Picasso Playboy

[James Takata]

Flew an Arri 3 with high speed base on Friday on my Pro I. Picture was fine through rehearsal, but once the camera rolled the video became completely scrambled. (Remember when the cable company would scramble the channels that you didn't buy? My friend's dad used to call it Picasso Playboy, but I digress . . .)

 

The camera was powered via one cable from camera port to the body and one from aux to the hs base. The video tap (CCI or CCR IV?) on the camera was powered via 3-pin fisher on the camera to 4 pin XLR on the video tap. The other option on the tap was a 6 pin female hirose. Tried changing batteries & cables with no luck. Took off the mag and rolled camera and the picture was fine. Yay! Put the mag back on and picture went bad again. Awwww!

 

Called GPI and George explained that it was a grounding issue and the tap needed to be powered separately from the camera. Then called Charles Papert, hoping to borrow the proper cable, and he awesomely talked me thru the problem on the phone and came up with the solution of unplugging the high speed base and powering the video tap with that cable (fine as long as we didn't need to go high speed, which we didn't). Apparently this was an old problem with the Arri 3 video which most veteran operators would be familiar with.

 

Thanks to a lot of help from my friends, we got the problem fixed and got the shot.

[Alec Jarnagin SOC]

James,

 

Ah... the good old days.... Getting nostalgic - now its just HD cameras sucking your batteries down faster than that Picasso Playmate could.... ah, never mind.

[Alfeo Dixon SOC]

Picasso Playmate

[Joel San Juan]

Hey buddy,

 

Glad you manage to resolve it! :)

Awesome to know you have immediate support

from the great community in LA.

And am learning stuff from your threads as well!

 

All the best :)

 

Joel