top secret
I’ve been asked by a few people to show photos of my rig. I’ll start by saying a lot of photographers that work with rigs will not show photos of, or describe their rig. This is not something I really understand. My attitude is that your work should speak for itself without having to shroud your methods in secrecy.
Perhaps this is because my photos aren’t good enough to be in print and so it’s easy for me to be open about what equipment I use…
In any case after that it would be churlish of me not to post a photo of my rig.
It’s really quite simple:
1.) Manfrotto suction cups
2.) Arri clamps
3.) 5/8th” Aluminium round bar.
Please note, I’m not saying my system is perfect or the best you could do – I know of people using single bars to get huge distances but as they wont share how they do it, I can’t say any more than that. All I can do is share what I use, and the results in my rigshots pages.
If you have a question, ask me!
In the spirit of sharing I’ll post a photo here that I don’t want to use as an example of my rig work. There are several serious problems with this photo which would mean I’d never normally post it except for one thing… The magic van.
I know the processing work on this is bad, and that it’s not sharp. But look at that van! The entire background is a blur, except for the silver van on the right. This is not faked or photo shopped.
I can only assume it was travelling at the exact same speed relative to the camera panning. I can’t see how I’d ever achieve this if I was trying to, this has to be a one in a million shot. Shame that can’t be said of the rest of the photo!
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Cheers for posting the rig Ben! I can’t see how you can use only one bar, wierd..
Your results are definitely improving, keep up the good work
August 12th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Friend, I have some questions, can you take a picture of a close of the clamps? I want to make a rig just like yours, but I can’t figure out how you fixed the clamps in the alluminium bar.
would you help me with that?
August 15th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Oh dear I’ve just realised I photographed the wrong thing and posted images of the suction cups rather than the clamps…
I’ll have to do another blog post with much more detail for you very soon.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Just found your Blog, and enjoyed reading it. Are you not worried that the suction cups would damage the cars paint? Only asking as I’m lucky enough to have friends with some very, very expensive cars and it would be a shame to ….. you know…
Cheers
January 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for your comment Dave!
Suction cups most definitely can damage paintwork. But if you are careful then it’s exceedingly unlikely to happen, as long as you follow some rules.
Don’t put the suction cups on stickers or armorfend style paint protection film – it will leave a mark.
Make sure both the cup and the surface are spotless before you put them on.
I’ve yet to leave a mark on any car except my own, and that was because I put a cup right on a sticker.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Hi Ive just found your blog and its great lvoe teh photography you ahve got, im gettign a rig of my own in a few weeks so i can finally get soem rolling shots, my question is how do you go aobut removing the rig, do you take a static shot of the car with out the rig then set it up? how do you go about this as i know you would need the camera in teh same position for this to work
March 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Hi Joe,
Basically you are right, you have to take a static without the rig in then use photoshop to merge the two photos. This can be quite hard. Things to remember are to fix the white balance and the exposure so the colours match as much as possible.
The way I do this is to setup a tripod as close to the camera as I can – I then move the camera onto the tripod, remove the rig from the car, reposition the camera using the viewfinder to get it as close as I can then take a collection of photos.
In post processing I select the photo which is closest in colour and exposure to the rig shot, select the area I need to copy in, feather the selection then copy it into the rig shot.
Then it’s a case of using the transform tools to get it looking just right, and then cloning out any other areas of the rig.
I’d advise you to go over to POTN and look at the rig thread there, loads of information which I wish I’d seen before I bought mine!