Benjamin Treplin

Job it's not about passion or love, unfortunately it's about animosity. Lots of agendas, yes, and even more lots of egos. I don't care who it is. I don't care who is affiliated with whom. If folks have a problem and come here, then they have to fucking tell their whole story. Just ranting, bashing and bullying is not enough. If topics are too delicate to discuss here, then leave it outside, completely! Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean this is the wrong place to speak up against a vendor, make other aware of an issue. It's the wrong place for agendas and egos. Leave that to politicians they get payed for it. This behavior stimulates the worst in all of us. I have given in on this too. I don't like it. 'IMHO' was commonly used here. It reflects an attitude. A mind set of how people want be treated and in my humble opinion should be treated.

I'm all with you Brooks! Nobody judges a chef by the knifes he uses. All that matter is does it taste good. If I'm really eager to know more, I'm interested in how the food is made and not the tools used. I don't care what rig, camera etc. was used. Is the shot good! But please keep in mind for what it is made for - small youtube promo or big feature. It's a big difference if you buy a take away or sit in a restaurant. It has been suggested several times to get a thicker skin and move on. WFT? That is exactly what people do. They move on and it's a loss to this forum. I leave my thick skin at work! I visit this place in my off hours. I have no need to spend my leisure time with people just tossing a commonplace at everything - except for Ron - and that with a negative attitude. Seriously, what is the wealth of information in opinions like: buy this brand, set and forget, your work is shit, this vendor is shit or even highjacking classifieds. Facts get mixed up with or replaced by opinions and sold as wisdom. Brooks is right! This has to stop! It is far more interesting in how shots/scenes are achieved. How do we collaborate with others. How do we make things work on set. How can we can be better camera operators. Klemens Becker once said on a workshop: Lets not talk about how we get the f*cking level right, lets talk about the important stuff we have to handle every day as operators.

It's the same with divers. There are two kind, the one who pee in the wetsuit and the one who don't admit.

Super well designed and machined. I'm very happy with it.

Here is my take on the Mōvi, based on a very smart thing I read in Wired magazine http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/04/start/the-disruptor Steadicam is save at the high budget productions where reliability of the equipment and the know how and artistic skill of the operator is key. The very low end will get the full pressure right away. All those who can't afford a good Steadicam op and know a newbie may suck big time will go for Mōvi like devices (they grow like mushrooms) or production will buy it. The play ground for emerging Steadicam ops will dry out. With time the stabilized gimbals will become more sophisticated, robust, reliable, feature rich and expensive and will eat they way up into our sinecure. There is a good reason companies like Steadicam and now PRO are offering lower priced rigs. They want to survive as a company. The effects on our community are there. Rates go down as supply of rigs and operators go up. Steadicam won't die, but it will take a share out of the jobs that are there any given day. It will increase pressure on our rates.

Camera signal out -> Decimator loop-through -> XCS -> Samurai https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0gf2da7mgozabv/Foto%2009.09.13%2018%2032%2026.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9nrh3ezw4slf4v/Foto%2015.09.13%2015%2051%2052.jpg

Hi all, I have an annoying issue with my Samurai. When the HD feed runs through my XCS the recorder does not recognise the HD input feed after the Samurai is either switched on or coming back from playback. Replugging the BNC works some times. Rebooting my Decimator (loop-through) does work most of the times. Monitor or HD Tx is fine. Anyone else with similar experiences?

It's the Alexa sensor

Happiness here too. Lightweight and rocksolid.

A more serious input. A very interesting read, which is related to Steadicam vs. cheaper stabilized platforms. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/04/start/the-disruptor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNxj1FdKuo

reminds me off the good times with Phil Rhodes....

I can only second Osvaldo's praise! It's AMAZING indeed!!!!!!!!!!!! Super lightweight, rock solid, tool free. Set and forget friction at the tilt axis. A fair price IMHO.

Extremely well made monitor arm. The one on the non-breakdance pictures is mine and a great fit with my Cinetronic.

Hi Jerry, Point taken. Let me rephrase my statement. It is a feature if you like it. The few times I flown a G arm I didn't get used to it, found it rather annoying. At the end of the day it's personal preference, again. Oh yea cars, totally overrated

Hi Chris, I'm all with Twojay and Eric. No curve or chart will tell how an arm performs while you operate it. It just doesn't translate into a feeling. It's the same with lenses. No chart will tell you what the images looks like a zoom or prime lens will project onto film or the sensor. There are lenses that have terrible test chart results, bad resolution, chromatic aberration and utter torsion, but for all that just look gorgeous on the screen. To answer you question Jamie. Is that just something that you get used to? - Yes Does hitting the bottom every hurt/ruin your shot? - Depends Do any other operators share my preference resistance at the end of the boom range? - No, I don't. A feathered stop just reduces the useable boom range of the arm while in motion. It is not a feature, it's a bug!

http://flavorwire.com/405833/flavorwire-exclusive-netflix-studios-have-very-different-explanations-for-widescreen-cropping

Third man enters Chris, AFAIK the seperate video circuite was introduced by PRO for one reason only, to isolate the SD video feed from bad shilded camera motors. The XCS has done this shilding with proper electronics parts. I had zero problem with camera motor interference or FF and I have flown SR2 and Arri 3 cameras. To claim that having all on one circuit is a bad idea is just misleading. There is no danger to your equipment by doing this, put aside the chance that your SD video sucks if it is not done properly. With modern film cameras and HD camera these days that kind of issues are gone for good. Selling a monitor that back feeds to ops with all kinds of rigs without letting them know is a bad idea. My two cents on this.

The back feed over the Lemo was an idea PRO owners had. The battery from the "MON" plate goes to the Cinetronic and you still have power on the "MON" circuite via the monitor cable. This way you are bypassing the 5Amp breaker on your PRO, which IMHO is not a good thing. A bad transmitter cable or whatever you want power and fails could fry your monitor. My suggestion is to use the D-taps on the battery plates to feed power from the monitor to the sled. It's a proper sized cable and fused. If your not a PRO owner this back feeding can cause serious trouble. While upgrading my monitor with the heatsinks Chris will add a diode to the Lemo.

Peter, what works great is WD-40 or AFC 50 and the like. Basically any kind of oil works good on stickers or gaffer tape leftovers.

Eric, good question. The answer is simple. I'm the coolest and hottest operator in town and get all the new toys before everybody else does. Just kidding. ;) The menu is not pretty but has a lot of setting. Below the frame lines setting there is the setting for the bubble level. You can open the sub menu and switch the level on, change color, size and move it over the screen. Of course it is not a working level, but you can see what the level layout look like right now. It looks like a real bubble level. With a bubble, two hair lines left and right to the bubble and a whitish a bit blurry frame around the area the bubble moves. I should have been more precise with the headline, but the rating says "bubble level layout". I'll edit the headline. Thanks for bringing this up.

I just posted a review here that also includes a heat test I did on Monday.

First, Id like to make this clear right from the start. It is not my intention in any way to start a war, nor do I have an agenda of any kind other than that I post a review about a product that is finally in the market and that I bought. That has been long waited for and is claimed to be The New Standard. Furthermore I have the upmost respect for small businesses who take the time and effort, the setback and frustration and the financial risk to engineer and build new products in our small professional high end/low volume market. Who sustains all of this to bring an idea from the first sketch into a final product. Secondly, you are reading entirely my point of view here and I give my best to be as objective as possible. This review is based on my observations and the resulting thoughts about it. Thirdly, I sent the first version of this review to Chris asking him to comment on it. Most of the points made here where in that version I send Chris (one thing that wasnt covered is the overheating issue) and this review is more of a text than a list of things and comments. Im including Chris comments on this review here although he didnt comment on all topics. I didnt ask for his permission, but I think it is good to have his point of view here too. And I hope he is okay with that. So lets get started. After waiting way to long for my monitor, as a lot of fellow operators have, it arrived three weeks ago. Since then I had the chance to put it through real world situations on some monitor worst case scenarios like direct sun and overcast at the beach, motorbike chasing on a quad, shooting under a 10'x10' silk with 12Ks on top. I added some suggestions of things I like to have improved and marks from 1 (bad) to 10 (excellent). The Display: All in all I like the display, the antireflection coating could be a bit better though. The viewing angle of the display is better than the competitors I came across so far. The Cinetronic achieved what I was looking for, a flat panel monitor that has a good view-ability in all sorts of conditions. - viewing angle - 9 - anti reflection - 8 - brightness - 7 As a benchmark the TB-6: viewing angle - 10 anti reflection - 10 brightness - 10 Color: The first four DOPs that where looking over my shoulder had all the same first response: Whats wrong with the color? - Checking LUTs, camera settings, AC bringing in a reference monitor etc. bla bla. After that I took the time to get the color close to a Transvideo Ultrabright. Does that color shift come from the coated glass or the bonding? Would be great to have factory presets that gives neutral colors. - My rating for color rendering of the display at factory settings - 4 I use it with red at 85 and green at 80. That comes close to neutral. Chris comment: We will be doing a color analysis on the screen, and calibrating the color. The brightness improvement in the software also fixes a gamma table problem, which helps with the color as well. The Menu: I do a lot of day playing, so a few options have to be at the menu top-level, ideally with no submenus to open. That are: frame lines, center cross, image size, image format, contrast, brightness. The frame lines should move corresponding to the image size. Adjusting the frame lines is a bit of a hassle. It is hidden too deep into the menu structure and it would be good to disable speed up function or reduce the increments. You're constantly overshooting while adjusting. The line style 'dashed' should have color/black instead of color/transparent which makes it rather useless. The same styles should be available for center cross as well. One thing I recognized was that the frame lines, image size or any other adjustment reset from time to time to default settings without any user input. Switching off the monitor and sled, having lunch, switching it back on and everything is at factory presets. I stopped using the frame lines. I have to check if this is still persistent with latest FW. The image size presets like Normal, Fill All, Anamorphic, 2.35:1 are a bit confusing. 1.85:1 is not really a HD aspect ratio format like 1.78:1-16/9, which is surprisingly not there. Also image size options are not coherent between different sources. In SD there are a lot options that dont work. They should be removed. Switching the video source (e.g. SDI - Composite 2) with the left/right button changes image size settings on composite 2 input. I had to go into the image size menu and switch between sizes on composite 2 to get it back. I noticed that because monitor frame lines suddenly didnt match the picture. No image mirror or rotation (X-Y). That should be standard. 1to1 / Pixel to Pixel. I couldnt find out how to move the frame? I only have top/left corner available. Would be great to have the up/down buttons assignable to enable direct adjustment of contrast or focus peaking/falls color on/off etc. A popup scale for backlight adjustment, to set preferred adjustments easily would be great. Also a feature that should be there, in the light of overheating, is a standby function. Short touch on the on/off button puts the monitor in standby a long one shuts it off. It would be great to have the monitor fired up when it gets a voltage input on the Lemo socket e.g. switching on the sled. The menu is cluttered and cumbersome - it's freaking me out. - My rating for the menu is a - 2 Chris comment: We have a software update which greatly improves the brightness and view-ability. It also improves many of the menu functions and adds some features. We will be adding more features to the menu, hot keys etc. Also working on cleaning up some of the menu, and moving things to a more logical place. Image flip is something we are working on. All the LCD chip manufactures dropped it from their chips for some unknown reason. We have tried some other approaches, but were not happy with the results. We are working on an acceptable image flip and hope to have something soon. The backlight level indicator is on the programmers list of things to do. In that regard the last SW update (6-13-13) didnt change a lot. Digital Level Layout: It's fancy and colored, but for me not fast recognizable and overlays too much of the screen. Please add styles like the XCS-PDL or the PRO level. - The digital level layout gets a - 4 The Housing: I like the design of the monitor. Its really cool! - Design - 10 This is a dedicated Steadicam monitor, right? I'm really surprised that the mounting holes do not align with the monitors CG, at least with the A/B plate at the back. I tested it with and without attached BNC and Lemo plugs. With a battery at the back it is way off. The beauty of this kind of form factor is that it can be easily mounted at it's CG, therefor adjustments of the viewing angle don't alter the Steadicam balance. This is a big draw back for me. - Mounting holes - 5 / with a battery - 1 I luckily have a workaround. Matthias Biber is building me a bracket that will mount the monitor + battery at its CG. Chriss comment: The housing was fairly well balanced, but the battery back throws the balance off. It does end up being a little top heavy with the battery on. Bottons: I like them, although for the cold season I have to buy iPhone cloves to be able to use the buttons. - My rating - 8 Power Supply: I bought my monitor with an Antonbauer plate. I dont like to carry dead weight like the Weight Back option. XCS owners and fellow operators who have there rigs configured with all batteries wired parallel in 12V mode or no separate circuit for the video acc., listen up! I fly the Cinetronic with the 8-pin Lemo and a battery. First I still use a SD feed to get my internal PDL on the screen and second I like to have the weight of the battery out there, matches almost the weight of my TB-6. I made the assumption that the A/B plate and the 8-pin Lemo are equipped with a diode so that the rig does not feed the monitor battery and vice versa. I was wrong. The 8-pin Lemo does not have a diode. So the monitor battery was back feeding into my sled and helped powering the camera. The diode in the A/B mount was getting so hot that it started melting the plastic. Luckily, as far as I can tell, it didnt fry anything in my XCS. Chriss comment: Originally we had one [diode] there, but then several operators suggested that we not have one. This way it would back feed the sled and power video transmitters etc. Basically they wanted to shift the weight placement to the monitor, and not have to still fly another battery to power the other ports. They said that gives the the most flexibility, since they could just unplug the 8 pin lemo cable if they didnt want the back feed. Come on guys! Use a D-tap cable from the monitor plate to the sled plate. It has the proper wire gauge size and the power runs over the 5 amp breaker. If people really like to have it that way, please make it an option, one could order, and put a sticker next to the Lemo socket. - My rating is a - minus 1 I will get the A/B plate replaced and a diode will be added to the Lemo socket. When that is done its a - 10 Overheating: On monday I was visiting the Tiffen workshop at Starnberger See close to Munich. They had the Sachtler Artemis demo unit there on display. It was a sunny day with air temperature of 25 to 26 deg celsius and we decided to do a heat test like Greg Bubb did. The monitor was set to 100% backlight, the display was set at 50 brightness and contrast. We placed the monitor in the sun with a HD signal present at about quarter past 3 p.m. and waited. Next to it we had a Transvideo 6 SBL monitor. Set to maximum brightness as well. After only 9 minutes the first sign of overheating showed up at the center bottom of the screen. After 30 minutes we stopped the test. The black pixel area had a rounded shape (frame edges smaller, center wider) and the center area was about 2,5cm wide. The monitor housing and display where too hot to carry it bare handed. It is fair to mention that we placed both monitors on the warm terrace floor after 20 minutes to simulate an even warmer condition. The Transvideo showed no sign of pixels going black. The display was hot put not nearly as hot as the Cinetronic display. Next time I have the opportunity Ill will test my monitor as well. Im totally with Greg Bubb on this topic. It makes the impression that an overall environmental test wasnt done properly, but that is just a wild guess. I hope Chris and Mike chimes in and gives us there point of view. [Edit] While writing the review Mike and Chris have posted regarding this topic here. Im really glad things got sorted that fast. Thank you! Conclusion: The biggest issue for me is the user interface, because there is nothing I can do about it, not like the mounting issue. It is not possible to make fast adjustments on crucial settings with exception of backlight and input source. The graphics are last century. It almost looks like it was originally made for a LCD projector. Chris, will there be a software update that has a new graphic user interface? You wrote me that there will be a new firmware that has the options cleaned up and put in the proper place. But will you get rid of that utter consumer GUI. From my point of view a very good monitor not only has a good view-ability in all sorts of conditions. It is equally important to have a good usability. Comparing the TB-6 with the Cinetronic - the benefit of having a colored image in HD is traded for a strongly reduced usability. The New Standard - Not yet BTW Polarized Sunglasses: Somebody a while back mentioned that the Cinetronic works with polarized sunglasses. Well, kind of, at least for the Gen2. When you are operating all shots in regular mode for the rest of your life, youre good. If you are operating goofy or in Don Juan either way, you are removing your pola sunglasses in an instant. regular operating - 10, Don Juan - 1; goofy operating - 6, gDJ - 2

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