Thomas English

I would, but I would disconnect my marell VDA/bubble unit at the same time as changing my monitor over. Otherwise, I think it would be absolutely fine. It s discussed regularly on this forum and the consensus seems to be its fine to stick HD down short lenghs of 50ohm cable. I use my lightweight SD (50ohm) cable all the time when hard wired I just don't bring it up in conversation.

well done Rob!

How did this recorder turn out Ramon? It looks like it could be great! thomas

This one is cheap and takes 12v http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...oughType=search

some monitors do need a really strong synch signal to work. So long as the synch is there the rest of the image can be bad or good with no problems. Some monitors (sony clamshell etc) have a squelch type circuite, like when you don t hear the white noise when releasing the button on a walky talky. which makes the image jump around twice as much when the synch signal goes wrong. Try and use a Time Base Corrector on the signal out from your reciever something like this http://www.vtx.co.uk/video/tbchq.htm You will probably find that your rental house does keep them. Other wise your techie there will get one in for you. It should not be too hard to get.

It is very possible that the other antenna was absorbing a reflected wave. Try getting a small sheet of metal on a Cstand and shifting that around your sharkfin, blocking any reflective waves. It is also possible that it is contributing to the antenna! Your own body can contribute to the antenna sometimes! because your other ariel was "cut to the correct" wavelengh, it could have set up a standing wave accross it enabling the signal strengh to increase on your ariel. With UHF/VHF sometimes just the fact that there s lots of metal in an area can "attract" the EMF. Like an inductor in a transformer or lightening! Thus decreasing any reflective interference because you have brought all the energy over to u rather than letting it bounce off the back wall. This is much less possible on microwave.

I would like to testify to the importance of this. It is better to have to buy one unit and have it fixed 5 times for free than to buy 5 infinately poorer and less versitile units and replace them regularly as they break. I have been through 7 x 2.4ghz RX s and 2 x 2.4ghz TX s in my short career as a steadicam operator.

I have been studying this for a few days, as I plan too on upgrading. The major difference between UHF and 1.4/2.4 is they are AM and FM respectivly. "Amplitude Modulation", where the video signal is put by using the amplification of the frequncy carrier seems to be much more prone to multipathing/reflection interference than "Frequncy Modulation" where its more down the frequency changes to carry the signal. However the higher the frequency the better the bounce and hence the more multipathing, hence why 2.4ghz break up so much over the AM UHF s however the signal and colour gamut on UHF "CAN" be consistently worse than microwave as small reflections find it easier to remodulate an AM signal. An ideal system would be an FM UHF , but I think the wavelengh may be too long to frequency modulate. Another ideal system for our application would be a diversity 1.4ghz. AvalonRF do diversity 2.4ghz that are used on police helicopters and the like. It is however $4000 for the 4 ariel diversity reciever. Marell electronics have just started selling diversity 1.4ghz and 2.4 ghz systems at quite reasonable prices. approx 1900 sterling (RX and TX) as well as diversity directors monitors. Hopefully the ability for it to flick to the best reception antenna could eliminate most of the breakup. has anyone yet tested the VATboy system on http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...cial_s%26sa%3DG I don t think you need as much power as I have, 1000mW on 2.4ghz. I think 400mW is about what would be best. better concetrate on your recieving antenna. My new configuration of my 2.4ghz has a unidirection ariel mounted on a PAG battery (so no bounce can get through the back) I am interested to see how this performes in real life. What diversity recievers are used on the modulus? I hear chroiszel make one, xcs make one and avalonRF make one. Is a diversity noticably better on AM UHF? A clever chap I was chatting to at joe dunton reckons that if you plan your ariels right on diversity you could have a mobile feed going up the projectors at say a concert or the like. a good consistent enough picture at a concert. My housemate just got back from stateside after doing the visuals for DefLeopard. He hung out with some kids using a UHF system Waveshot at a gig and he was putting the feed onto a screen perfectly. Transmiting through a crowd with only occasional breakup. http://www.dvshop.ca/camera/waveshot.html However I think it may only be available on NTSC . I feel the future lies in COFDM systems. No delay, No breakup, perfect signal until a distance is reached. However at the moment they cost about 6000 sterling, and weigh a lot more (1.5kg TX). http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/papers/paper_15/paper_15.shtml sorry for the rant, thomas

BRILLIANT!

The UHF systems in your links seem very interesting. I worry that some old lady around the corner complains to the authorities because she s picking up your picture on the TV. I would be interested to know the effective range they give and thus the safety zone. The lower the frequency the more "flex" the transmision has. Super high frequencies you get a lazer. very straight. hence my desire for the lowest frequency possible. The big problem I have with my 1000 mW 2.4 ghz TX is not that the reciever is picking up the picture. The problem is multipathing. Where the signal is bouncing around the place, some signals are going longer routes to reach the reciever and thus getting there slightly out of time with the main signal, causing interference with its own signal. In that sense having a weaker TX can sometimes be an advantage. The secret is having super uni directional recieving ariels and have a runner point it at the rig. Rob, I assume you have no problems buying 1.395ghz ariels in thailand. This is my problem here in the UK. Have you found anywhere selling diversity 1.395ghz recievers? Where you have 2 ariels an awkward wavelengh distance apart and the reciever chooses the finest signal. looks like I am going shopping when I come over at xmass. The other problem I have with all these cheap recievers is their voltage range. I burn through 2.4 ghz recievers at a rate of one every 2 months and I reckon its because I run it off PAGs which are fairly high voltage relative the the 12v these guys are made for. especially hot off the charger. I have directly lost a few RX s by putting a battery straight off the charger. By the way 10mW TX RX ranging 20 miles in open space would only be possible with 2 huge highly unidirectional antennas. In the kind of setups we use you ll have difficulty ranging over 50 yards. thomas

If your using it on a flyer, its unlikely that you ll be doing much film stuff. Get a lighter motor than the M one. A little heden would see you fine. I would also worry about powering the M motor off the camera. I have heard it does not like the power an sr3 gives it. The bartech I think is the lightest unit around. possibly the cmotion unit is at the same level as well as MK-V s new unit. The bartech is a great bet. Jim would sort you out with all the cables you need I am sure. I use the M motor and its fantastic.

you have a few anton bauer batteries on there? I think this is far too much. See if you can put one lithuim battery to balance up with your dvx100. Post a photo of your rig all balanced for more vlues as to what is going on. but yes this is far too heavy. My sled comes to 41 lbs with a varicam, ring light, full remote follow focus and 2 nicads .

Here is a demo of the 24inch post in action. Brian has these available now. Thomas

definately produce your own demo and treat your shots like really complicated practice. Make the shots super tough. Do a deal with a local performance arts school. Make the maddest stuff you can because essentially your a filmaker. Make a dancer s showreel. Chase a fire performer around a disused factory. get a load of kids and shoot their kartwheels in low mode. try and spin the whole rig so you have their heads in shot the right way up the whole time. Show off, it s show bussiness! Do it before you forget the idea. Spend some money and make some art. Also, if you made some deals on the jobs you did because they were maybe not commercial jobs. They owe you those bits for your reel! Don t be afraid to be rude to people when demanding that footage. If they paid full rate thats a different issue, in that case you got paid to do your job and walk away with no rights to the footage. If you did them a deal because it was a student film then really they have to give you a copy pronto.

Your going to love moscow! love it! Lots of good bars, lots of very very good bars. I don t remember a single name of one as it was all a haze. You won t have any problems finding them. Carry around a few hundred dollars in cash in various pockets to pay bribes, so that it looks like that s all the money you ve got. Take time to pay, let them wait for it or it will just get more expensive. Carry around a photocopy of your passport with a few phone numbers on the back of good russian speaking people to get you out of trouble, above the phone numbers right down the name of a prominent moscow legal firm in russian and in the same handwriting. This will do a lot to stop them hassling you when they are inspecting your documents. Avoid at all costs handing over your real passport. It s really difficult to tell who is who, army or police etc, when your being stopped, they ve all got guns and point them at you sometimes. You can flag down any car when your waiting for a cab, just stand in the road and put your hand in the air. But keep all your destinations written down in russian as little cards as nobody speaks english, really cheap travelling around. Best bars, beautiful girls, great people..... your going to have a lot of fun!

The movietube does not have a rotating ground glass but a film of microcrystalline fimscreen. The image looks great. If you want to remove the grain it is easier in post using "grain effects" as the grain is static. But it is very fine grain, much finer than the PStechniks (when not spinning). its really good. It is cheaper than the PStechniks but by no means a cheap version. It s very well built and has a prism so the camera can sit the right way up. Very solid and easier to operate handheld. A lot of the cheap units use ground CD s as the "gate" and are not comparable yet to the Movietube and PStechniks. They are certainly not good enough to take on a job for a client. All the pro s and cons of various units along with some incredible home ingenuity and engineering can be found on www.dvinfo.net By the way the promo was for Hard FI , new English band. watch it and judge for yourselves.

If any of you are interested. With a ronford - baker snatch plate added for extra weight the movie tube balanced perfectly on my master film arm. Perfectly but at exactly the lightest setting of my springs, But perfectly none the less. The extra height is an issue with some shots. The image quality was easily as good as a PS techniks. The build quality and versatility I would say is better. I sometimes find the PS techniks to be a really "slow balancer" the movie tube is much tighter and more like a film camera. Better system overall I think.... If you can get your head around the extra camera height thing.

This is a photo of the setup that worked. The Mk-V evolution is great for gaffering bits on. I reckon if in an emergency this downconverter would be available from "procam" in Tokyo. thomas

A Japanese crew came to England with a 700 HD about 2 years ago. They said they had a downconverter, as it turned out it was a rackmounted 12v NTSC downconverter. I Gaffered it to the bottom of my rig and sent the component cable all the way down from the camera into the downconverter. It was a faff but it worked. There definately are downconverters available for it but it s the oldest HD camera you can get.

I would really love to watch the spot Charles, is there anywhere I am still able to download it?

Thats right... miniDV or HDV I ve been shooting quite a few of these 10,000 budgets promo s on Z1 s and PS techniks recently... pikey setup but these are heavyweight clients! RSA and Alchemy . Shows how dire the promo industry is getting. Then again they do look cool in their own special way. Maybe things will change as they slowly swamp the pier to pier networks and pay to download music takes off. Maybe things will get back to the glory days! all my mates in the music biz are looking forward hopeful What seems possible is that the piracy pier/pier may be stemmed just on time to save our film industries! Whatever happens these setups are here to stay!

Dear All, I am well versed with the PS techniks unit, pro35 and mini35 . Next tuesday I have a promo on the movietube. http://www.movietube.com/index2.php It looks like an odd beast. It may balance better than the mini35 or it might be even trickier. Any experience? This will be interesting. Thomas

make sure the "steadyshot" is turned off. Otherwise you get a weird vibrating or lag in the image. Have plenty of RCA to BNC converter plugs and cables. Thats all I can think of off hand. Not sure what your standard mattbox is but you ll be fine. Thomas

Apparently there will be a hard mount version! by the end of the month!! My question was really "Is this JUST another vehicle to operate from" People on this forum have been discussing for years operating off different vehicles, different techniques and different ideas. Is this whole forum not meant to be about thinking and swapping ideas, rather than slamming people because THEY thought they may do it differently. Does our small section of the industry not pride itself on imagination? I have a friend in England who has a few segways and has been doing performance shows on them for a few years. Dressed up as crazy angles. They cane it about town in these crazy costumes appearing handsfree. Actually what they are doing is not holding on in a straight line.... obviously not ideal. At the time I completely dismissed operating off one for this very point. There is a guy that rides a bicycle wearing a steadicam rig, and you can operate by just holding the post but its not very versatile. But there is nothing preventing you from operating off a segway in a straight line. As a separate point, the dangerous thing for them has been their costume getting stuck under the wheels! making them flip/slam in the the ground very quickly with no notice at all! On the subject of it being "the real" unit , While I think the Ulick segway modification is brilliant and if the price is right I fully intend to buy one. It is however the Ulick modification and not officially condoned by segway. I am sure though that he has all the proper manufacturer s liabilities and it will be completely cosha for Tiffen to take it on as a product. So do Tiffen have an exclusive distribution deal for this unit? It seems we will only be able to hire them from Ulick or buy them from Tiffen. This week I will head round my mates yard and get myself fully up to speed riding segways because this is definately the future of a lot of things. The sports camera people must be getting very excited! Has anyone tried Don Juan off one of these yet? Often running shots are designed to be shot from the front. When I run in Don juan I am aware as to how little I know about what I might run into with my field of view only extending for a few meters. We are now discussing the possibility of doing Don Juan and 15mph ! with no grip to guide you! This is possibly a time to rotate your monitor round the other way and have a super long monitor bracket? Congratualations to Ulick for coming up with a working product and Sir Garrett and Tiffen for fostering/specking this development

i think thats a little grouchy to a very valid question. If someone shoots off a quad, I don t have to buy their quad do I. What happened when the first quad was used for steadicam? I would certainly hope nobody had their head bitten off for suggesting they would like a go. The question was intended as a 'can I have a go at playing with segway s too is their a reason I am not allowed' The 4 times the value came from a) this forum b ) a friend of mine who spoke to ulrick the designer I would love to buy ulricks segway, tried and tested. But since the intelligence is in the segway at $5000 I find it surprising that I would be paying $15000 simply for a different controll lever. I am more than glad to pay for top machining and a premium for innovative ideas. I would be more than glad to buy ulricks unit. So.... are there any patent points that would stop me buying a segway and messing about with it. Its nothing like building my own steadicam. As I am still using a segway, just my own controll lever. I am not planning on reinventing the segway. Let s not turn this into a sore /argument, as I see your point and agree. We will just have to wait and see how much these units come out. I would like to buy one.