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Bad RED camera plate


Lars Erik

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Doing a shoot with the RED camera these days.

 

I have to use the RED camera plate due to the lower 19mm rods. These rods is in conflict with my top stage. Therefore the bracket.

 

This bracket is quite awful. It's very bad. When we (me & focus puller), attached it to the camera the first time, the plate was not 100% interlocked. I would say it's about 3 times as bad as a regurlar 2/3" bracket. We e-mailed the RED team about this.

 

They told us the RED camera bracket was never supposed to be a 100% rock steady camera plate. It was intendted for handheld work. If you want a 100% steady plate, we recommend the cheeseplate we got. Although, if you want to use the standard plate, you can use a business card (of paper, not plastic) and place this where the plate interlocks with the camera. This will punch a hole through to the camera and steady it.

 

I'm not sure what I'm mostly amazed about, the fact that they made a plate that isn't stable, or that they had researched how to fix the problem by using a business card...

 

The business card didn't fix the problem. We had to use paper tape and tape this to the edges of the camera plate. This made it a lot better. At least acceptable. Anyone else experienced this problem and have a different solution to this problem?

 

 

That said; the camera itself is very good. Even though there are a lot of practical faults to it. But I suspect the RED team will fix this in the months to come. But this camera is a huge step in the right direction of HD.

 

 

LE

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Hi Lars,

 

I had the RED on my archer the other day and didn't seem to experience that issue. We had the 19mm baseplate on, and then the RED cheeseplate (the pretty thick one) under that. Seemed pretty solid - would be interested to know where we are differing in the rigging.

 

Attached a pic, but there's some more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/offsetcarrier...57604263189795/ (towards the end)

 

post-5402-1207306653_thumb.jpg

 

On another note, how's that AT-AT mod working out? I can't really afford it right now, but was wondering how well the simpler "battery mount on the rods" system worked as a way of DBing larger cameras?

 

Cheers,

 

Ed

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Hi Ed,

 

we had the standard camera plate that is delivered with the RED. As I said they stated that the cheeseplate was the 100% solid one.

 

I just think it's bizarre that the RED team makes a camera plate which is very loose, it was so loose it was even totally unacepptable for standard tripod work.

 

 

LE

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Aha, sorry misunderstood that you used the cheeseplate to solve the problem in the end.

 

I believe a lot of Red users are switching to the Element Technica dovetails (http://www.elementtechnica.com/products/) which match up better with tripods.

 

There's a video at

where they go through the various options.

 

Ed

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HI Ed

 

What harddrive is that? The camera seems nice and light did you know how much lbs.

 

Did you use the onboard batt. or did you power off the sled?

 

Do you have the HD monitor or did you use a downconverter? I thought the RED does not have one built in.

 

I think I'll have to find a Red in NYC and test fly it. I hope to use it soon.

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post-380-1207328064_thumb.jpgI was testing the RED on my rig the other day and I used the motor rods on my PRO plates instead of the 19mm rods on camera. Worked great except for the little monitor on top for the DP to check his playback. I used a onboard battery to power the camera for added back weight and a miranda downconverter.post-380-1207328064_thumb.jpg

 

BJ McDonnell

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HI Ed

 

What harddrive is that? The camera seems nice and light did you know how much lbs.

 

Did you use the onboard batt. or did you power off the sled?

 

Do you have the HD monitor or did you use a downconverter? I thought the RED does not have one built in.

 

I think I'll have to find a Red in NYC and test fly it. I hope to use it soon.

 

Hey Philip,

 

I'll answer for Ed, so that he can correct me later. =)

 

post-5402-1207306653_thumb.jpg

 

The hard drive is the Red drive, it's 320gb in a RAID 0 config, (for me) it's in the 22-27lb range. In his photo he has a battery, (it's on top of the drive on the top) RED doesn't have a downconverter built in, but he's got the LCD on the rods, up front so he can see it.

 

Ed, (or others) correct me if i'm wrong.

 

happy flyin'

love, Bryan'

 

 

 

 

*he he, I rhymed*

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I used a onboard battery to power the camera for added back weight and a miranda downconverter.

 

 

I get using a battery on the red to increase the weight and inertia, but why so high?

 

 

There really is no reason for the battery so high. We were just doing tests and that is kinda how we configured it. We could have put it on the bottom but we really just wanted to run around with it at Abel Cine. I wouldn't keep the monitor on top either. Im not too picky about battery placement on it. It works fine high or low. Plus we didnt even attach a low mode bracket on it. Like I said, just a test.

 

BJ

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Thanks Bryan I thought if was a motor for focus on the rods. Now I see it is a monitor.

 

is that the only on board hard drive?

 

is it weired to operate looking up or stright ahead? I'll have to try it one day.

 

BJ is that the miranda with the blue tape on it? I've only used the purple one with the sony F900.

 

I cant wait to see one of these thing up close.

Edited by Philip J. Martinez
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There really is no reason for the battery so high. We were just doing tests and that is kinda how we configured it. We could have put it on the bottom but we really just wanted to run around with it at Abel Cine. I wouldn't keep the monitor on top either. Im not too picky about battery placement on it. It works fine high or low. Plus we didnt even attach a low mode bracket on it. Like I said, just a test.

 

For some reason the notion of a low and/or underslung battery and hard-drive is still a bit elusive, although I hope Element Technica is working on this (we talked about it months ago). The RED is a bit on the tall and skinny side to begin with, so having a top-mounted battery is indeed the wrong way to go as Eric suggests. Certainly for handheld and perhaps more subtly for Steadicam, it will be good to get the weight lower.

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There really is no reason for the battery so high. We were just doing tests and that is kinda how we configured it. We could have put it on the bottom but we really just wanted to run around with it at Abel Cine. I wouldn't keep the monitor on top either. Im not too picky about battery placement on it. It works fine high or low. Plus we didnt even attach a low mode bracket on it. Like I said, just a test.

 

For some reason the notion of a low and/or underslung battery and hard-drive is still a bit elusive, although I hope Element Technica is working on this (we talked about it months ago). The RED is a bit on the tall and skinny side to begin with, so having a top-mounted battery is indeed the wrong way to go as Eric suggests. Certainly for handheld and perhaps more subtly for Steadicam, it will be good to get the weight lower.

 

 

I totally agree with you Charles. If I was doing a job with it I would place the battery lower. Being that we were just doing a test we just had it up there. I will admit I was in a hurry to get home before the 405 got crappy. Those of you who live in LA I'm sure can understand that one.

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I used a Red about 8 months ago, it was one of the Alpha versions serial number in the low 20-ties. No real steadicam friendly parts. I took of the lower rails and mounted the Body directly to the Camera Plate. I actually used the last thread on the body, it was very front heavy. We could only use the Red battery that was mounted way on the top.

 

No mini BNC to BNC adapter so we used the 25 foot cable and taped it to the top. I ran out of space to mount the Transmitter and the Downconverter.

 

After all that it wasn't as light as people wanted to make me believe, about a Arricam LT, I would say.

 

Check out the PL mount "improvement" via Electrical Tape. That was when the PL mount was still turning freely, I was told that at prep they had dropped a Lens as they where not aware of that flaw...

 

No hard drive available at that time, we used Flash cards only (16GB), each change was about 4 mins, each battery change resulted in a 83 second reboot of the camera...

 

And to make it really fun... We shot in a 5:1 aspect ratio!

 

 

Later,

 

 

Erwin

post-45-1207438393_thumb.jpg

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