What is this?

[Bill DiPietra]

I've been watching an ARRI 2C on ebay. Looks nice, but the seller has a Cine 60 "battery pack" attached to the base of the camera which the constant speed motor/handgrip is also sitting on.

 

I contacted the seller and was told that it's a battery pack, but it looks more like a charger to me. But doesn't the motor need to be connected to a power cable during operation, in any case? So what is the purpose of this other than making the camera bulkier?

 

I'm probably missing something very obvious. Hopefully, someone can enlighten me. Here are two photos:

 

[Brian Drysdale]

It looks like the gear box for the side mounted motor. It enables the 2c to have a flat base, it was handy for Steadicam work,

[Gregg MacPherson]

Hey Bill,

The flat base motor mount lets you use a normal tripod head. If you don't have that you need a tripod head that accomodates the bottom mounted motor. The flat base in the photo looks quite old. The ones I've seen looked like they were made much later in time than the camera.

 

I have a Ronford F15 fluid head that takes Arri II with bottom motor. Like this one but not scratched up.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200817218827?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT#ht_117wt_953

Mine has a removable plate on the head so you can mount flat base cameras as well. Will sell quite cheap, comparable price to this one incl shipping. (shameless promotion)

Edited March 17, 2014 by Gregg MacPherson

[Dom Jaeger]

Hi Bill,

 

as mentioned, that's a flat base, basically a belt-driven gear box that allows the motor to be mounted next to the camera. It makes the configuration more compact and easier to mount on a tripod or steadicam. It was originally devised for fitting the camera in a blimp. Several manufacturers made them over the years.

 

Here's a Cine 60 base with camera and motor removed:

 

To attach the camera to a flatbase the handgrip motor is taken off (4 screws) and this gear on the bottom of the camera needs to be removed:

 

It normally got stored in a compartment of the flatbase (see the little cylinder on the Cine 60), but sometimes it's missing. Without that gear you can't mount the motor back on the camera base (well you can but it won't run the camera), so make sure any flatbase model you buy has that gear if you want to use the camera handheld as well. Hard to find those gears.

 

Without a flatbase, you sort of need stands like these to mount the camera on a support (on the right is one with a support for zooms):

[Bill DiPietra]

Thanks a lot, guys. That really cleared everything up.