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SmallHD 703 Ultra Bright


Johnathan Holmes

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Just a note on the 703's pass-through:

 

It uses 28 AWG wire, so don't plug anything into it that pulls more than about 1.4A. The two Lemo connectors are just wired together, so either one can be used as the input or output. their decision to wire it that way means that the battery input does not get passed through to the output Lemo. I'll be offering a mod that corrects this for anyone who needs the battery to power the output.

Good to know Alan!

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

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One of the AC's had one on set last week. Thing was amazing.

I've been using a DP7 Highbright for several years now (one on my sled and one as an operators monitor) and I'd put it in the awesomeness category of my PRO arm. I'm not even sure if I can find anything to fault on it. And I've flown most of the top steadicam monitors made since 1998.

It's fully visible in the hardest light.

It's super sharp.

The functionality of the buttons is nearly perfect.

I've done everything short of use mine as a hockey puck and they keep working perfectly.

The size and form factor are perfect.

What else can you say about it???

And the new one seems if anything even brighter and more awesome!

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Works great for me... using a panavision XL with HD tap. Its bright...very bright. Delay is juuuuust slight but not a problem for me. No bracket available for the Artemis sled yet, so I had one machined to adapt to the 6 inch size. Lots of options that I won't use and I do miss the built in level of my recently deceased 702.

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Any new comments after the summer period? How good is the anti-reflective screen protector? Maybe better use the anti glare screen? Any operators using it as their main monitor on the rig yet? Im still using the Cinetronic Gen2 and Im hoping for a monitor as reliable in visibility but with better image and color quality as well as better software and functions. Is this the right monitor?

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Any new comments after the summer period? How good is the anti-reflective screen protector? Maybe better use the anti glare screen? Any operators using it as their main monitor on the rig yet? Im still using the Cinetronic Gen2 and Im hoping for a monitor as reliable in visibility but with better image and color quality as well as better software and functions. Is this the right monitor?

 

From my experience, now having owned the monitor for almost a year, it is quite reflective. As an assistant, it doesn't bother me too much because the problem really only crops up when you have a light source behind your head when looking at the monitor. And in those cases, I can always angle the monitor to remedy the problem.

 

I really do love how bright it is, and the brightness can often compensate for the reflections. I rarely ever need a shade/hood over my monitor even when working outside in daylight.

 

That being said, I can see this being an issue for a steadicam monitor. When you are doing your shot, if reflections become an issue, you can't just reposition the monitor on-the-fly to fix it. If the shot requires your rig to be at a certain angle or position, you can't just reach down and reposition the yoke mid-shot. But you can always put on a hood/shade.

 

One other issue I had with the monitor is I've had needed two repairs thus far. One was for 2 dead pixels and backlight leak along the right edge. Another time, the monitor just refused to power up and required a new main board. But in both cases, warranty covered it, so I only had to pay for shipping back to SmallHD and they have been very good with customer service with regards to turnaround times.

 

Sharpness and image quality is pretty good. It doesn't have the best colour reproduction, so don't use it for any colour sensitive work. I do like how it can take LUTs off an SD card, so if your camera is only splitting out a very flat image, you can apply a LUT to make it more contrasty.

 

In terms of delay, I did some tests where I took a picture of the monitor hardwired to the camera (Alexa) photographing a timecode slate. It appears the delay varies anywhere from 1 frame to 10 frames with an average around 3 frames. I don't know why it varies, and I didn't have enough time to do a more comprehensive test.

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From my experience, now having owned the monitor for almost a year, it is quite reflective. As an assistant, it doesn't bother me too much because the problem really only crops up when you have a light source behind your head when looking at the monitor. And in those cases, I can always angle the monitor to remedy the problem.

 

I really do love how bright it is, and the brightness can often compensate for the reflections. I rarely ever need a shade/hood over my monitor even when working outside in daylight.

 

That being said, I can see this being an issue for a steadicam monitor. When you are doing your shot, if reflections become an issue, you can't just reposition the monitor on-the-fly to fix it. If the shot requires your rig to be at a certain angle or position, you can't just reach down and reposition the yoke mid-shot. But you can always put on a hood/shade.

 

One other issue I had with the monitor is I've had needed two repairs thus far. One was for 2 dead pixels and backlight leak along the right edge. Another time, the monitor just refused to power up and required a new main board. But in both cases, warranty covered it, so I only had to pay for shipping back to SmallHD and they have been very good with customer service with regards to turnaround times.

 

Sharpness and image quality is pretty good. It doesn't have the best colour reproduction, so don't use it for any colour sensitive work. I do like how it can take LUTs off an SD card, so if your camera is only splitting out a very flat image, you can apply a LUT to make it more contrasty.

 

In terms of delay, I did some tests where I took a picture of the monitor hardwired to the camera (Alexa) photographing a timecode slate. It appears the delay varies anywhere from 1 frame to 10 frames with an average around 3 frames. I don't know why it varies, and I didn't have enough time to do a more comprehensive test.

 

I quite like the 703 but find the blacks not as good as the 702 HB. The new OS 3 gives a lot more control over brightness, contrast, and gamma adjustments so it's helpful to push the blacks around sometimes. I now use a 702 OLED in studio and a 703 UB outdoors.

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I think the problem with the blacks is just inherent with using an LCD panel and not an OLED panel. Even the "black" pixels are being backlit (and even more so with the Ultrabright 703). I'm still waiting for them to update the firmware such that I can assign toggling of peaking and focus assist with one of the physical function buttons.

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