Frederic Chamberland

Hi Karsten ,

You are right , PRO GPI had a sale last summer on a few Titan arms . I sent them back the Atlas and they credited me the value at the time and applied it to the Titan. No hassle and easy transaction . I realised the camera setups I still use mostly consist of alexa , cooke lenses ( s4 and 5i) , cinetape, preston ... Just too much for the Atlas . The 2 gray cans were maxed out and I still needed some juice .

And so when PRO GPI annouced the few arms at the special price , i jumped on the occasion . And i never looked back . This titan arm is the most magical piece of equipment in my kit .

Cheers

Frederic

Hi Richard ,

I did not think long enough to consider the Aux power connector on the sled ... And i already had extra arri power cables , i went the lazy way I guess .

And answering Jens question : i much prefer to use batteries in a separate way so they don't die all at the same time . It's a very personnal way to see it and I would understand someone who would prefer sharing the load between all of them.

Hi all,

Here is a little modification I made to my sled to better power the ALEXA. It works like a charm so I thought I'd share:

Been flying the same setup for the past 3 years; ALEXA with Cooke lenses (5i's), cinetape, teradek, 2 motor preston with MDR2 on my HD PRO GPI sled.

To keep the post short, I fly 1 Dionic HD in the front (below the post) and 2 Dionic HC at the rear : I have been using the 2 rear batteries in 24V mode to power the ALEXA until last week.

The 2 HC's at the rear would drain very fast feeding the ALEXA ; I needed at least 8 of them to get thru morning. Since the sled is very well balanced the way it is right now, I considered using the front battery in 14V mode to feed the camera. The big Dionic HD battery in front is from the rental house and we already use them in studio and handheld mode.

Since the 3 jumper blocks from PRO are not designed to feed the camera from the front plate, I called David Hable and he re-wired one of my blocks to do just that : front is now camera only, and the 2 rear plates are ACC and MONITOR only (see pic).

At the same time , he also re-wired one of my Arri power cable to feed the camera in 14V instead of 24V. Only thing to remember if going with this mod is to go into the ALEXA menu and change the "low battery" warning on the BAT1 position to somewhere around 11v instead of 22V: if not, the camera will "think" the voltage is way too low to power the camera.

The mod is simple and cheap(re-wiring a jumper block and a power cable) and the difference is huge in power management: not only am I saving my batteries (using the rental house instead), the camera will last almost 70 minutes on one single fully charged Dionic HD .

On paper it seemed like a win-win modification and I can now confirm it works great with this setup.

Would love to see if people here have made such modifications and what they did.

Fly safe,

F

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90607088@N06/sets/72157636854764936/

Hi,

Letting go both lightweight ALURA's . Excellent condition. Will go thru Arri dealer for inspection prior to shipping. Comes in original Fuji/Arri carton boxes. One owner (me) . Paid 52K a year ago. Only very small cosmetic blemishes is where we attach the clip-on on the front end.
Pictures to follow later this week as they are already being serviced. They are 1 year old and I would consider them "almost as new". I have a transport case I want to keep but will let go for 500$ (transports both zooms and a clip-on)
Wire transfer only. Rest assured I am the original owner. Original invoice from ARRI available. Both zooms are in feet .

I am completing my MiniS4 set and need to let go the Alura's . Great zooms, fantastic value.

Here is a picture of the case with both zooms in (taken last spring)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9060708...7636514590333/

38K

I just sold my Cinetronic Gen2 recently. I told the buyer why I was selling it.

Here is my story;

I am among the very first ones to have put my faith/money in this company (Gen1 serial was 007 and Gen2 is 009...) so I can say without a doubt that I really wanted Cinetronic to succeed. While the Gen1 was so close to perfection, I had to go for the Gen2 when available : smaller footprint and upgradable level were enough for me to upgrade : and that's when the $h1t hit the fan ; I have experienced every glitch mentioned here and more (PSF/PSI, menus going wild, video input randomly scanning while shooting, firmware upgrades impossible....) . All of those glitches were frustrating but when the screen lit up and I had an image, it was so beautiful and crisp, I forgot all about the problems.

Then, one day off , I tried upgrading the monitor by myself : OMG, this was by far the most excruciating upgrade experience in my life . I never could do it, and I even got the help of many set geeks with no results. And sorry Jen, but your suggestion to invest in a used notebook to upgrade that monitor is just sad and trying to avoid a reality: the firmware update process on the Cinetronic is at best an alfa version .

Anyway, when that upgrade did not work, I said to myself, that's ok, I have to send the monitor in for the heat sink upgrade anyway later, I'l live for now.

Then it happened : power the monitor up; no image, no nothing, just a small icon appearing in the bottom corner with no buttons responding but the power one (sent a video of the problem to Chris about it). I'm on set and do what anyone would do in those situations; you grab a 500$ on-board LCD from one of the studio cameras, and velcroed it on top of the Cinetronic . At that point, I'm just mesmerized at that fantastic 4000$ weight plate on my sled. I email Chris asking for a loaner, but they had none, not even a Gen1 ... Only solution is to send it back. It's thursday and I'm shooting nights, I woke up early friday morning to mail the monitor; It's at Cinetronic's headquarters the next monday at 11AM... then , nothing. not a phone call, not an email, not a text message for 5 days ! I emailed Chris on saturday and he responded that they will ship it back on Monday. And he does; using the slowest method at UPS; expedited.... I received the monitor the next FRIDAY ! From them receiving the monitor and me getting it back : 12 days!! And that was for an urgent repair, so urgent I needed a loaner. That turnaround thing was the icing on the cake.

So I received the monitor back and plugged it on my sled, new firmware installed, buttons are much more responsive and screen is always as sharp. Menus have been cleaned and much more precise : everything I expected 2 months before. It was all there: I powered it off, put it back in it's bubble wrap and now sold it dirt cheap so I can move on and sleep at night. It's too little, too late for me; I have much more things to do than stressing about a monitor or the service attached to it.

In short, I think that Gen2 monitor should not have been released in the wild so early, it was not ready. Chris was always really fast answering every email regarding my troubles for the monitor and I was ready to live with a couple of future firmwares updates ; where they failed miserably is when I needed them the most : the customer service . Not having loaners on the shelves and having a 12 day turnaround is not acceptable , all of this with no communications.

I read the stories of John Perry and other satisfied customers of Cinetronic and I feel I was very unlucky.

For once in my life, I should have waited before buying a product : I'm pretty sure that the new firmware is much more stable . And selling that monitor was the last thing I wanted to do. That monitor "burned" me and my crew too many times.

Sorry, but I'm out of the game.

Cheers,

Arri already has a cable to read the Cinematography Cinetape, it connects to the UMC3A and sends the data to the WCU4 . Got one and it works flawlessly.

Munich is working on a cable to interface the Cinematography Cinetape to WCU4 thru the Alexa plus and up (no external MDR needed)

I have had an WCU-4 also for about 3 months now. As Eric said, beautiful piece of gear, well taught out. greatest pro is not having a MDR if you use any ALEXA + and beyond . The UMC-3A also works great and has a much smaller footprint than the MDR2 from preston.

Couple of observations when compared to PRESTON :

CONS

•Motor cable has to be screwed in the motor connector, big fingers will hate that. And good luck in the cold, you will have to remove your gloves to tighten the connector. I learned to leave them on the motor now, I never remove the cables anymore.

•Linking of the hand unit to UMC-3A or ALEXA varies from 3 seconds to almost 7/8 on occasions... While PRESTON is less than a second....Not frustrating since it's just a couple of seconds but you realized you never had to think about it with the Preston.

•some ARRI genuine cables for that remote are outrageously expensive ; 900$ for the EPIC on-off ? David Hable made one for 1/4 of the price.

PROS:

•No MDR (if used with ALEXA + and up)

•big LCD screen with beautiful info. Arri signature is all over the place (efficient and clear)

•light and compact Hand unit

•motors are very quiet and have a small footprint.

•backlit ring is great

•build quality

The only thing I don't have a backup in my kit is the Preston because I know it does not fail. 23 years in the business and I probably have seen one or two Preston's going down. I won't sell my Preston. But I'm keeping the ARRI.

Fly safe.

SOLD

3600$ same conditions .

Lots of interest , no buyer yet :

3800$ same conditions.

I'm on set , any question will be answered asap.

The price will come down every week until I have a buyer . I can't keep 3 monitors . I already have a transvideo and the new DP7 : grab a deal here .

Monitor is in 100% working condition with a perfect screen.

Thanks .

Used about 10 days. Screen is perfect with no dead pixels or scratches. Monitor just came back from Cinetronic and has the new heatsink and firmware installed.

Very small scratches near the power plug as seen on photos.

This monitor is ready for a new home with 1000$ off retail (Cinetronic offers a 500$ discount right now, save another 500$...)

•no battery plate

•monitor only

•free shipping in North America, I'll be happy to use your FEDEX account to ship anywhere else in the world.

•wire transfer prefered

•paypal accepted if we split the charges (about 60$)

Monitor will be carefully packaged.

Thanks. Fly safe.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90607088@N06/sets/72157634919617104/

Arri will charge 900$ for the cable.

David Hable makes it for less than 300$... and it works perfectly.

Cable is a "Y" that powers the UMC-3A and triggers the camera. You choose power option (p-tap,4pins XLR...)

Nice to have options,

Fly safe and richer

I received the OLED DP-7 PRO two days ago. Bought it as an on board monitor, not for steadicam monitoring. It's got an amazing screen and the color balance was almost perfect out of the box.

What I noticed is the user interface has been very well tough out. Menus appear very clearly and going thru them is intuitive and blazing fast with the scroll wheel. I wished my Cinetronic Gen 2 had something similar.

Also a nice feature is a floating warning when you loose the signal . Not a blank screen or a blue screen but an actual pop up line crossing the frame stating what the problem is.

The gorilla glass feels exactly like an Iphone but is also a real mirror . Aluminum casing is nice and feels solid but the thing is VERY light.

And of course , it has so many accessories available . Now I will put it thru hell for the next 2 or 3 weeks and will report on performance afterwards.

Right now, this OLED monitor is the best screen I have seen for on board monitoring yet ( right next to the Rainbow HD from Transvideo) but I want to field test it before raising my thumbs.

Cheers,

Frederic

Hi Sean,

Fellow Canadian op here: on tv series : I have 1 day for prep ( 8 hours) and one day for wrap (another 8 hours) . Part of the deal.

Just received one of the 4 Titan arms with (supposedly) minor cosmetic defect ; It's as new, I can't find any blemishes , bad anodizing or scratches . . .

They could have just called it the "annual blowout sale on Titan arms" for all I care.

Thank you PRO team. One very happy customer here.

I'm one ATLAS owner who just traded it for a TITAN and could not be happier with the upgrade path : Sent my arm in, couple of hours later, got an offer for the trade and I'm sending the remaining balance next week to get the TITAN. Painless, secure and lightning fast service. That was easy.

SOLD !

still for sale.

2900$ free shipping. + 100$ anywhere else.

sale pending

I hear you : 3000$ shipped in the US/Canada. 100$ anywhere else

SOLD

Hi James,

I have had my Bolt for a while and while it becomes burning hot, never had an overheating problem. Velcro glue will melt . As hot (and maybe more) than the old Modulus. But not a single glitch yet related to heat.

F

700$ free shipping in USA /Canada

3200$ shipped in USA/Canada . Add 100$ anywhere else.

For sale:

transvideo CineMonitor HD6 Super bright.

Few scuffs here and there but the screen is PRISTINE. Not a single scratch thanks to the plexiglas cover used almost all the time.

Comes with:

Pelican case (transvideo one)

Mesh pouch

instructions

1 LEMO to BNC cable

1 LEMO to 4 pins XLR

1 FISHER 11 pins (arri) to 4 pins XLR

transvideo sunhood

1 slide and clamp for slide

3400$ shipped anywhere in the USA/Canada. Add 100$ for the rest of the world.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90607088@N06/sets/72157633434603136/