What is a Camera Cheese Plate?
A camera cheese plate is a customised utility bracket used for rigging a camera.
Camera cheese plates offer the strength and rigidity needed to set up a secure rig and allow you to add accessories and mount them onto the camera body for stabilisation. Cheeseplates – or cheese plates – are usually black, which helps to reduce any accidental off-angle or side reflections moving towards your lens (despite the fact it’s normally at the back of the camera!).
The Full Frame Camera Co Cheeseplates are made from high grade, machined aluminium – making them both light and very hard-wearing. Our bespoke, hand-finished plates are designed as rear cheeseplates for the Canon C500 MKII and the C300 MKIII. (NB: Common cheese plates on the market include those made from plastic, steel, or alloy.)
How do you use a cheese plate on a camera?
Most cheeseplates are designed to mount either vertically or horizontally. This allows a camera cheeseplate – especially a rear cheeseplate – to offer better support for external recorders, or to serve as a convenient place for heavy batteries.
Cheese plates basically serve as a versatile and cost-effective way to mount any device without worrying about having a custom camera set created for you. They have pre-drilled screw holes, or ‘threaded holes’, which are in two main sizes used extensively in the film industry to suit universal camera accessories, allowing you to attach any screw-based device easily, and to achieve as clean a mount as possible.
Everything a camera might need! Almost. These items include:
- Viewfinder brackets
- Monitors
- Microphone and brackets
- Wireless mics
- Wireless video transmitters
- Battery Plates
- Noga Arms
Please note, however, that our cheese plate for the Canon C300 MkIII/C500 MkII is not required to mount our V-Mount or Gold Mount battery plates to the camera.
What is a cheese plate in film?
It means the same thing – the ‘Cheese Plate’ is not necessarily the dairy buffet offerings on set (although it might be if you’re lucky!). This term is actually referring to the same piece of kit: a camera mount which allows a camera operator to add vital and extra items of equipment, including the support for battery plates for extra power, which is often needed for long professional shoots.
Why is it called a cheese plate?
The mount is called a cheese plate because of all the threaded holes! This piece of camera equipment looks a bit like that famously holey Swiss cheese, emmental (and others!), hence the name – cheese plate. The film industry loves a good pun or analogy, after all.
What’s on your rig and what are filming with it? Connect with Full Frame Camera Co. on social media, we would love to hear from you!
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