The Talos Damping Magic Arm is a new rigging accessory from Mofage – the manufacturers of the Poco PL mount adapter that takes drop-in filters. Mofage claims to be a collection of designers and filmmakers aiming to devise products that make filmmaking easier – which indeed the Poco looks as though it does. This Talos Damping Magic Arm is their latest trick – a jointed and fully rotating pair of arms with ball socket heads all controlled by a single lever handle in the middle. What is special about this arm, the company says, is that it only takes a single turn of the handle to release 80% of the arm’s grip, so it is easy to adjust but also strong enough that it won’t move once fixed into position.
As much as it can be a lot of fun to build a camera rig one of the things that very often puts a dampener on the experience for me is accessories, monitors and cameras not staying locked in the position I put them in. I have lots of miracle-promising clamps, brackets and mounts, but there are none I take out of the tool box with absolute confidence it is going to spend the whole day obediently holding whatever I want it to hold in exactly the right place. Moving accessories, swinging cameras and drooping monitors are my least favourite parts of filmmaking, so I’m constantly on the lookout for equipment that will take this pain away – hence my interest in the claims made of this arm.
Talos Damping Magic Arm: what is it?
The Talos Damping Magic Arm consists of two metal arms joined together at a locking axle. Fitted at the far end of each arm is a head for attaching to an accessory or a camera via a 1/4in 20 thread. Each of the two heads is held in place by a ball and socket arrangement, while a rotating cut-out collar around the ball joint allows the head to turn in a wide range of directions up to 90° to the main arm. When the main handle at the axle is released the whole construction becomes lose and we can adjust all the variables at the same time. Once everything is in the right place, turning the handle back again locks all the joints simultaneously.
The joint between the two arms doesn’t have the teeth we often see where things come together that need to remain firmly in place. The downside to this is that the joint relies solely on the handle being tight enough as it doesn’t have the extra security of physical obstacles to hold it in place. The upside is that the handle needs less rotation to loosen the joint to the point the arms can be made to move.
Each of the heads has a wheel to help screw the thread into where ever it is going, and the wheel has five holes that accept the end of an Allen key to allow greater tightening than is possible with bare fingers. Either side of the screw we have a pair of retracting locating pins to prevent rotation when the fitted accessory has anti-rotation holes for them to pair with.
The heads are removable too. Undoing the screw that holds them in place reveals a short pin with a 7mm diameter that Mofage, on its website, shows accepting a small tripod head. The company tells me this is a proprietary fitting that they will use for a range of accessories designed to be attached to this arm, and that there will be other accessories for the arm in the near future. A cable tidy is already being shown in social media posts. You may also note there are grooves in the sides of the heads too, that look as though they might accept NATO- or arca-type accessories but they don’t at the moment.
The arm comes in a choice of three colourways. The one shown here is called Subvert Classics Black, but if you are cooler than I am you might go for 90s Vintage Beige or Electronic Sci-Fi Silver.
In use
Despite Mofage telling us that the Talos Damping Magic Arm is lightweight I found it surprisingly heavy for its size. They have created an ‘exoskeleton’ design that sees lots of air where metal could have been, but it still weighs 0.93lbs/426g – which puts it somewhere between a 5in and a 7in monitor, or half a mirrorless camera. That’s quite a substantial addition to any rig, but at the same time this is an arm that is very solidly made and which will probably last for ever – and it is designed to support up to 11lbs/5kg. When looking at other ‘magic arm’ accessories you’ll note the Talos is lighter than the Manfrotto Magic Arm but it is also shorter – though the Talos is lighter per unit of length.
I was surprised to note that the heads on the end of the arms use 1/4in 20 screws, but I suppose it’s better to supply smaller screws that fit cameras and smaller accessories, when an adapter can easily allow the screw to fit larger threads too. The wheels that turn the screws are nice and big, and so are easy to turn and good to get a decent degree of tightness between the head and whatever you are fitting it to. I was disappointed at first that there was quite a lot of wobble when holding monitors and some rotation when holding items without anti-rotation sockets, but an Allen key in a hole in the wheel allowed me to tighten the screw properly to make all those issues disappear.
I’m not an engineer so I don’t fully understand how this is done, but Mofage has managed to create a central fastening that holds rock-solid when it’s done up but which can be finely adjusted with a quarter turn of the handle. So, when you’ve set yourself up and you realise the monitor isn’t quite at the right angle you can adjust it without having to undo the whole arm and without having to unscrew anything. A quarter turn of the handle still leaves enough strength in the grip to hold everything in place, but enough flexibility to allow us to make slight, controlled moves. This, for me, is the best thing about the arm – that I could move things easily and without a whole process. When you find the right position and retighten the arm there’s no droop either – whatever you just positioned will stay in that position. You don’t have to readjust your readjustments, as I find myself doing a lot with other clamps.
The arm obviously works to attach accessories to your rig, but it is also great as a camera handle too, and can act as a handle and hold a monitor at the same time. I used it like a miniature leg to support a camera too, and found it could balance nicely when the lower head was turned 90° to act as a foot.
Conclusion
I’m not about to tell you all my dreams have come true, mainly because that would demonstrate how sad my existence is, but this Talos Damping Magic Arm has brought a dramatic change to my shooting life. I really like that it can transform its shape and gripping angles in under five seconds, and that one moment I can be using it to support a monitor and the next as a camera handle – and that it does both things really well. As the arms are slightly off-set it takes a while to work out how to find a position in which the camera will hang straight when you are using the Talos as a handle, but once you’ve got the knack you’ll appreciate how flexible the arm is for shooting at all kinds of angles. And of course you can use it as a handle and a monitor grip at the same time. I’ve used it to mount lights and mics to the camera too, and enjoyed how simple it is to switch a position from directly over the axis of the lens to way out to the side of the camera. The Mofage Talos Damping Magic Arm really is magic, and I can’t think of anything negative to say about it. Maybe it could lose some weight, but not if that will be at the expense of how well it grips and holds accessories in position. Of course now the issue is one of these arms isn’t going to be enough.
Mofage Talos Damping Magic Arm Specifications
- Price: $129
- Payload: 5kg/11lbs Vertical/2.5kg/5.5lbs horizontal
- Max length: 30cm/11.5in
- Folded length: 16cm/6.25in
- Fitting: 1/4in 20 screw with anti-rotation pins
- Weight: 426g/0.93lbs