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67. Introducing DSLR Gorilla Kits
2 years ago
Zacuto is releasing three brand new DSLR Gorilla Kits; The Rapid Fire, Quick Draw, and Tactical Shooter. These are innovative and lightweight DSLR Gunstock Shooters which are part of our new line of DSLR support options.
“I think the Gorilla line of stabilization products are keeping with the small form factor of the camera,” explains Dave Schwarz. “This gives us the stabilization we want, and we are not defeating the purpose of small and lightweight.”
The brand new rigs have been developed to be lightweight, inexpensive and infinitely adjustable. These Gorilla Kits are created specifically for guerrilla shooters like photographers, journalists, event and indie film shooters. Watch our new video Introducing DSLR Gorilla Kits and see how the new line of Gorilla Kits can benefit you.
“I think the Gorilla line of stabilization products are keeping with the small form factor of the camera,” explains Dave Schwarz. “This gives us the stabilization we want, and we are not defeating the purpose of small and lightweight.”
The brand new rigs have been developed to be lightweight, inexpensive and infinitely adjustable. These Gorilla Kits are created specifically for guerrilla shooters like photographers, journalists, event and indie film shooters. Watch our new video Introducing DSLR Gorilla Kits and see how the new line of Gorilla Kits can benefit you.
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Scott LynchProducer/Editor
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I think you guys will sell a LOT of these.....
Thanks guys!
New Z-finder viewfinders are coming end of July.
Now i understand that you're a business and need to make money, but to me (and this is a very limited understanding considering I do not know the price it costs to make a single unit) I would call what you're doing... theft... wait a minute that's a bit harsh it's not theft.
I just get really frustrated that you can charge the same price for a couple of rods and some plastic as the Nikon D90, think of all the research that is needed to produce the D90 and the price of materials, now compare that to the research and materials needed to produce your product!! It doesn't add up to me.
I hope you think this is a fair comment.
Oh,I forgot to mention that your products are extremely cool ;)
Here's why they cost what they do.
First, you are underestimating it as a bunch of metal rods and parts. The engineering to get all of these articualtion points and figuring out what metals to use to not make it to heavy, not have it rust, but be able to give you the correct support, takes a lot of skill and prototyping, just like cameras do.
Second, cameras are massed produced and will sell over 100,000; whereas, our market is much smaller, we may only sell 1,000 - 2,000 units of a good selling product in a two year period, so we don't get the benefit of quantity since we make these in small batches. Plus we don't make them offshore at what we would call slave labor wages. I don't think you get good products that way and we don't treat people that way.
Third, our products have a lifetime warranty, even if you destroy it, send it in and we'll repair or replace it. Check the forums, you'll see great stories of guys who ran over their rig with a car or got it in salt water and we are more then happy to fix it, free of charge. That's part of our Zacuto experience which is about customer service, being able to get someone on the phone, having questions answered and being treated as a customer should, with respesct.
Forth, we make our products in the USA which means we can bring them to market faster, 6 to 10 weeks from an idea to having intentory. You can't do that in China. Plus our quality is something we are proud of, we don't make products that fall apart 4 months later. These Gorilla kits are all made from Zacuto components that can be reconfigured and used for future cameras for the rest of your life. And they are warrentied as such.
We are not interested in being a cheapo brand, their are brands out there that are less expensive. They have their designs and we have ours. As Philip Bloom says, he bought 2 or 3 of the other brands and didn't want to spend the money for Zacuto but eventually when those all broke, he decided to go Zacuto and recommends getting it right the first time.
I think their needs to be someone who creates the best products he can and let the costs fall where they do. Others set a street price and find cheaper ways to make the parts to keep the product at that street price. I just want to make great products, I think I should be entitled to do that. I understand that Zacuto is not for everyone.
Steve
I bought cheaper and they never lasted. I did this three or four times and gave up, bit the bullet and bought Zacuto and never looked back. 18 months ago I bought my rig for the Letus. Today it is exactly the same rods and rig. Utterly perfect in every way and robust more than ANY gear I have used in 20 years in the business. Cheap? No? Value for money? For sure.
I always use Zacuto now and as long as that quality continues and their innovate as they do they will have a fan with me. I wish everyone could afford what they make, all I can say is work your way up it, it's such a modular system, it's all compatible with most other bits of gear. Buy essentials and work your way up.
Steve
Now, here's an idea for Steve... How about you make a foldable one like the waist level finder of Mamiya or Hasselblad (the one that comes originally, not the prism finder)... then you can permanently attach it to the camera, attach also the eyepiece extender from Canon. and you are all set for both still and video shooting. No need to detach/re-attach... I'm not going to patent this idea... just give me some discount... LOL!!
We've thought of doing that but the problem is that when it's fully colapsed it would stick out too far to be able to get your eye in the cameras photo viewfinder. Believe me we have over 1000 hours of how to do this, we are literely on our 140th drawing with our engineer. It's real hard to make this, and make it somewhat universal to future cameras, so guys don't start bitching that when the 5DMK3 comes, they are going to want their existing Z-Finder to fit, and so do we.
When Henry Ford delivered the Model T he amassed a fortune. A vehicle for all.
The Rapid fire is $551 (and I think the cheapest pro kit on the market) store.zacuto.com/DSLR-Rapid-Fire.html
The Quick Draw is $680 store.zacuto.com/DSLR-Quick-Draw.html
The Tacticle shooter is $1117 store.zacuto.com/DSLR-Tactical-Shooter.html
We have two kits under $1000.
Steve
I should add, I admire your standards of engineering, design and style. Power to you.
Ron.
I am planning to use the rapid fire for my various trips around the world and I would like this baby to be as stealthy as possible...
(btw, mine is supposed to arrive tomorrow, cant wait!)
But I think Naim Alwan had a very good point in saying:
" I just get really frustrated that you can charge the same price for a couple of rods and some plastic as the Nikon D90, think of all the research that is needed to produce the D90 and the price of materials, now compare that to the research and materials needed to produce your product!! It doesn't add up to me. "
Now, it doesn't add up to me either. Your pricing is just totally nuts ! And even if I would win in the lottery tomorrow, I wouldn't buy any of your products just because of the fact that I believe that you're ripping people off with this kind of price policy.
Sorry but your " Gorilla kits " just finished me off !!!
I hope you're people at Zacuto are not too offended about my post and still have an open ear for your potential customers.
Cheers
PS : STEVE : " First, you are underestimating it as a bunch of metal rods and parts. The engineering to get all of these articualtion points and figuring out what metals to use to not make it to heavy, not have it rust, but be able to give you the correct support, takes a lot of skill and prototyping, just like cameras do. "
3:20 And what we've done is we just used our existing
components. We not really have any new
components here.
LOL
If you want an infinite configurable design that will work on current or future cameras, that allows you to change and re-recreate, we're for you. But we understand we are not for everyone.
Steve
I would also be one in favor of the black colored rods. A black Z finder would be cool too since the prototype in the video appears to be headed in that direction.
Thanks,
Vlad
I'm sorry to say that most new shooters are spoiled, they have access to ridiculously affordable, AMAZING gear that I would of KILLED for, much less imagined years ago. My first Arri camera body cost $20,000 USED!!!! + lenses + support + audio +++++.... What I'm saying is that ZACUTO products are AMAZING BARGAINS! with THE FINEST FIT AND FINISH IN THE WORLD! bar NONE!
thank you Daniel. You must be in my vintage, film, 1", 3/4" video, Betacam, then digital video, finally HD?
People do think we are expensive but in reality compared to other high end brands like Arri, Chrosziel, we are actually cheap.
If you ever need anything give me a buzz directly.
Thanks for the kind words.
Steve
You already gave me 2hrs of you time when I was in Chicago 3 years ago! You guys personally explained each component even though I was just "browsing".
I did not buy right away but wound up buying several pieces a few days later and several times after that. I Truly believe in service and you guys REALLY excell at it.
It is THIS that makes for loyal customers, I practice the same with mine. Another time a young lady at Zacuto (sorry I don't know her name) upon hearing my dire pre shoot situation, personally intercepted the UPS guy just so I could have an item overnighted (I ordered at about 6pm!) Now I buy your stuff blind folded!
And yes, I would be honored to be in one of your films! (especially if the intense chocolate smell is in the air from the neighboring factories, LOL)
I might stop by the last week of July as I will be in Chicago for Airventure in Oshkosh.
Cheers
Daniel
For starters, good audio has to be recorded separately (at least with the 5DmkII due to the low-cost microphone preamps and auto-gain). And there's a 12 minute (4 GB) recording time limit.
And even UDMA CF cards can't transfer as fast as SxS or P2. Oh, and H.264 footage really should be transcoded to be able to edit effectively.
Not having motorized zoom, low-resolution output monitoring, and the form factor of the camera body itself are three of the other dozen-or-so challenges.
Even the size of the image sensor (35mm) can provide a challenge when comparing it to videocameras--it would be completely impractical to add glass to give a full-frame DSLR the same reach as the kit lens on a Sony EX-3 (for example).
So, for a multi-camera shoot, thumbs down on using any current DSLRs.
And yet I've shot better-looking footage on my 5DmkII than I've ever shot on any video camera, ever. And the Zacuto rigs widen the possibilities significantly.
But DSLR's aren't a replacement for the bread & butter functions of videocameras . . . not yet, anyway. They're another tool in the box of those DPs who are involved in a wide range of projects and styles.
Good or better alternative.
Shutter speed? F-Stop?
FCP? Settings? Vegas 8.1 Pro? Settings?
Terrific film look, and I would love to try and duplicate it, but I need help rendering. I think this video is the quintessential film look from a video camera template. I would just love to know exactly how it was produced. It seems I get far too much jitteriness with my footage when trying to emulate film. Thanks for your response...btw...I'm going to get one of these kits for my GH1
Thanks again.
We use two types of cameras on all of our videos.
The first is an HPX170 with a Letus35 DOF Adaptor and 50mm Zeiss ZF lens. This is the camera that is on the circular dolly.
The other cameras are HVX200's with no adaptors or anything special. We just move them away from the action and zoom in to get the individual close ups.
Our cameras are setup as follows:
720p
24PN - Shot to P2 Cards
180 Degree Shutter.
The Zeiss Lens is always opened up to f/1.4, and the HPX170 is generally wide open on the stock lens sometimes we do stop down to f/2-2.8 depending on the situation.
The HVX200's are usually stopped down to f/4-4.8 again this depends on the exact lighting situation.
For post I bring in everything into FCP6, and edit all the cameras in a multiclip sequence.
We shade all of the cameras using a DSC Labs chart, so we rarely have to do any CC in post, if we do it's just a slight correction, which I usually use the 3-way CC mixer in FCP.
I render out a DVCProHD 720 24p .mov movie from FCP and bring it into compressor.
In Compressor I make an m4v 1280x720 with square pixels and I crunch the gamma by hair. If you want send me an email at scott (at) zacuto (dot) com and I can email the compressor setting to you.
Hope this helps, thanks for watching.
-Scott
i will try my cullman shoulder tripod now ^_^
The DSLR video market is only in it's infancy. It's about to get real!
No disrespect, to Zacuto or anyone else. Just saying what so many of your potential customers are really thinking.
Thanks, Randell