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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 :)

Matte Box Woes

This has turned into an exciting thread. I have nothing of value to add except to offer my encouragement. This process seems quite unique and promising - such direct dialogue between manufacturer and client. Great ideas coming forth. (Perhaps someone will try this approach with a whole camera! :turned: ) I really hope this works out for you Curt, and you sell a 1000 of these things.
 
Tim Le said:
. When a mattebox breaks, a plane doesn't crash and people die :blink:

Although if a crane breaks, people could die...yikes!
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But if a matte box breaks while on a crane arm and falls down on top of Britney Spears.....

I would rather face the wrath of a large group of normal human beings then the wrath of one prima donna rock star or movie star.
 
I may have mentioned this before but a nice feature I saw on another mattebox had a filter holder built into the shade (the inner rectangle portion), that had the ability to tilt forward or backward (I don't know exactly the range but would guess about 10-15mm), effectively being able to redirect lens flare. Although it did not fit all size filters, it seemed like a great idea and could be very useful, especially if it had locking steps in the degree of forward or backward range.
 
Getken, I know what you're talking about. It doesn't affect lens flares, it prevents light from bouncing around between the filters and getting into the lens. Not a bad idea... but a tight donut and a good eye will prevent this even better. It seems like a workaround to me.

As I keep thinking about this, CF for the hood may not be an amazing idea. CF isn't the most flexible stuff... and some flexibility in the hood is desirable. I'd rather have it bend before it breaks if I'm trying to shove it somewhere.

As for the eyebrows... yeah, CF would work for me. Nice and light, rigid, etc.
 
Brook, I wouldn't worry about it too much.. The flexibility of CF is determined by its thickness.. I'm planning on making the hood out of .020" thick material. If you look at the Arri MB-20 II you can notice that the hood is covered by sheetmetal and only a small portion is exposed.. The design that I came up with is similar.. You'd really have to try hard to get in there and bend the hood to the breaking point.

Besides... thats what protos are for... you build up a few units and beat the crap of them and see what happens. If it doesn't work out then we can always change it.
 
OK Brook, when I have some to spare you get to do the "jump out of the plane and see if it survives the fall test". One more question.. does anyone take advantage of the 360 degree rotation of the filters? It seems to me that 180 degrees of rotation would be more than enough.. half the time the filters seem to interfere with the rest of the mattebox anyway. And also... how much up and down movement do you typically need for the filter trays?
 
Define up and down movement?

180˚ would cut it for me, personally... I generally only rotate a polarizer. I keep it pretty simple on in-camera filtration, so others may disagree.
 
Brook Willard said:
Define up and down movement?

180˚ would cut it for me, personally... I generally only rotate a polarizer. I keep it pretty simple on in-camera filtration, so others may disagree.
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I believe the up and down motion Curt is talking about is for setting grads.
 
It all really depends on where you are setting the horizon so it varies a lot.
 
if you can add as much movement to the filter rotation the better, just so you dont have to remount the filter in the try to get those odd angles with the ND grads. But then again its not really that big of a deal 180deg is still very flexible and would work fantastically.

How many rotating trays are you thinking of having, also what filer size have you settled on? im leaning towards 4x5.6, 5x5, cause if we buy grads in 5x5 we have both horizontal and veritcal cause they are square.. :-)
sounds stupid but thats a saving in filters. less shite to carry around.


plus the rotating stage for the 138mm pola is important, and it should be easily rotatable, In my dream world with a small marking scale, but thats not that important either.

Also remember to leave enough flat space on a side of the shade to be able to Velco Filter labels so we know whats in there.

looking forward to see an evolution in MB design.

Curt are you also thinking for making Clip-on backs, or will it be an all in one
with a removable swingaway kind of like the Vocas 0450 (i might be wrong on model but close enough).
 
Curt, what would be awesome is an evolution in filter tray design...

A set of filter trays that allow for 4x4, 4x5, 5x5, 5x6, or 6x6 filters.

Think of the design of the trays as a 4 sided vice grip. I'm not sure on the particulars or pieces used for the tray but I would imagine a tray that has 4, possibly worm-gear driven pads that grip the filters allowing for any size filter to be used.

Also, please make sure that the MB allows for the larger front diameter lens such as the older Cooke and Agenieux lens. A 150mm front diameter should be safe for most larger lens.
 
It's probably not possible to design a matte box to suite everyone's needs, nor the needs of every lens. Requests so far have been for an affordable, rugged yet light weight, fully featured yet compact, multi-stage matte box with swing away, clip-on config, capable of supporting 4x4, 4x5,6, 5x5 and 6x6 filters, etc, etc...

I'm a novice but that's beginning to sound like two (possibly three) different models to me. At some point the possibilities will have to be narrowed. I'd certainly be happy if the design would accommodate the range of Red glass we can currently expect - that is from 15mm - 300mm. Not sure what the fronts are on the Red 18-50 zoom or the 300mm but I would be surprised if they require 6x6 filters or a 150mm front diameter. If I need to use an Optimo, I expect I will rent a suitable matte box.

Personally the features I'm looking for are:

- compact and light
- rugged
- fully featured
- cheap

As the saying goes - pick any three. :wink: ... so I would pick the first three.
 
I think the ideal thing, would be to make a system for the RED and its lenses,
There are already alot of options out there, for an infinatly variable amount of lens configurations and spacing.
I would like something that works great with the RED, doesnt get in the way of motors and FF units, is light and matches the design of my Camera.
Fits my RED primes perfectly.
 
Thanks you two.. I was starting to think the same. You know how the old saying goes... a camel is a horse designed by committee. I'm trying my best to meet the majority of the requests but there are a few that don't work well together. Regardless the first priority is to work with the red primes/zoom/300mm.

Now I have another question.. Does anyone every use two grads at a time? If not then technically only one of the trays needs to have up and down travel correct? I'm just trying to get all the facts straight before I finish off some of the bigger details.
 
CVB said:
Now I have another question.. Does anyone every use two grads at a time? If not then technically only one of the trays needs to have up and down travel correct? I'm just trying to get all the facts straight before I finish off some of the bigger details.
Click to expand...

We frequentely combine NDs and grads, so yes, in our case one rotateable should be just fine, we never used more than one filter that needed to be rotated.
One situation where two rotatable slots could be required is when combining a grad and a pola or an nd grad and a pola. But don´t know how often that´s going to be the case. Very rarely I think.
 
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