By Max Duncan and technical editor Matt Allard:
A few years ago RED were the first major maker to widely adopt the use of NATO accessory rails and clamps in their systems. The design originates from the precise standard of mounting adopted by NATO countries to quickly and accurately mount scopes, lights and other accessories to guns.
At BIRTV in Beijing, Dutch accessory maker Vocas were showing their range of NATO rails that can be used to attach a variety of third party accessories to your camera. These allow quick attachment of compatible accessories and should work with other makers’ NATO-style systems.
There are several options including the one that is 170mm long and can be used to attach lights, microphones or EVFs to a 15mm rail. They also showed us a 15mm Nato rail that has a rosette attachment on one end for mounting to baseplates so that you can add a handgrip and position where you like. Both these should be available later this year for around 120 Euros each.
Vocas also showed a prototype of their new 6×6 filter stage matte box. It features built in ‘eye brows’ for controlling flare and reducing the need to use a top or side flags for some uses. The matte box features the ability to hold up to four filter stages, all of which can be rotated 360 degrees. The design also features a new support bracket for attaching the matte box to 15mm rails. There will also be a swing away option available by the time it comes to market.
The matte box will support lenses with up to a 162mm front and it should be available for purchase by the end of this year with a starting price of around €1700.
For more info visit the Vocas website.
