE a unit which you will test and return if you decide not to keep it. but getting a test on faith is very tough here. Also if Vataliy worked out getting a demo unit for free in exchange for all his hard work, the company may not want to hand over another one..

I have no dog in this fight, these are only observations.

Jay
 
Hi Jay,

Just figured I would chime in here to shed some light with the whole "issue". David first setup the Group buy for Redusers with a healthy line of communication directly with Laing. This is, until vitaliy stepped in as the supposed "rep" for the company in Europe that enflamed this spit war back and forth. This is solely due to the way he responds to user inputs and suggestions (language barrier maybe, but I don't think so). You can backtrack in the original thread to see all the action for yourself. I gave up on the guy a long time ago myself and went with the ProLine instead simply due to worries of future customer support (I originally wanted the laing).

As for asking for the Test unit. Chris did suggest that he pay for it as a deposit until he sends it back to the manufacture after the fact. I do not believe he ever intended to acquire a "free" unit with the sole purpose for testing.

Regardless, I would suggest proceed with caution as well.
 
As for the test rigs, I have to tell you this is sadly common. I've been running group buys with both CAME and K5600 for their HMI lights and neither would provide a test unit. Sad truth is when you are dealing with numbers this small the vendors don't usually do stuff like this. I would suggest you offer to PURCHASE a unit which you will test and return if you decide not to keep it. but getting a test on faith is very tough here.
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Test rig was not a problem here. We have test rig provided to skiller shooter.

As for Chris, before mails with demands with "or else" things, he had been asked(not by me) to pay for rig and either return if he won't like it, or get full refund in case of really useful test. He replied that he do not have money for such rig and that all must be provided for free to him. Anyway, it is past tense.
 
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