Andrew Stone

If it were me and were BUDGETING for up to 4 grand and my sled could handle the 4 pound weight of the Cinetronic I would forgo a few other smaller purchases and go straight to the Cinetronic. Having said that, in the 3 grand range the Nebtek SC monitor has got the nod from more than a few operators. The direct link to the product is here. I'm using the daylight viewable V-LCD651-STX Marshall at the moment. It's just under 2 grand. I get around the lack of image flip by having a nanoFlash between the monitor and the camera which can perform the image flip function when required. Granted a lot of operators either don't have a nanoFlash or wouldn't be in a position to add that to the camera package they are presented with. Also you can also manually flip the 651STX monitor. -Andrew

Interesting so with this TIFFEN has now released the 24V capability of the sled. I assume the sled was pre-wired for this 24 volt use and that a small dovetail plate comes with the add-on. TIFFEN doesn't appear to have pricing for the battery hanger on their website. Could you let us know the pricing on this? Thanks for the images Mark! -Andrew

Not to derail Mark but could you shoot up a photo of the auxiliary battery hanging device? -Andrew

I wonder if there is anything a Romanian Operator can do on your behalf. Are there Romanian Operators here?

Here's a link to a method of reporting stolen goods on eBay... http://www.ehow.com/how_5079005_report-stolen-items-ebay.html Here is an eBay page on what to do about stolen good on eBay... http://pages.ebay.ca/help/policies/stolen.html I wish your friend success in solving this Matteo. -Andrew

Looking for tariff codes on two items. One, for power related cables and two, for metal bracketry. If someone has a spreadsheet with this info and could share it, that would be most helpful.

I'll let Tim know about this thread. Ron I am pretty sure you are correct.

Brant, as far as I know, the Hyperdeck Shuffle has not even made it into the hands of outside beta testers. Of the other ones that are available there is the nanoFlash that has been out for almost 2 years. It is light, steadicam friendly, noiseless but it costs about $3500 to $3750 once you factor in media. I have one and love it as it just works. Set it and go. Of the others, Sound Devices Pix240 is the one to watch for. But it will be heavier than the nanoFlash. It should be a set it and go device. It will probably be in the same price range as the nanoFlash once you factor in media and gak although it spits on 10 bit material whereas the nanoFlash spits on 8 bit but footage from it has been sanctioned by many TV outlets as acceptable for broadcast. Also, there is the ATOMOS Ninja and Samurai units. They are getting a lot of good press but largely from well executed PR. Their Ninja unit just hit the streets but I haven't seen much in the way of peer review on it. The device is HDMI based. Their other unit, the Samurai is HD-SDI based but, I believe, isn't scheduled for release until late summer, early fall. Finally, there is the nanoFlash people's new, Gemini 444 unit which records uncompressed to SSD drives. The idea is that you conform your video after the shoot to the codec of your choice doing an injest from the unit to your computer at the end of the day. It is in the 6 grand price range so half way between the aforementioned and the Cinedeck 444 unit that many know about.

Jay, a point of clarification on the Cinetronic with the Flyer. The Cinetronic is close to 4 pounds. You would have to do rebuild the lower spar to do proper weight distribution. A stock Flyer could not be balanced with the Cinetronic on the stock monitor mount.

Jay and Mark's comments pretty much state what I would have mentioned. A bit odd having this set of problems and questions for a show destined for PBS. This is not so much a statement towards you but to the people who are requesting this of you... It's gotta be said. Like Mark mentioned on low budget shoots you can get things kinda there on the monitor and should be acceptable for post. I would say within a half a stop given the crude settings on the Flyer monitor, Of course, things are going to change in relative terms when the light that hits the monitor goes up or down. This is more of an issue when you are shooting outside. In addition to a flip out LCD, if there is one, I would opt for one of the lighter monitors like the TV Logic, that does have scopes and can be had for under $1500. Daylight viewability isn't an issue here for your secondary monitor, as suggested, so put the money into one like the TV Logic. The Marshall is cheaper but I don't believe it has scopes. You didn't mention the camera you have on the rig. This information is essential to give you a response that can deal with issues such as monitor connectivity, weight constraints and other matters.

If Jerry and Laurie do a 2nd edition of their book, the last photo (with your permission Mike) should go in it. I cannot imagine being cabled like that! Regardless, truly inspiring Mike. -Andrew

I like Alfeo's suggestions. I am partial to Lemos but if I had a bunch of Hirose to P-Taps kicking around I would do what Alfeo did and use a connector based on existing but under utilized cables. I curse every time I go to take the power cable off the Decimator. I gotta do something about it as well. I recall there was talk via Charles last year that Redbyte was going to change their power connector. Have they yet?

Hi David, I'm planning to pick one up in a couple of weeks as well. I got a chance to see it in operation (of sorts) at the Marshall booth at NAB. My one concern is being able to set the latency of the level so it doesn't pickup every little nano movement and the other is the visibility of the display. It looked OK but of course the litmus test will be on the rig. I was assured you could adjust the sensitivity (latency) but I didn't have an opportunity to see the controls. Would be good to have a good digital level for a few hundred bucks... We'll see. -Andrew

Hi Brad, It would help if you specified which cameras you would be using. HPX is vague. There may be more accessory related stuff that Steadicam Ops will anticipate you need based on the specific cameras you will be flying. The Zephyr in reality gives you only a few more pounds of camera package weight which could easily be consumed by an accessory or two. Even knowing the power requirements would help, not just voltage but watts/amperage. As an example, if you threw a ringlight and an external recorder on your rig on top of your 17 lbs and you would be pushing the max of the Zephyr.

Check the "accessories" section of the Steadicam website at tiffen.com. they have a screw on 1 pound weight that will attach to the 1/4" 20 threaded hole on the underside of the lower spar. Also, of course, the merlin weights can be used.

Yes the Cam-Tec store has more than one solution you might wish to consider Mark. Have a look. There is also the old inexpensive standby: the Manfrotto baseplate system. Here is one of them at Filmtools... http://www.filmtools.com/boma32quread.html The rubber bumpers on their baseplate may solve the twisting problem by gripping the bottom of the mounting point on your Zephyr. The Manfrotto things are so cheap, you can buy several to use the receivers on several different accessory setups. Just a thought.

Hi Charles, I know your priorities and focus have changed since you posted in this thread about manufacturing a monitor yoke however I am wondering if you are still planning to do this. I have a the 6.5" Marshall 651STX and have drawn up nothing in the way of a monitor yoke that's presently available. Quite bizzare... Googling "monitor yokes" brings up nothing except for 17 and 24 inch monitors. Even Marshall has nothing, or so it seems. -Andrew

Hi Jonathan, At a high level, there are two kinds of AB mounts: compact and standard. Not much difference except the compact, obviously has a profile that is not as wide but two of the receiving holes for the gold mount studs are theoretically not as secure. In practice, they are essentially as good. Anton Bauer sells there mounts either plain jane or with various mounting plates for particular cameras and some are corded with a power receptacles. Best place for getting info on the different kind of mounts is directly from Anton Bauer or use the search engine on B&H. The one thing to be mindful of is whether or not you need to get the mounts that bolt from the top of the plate or from underneath.

Hi Louis, Between NAB and work not involving Steadicam, I haven't had the time to delve into any further than getting a bit further on the connector. The most likely candidate is Hirose MXR-8P connector. Here is an order page with a schematic attached. The Sony rep I talked too actually wasn't much help. There is someone else that is supposed to be working on a cable but i think he, similarly, has been distracted by other things. I will give him a nudge.

The NAB edition of Film & Digital Times has just been posted on Jon Fauer's website. You can download it here. The business on the F65 begins on page 7.

Hope to be there around 9:30 unless you will be wrapping up by then. -Andrew

Just used the iPhone app, AJA DataCalc. It says 1 second of 1080p24 at 10 bit RGB is 199.1 MB of data. That works out to approximately 8.3 megs of data per frame. There are 2 suggested work flows using the data. One is obviously using the uncompressed material and the other is to transcode the data off the unit into whatever codec and bitrate you want as the material is going through ingest. Apparently, the transcode into one of the higher bitrate versions of ProRes occurs in about half of real-time on an 8 core Mac tower to give you a sense of things. It will be interesting to see if the screen will be decent enough to use as a framing monitor. Not sure as it is a bit on the small side. We'll see in a few days at NAB.

The only extant monitor known through here in that price range is the Nebtek. Hoping this monitor you speak of Eric has scopes in it and provision for a leveler. Not flying your TB-6. Hell has officially frozen over. Thanks for the heads up Eric. I'll be going by the Angenieux booth. -Andrew

I'm in the process of trying to find a good monitor as well for both Steadi and focus assist on my F3. I agree with Tom about the 651. I would get a monitor at this point that will do HD-SDI and 3G. One will have a problem getting HDMI down the post. Seen it done. Not pretty. I'm pretty sure the 651 does not do image flip for low mode which requires either turning the monitor around with an unbolt or 3rd party image flip through a nanoFlash or something else. The 651 you can easily acquire with whatever battery plate you want from B&H or wherever and the battery plate is centered. I didn't see weight specs on the new Marshalls and they haven't, as of yet, put this info on their website. The 651 is around 1.3 pounds according to B&H. That is a good weight for the smaller Steadi rigs and it was very much up there in terms of daylight viewability when compared to the monitors in Charles's monitor shootout from a couple of years ago. It has both the 800 nits and the transreflective material going for it. I'm hoping there will be more offerings to come at NAB. I need a monitor now but I am going to wait at least a couple of weeks.

Update... Someone believes it isn't the Tajimi connector. From an F3 forum on DVinfo...