Charles Papert

Hi all: The ZeeGee will be available to test and fly at the ICG Local 600 Yard Sale this Saturday Nov. 6 between 11-5. Bring your arm and vest and check it out!

Good question! In theory, because this is essentially an "unSteadicam", you could get away with some of the lesser 3rd party arms because you won't be looking for the highest performance in terms of smoothness and isolation...in other words, unlike Steadicam, part of the way there is good enough. That said, I can't specifically endorse a particular brand of those. Amongst the better arms, I think the NB would be a great solution.

Introducing the ZeeGee! A new way to deliver the handheld look leveraging your existing Steadicam arm and vest for shooting flexibility and comfort. The ZeeGee perches on your armpost and offers free movement in pan, tilt and roll with easy control. Dialable drag in tilt for the operator, locks in all axes for the AC when they need to work on the camera, and the DP will love that you can frame up off the dock for lighting purposes. It can jump onto a baby pin down on the deck or up on a combo stand, all with full control over the operating. I came up with this concept over a decade ago while wrestling with the early 35mm sensor digital cameras and the ensuing long takes that came with them and built a couple of prototypes—longtime members of this group may recall seeing clips of a babyfaced Neal Bryant running around with one years ago. Neal had tremendous success with that prototype on various sets, so I've joined with Cinema Devices and finally able to bring this market! The price of the ZeeGee unit is $5500 with various accessories available. We will be running a limited promotion for the first run of units, pricing to be announced shortly. https://thezeegee.com

Speaking of New Kid(s) On The Block and Steadicam...this was a long cold night 25 yrs ago.

Yep, I have that one too, but as I mentioned I don't like using a surveillance headset so I have that one cut apart to take advantage of their circuit in there that mutes the comtek when there is walkie transmission. Have been trying to work with that company to make a headset-agnostic version but they aren't interested.

I spoke to a Bolero rep this week. There are some really cool features to their system, including the Bluetooth connectivity David Thomas mentions above, plus a nice looking display to switch between multiple channels (I've long envisioned an infrastructure where A and B cam have their own channels, the 2nds and loader have another one etc, so operators don't have to wade through the chatter). But it's really expensive and I'm not going there. Last year I took a hard look at the Unity system which leverages phones (I would have supplied Ipod Touches) as the interface, it has many great features also (multiple channels, ability to feed in program which could be Comtek etc). Affordable and kinda slick. But sadly, the latency was too great. At least half a second and sometimes more, which is disconcerting if you can hear the other person and/or need to call out anything that has critical timing. The search continues... Steve, I've been trying to have an interface box made for years that can combine the comtek and walkie audio with some other specific features. There are various companies making them integrated with a surveillance headset, but I wanted to be able to use my own as I prefer a lightweight over the head with boom. Have tried a few times unsuccessfully (and have concluded that if getting custom camera parts made is as hard as custom audio parts, we'd all be screwed). Can you send your contact for the person you suggested?

David Thomas, have you worked with the Bolero? Would love to hear some specifics on performance, functionality, quirks etc.

But surely with a much later Derose battery mod?!

Terry, what was the story with that rehouse in the last post? I get the battery mod but the sled and monitor rehouse...was that a Model 1 originally?

From this day 25 years ago, here are the tributes to Ted from the original Steadicam board on AOL. https://drive.google.com/file/d/16nqO_ukpSfbu-EN4v2ONu2JWnPhvrJwS/view?usp=sharing

got here too late! If anyone else reading this needs, I have Decimator MD-HX's that will do the job.

Oy. Sorry man. It makes no sense...that's like $2000 less than the Teradek 1000 with twice the range. Still a very capable transmitter. Hope you can sell it soon.

That's a pretty cool feature, Mike. Would there be a possibility of having it talk to the the desktop software to render a more sophisticated real-time graph of the spectrum, so for instance a DIT could use it as a frequency analyzer without having to use other hardware?

Mini package is $1300, the Fusion receiver $1000. Check with Media Blackout on the rest of it.

A little update: Had three Mini sets in action on the last show. A and B camera each got a Mini transmitter (in the housing shown above) and were set up in a 1:2 configuration with a Connex Fusion receiver (the original full-size Connex receiver, with current firmware update able to communicate with the Mini transmitter) on a panel antennae array, plus the Mini receiver in housing for the AC's. Overall the performance was comparable to a Teradek system, which is to say there were sporadic and seemingly random breakups at different times which were often fixable by power cycling the system in question. Range was decent. Best scenario came when one of our characters was on a hoverboard traveling half a city block. With the antennae array pointing down the street, the system held a line-of-sight signal for a solid 450 feet (the entire block) with no issues. At other times we did see breakup even at short distances. Having two units in close proximity seems to be a little problematic. I have the antennaes the prescribed 4-5 feet apart on a mast but they still seem to fight with each other a little. Good news is that like the latest Teradeks, if signal is lost is will quickly restore, much faster than the previous generation. Overall, performance is roughly on a par with the current generation of Amimon-based transmitter systems but at a much lower price point. For me it is absolutely necessary to have SDI in and out so I went to Media Blackout to have them design the housings seen in previous posts. This certainly upped the cost but still, substantially less than commercially sold versions with SDI.