Andrew Stone

But Filmtools sells it for around $2500. It's a lot for a monitor that isn't daylight viewable in my opinion. Someone mentioned a few months ago that recently Marshall did a quiet upgrade to the 651STX and it automatically images flips when you turn it upside down. That monitor retails for $1800 with a battery mount and is, of course, daylight viewable. Having said that, I haven't had the image flip feature confirmed by anyone other than an observation from one poster here.

Excellent tip Robert. Thanks!

Agreed Eric. If one cracks open the Dynamic Balance spreadsheet, you just gotta scratch your head as to why someone would use that on location (if at all in practical terms).

In the event someone is looking for the Dynmaic Balance spreadsheet, it can be found with instructions off of Jerry Holway's website.

Zacuto sells bits and pieces for the baseplate allowing you to use 3/8" 16 fasteners or to add another 1/4" 20 connector. Here are a bunch of them from B & H. You need an odd sized hex wrench to complete the task. Can't recall the size at the moment.

Janice makes a two pound weight plate and the Zacuto along with most other universal style baseplate solutions are near the two pound range so swapping out Janice's 2 pound plate may not be such a bad idea unless you need a mattebox that is not a clip on. BTW I started using one of these French Flags in place of mattebox when I am not using filters. May sound like a thread derail but once you put a standard mattebox off the front you may have to work around it. These flags are super light so if you knock it on a door frame you can pull it back into relative position without trashing the rig balance. Took off the clamp and added the brace that goes to a 3/8" 16 bolt. You can remove knuckles from the snake to make it as short as you want. If you find you don't like it on the rig it will still make a great flag in a standard application. I agree with you Mark about mounting a rod block from below. Up top would make it impractical in most situations. Dog bones WILL be necessary no matter what, unless you stick with a standard rails based baseplate under the camera.

That is the one I was thinking would work on the dovetail plate, Mark. I never got around to making the phone call to TIFFEN to find out. My present solution is to use top mounted rods or a Zacuto baseplate. Obviously a machinist could fashion some rods to attach to the dovetail without much effort.

Matthew, You may wish to check a couple of the items off this page from the TIFFEN/Steadicam website. I am unclear if the rods block threaded holes will line up with the holes provided for rods on the front of the Flyer/Zephyr dovetail plate. May wish to call TIFFEN directly. Post up if you find anything out.

Here is the big thread on the issue from a couple of years ago. Do a forum search on the word "numbness" and it will pull up a lot of relevant threads. -Andrew

Mark, Have you looked at the Cam-Tec site. There is the "French Shorty" and variations on it. -Andrew

Richard, indeed. Please update once you contact him. Curious if he is still selling Steadicam bits. -Andrew

Might want to contact Tom Gleason. His website is Cinewidgets. Here's the product page. -Andrew

Ramon a bit more info on why it appears to be a dead end using the paint box control connector (labelled "REMOTE") on the back of the F3. It appears that the communication that turns the Sony on and off in record mode is not simply closing a circuit in the REMOTE connector. Apparently, there is some kind of serial communication going on so using a "relay" approach will not work... at least this is the information gleaned thus far. I cannot get definitive information, nor have the others I know who have been attempting to find a solution for this. -Andrew

Excellent idea Michael. I contacted Convergent Design through another forum here is the info... Below is a schematic of the pin assignment for the NanoFlash remote plug. Here is a reply from Dan Keaton of Convergent Design on creating and using a run/stop cable with the nanoFlash... A good solution for those of us who have a nanoFlash, not so great though if you show up on a shoot and the production wants you to use the internal recorder in the F3 in a conventional manner. -Andrew

Ramon I've hit a dead end with this one. Here is the proper connector (verified on camera) but no one, I am aware of, has been able to fashion a simple start/stop cable with it yet. -Andrew

Clarification in my post above. "RAW" should read "uncompressed".

That's great Eric that you have got it up and running. Of all the people I have heard TALKING about it you are the first person, I have seen, with an actual usage report. I've been waiting for this. Despite your confident dismissal about the SSD degrading over time/usage issue, it is an issue. There are tools out there to defrag them to keep them running in an optimal manner but you have to be on top of this. I don't believe you can do this in the unit but have to do the defrag on your PC/Mac. Probably won't matter in your case but if someone was using this in production as a recorder to capture production footage and frame are dropped, it is an issue. RAW 422 10 bit material does push the limits of a single SSD drive. The Convergent Design people have been wrestling with this issue in developing their new SSD based recorder and have developed defrag routines to keep the drives running at full strength. Optimal performance is key for SSDs to capture flawlessly. Down the road it could become an issue. Did you make your cables Eric?

Sydney I share your frustration with the limited codecs on most of the recorders. The Cinedeck is the only recorder, that I know of, which allows you to install your codec of choice on it. Last time I checked the Cinedeck was in the 10 to 12 grand range. The Hyperdeck Shuttle to me at this point is a curiosity. Until there are some serious field reports on it, I'm not going near it, despite it being cheap. There will be a lot of setup and custom cabling required for the Hyperdeck unit and I am not convinced the SSDs will be usable for very long due to fragmentation issues. In order to record uncompressed video the SSD on the Hyperdeck Shuttle will have to perform near 100% efficiency to work. I'm going to let someone else be the beta tester on that one. -Andrew

If you are interested in a 10 bit recorder that you can use for both capturing your footage and potentially using/renting to production, you may wish to wait for the Sound Devices, Pix 240, unit. In the same price range, has Sound Devices legendary mic preamps in it and it records both ProRes and potentially more important the AVID codec, DNxHD. It's coming out in September so it hasn't been field tested yet however Sound Devices has an unassailable reputation for their portable field mixers. Many (most) sound guys use them. The Pix 240 has a bunch of workflow advantages that many of the other recorders don't have which is spelled out on the product page. I'm using the NanoFlash right now. As far as 10 bit recorders go, the Pix 240 is the only one, at this point, that has my attention. -Andrew

Someone here discovered their new 651STX have a mechanism that detects the physical orientation of the monitor thereby flipping the image. People who bought one recently may want to flip their monitor around to see if it works.

I use Eric's method and it works for me. I believe it has to do with the rig following the "Conservation of Angular Momentum" law. You effectively have a rig that is in a frictionless environment so the angular momentum that would cause the rig to lilt (if it wasn't in perfect balance in all directions) when you drop it from the horizontal position with Eric's method is achieved in an instant rather than building up over time as we would expect following common sense reasoning. I may be blowing wind with my theory. Regardless, Eric's method does work. -Andrew

Nice work Andy. I didn't think it was possible. Can't comment on the weight stress on the gimbal. Cheers, Andrew

Brian you are right. I should have referenced the Pilot in my post. This was my intention. I own an F3... Unless one is flying ultra wide angle lenses you will have to kit it out with a motor, rails and all the other stuff that goes along with it. Although the F3 body is relatively light compared to other large sensor cameras, when you get it "ready" the camera is close to 20 pounds and easily higher if you start to put a transmitter on it and the batteries to power all the gak. The Tokina 11-16mm f 2.8 using the MTF adapter is probably the best "light" solution going, if you want to set it up for a smaller rig and probably be able to avoid using a motor, rails, etc. Without batteries that lens plus the naked F3 will be around 13.5 lbs but this is an extreme wide angle lens. There is also the Nikon 17-35mm f 2.8 which is about 7 ounces heavier than the aforementioned Tokina. Both a very good lenses for what they are. Another solution would be to use an EX1/EX1R or maybe the EX3 (heavier than the EX1) which would be able to closely match F3 footage. I would give this serious consideration given your circumstances. -Andrew

A Flyer can barely handle an F3 once you load it up with essential accessories. You will be north of 15 pounds and closer to 20.

To my knowledge the 651STX Monitor is the best daylight viewable monitor in that price range. Do a search here, you will see a number of operators eschewing it's benefits. According to the reports, as I mentioned above, the Nebtek is the next in line but it is around $3500. Have you read all the posts related to Charles's Monitor Shootout from a couple of years ago. It was shortly after the shootout that people became aware of how good the 651STX was in relation to say the Nebtek and a couple of others. Transvideo was the "go-to" monitor for daylight the viewable LCD's and now its the Cinetronic. You should be cautious though about the 651STX, if you are a day player or work on a set, the lack of image flip will put you in compromising positions when set time is the order of the day. -Andrew