I first used the Canon 7D for professional video work a year ago, and after that I bought one immediately. I had done my research and knew that buying a $1,500 DSLR camera body wasn’t enough to do professional work, but now a year and many shoots later and I think I’m pretty close to the perfect rig setup for me. Please hear me correctly… I’m not saying it’s perfect, I’m saying it’s perfect for me.

The thing I discovered quickly was that mounting all of the accessories and the 7D together was not as easy accessory manufactures made it sound. Also, getting the rig balanced well proved to be a challenge. I started out with the iKan Super Fly and it really did seem like a good idea, but it was terribly difficult to use handheld and really didn’t support many accessories. The RedRock shoulder mount was my next purchase and is very stable, but ridiculously heavy and unnecessary for mounting onto a tripod and can’t be used with our Kessler slider or jib.

So here is what I have come up with: A tripod/slider/jib and handheld-friendly, somewhat compact, rig on 9″ 15mm rails and a cheese plate. This portion of the rig has all the essentials: Camera body, follow focus, matte box, monitor, and audio recorder. This setup has handles on the back of it for going handheld easily. One the bottom is a quick release plate that can attach all that to the RedRock Micro shoulder mount. Within seconds I can mount the camera and all it’s accessories to the shoulder mount when we need it. Here are some photos of the two setups:

Another cool, and intentional, design of this custom rig is that the 7D itself is on a quick release as well so that it can be popped straight up out of all of these accessories to be used on it’s own. The top handle is attached to the hot shoe for this sole purpose… taking the 7D out of the rig to be used on it’s own without having to detach anything from the camera.

Here is a list of makes up this rig:

- Canon 7D
- RedRock Micro  DSLR Field Cinema Deluxe V2
- RedRock Micro Matte Box
- RedRock Micro Follow Focus
- RedRock Micro 9″ 15mm Rails
- iKan Super Fly (a highly modified version)
- Marshall 7″ HD Field Monitor with HDMI
- Zoom H4N (not pictured here)
- Manfrotto Quick Release Plate/Adapter

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