Charles Papert

None of the units listed have latency issues, so it's a matter of range and reliability. 100m is a significant radius between tx and rx. I've seen all of the systems above drop out at less under various circumstances. If production feels it is acceptable to lose signal from one or both of those cameras, by all means spend less and get a Camwave or Bolt. You can't ensure it with the Boxx but it will give you a much better chance at it. Make sure it comes with the external patch antennas and get them high in the air.

So what would you do when the battery runs out midshot, couple hours into the shoot? Multiple receivers, keep swapping them out? External battery that powers the monitor and the receiver is clearly the better way. For those who are trying to be more budget-minded and/or keep their gold or v-mount batts for the rig etc., consider that there was a pretty cool set of handheld director's monitors floating around towards the end of the film days that used relatively inexpensive power tool batteries. These days you can easily spec Li-On versions that are even lighter.

Great job, uh, Job!! And there's the final word on the "how to do a circling shot"!

With nearly all HD transmitters I've seen a small but quantifiable loss of sharpness due to the raised noise floor. You can see it on the waveform (where what should be a sharp line becomes a fuzzy line) and it manifests into the image as a slightly softer image. There are times that I have called for focus check on the camera only to follow up with "never mind, it's the transmission". It's usually quite subtle...but then again, so is critical focus.

Dont know if anyone can post that clip from "Sweet Liberty" that showed Larry doing a 360 around the actors plus the corresponding shot from the movie-within-a-movie?

Strictly speaking it's Baron von Gimbletorque, but I don't generally care to flaunt my nobility.

I feel like I should use a mysterious nom de plume when I post here about operating a Steadicam...regardless, I generally found a tape circle helpful. I didn't have to look at it any more than I would look at V's as I walked back into them, all were glimpsed in peripheral vision behind the monitor. There is a significant added benefit of a tape circle and that is that it helps the focus puller considerably, especially if they don't have a Cinetape. Half the marks I used to drop were for their use. Whatever helps them get it done so you don't have do any extra takes. best, Frederick von Gimbletorque

"Thirded". Customer service is an extremely important benchmark around these here parts and knowing that concerns are being heard and addressed goes a long way.

Well, I think so. Another scenario where this could happen is if the cable were accidentally unplugged or developed a short. You'd never know it until the battery died on the Bolt, and even if you immediately remedied the cable issue with a backup etc., you'd still be SOL. In our situation, everything stopped dead while we pulled the Bolt, brought the Boxx in from the truck, mounted it, rebalanced etc. Equipment failure is one thing, and it can happen to just about any gear, within reason. Design flaw is another. Just to be clear to any and all from Teradek: the point here is not to malign your product with snap judgements as is typical of too many message boards. This Forum is (theoretically) made up of industry professionals who have high standards for their gear because those standards are expected in turn by the people who hire them. Few items in a Steadicam package are more critical than a transmitter, because that is the direct link to the most important people on set. Every new product is circled around and evaluated in this fashion. There will be many users of the Bolt out there who are just happy to be able to push an image wirelessly (some for the first time in their likely brief careers) and will be perfectly satisfied with the compromises presented. Understand that if you came out with a "pro" product that costs 50% more and delivered 50% better performance without the voltage and battery issues etc., most people here would still buy it (unlike the typical message board moaning about everything costing too much). Bottom line is: tough crowd here, but one that you should listen to if you want your products to gain traction in the working industry. So Mike or others from Teradek, if any of this is incorrect or can be further clarified, please do so. FYI the first unit that I received did not accept incoming voltage. Chris said something about suspected reverse polarity being fed into it. I talked through the workflow with Will and we determined that it was all but impossible for that to occur with the way we were powering it, unless the supplied cable itself was miswired.

Heat sinks are good but it wouldn't help being pressed against it. The Modulus got amazingly hot, even with the heat sinks on the 3000. Brian, good point. I didn't clarify but of course the upper voltage range should be improved (that's the "easy" fix compared to the battery conundrum). I asked Chris about that and he suggested this would be looked at for a future model, but not to expect any updates/upgrades to the current model.

I wish that I had had time to be scientific about things on the recent shoot. Many other things clamoring for my attention. Overall it seemed to do pretty well, for the time that we were able to use it. Transmitters are a tough rap. You don't notice them until they have an issue (and then it's really frustrating). As noted by Ron above, the Boxx has that early warning indicator where the picture starts to get noisy which tips you off to pending issues (so you check batteries or move the antenna closer etc). It's tough to go back to a TX system that simply shuts off the picture when it isn't happy. The Bolt worked OK. The power thing makes me poopy. It's relatively inexpensive and that's good. But I'm keeping the Boxx for now and waiting to see what the next thing down the pike will be.

So let's talk a little more about this internal battery and what it means in real life situations. A few above have noted that it keeps the unit hot while you are changing your sled battery, which they consider a nice feature. What about when you power your rig off when you are not using it? The Bolt switches over to the internal battery, which eventually runs down. I myself used to save power on my rig off all the time. So this means multiple times a day, you will run the onboard battery down to nothing, and every time you turn the rig back on, it will recharge. Big deal? Maybe, maybe not. Consider the situation that we experienced on our show, where the battery was depleted and the rig had hot batt's. The transmitter becomes unreliable. A quick fix is to change out the sled battery for one that has a lesser charge state, but that's weird. You could add an inline voltage regulator to keep the incoming voltage under the stated range of the Bolt (which is still under debate), but that's klugy. Solves that problem, though. However, you still have a unit that is constantly switching over to internal battery when you turn off the rig. How many cycles does the internal battery support? For day in, day out use like on a series, you might run through a battery within a season. Perhaps Mike or someone else can tell us about battery replacement procedures--does it have to be returned to the manufacturer or can it be done by the end user? One way to avoid this is to turn the Bolt off by its power switch when not in use. Fine in theory, but the longtime tradition of powering off the sled is that all accessories are controlled by the master power switch or breaker. Who really wants to have to remember to power down a separate accessory and then have to remember to power it back up again? How often will you forget to power it back up and hear "no picture at village!" The mentality of multiple batteries and power switches is something that came in with the DSLR era: plenty of people had setups with cameras powered off internal battery,viewfinders powered off an additional battery, external monitors powered off yet another battery and so on. It was completely confounding to me to have to manage all those power source and one of the first things I did on my personal setup was connect everything via a single Anton Bauer battery, which took a bit of effort (thanks again to Matt Petrosky who made all of my custom cables with inline regulators). Maybe I'm just a freak about this but it makes little sense to me to have a component on a Steadicam that is merrily burning away when all of the breakers are popped and needs to be attended to separately. One solution to this would be that the unit have a timed auto shutoff when external power is cut, say, five minutes. This would give enough time to change batteries and still have the unit remain up, which has been noted as a plus, but would keep it from running itself down when the rig rests. To properly work with an auto-power situation, the power switch on the Bolt should nominally be a momentary button rather than the mechanical switch currently in use because it is confusing to have a unit appear off when the switch says it is on. This of course would not be applicable to the current model but since Teradek is reading this, it's a suggestion for future models. My interest in the Teradek was not just for use on Steadicam, but as a cable replacement for all modes (Steadicam, handheld, studio). Much in the way that we used to have Moduluses on film cameras full-time and had complete mobility. For me spending my life at the monitors, it's frustrating that each time the dolly moves from A to B while a shot is being lined up, the cable gets unplugged. With many shows unable to afford a utility, cable duties take a back seat to other more pressing issues and it would be great to have a reliable clean* image via transmitter. However, all of the same issues with powering apply in these modes. It's an extra step to power cycle the transmitter via that tiny switch when a camera is powered down (one camera only, lunch, company move, end of day etc) and I can't expect the AC's to have to do that, nor do I want to have to wait around to see if they've remembered to turn it back on when they power up (they won't). If anyone has a revelation about all of this, I'd be happy to hear it. In the meantime, I'm returning the Bolt. * "clean" is a relative term. I have yet to work with a transmitter (including the Boxx) that doesn't introduce a certain amount of noise into the image. It's an acceptable tradeoff but don't be thinking that the images from any of these transmitters is consistently the same as hard-wired. You see the difference on the waveform. Occasionally I've had to assuage a sharp-eyed director who is thinking we boosted the ISO or something.

Sadly Alfeo, that pilot didn't get picked up by the network. It's now being shopped elsewhere.

Struggle with manpower/time...yeah, I might have a little experience with that! This year I've done a series of projects that have redefined for me what is physically possible in a given period of time and/or with a given set of resources. 105 pages in 8 days on one webseries...on a pilot, 38 pages in 48 hours (four mandated 12 hour days), including four musical numbers...most recently, another webseries presented 165 pages in 13 days. That last one proved to be, as suspected, impossible to achieve. We simply could not make our days. Key & Peele is actually almost reasonable in comparison! My departments are reasonably sized, although still missing a few key souls (one 2nd AC for two cameras and no utility, for instance). It's become second nature for me to tailor the lighting setups around what is possible without killing the crew, which means giving up on some nuances. We have no standing sets and are generally on location, so it's a fresh build every day, and usually several completely different looks. There's certainly none of the typical episodic repetition, so it keeps things from getting stale. It's a fun gig.

Mike, Chris at your company confirmed to me today that the max voltage that will cause the unit to shunt over to the battery is 16v, not 17v. Which is it? Either way, this happened to us during a shoot last week. The internal battery had been run down, and reception began to diminish. We didn't have time to meter the power coming from the sled (Will Demeritt's) to confirm that this was what was happening, but the unit was unable to maintain transmission across 15-20 feet line of sight in this circumstance.

Emre, thank you so much for the nice post. I'm glad you guys are enjoying the show. Over this break I've been plotting a blog that breaks down select sketches, just have to figure out which platform to use (custom/Tumblr etc). These days it seems like if it isn't blogged, it doesn't count--haha, yikes. Until then, if you do post about it elsewhere, let me know. This seems like an appropriate time and place to give to props to Nick Franco about his work on the show. We don't do a ton of Steadicam but when we do, I know I can count on him to bring it every time. This sketch from season 1 https://vimeo.com/channels/keypeele/39112696 was a showcase one'r for all of us, a lot going on a minute and forty seconds, especially on a schedule that has us shooting 2-3 sketches per day on location. Some pretty ferocious backpedaling up a ramp and around corners. Also want to shout out Denis Moran who is an old friend to the Steadi world, who is my A operator on the show and does a great job as well.

ginormous no bueno--just need one a little bigger than the standard to clear bulge in lens housing. And I need to buy it. But thanks! (butt thanks??!) still kinda amazing to me that I own these things:

I need a larger 32p gear for a Heden M26T motor for use on a studio zoom where the standard gear doesn't give enough clearance (motor body hits housing). Doesn't have to be huge, just 20% larger diameter. If anyone has one in their scrap bins, please let me know.

It seems to me like a lot of people are missing the point here. Eric was removed as a moderator, not banned from the forum. He is actually MORE free now to speak his mind and say whatever he wants, if he chooses to do so. Ironically, those words will now be subject to moderation at the hands of others, just like everyone else. Speaking of missing the point: Jessica, unless your aforementioned personal attacks and badmouthing happened on this forum, I can't really see what they have to do with any of this.

With Steadicam package rental rates on the dwindle, it's time to get creative, peeps. Years ago I started getting my Preston on as part of the camera package, so it lived with whatever camera I was working with as the full-time FIZ. Additional rental, anywhere between 500-800 a week. Yes, more wear and tear, but it can really add up to a lot of extra income. A lot of shows are using transmitters now full-time so that's another way to get in there. You may have to go head-to-head against the AC's who may well be trying to do the same thing. On the specific issue of owning Alexa plates: it's the age-old dilemma that is particularly an issue in smaller markets. Rental houses don't have the right parts, and who wants to buy more stuff. However, ending up with vibration in your shots may just lose you a job (or the next job) so keep that in mind when considering the price of an Alexa baseplate. Anyone want to buy my Hill Arri 3/SR low mode bracket? didn't think so, haha.

I said it before and I'll say it again: there is only one way to truly test transmitters against each other and that is in legit and thorough head-to-head testing in a myriad of environments. This was the goal with the original concept of the Great Transmitter Debacle and things have only gotten more interesting in the last year or so since we haven't been able to get it going (Ron B. is always off in NYC earning the requisite funds to keep Jumbo's open). It is going to take a whole stack of anecdotes to be able to determine the performance of a given unit like the Bolt: Twojay gets good results 45' feet away through two walls, the next person loses signal line of sight from half that, who knows. It's RF baby. Shipping and billing issues are not sexy, but for me at least I want to know what kind of customer service to expect when dealing with a new company. Most people who owned Moduluses (Moduli?) went through the pain of multiple-month servicing at some point. So far, it's been a bumpy ride (the unit that Will describes is mine) but that's the joy of early adopting.

Same happened to me.

Regarding #1--don't think it was his invention, more like a period of naming parts after notable CP employees (see: Robings J Bracket and West Docking Bracket, monikkers that have disappeared into antiquity, sad considering they belong to gentlemen whose career contributions to the Steadicam world were greater albeit less infamous than JG's...)

Looking forward to hearing everyone's results. One thing to keep in mind is that testing a transmitter is a complicated process. They can all excel in certain situations and suck in others. On really needs to test not just indoors and outdoors but in several variations of both where the topography and ambient RF vary, to get a full picture of performance. I'm going to put my Bolt through an upcoming 14 day location/stage shoot before I make any decisions or announce my findings (unless it's a non-starter...)

whatever they are paying, I'll pay double. (I have exactly the same thing lying around--I use it to pad stuff in my big open case of generic BS that comes with me on travel gigs)