For the past year, I have been trying to catalog the landscape that my wife has so beautifully cultivated here. She knows how to pick out plants, where to put them, and how to tend to them. And I know how to dig big holes to put things in so we make a pretty good team. What I wanted was really high quality footage of our landscape throughout the year. But I had a problem: I never seemed to have a camera ready when the time was right.

I would walk out the door at 7:32am, and I would see the sun hitting a big spiderweb in the yard. But, by the time I went and got a camera out of a rig or pulled it out of its case and went back to get the shot, the sun had moved and it was no longer hitting that spider web. I got really frustrated with that so I started looking for ways to put together what I'm calling my Quick Rig. Design-wise, the quick rig had to be really portable. It had to work on a tripod or handheld, and it had to be ready to go all the time. I needed two components to make it happen: a lens with a really long zoom range and a tripod that was small and lightweight. So I tried a bunch of different equipment and in this article, I'm going to go over the components I've selected for the Quick Rig.

This rig is all about trade offs; it’s about finding the best option for each component in the context of how I need it to perform. Consequently, none of the components are particularly mind-boggling in performance, but the way they all work together to solve my specific problem is why they made the cut.

The Tripod: Leofoto Ranger LS 223CX

Working from the bottom up, we have the Leofoto Ranger LS-223 CX tripod. It's not exactly cheap at $150USD, but I really like it. It feels like good value. It's light and very rigid and it's very adjustable with an integrated bowl leveling system, which was the feature that set this tripod apart from the others that I tried. Setting up and leveling the camera using a leveling bowl is much quicker than trying to make leg adjustments. It will go from 13 inches high to about 2-1/4 from the ground and being carbon fiber, it light but stable.The adjustment knobs and leg locks are very solid.

One feature that I'm on the fence about is the accessory mount. I was really excited about this option when I was shopping, because I thought I'd be able to mount my monitor on the tripod instead of on the camera to take better advantage of the fixed dampening that I have in the head, But the way it was positioned at the point where the legs meet the bowl, limits its use - for me anyway. I can get a friction arm mounted, but making adjustments to whatever is on the other end is awkward. Either way, it's certainly better to have it than not. It might be something that as the setup evolves, I'll find a way to take advantage of.

(Pseudo) Fluid Head: Benro S4 Mk. 1

Moving up, I’ve used a really old - probably 10 to 15 year old - Benro S4 video head. It works, but it's probably the weakest link in this rig. I call is a “pseudo” fluid head; it has dampening on the pan and tilt, but unless I'm mistaken, it's pressure-resistance and not actual viscous fluid. It's a budget head and it gets the job done. The real problem is that the resistance is not adjustable, and the bigger and heavier the camera's set up, the more resistance I like to have. Getting smooth pans and tilts can be a challenge. A head with adjustable drag would be a better solution than the S4.

Camera and Cage: Sony A7III / Smallrig Full Cage

Next up is my Sony A7III which is in a SmallRig full cage that adds mounting points for all manner of goodies. While I could get away without using the cage since my monitor and mic could be attached to the hot shoe mount, that mount has lots and lots of little wires and connections in it and nd I don't want take a chance on messing something up in there. The cage is mainly for handheld shooting. It adds weight and it allows for a handle to be mounted on the right-hand side. Plus it allows me to add a clamp to secure the micro-HDMI cable that is connected to my external monitor. With something like this that is going to be handled a lot, having that clamp protects that output.

Monitor: Feelworld F5

On top of the cage. I’m using my oldest and cheapest 5” monitor. This is a Feelworld or Andycine F five. No touch screen here, just four buttons on top that I have mapped to: 3-stage zoom, false color for exposure, rule of thirds grid, and focus peeking. Mapping those buttons makes this monitor quicker to use than most of the inexpensive touchscreen models I've used. And, it seems like the battery life is a lot longer than on those touchscreen monitors. The F5 is not super bright (which may be contributing to the extended battery life) but with the added sun hood, it's bright enough for my purposes. I send a clean feed via HDMI to the monitor to maximize the real estate on the screen. And I use the monitor on my camera to keep track of all my camera settings.

Audio: Movo VXR-10 Pro

For audio, I'm using the Move VXR-10 Pro. I've made a video about this mic and a couple of videos about the standard VXR-10. One problem I've had with the original VXR-10 is resonant noise. Every move on the cage or handle seems to get picked up. I'm have to assume that the pro model has better dampening inside the body of the mic, which makes a big difference in overall usability.

This mic has a supercardioid pickup pattern, which gives you more sound from what's directly in front of the camera and rejects sound from the sides. If I need to get ambient audio, I have found that a pair of lavalier mics clipped to either side of the monitor hood provide a good stereo image. I run them through a splitter cable to feed the signals to the left and right channels. It's lightweight, it sounds good and I've noticed no phase issues to date.

The Lens: Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD

After looking at several options, I landed on the Tamron 28-200 f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD. It's got a really long zoom range, it’s quite speedy at the wide end, and it's lightweight and compact. There are a ton of reviews on YouTube about this lens that cover more than I care to in this article. Many videos compare it to the Sony FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS, which was the other major contender. The Sony just didn't measure up for my needs. On the plus side, it's got a longer zoom. It's got, um, optical steady shot, but it's bigger. It's more expensive. The image quality in general is not considered to be as good and it's not as fast on the wide end.

I was looking for a dedicated lens that could live on this rig all the time and the Tamron 28-200 works well in that capacity. It is not a lens that I would normally take on jobs with me but I have found myself grabbing it as a backup on jobs where I’m using a long lens. Ironically, while I had this lens on rental I took it on a job, “just in case” and needed to use it when someone knocked over the tripod that had my Sony 70-200 f/4.0 on it.

28mm is not super-wide, but it's plenty wide for my needs. On the 200 millimeter end, the reach of this lens allows me to get much more intimate footage of our local wildlife which on the current project is a big part of helping keeping the footage interesting. Having the Sony APS-C punch-in option on my A7III makes that 200mm into a 320mm equivalent.

Another thing I love about this lens is the close focusing ability. I'm able to get those macro-esque tight shots that draw the viewer into a sequence, and then immediately go to a wide shot or whatever the situation calls for without having to make a trip to my camera bag, or lens locker, or make a phone call to someone who will loan me the lens that I think I need. Lastly, the image quality is good. It’s not the sharpest lens I the world, nor is it the quickest auto-focusing lens but it gives me an image that I’m happy with. Again, this is about trade offs and the areas where this lens excels far outweigh any of its shortcomings.

Conclusions

For ease of transport and quick setup, the rig is fantastic. The short tripod means working relatively low to the ground or finding something to set it on. Fortunately, I have no shortage of rocks and cars and railings I can use. The leveling ball in this tripod is smooth. And having the level on my head at the back of the camera makes setting up and getting level very quick. Framing up shots with the long range zoom is simple and having a dedicated quick button to get to false color allows me to dial in exposure with much more precision than relying on the camera's meter or the histogram - both of which are largely useless for video. For handheld shooting. I can quickly release the camera cage from the tripod and the weight on the rig works really well. Even at 200 millimeters, I consistently get usable handheld footage. One thing I found myself doing is actually keeping the tripod attached when shooting handheld. The extra weight below the camera helps to balance things out, but more than that, I can brace the tripod legs against my body, giving me a lot of stability.

The rig is small enough to not look obtrusive if I'm shooting in public, and if I need to get the size down more, I can lose the tripod, the head, and the monitor. The physical size of the Tamron lens is a real benefit to me on that front.

Bottom line. It solved my problem. Having an always ready to go quick rig means I shoot more footage, which makes me better at shooting footage. And, it's allowed me to get shots that I probably would've missed otherwise. It’s also changed the way I approach setting up, it's opened my eyes to some new shooting angles, and generally broadened the way I approached shots. It removed the obstacle that I had to getting the footage I want.