this is a cheap magic arm off amazon and i absolutely hate it
the reason i've never liked magic arms or friction arms is because i've always purchased cheap ones
and they're cheap they're just junk if you don't screw it in right you do this
the whole thing will tip over and your piece will fall over and then no matter how hard you tighten
it the teeth in here are so small that it just always is going to move no matter what you do
so you can't really utilize them that well and the fact that there's no sort of real
quick release system because you'd have to screw everything down
it takes time once it's screwed down you got to move it around and get it in place and i just
i just and like i said before if you set it you have to set it so that it goes against the screw
you can't set it so that it's not against the screw because then that's what happens i just
i've i've not used these things hardly at all because of that reason but when i footage sent me
the spider crabs the new friction arms the magic arms from ifootage they're fantastic and i footage
just send these to me for free they're not paying me they're not asking me to say anything they
don't get to see this video before it's released but they just sent them and said try them out and
i've been trying them out for the last few weeks and i gotta say i've been blown away by the build
quality of these and what they're capable of these are the magic arms from i footage the spider crabs
they're not cheap but like most things in this sort of business you get what you pay for and
on things like this tripods support gear things that are probably going to last you the rest of
your life it's better to invest a lot more money up front and have something that's going to last
and it's going to actually be useful then get cheap junk and buy cheap junk six seven eight
nine times and hate it and just not use it because you hate the way it works and that's where these
come in incredible now i've been using them for about four weeks this is the lt which is
the cheapest it's the four to five and a half and they also sent me the m a three to four and the m
a five to six these things are the most bomb-proof bulletproof things that i've used and they're
really really well designed on the design first off this is the cheapest one and i can't like
i cannot if you see the size of the teeth in here they're huge and it will take a lot of force
i mean i can't i i've tried and that's not even tightened all the way down there's a lot of things
that you don't really notice until you've used a really junky crappy cheap one like i've been using
that's where this even though this is the cheapest one i footage offers the design really comes into
play now you've got a cold shoe mount here with a quarter 20 in it and some locating holes if you
want to use something like that it tightens down with this really nice uh grippy ring here which
has got a knurled edge so you can get a good grip on it and on this end you've got the quarter 20
and an o-ring which gives you grip which is much better and i think it's going to last a lot
longer than the cheap little like rubber grippy stuff that you usually find on the cheap ones
but the nice thing is too instead of having to spin this to put it
on you can just turn this knurled thing here so you put it up you rotate it in
and without ever having to turn or use your piece of you know rotate your piece of equipment to get
it on there you've got a really nice tight grip and it is well well attached but there's also the
ma version which are the more expensive versions but they come with some really really nice
upgrades now this is this is the ma56 i've also got the three four here and either one of these
is fantastic here's what's really nice and really well designed about these is you've got these nice
lever locks or lever locks depending on where you're from and then this little
button you push here to pop this part out now this is the 3 8 or quarter 20 with the airy
locating pins which also push back so if you don't have pins they'll just push back
no problem but the nice thing about the way this is designed is the 3 8 will just push back
and then you can rotate if i can do this with two hands you can just rotate this to clamp it
down and it's got the same nice rubber o-ring you clamp it down flip this in and then if you notice
there's three holes here and three little spikes in there those line up together so you put it in
by kind of lining up those three spikes on the little red handle and it clicks in and because
of this little push thing here it locks in place so it won't fall out which is really nice if
you're attaching expensive heavier monitors or other heavy gear but you're putting it in
upside down you don't have to worry about it falling the nice thing is too push that pops right
out and you're ready to put this you know onto another magic arm or something else somewhere else
if five footage isn't selling these individually they really should consider it because you can
attach these to whatever you want that has a 3 8 or quarter 20 or airy pins and then hot
swap these to go wherever else you want to go and then you're ready to go so then i could take this
arm pop this off pop this off and go stick it on my tripod or on a slider or on my camera with a
monitor or anything like that makes it super fast and super easy to be able to swap and move your
gear around now the other nice thing that comes with these ma series arms is this it's a cold shoe
mount with a quarter 20 and some air airy locating pins you can attach this just like you would
to anything else nice and tight you've got this nice knurled band that tightens it down
and you can put this in a cold shoe or a hot shoe on your camera and then immediately you have a way
to again attach this arm nice locking tight it won't come loose you can tighten it down so that
it's super tight and then the same thing with this arm even though it's much bigger you can't like
you just i mean you could probably get it to break if you really tried but uh i've tried pretty hard
and it has not budged on me if you want to see other equipment that's fantastic for solo creators
filmmakers photographers click or tap there i put together a short playlist i will see you in one of
those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream
wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i will see you again soon in the next video cheers