stripped adjustment screws?

[JakePollock]

just finished dp'ing a short (all on the 85mm by the way) with one day of steadicam. normally i fly a rented ultra, but the sled is down for repairs, so we used the msb back-up sled with the ultra arm.

 

originally i added extra weight to the bottom of the sled to help balance the 535 in it's full glory (no light weight mags and no chance of removing the eyepiece in taiwan), but once i mounted the sled onto the arm, i had a dickens of a time trying to set up the arm. first, the arm was previously set for a very low weight, so the assistant and ac had to help me hold the rig up to get the arm to sit in the sweet spot. i dialed in the forearm without any problems, but for the life of me couldn't get the back section of the arm (bicep?) to take the weight. i know the 535 is a heavy mother and all but it should still be within range of the arm (and since the msb is a lighter sled and we were using wired focus control, the overall weight of the sled was still reasonable).

 

so i would venture to say that the back section's adjustment screw is stripped?

 

and another question: what would you have done? you're on set; the arm is screwed and won't adjust properly. have you ever been in that position? how did you get the shot?

 

i took the extra weight off the bottom of the sled which helped with the arm; however it was still far from being ideally adjusted. even worse, though was that with so much weight on top i couldn't get the rig to really adjust properly. i was dealing with almost reverse drop time.

 

moral of the story was that operating such a poorly set-up rig was a real drag.

 

jake pollock

taipei, taiwan