Thomas English

Here is a photo of my rig and it s accessories.......

My focus motor seems to be sticking . Between 5ft and 10 ft some//times it sticks then jumps to where its meant to go. It also sucks electricity in these spasmodic moments. Maybe its a bit of grit stuck? I have been warned against taking them apart myself. Its a CP sld100 . Is there anyone in england that can fix these. failing that the U.S. ? Thanks

OK...... I want to put focus teeth onto a dimmer knob. It s the dimmer knob on a gekko ringlight. Anyone ever succeeded in putting focus teeth onto such a thing. I have ordered in a genio for the job with little lightweight mv26 motors. So I want to twist the little dimmer knob with the genio motors. In that kit I also have all the old chroizel gear adaptors... any ideas? blue tac !? double sided tape?

I think as an artistic choice they are overated.... the couple of really well planned out moments are cool.... But I am not sure really how much they add overall vis a vis the hassle.. Using them in anything other than dream sequences and promos... dunno I think if I was a stills man I would be infinately more excited and probably use them all the time.

Sharps hated it... she was cute though I kept just asking her things like... left of frame 4ft and right of frame 7ft and Ill focus by manipulating the frame and camera distance... but she hated it.. she kept wanting me to hold the camera into shots so she could tweak the lens... it hurt... It was a dream sequence so I knew I had room to manoever artistically. poor lass... Im sure it looks wicked though... I like the way u can hold focus on person accross the frame by panning and tracking ! playing accross the focus plane! lots of cool steadicam oportunities.. poor lass Guy holding the gun .... setting the focus plane accross him (as he points towards you) and tracking round him so only the gun starts in focus but then the whole body comes into focus... wicked! Yeah... reckon your arris sound loads better! loads! these were made by arri but they had the bellows ... hence the 19mm bars.. how fast are your arris? these were only f4

can I have their phone number s please.... they definately are girls are nt they? xx

did the job today gosh.... I had to carry the bridge plate system to have the shift and tilts combined with regular mags and regular top... made it quite heavy... heavier than a 535B by far (from the rig settings). Funny because its not bad to lift and does nt feel any pain but as soon as i did anything complicated my footwork fell apart... simply couldn t get away with my normall footwork with such weight on! thanks... respect to all u BL2 old boys out there xx

as it turns out we are now using shift and tilts. could get painful

I have been using it since its release. Its great. Theres been some software upgrades since the first one. I absolutely love it. Am having a real hard time on anamorphic lenses at the moment and its really helping me. You can move the bubbles anywere in the screen. 7 programable inputs on both pal or ntsc. battery level indicator. I think you would have to put it before your topstage on the ultra short of splitting out your monitor cable. U can position it whichever whatever way you like. I ve got a vda built into mine.

Thanks stephen! The reason I ask about these extra s is that is this production are so tight ... The ST is the only body on the shoot.. I don t think they can afford the extra 200 pounds for a 100% top.... and possibly not the hundred quid ish for the steadicam mags. I generally convince production to go upside down for low mode. Is that a bad idea? I ve been doing it loads on 35mm .. everyone seems to be going intermediary... are they ever any problems with going upsidedown on any of these cameras? I have nt gone into proper lowmode once this year! John Ward once gave me a right roasting when I told him my bad habits.... So I ll insist on the LTsteadimags and see what happens with the 100% top. You would happily carry this on your 3a arm? very gratefull for your answere s stephen.... your bar tab is mounting! cold guinness is it? thomas

Seems I am relegated back to newbies since to many people this is probably a very simple question. Got a job on the Arri ST (studio) I never use the video top on the 435... do I need to use it on the ST (I enjoy the weight of the 535B with 100% top and steadimags) There is an extension throat for the mag to hold it more vertical. Do I need to bother ordering steadicam mags ? I know that you can use the LT steadimags with an adaptor. Is there a weight saving on the LT s steadimags? Thankyou all for your time thomas

I reckon the g70 will be an incredible contender, but as stephen murphy and will arnot pointed out; How easy is the g70 to clean ? can a monkey like myself simply take it apart and clean it or do I need to spend $2000 on a service ? Will I need to wear arm covers in the rain? I just bought a master arm, but I would be wanting to make a decision to buy one or the other next year when the choice/funds are available. Really it is still a close call. I would love it if some pro veterans would try it out and review it.

I paid £1500 for my rainbow superbright . I believe the cineIIa superbright is £2200

I had a go on one of those handheld glidecam things the other day. The guy paid $100 for it . As Mikko said, probably a GC2000/4000 . Get one of them and put the lightest camera on it possible. I hammered it playing for hours with this thing doing crazy spinning shots etc etc and was really impressed with what I got (making a load more visuals for ninja tunes and associates). Get one of them and enjoy the pain. Nail your nice tracking shot then "cup" the camera to rest it. You ll be fine. see if you can put the battery on the bottom and have an extension cable to power the camera, thus loosing more ballast from the bottom. As you say, you probably can t wear the vest anyway over your uniform.

I have heard of people using water as a counterbalance. That way you only need to fill it up when you hit location. A big barrel, completely full so it does not slosh.

don t worry Ben, The g70 won t come out for ages! you ll have made your money back by then. The weapon of choice on cheap bread and butter promo s at the moment seems to be varicam gekko ringlight downconverter singlechannel bartech 2 lightweight pags on a recent promo i weighed it and this comes to a grand total of 55lbs on my sled. So I figured forget the g50 and bought a nice workhorse master and now I am confident! in a year and a half, when it comes out..... ill get a g70

The other thing is, It might not have been the strenuous shot that did it.... It could have been soft mounting on the wheelchair! I often never really get comfortable soft mounting on moving vehicles.

Go to a few pilates classes with all the dancing girls. Learn about tensing your core muscles so you are able to achieve perfect posture. Pop your rig on, stand up straight (whilst leaning the whole body back to counter balance the rig) and tense your core muscles pilates style so that your hips back pelvis legs etc are all straight and in line. If the rig pushes away from you pulls in out or any about, its incorrectly set up and you could be causing your self problems. In a pilates straight your rig should sit at your favoured float point.

I think we all need to rely a little less on the internet if in a hurry. All my computer mates reckon there could be a day soon where email becomes so unreliable it simply won t work anymore, with the proliferation of worm viruses etc. If you need something in a hurry, use the phone. If you need something for definate, send a letter by registered post. I managed to shear part of my topstage sunday before last on a shoot. In a panick I texted Howard, on a sunday and he called back immedietely. I had recieved and had fitted my new part on the tuesday. Whilst Howard is often unreachable, he does have a team of engineers all over the UK and probably now the US able to sort problems out quickly and efficiently. And there is always someone answereing the landline phone. I am sure I could have sorted out the courier to have had the part delivered to london and fitted on the monday but it would have cost me more money.

sure.... 5 w would cover that kind of area at the 100Mhz range . But 900Mhz is much higher so could have a much shorter range.... I would absolutely love to use a 900Mhz tx/rx but I just don t think I could risk it. Its fine with the bartech because all they could confiscate is your focus puller (as the lens controller does not transmit). But risking putting a 900Mhz TX on my sled is maybe very dodgy. perhaps ill find some HAM radio forum s and enquire.

sorry for not thinking, the av loop through would enable you to put the archos at the top of your rig between camera and sled, negating the need for a VDA.

From simply looking at the spec differences the DVR AV500 stores 100gb whilst the 420 only 20 Gb The Mpeg-4 live video encoding on the 420 seems to be of limited datarate (SVCD) whilst the 500 the mpeg4 can be selected up to ?near DVD quality? No indication of the actuall data rates is included but its implying a maximum estimated 2.6 Mbps on the 420 and 6 Mbps on the 500 . i.e. The image quality on the 500 can be loads better. Although their idea of ?near dvd quality? could be half to a third those datarates. The 420 is 280g whilst the 500 is 315g The ?pod? or docking on the 500 seems to have video pass through. This could be a problem if your wanting to loop your out video back onto your sled. It would have to be disabled to avoid feedback. Whilst I have never used an Archos I would imagine wanting to put the video signal in from the sled and then out back onto the same connector. That way I could turn the camera off and press play and the playback would immediately play on my monitor and transmitter without having to re wire anything. Correct me if I am wrong please.

I am really interested as to the whether anyone uses the modulus in England. 900Mhz is clearly the best frequency to send video. However the law stands on illegal transmitters that the DTI can confiscate the transmiter and anything attached to it... i.e. your rig and productions camera ! what would be the detectable range of the modulus?

Thanks Will, Im sure I speak for many people in saying your post is a super interesting insight. Thomas

Is it still the 3a topstage on the mk-v nexus, like I have on my evolution? I think it would be tricky to trim on the fly unlike many of the other topstages.