Zephyr roll call

[John Hatcher]

Hi Morgan,

 

I'm not sure how expensive these are, but check these transmitters out. They've worked really well for reality stuff I've worked on. It's called an MDT-B made by Cobham. http://www.cobham.com/about-cobham/aerospace-and-security/about-us/tactical-communications-and-surveillance/nashua/dtc-communications.aspx

 

I'd speak to them to get the details, but range is really good.

 

 

 

 

Hello from Sweden! :)

 

I´m also a Zephyr owner and operator, using a HD rig.

I´m shooting with a large variety of cameras like Sony PDW-355 XDCAM, Sony F3, Panasonic AG-AC160 and HVX170 depending on client.

 

This is my first Steadicam, bought it to start my career as an operator after 10 years in the video/tv-business.

I really like the Zephyr, easy to handle, easy to finetune with the noobs next to the sled, it´s a quality product.

It fits my clients needs and my startup budget.

 

I´m on the market for a HD-SDI wireless transmitter/receiver, minimum of 50 meter. Any suggestions?!

 

Here is a video from a simple practise-run a did, when this was shoot a only had 5-6 hours with the rig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3r9gWAgv-E

 

Kind regards,

Morgan

[Mark Schlicher]

As conversations get more specific about AKS, etc., perhaps we should branch them out into the appropriate sub-forums rather than having them buried in this Zephyr mega-thread.

 

Thanks for posting about the transmitter, I'm going to check the link now...

[Christian Ramirez-Coll]

Hello,

 

 

My name is Christian Ramírez-Coll, I got my Zephyr about four months ago and have been following the posts ever since. Thank you Mark Schlicher for starting this great conversation.

 

I curently fly it with my 5DIII, Hollywood Cage and a newly acquired (used) Marshall 7'' Monitor. I am thinking of buying an Atomos Connect HDMI to SDI converted. Has anyone tried one yet.?

 

here is their page:

 

http://www.atomos.com/connect/

 

Thank you.

 

P.S. I am having the same monitor-bracket-power conundrum as everyone else.

[Ron Michael]

Hi, I'm also a zephyr owner. I've been flying the Red Epic/Scarlet rig with 19mm rods, mattebox, filters, and RTMotion FF. Camera configured weight at 22lbs. I found a niffy way to dynamically balance my rig. One problem I had was that some camera component gear was not always lined up in the fore-aft plane on the camera or that some gear like a swing away matte boxes had too much lateral weight beyond their normal fore positioned weight. As creative as I could to swing a reciever to the other side to try and balance lateral moments, I still couldn't get good dynamic balance with only fore-aft adjustments of the sled. This necessitated a new way to mount my second AB battery. I used a pair of manfrotto 357PL mounts to form an xy adjustment at the bottom. This then allowed me to balance out lateral moments caused by arm-weight of other equipment. It was just what I needed and the second battery obviously solved the problem of a marshall hi-brightness monitor and RED eating a single AB 90 battery up too quickly. It was a good use of weight for stability.

 

Btw, my method of dynamic balance does the typical static balance exercise but then I put the rig in a horizontal position and adjust for horizontal balance and look for any torque rotational moments. I counter balance them with the xy stage, and then go back and fine tune my drop and

level/pitch attitude and I'm done.

[Alan Rencher]

I'm kind of puzzled by your description. Do you have any photos?

[Victor Lazaro]

Hi all,

Zephyr owner reporting in!

I have been flying a Zephyr for a year now and bought the rig I was flying from its owner.

It is my first rig and I am very happy with it overall.

I am going on a 10 days Bollywood shoot this next week with it on Epic.

I fly mostly Epic and sometimes Scarlets, so almost exclusively Reds.

 

As AKS, I have:

- HPX170 with a 11lb weight plate for training and simulating a full Epic weight. I use it for training mostly.

- Digital level. Is ok, not great but useful.

- BlackMagic Hyperdeck shuttle. I place it where the 2nd battery would live (under the J box/K section/bottom electronics). I was tired of waiting on production to send me proxies from the R3d Files. Now I give them the proxies and I can make a copy for me.

- Paralinx Arrow, I love that toy! It's perfect. Sits in the HDMI plug on the Red, or on the HDMI out on the Hyperdeck Shuttle (converted from SDI).

- SmallHD DP6 that I use with the Arrow as a handheld wireless monitor for directors.

 

Now about the downs of my Zephyr.

The damn post clamps!

They both broke and got stuck. I actually talked about this on another thread. I finally got one new clamp, but the second one has yet to be mailed by Tiffen.

The safety screws on my dovetail are gone (thanks camera intern, Grrr), and I replaced them with simple screws and nuts from my local hardware store, not nice, a bit annoying and uncool, but gets the camera safer for now. Same waiting for Tiffen to send a replacement.

 

About the weight limit. It is in my range for now. Epics are the main cameras I have been working on even as operator or AC an those cameras hit the sweet spot of the Zephyr. The annoying thing is more on the camera side and the difficulty between each owner and playing Lego with all their weird accessories and mounting plates.

 

Fly safe

 

 

[Ron Michael]

Alan,

In this case, I used a Ikan ab mount and a pair of Manfrotto 357 PL to make the xy stage and battery holder. I modified the ab mount by adding diode and lemo connector and cable. The Marshall level sensor is also attached to the front of the first plate. Hope the picture helps.

[Alan Rencher]

Victor, Do you normally fly with the gimbal that low? I see that the post is extended. You have room to bring the post and gimbal up.

 

Ron, I've never heard of anyone ever having an XY adjustment on the bottom of the sled. Why would you need that adjustment?

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Ron, I've never heard of anyone ever having an XY adjustment on the bottom of the sled. Why would you need that adjustment?

XCS sleds have their X/Y at the bottom not at the top

[Ron Michael]

Dear Alan,

The xy at the bottom helps to achieve dynamic balance for cameras with some attachments that have weight in odd (non-fore-aft directions). I began to realize that it was always easy to achieve good vertical static balance but dynamic balance problems was caused by rotational torques from weights from other axis directions either in the top (most of the problems) or bottom . The xy at the bottom is a good place to adjust that out because you have a battery to do it with. I first used a 1lb weight but realized that the battery solved two problems. Try it for yourself. Go ahead and get your vertical static balance and then put your rig in perfect balance in a horizontal direction and slowly spin it. Does it stay perfectly balanced no matter which direction the camera points or is there some direction it wants to settle to? If so, that is the heavy end that throws your Dynamic balance off. The xy weight can rebalance that for you by allowing you to move the battery in the opposite direction (both x and y if needed). In fact, I found now I have better stability all the way around because I can go with even more drop time (near perfect balance) and lose the pendulum effect and rotational problems while in any attitude and it just stays put. I just realized that cameras with odd attachments required a rig that has xy on both ends to counter each other to keep the axis between them stable. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have figured this out.

[Alan Rencher]

XCS sleds have their X/Y at the bottom not at the top

 

Interesting!

[Jerry Holway]

Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to have the c.g.'s of the main components - camera, monitor, and batteries - off side to side, even though one can statically balance for it. We wagged the batteries in the models 1 and 2, and the battery and electronics in the 3's, to adjust for the camera c.g. being displaced side to side.

 

It does makes it more difficult to achieve perfect dynamic balance if one must work out what happens when c.g.'s are displaced side to side as well as fore and aft.

 

As manufacturers can control the c.g.'s of the sled including the monitors and battery c.g.'s, it makes sense to side-to-side center the c.g. of the camera and accessories (the unknown quantities) via the top stage.

 

However, perfect dynamic balance is not required for most shots. Most ops trim for headroom by rebalancing. This takes it out of perfect dynamic balance, and we've all learned to compensate just fine.

 

Jerry

[Andrew Stone]

I think most people would agree that part of becoming good at Steadicam involves becoming adept at creating a nice tight camera package with a low center of gravity and be able to do it relatively fast. I always have a box of strip industrial velcro in my kit that will allow me to get all the accessories as close and low as possible on the camera & rails. On lighter rigs you want to put some that weight behind or under/in front of the camera to help with pan inertia. Putting stuff on top and off to the side I avoid. That's where you are going to get into trouble or at least spend more time with balancing, be it static or dynamic.

[Ron Michael]

Andrew and Jerry,

Thanks for the advice. I agree with both of your comments but I found a quick way for me to get a bit better balance out of a situation that didn't call for me to tear down a camera for lowest CG etc which I fully agree would be the best solution. I just found the sled to be lacking in it's ability to deal with the problem as you both pointed out causes problems for most operators. I don't like noisy gyros on some sets and think that the inertial design is good but this fore-aft plane only idea has created a situation where lateral and fore-aft stabilities are different if any lateral stuff gets involved. Tying on xmitters, recievers, knocking off handles or monitors also takes time in productions and in somecases leaves you with weight in directions not optimum. I just found a way to setup a rig that was ready to go when you find yourself in that situation too. Thanks again for the advice.

[Wan Zhong Wei]

Hi Ron,

 

Looking at the picture that you have posted of the AB battery seated on 2x 357 plates, I think it might do more harm than good due to the increased number of contact points, right now it takes 3 different tiny screws before it hits the battery position. Increased amount of flex, vibrations etc will be introduced.

 

having the battery placed in that position will also imply that the sled will need to be further out in relation to the operator when in missionary position or when during switches, increased effort I must say.

 

I have flown rigs with motors attached to the sides or with cameras having additional attachments on the side, I usually try to build them to balance out each other, (one at each side) if not, the zephyr dovetail allows 3 different horizontal positions for mounting, I am sure you can find the CG via that or with the side-to-side trimming.

 

I am always for a "nearly-neutral" stage, with both fore-aft and side-to-side at their "zeroed" starting positions, relying on my rig building to get things aligned up nicely.

 

Jerry is right too, we spent so much time trying to get the sled in dynamic balance only to realise that the DP or the director decides to ask you to do a tilt, post is not vertical anymore, the balancing doesn't obey.

 

Fly safe!