This guide focuses on compact and affordable matte boxes for your cinema camera.
Articles contain sponsored links to our favorite stores.
When it comes to matte boxes, there are several really expensive alternatives out there — but not so many affordable ones. Let's find the best affordable matte boxes available right now.
Best Compact Matte Box
...
1. SmallRig Mini Matte Box Lite 3575
With their Mini Matte Box Lite, manufacturer SmallRig extends their popular catalog of easy to use and inexpensive camera equipment. The matte box attaches to your lens by the filter thread, and the included step up rings allows you to go from different lens sizes to the matte box diameter of 95 mm.
This matte box comes with a top flag and a 4x5.65 filter tray. It also allows you to stack multiple filter trays in front of each other by sliding them in place. There are also 4x4 filter trays available if you have square filters. The filter trays support cinema filters (like NiSi or Formatt-Hitech) of 4 mm depth.
Specifications
- Product: Mini Matte Box Lite 3575
- Brand: SmallRig
- Weight: 108
What We Like
- Great matte box for a low price
- Easy to use filter tray system
- Lightweight
What We Dislike
- Nothing — great for the price
2. Bright Tangerine Misfit Kick
The Misfit Kick by Bright Tangerine is their latest and greatest matte box, which is available in many different kits; the basic kit is simply the matte box and a couple of filter holders, and even so the price is quite high for most of us.
This matte box is also compatible with ARRI Filter Trays, which makes it a very good choice in a professional shooting environment since it can take everything.
Specifications
- Product: Misfit Kick
- Brand: Bright Tangerine
- Weight: 305
What We Like
- Easy to extend and add products to
- Compatible with ARRI Filter Trays
- Very durable
What We Dislike
- Very high price for hobbyists
Table of Contents
What makes a good matte box?
...
1. Material
The material of which the matte box is construction is the main contributor to low weight; as an example, carbon fibre will always weigh a lot less than a matte box constructed of primarily aluminum.
A compact matte box will always benefit from lightweight materials such as carbon fibre, and the excellent starting point Mini Matte Box Lite 3575 is — you guessed it — made from carbon fibre and plastic primarily, making it lightweight and easy to use.
2. Mount
Matte boxes are mounted to your camera in different ways, and the most common way is to mount it to 15mm rods on your camera rig. This might be contradictory when talking compact matte boxes, since it requires additional rigging, and that because of this these small matte boxes are instead mounted to the lens itself using step up rings — a really nice way to get a small, simple and robust camera rig.
3. Durability
When it comes to durability, there are no ways around the fact that durable materials are more expensive. This means that the cheapest matte boxes will not be as sturdy and durable as the more expensive ones, but it does not mean that every cheap matte box will break immediately; you just have to be more careful with cheaper matte boxes.
if you work in a tough environment where the camera rig has to be able to take a beating, then the very cheapest matte boxes will not suffice — you need a little more expensive matte box in order to get the durability and sturdiness that your shooting environment requires.
4. Ease of use
Last but not least, being able to quickly mount the matte box and also adding or removing filters to and frmo the matte box is essential to the everyday use; if you don't have a variable ND you need to be able to quickly exchange your ND filters, for instance.
The matte boxes we recommend in this article all have quick ways of adding and removing filtration, making all of them easy to use in pretty much all shooting scenarios.
Our Favorite
When it comes to ease of use and low price, there is really no competition for SmallRig's latest matte boxes; they're solid, lightweight, have good enough flags and really easy to use filter trays that just slides in place and — most importantly — doesn't rattle.
Of course the Bright Tangerine matte boxes are "better", but at what cost? If you're a hobbyist or one man band, the SmallRig matte boxes will be good enough and provide you with just the tools you need at the lowest price point possible.
For professional productions, the Bright Tangerine products are a no-brainer since they're compatible with ARRI filter trays and will work for any camera kit.