Shape Cage for the Sony A7 111

The Shape cage and rig is designed to fit the Sony A7 111 mirrorless camera. It can be utilized in different combinations, as a handheld rig, and as means to fit a matte box, follow focus and onboard monitor, making the A7 a production camera.

At BSU we have:

4 x Sony A7 111 cameras

2 x Shape Cage Rigs

Below is a tutorial video about setting the rig up

0 Intro

0.34 What's in the box

1:48 Handheld parts

2:07 Fitting the camera to the cage

4:46 Adding the bars, matte box and follow focus

8:17 Moving the matte box for a lens change

8:44 Changing the focus wheel cog

9:08 Using a Shinobi monitor

9:35 Using marks on the follow focus

10:03 The top handle

10:30 Credits

Links to other pages:

Filters and their uses

When to use a matte box

The matte box and follow focus can be used with either, the Samyang prime lenses, the Sony lenses that come with the cameras, and the Canon 24-105mm with a Metabones adapter that are available from the asset store.

The Samyang lenses are classed as Cine lenses as they have manual focus and Iris rings with geared teeth and hard stops which means we can use the Follow focus to turn them in a repeatable fashion.

Considerations of using the Shape rig with the Samyang lens kits

Because the Samyang Primes are all different focal lengths, their physical lengths differ too. This means that to fit BOTH the Matte box and follow focus can be a squeeze on a couple of the lenses. If just using one or the other there is no problem. Here are some abbreviations so the following info makes some sense.

14mm = The focal length of the Samyang lens. ie, 14mm is widest - 135mm is longest.

FF = Follow focus

MB = Mattebox

Diameter = the physical diameter of the lens at the front. This tells us what size filters (ND, Pollarizers or Promists) we can screw onto the lens.

So going through the Samyang 6 lens kit from the widest:

14mm. FF fits on either side, MB crops too much so cannot be used with this wide lens

24mm. FF fits on the left hand side, MB is fine

77mm diameter for filter

35mm. FF fits on the left hand side, MB is fine

77mm diameter for filter

50mm and 85mm. These lenses are physically on the short side, so to squeeze the FF you need a bit of a gap of about 1cm between the lens and the Matte Box, but will just about work.

50mm is 77 diameter

85mm is 72 diameter

135mm. FF fits on the left hand side. MB is fine.

77 diameter

Written by FR

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