Jess Haas SOC

Happy B-day. Hope you have a great one. ~Jess

I know roughly where the weights need to be for dynamic balance so as long as I think its close I don't bother spin balancing unless I am doing something such as whip pans where I feel that it will really matter. If dynamic balance is way off the rig can get kind of squirly but otherwise I don't feel that its that big of a deal for most work. ~Jess

It does standard framelines but not adjustable for custom stuff such as lining up with film camera ground glasses. Bug the manufacturer about this though and they might be able to fix that. ~Jess

Are you hitting the end of the battery fore/aft adjustment while trying to dynamic ballance? If so then you may need to add some weight to the monitor to get things within range. With no camera on the rig try to get things positioned to where it is slightly front heavy. The two batteries in back will pull the sled back while spinning. Having the cameras center of gravity slightly behind the post counteracts this. In order to have the cameras center of gravity slightly behind the post you need the sled to be able to be adjusted to be slightly front heavy without the camera. Sorry if that made no sense or was stating the obvious. Don't have a pro rig myself but I did go through the process of converting my rig from CRT to LCD and it dynamic balances just fine. Of course I rarely bother to dynamic balance on set. ~Jess

Watch out or he will make you like Don Juan.

Just be careful to keep them from discharging too far. If Lithium ion batteries discharge too far there usually isn't any coming back. ~Jess

I preped a show with a similar rig made by a different company recently. The biggest problem is that damn 2nd camera sticking way up into the air. You end up with the weight really high meaning you need a very long post with lots of weight on the bottom to balance. If it can be rigged with the 2nd camera shooting up instead of down that makes balancing much easier. I haven't actually used the P+S rig but I would say that you could probably make it work with lighter cameras but with anything heavy it is going to get difficult very fast. ~Jess

I thought it had to be an aluminum can and spiderwire coated in lisigav in order to transmit a video image? Maybe thats just for HD.... ~Jess

So you drill a few holes in the bridge assembly and mount a clamp to it. Should work but I would be a bit worried about it negatively impacting the structural integrity of the bridge plate (IE you hit a big bump and it snaps). Can't tell if this is the case without actually seeing the thing.... I made my own hardmount by drilling some holes in a steel plate to mount some U bolts and a socket block. ~Jess

I know indierentals has one. Is anyone else renting one? ~Jess

Theoretically things should be better than they were right before the switch since all of the stations were already broadcasting in HD as well as SD. It was getting a bit crowded which seemed to cause some problems. I wasn't having much trouble here in LA but Vegas was a mess which may have more to do with other RF sources. ~Jess

Interestingly that was happening with their 7" non high brightness monitor. The 6.5" actually seemed to be one of the cooler monitors there and didn't seem to exhibit those problems. I agree that that is a serious concern. I would also like to note that theirs weren't the only ones that seemed to be experiencing some problems from the heat. Being left in the direct sun all day is not nice for equipment but I do want a monitor that can survive it. As far as the transvideo goes it definitely is not too expensive for what you get. I was simply impressed by how well the lower cost monitors performed as I actually felt that they had a slight edge in daylight viewability. From what I was told yesterday the Nebtek will ship with user adjustable framelines. Both it and the Marshall already have framelines but on the Marshall you can't change their position so while useful for HD shoots they aren't useful for film shoots. As far as digital levels go I currently am not very reliant on one but use one of those little $50 guys on top of my monitor. If I was used to an onscreen one I might feel differently but while it would be nice to have not having one isn't really ad eal breaker for me. I was dissapointed by the 2 OLED prototypes that were there. They both seemed to have far too reflective of screens making them not as good as the LCDs there. Hopefully that will change by the time they make it into production. ~Jess

Both great monitors but if you want something cheaper without sacrificing daylight viewability The Marshall and the Nebtek were also nice. ~Jess

I would think that it would be rather easy to swap out the electronics for a diode to allow safe paralleling of the two batteries. If anyone wants to look into that and has one I can borrow and open up I wouldn't mind doing it. ~Jess

IMHO the hummingbird and the Tiffen monitors were probably the brightest LCDs but I have to say I was most impressed by the Marshall and the Nebtek monitors which were about as good at a fraction of the price. The hummingbird of course isn't HD and the form factor kind of sucks. The Transvideo was the most feature packed including adjustable framelines, digital bubble and all those goodies and had good daylight viewability. Of course it is also rather expensive. I found the Marshall intriguing since instead of being a super high nit rating to achieve daylight viewability it is Transflective. The result being lower power consumption and not as hot while still competing well with the others and being reasonably priced. Unfortunately it had the fewest features of any of them. It has framelines but only standard ones not user adjustable. It can't flip the image and only has the mounting hole on the bottom not one on top or any provision on the sides for mounting a yoke. At only $2100 you can't expect too much but I would like to see them add a few of these features. As far as daylight viewability goes it seemes that the reflectivity of the screens had a lot more to do with it than nit ratings. The Bolands faired rather poorly in this respect which surprised me while most of the rest of them were close enough in daylight viewability that it would be very hard to rank them. If Marshall can add a few features to there monitor I will definitely buy one, if not I am going to have to decide if I can do without them or not. If money suddenly becomes not an issue I might go with the transvideo but at 3 times the price im not sure if I need all of the extra features it includes. ~Jess

I would try some CorrosionX or something similar if you can get your hands on it. It seems to work a lot better than traditional oils at protecting from rust and isn't nearly as messy. ~Jess

Looks like I will be working on a film with this rig and two EX3s. Anyone have any experience with it? Any observations, advice, tips, etc??? ~Jess

On the RED connector are the wires attached to two pins each? If so and they are the right ones you should be fine. If they are only connected to one pin each on the RED side then I would not use it. ~Jess

Looks like I have a 3D show coming up. Is there any way to focus two lenses with one BFD? Could it be as simple as setting both recievers to the same channel and calibrating them exactly the same? Or maybe driving two motors from one receiver or linking two receivers somehow? Jim? ~Jess

I am not even going to ask why you were watching the Hallmark channel in the first place.... :-)

Shall we throw a non high britness LCD monitor into the mix for comparisson?

I will take some pictures and if I don't get too busy will try to do a little write up as well. ~Jess

You will most likely be best served with a used larger rig. If you want to get a rig that can only handle lighter cameras than a new Flyer LE might not be a bad option as you might have trouble finding one new and the price difference won't be that big. That being said you can often find big rigs for sale with all the accessories you are going to need for not much more money than you would spend in the end with the Flyer. Now is a great time to buy used gear if you have the cash since everyone seems to be hurting for money and clearing out their closets. When budgeting keep in mind you are really going to need to get a wireless follow focus as well. A BFD with motor is going to cost you a little under 5grand new. Wireless video is important as well but for lower end stuff you may be able to get by without it for a little while. ~Jess

Looks like an optical zoom vs. image repo to me. Looked like there was a bit of a vertigo effect going on at atleast one point although my eyes could have been playing tricks on me. Gyros maybe? ~Jess

While the estimates in the article didn't really take into account the whole battery thing they also didn't take into account the amount of energy required to drill, refine and transport gas. I have a feeling that our electric grid is a much more efficient means of distribution than that used to distribute gas. As far as short vs long term the nice thing about electric vehicles is that as we move to cleaner and cleaner energy sources for electricity they become cleaner and cleaner. In the US there have been a lot of windmills going up lately and the way things are going I would expect at lot more of such things. ~Jess