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Bad RED camera plate


Lars Erik

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Hi all,

 

just finished my 3rd RED project with just few weeks apart. There's alot of RED these days.

 

Anyway, I've made some new discoveries. The RED drive is VERY sensitive to vibration. We did a weeks commercial with several shots being done on water. The drive went crazy when there were waves around. And the waves were very small. The drive dropped a lot, so we had to go and shoot on CF cards. This worked out fine. I heard that RED is coming out with a new drive next year. It's supposed to be a lot more stable. So if you ever do shots with vibration, bring CF cards!

 

And the start-up time is driving everybody on set crazy! I wish they could sort that out. Maybe get a small battery inside the camera that would power it for a few seconds, so that you don't have to have a 90 seconds start-up time every time you change battery...

 

LE

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We did a weeks commercial with several shots being done on water. The drive went crazy when there were waves around. And the waves were very small.

LE

Oh great! I'm about to start a feature in the Bahamas with the Red and we'll be doing a lot of water and boat work in the ocean. We'll have cards on hand and it sounds like we'll need them. Thanks for the tip.

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I was shown a prototype drive mount at Element that had rubber feet which acts as a shock mount. It was made to mount to the side of the camera which would orient the drive parallel to the side of the camera (and help offset the weight of the quite heavy EVF) Perhaps this orientation would help. They will show this at Cinegear.

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The heat here in the Northeast has been oppressive (95+ and humid) the past several days. I don't know if it was related or not, but the Red drives have begun to act up. They seem to record, but any attempt at reviewing the shots results in the camera seizing up and then self-rebooting. The Red tech did check the drives on the computer and confirmed the footage was there and intact, but he was not comfortable continuing the shoot using them so we went with the CF cards. I should note that these problems occurred while they were shooting on a jib, prior to getting to me for Steadicam.

 

For me, it was a nice relief to not only lose the weight, but lose a piece of gear that had a very poor mount (see post #36 in this thread). I'm not entirely unconvinced that the poor mount, combined with a NON solid-state drive, contributes to the drive's misbehavior, as a few of us here have already speculated. The loss of the drive's weight was nice, but it did force me to make the entire camera rig longer since I no longer had its weight in the back to offset the weight of the zoom lens in front (see same post). This was an easy thing to do with the Element Technica 24" rods I had - everything just slid toward the rear.

 

Lawrence, it's funny you mention a possible solution by ET for the drive mounts. I've called these guys, Ugrip, that make a product very similar to what you describe. The US distributor is in NY. I spoke with him this morning and was told he expects some of their products in stock this week. The product I'm specifically interested in is their Firestore mount.

sbf-ma01.jpg

 

The problem with the crappy shoulder mount was solved. We figured out how to use the bottom plate/cheeseplate combo. I'm not sure why use of it has confused so many people (lots on the RED user boards), but if you just get your hands on it (which I wasn't able to do before) it's pretty obvious how it mounts. I suppose the confusing thing is that it is not a quick release or a slide-in mount like everything else. The RED cheeseplate needs to be mounted to the bottom plate BEFORE it is mounted onto the camera. There are two large countersunk screws that secure the two together. In my opinion, it should be the only solution for mounting to Steadicam. Unless you don't need the rods, in which case you can just mount directly to the camera.

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A jib op friend of mine said that every shoot he has done with the RED it has had problems with overheating. Not all that surprising since they were all outside in the middle of the day here where getting up to 100 isn't all that unusual. The shoots that I have been on with the RED haven't had this problem, so maybe some are more prone to it than others. I have a feeling that this summer we will find out if heat is going to be a serious issue for the red.

 

~Jess

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Speaking of the RED drive, now that SSD Hard drives are starting to make an appearance in laptop computers the prospect of a solid state drive holding upto 64GB can't be that far off, which should hopefully increase reliability and storage whilst decreasing power use.

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And the start-up time is driving everybody on set crazy! I wish they could sort that out. Maybe get a small battery inside the camera that would power it for a few seconds, so that you don't have to have a 90 seconds start-up time every time you change battery...

 

LE

 

 

Got a RED power cable from Terry West that uses Camera power and Aux plugs on the PRO. You power the camera with 2 batteries and it allows you to hot swap batteries when they are down. This means never having to power down the camera for battery changes and avoid the 90 second reboot. Although without standard film mag reloads that 90 seconds is a welcome rest stop.

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Had a chance to fly the RED finally. No problems to report. Fairly light in weight. Biggest drag was having to input sound. I made some very, very thin 3 pin XLR jumpers for sound. That worked really well. I ran the camera/hard drive/down converter/Preston/Red monitor/TB-6 monitor/Modulus for at least 1 hour straight off 2 Dionic 90 batteries and had plenty of juice to spare. Just velcroed the hard drive to the cheese plate on top to eliminate the hard drive/battery bracket.

 

post-62-1213909178_thumb.jpg

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No problems with this camera... Very easy to get balance, light weight, compacted body... I mounted the body directly to the camera plate... And get fly in 12-15 minutes...

 

Taking a last view to the shoot, while my assistant finish his work... And no problems with the RED....

 

post-4379-1213916980_thumb.jpg

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I finally worked with REDcam, no problems at all!!

 

I found it very easy to balance, and actully very lite, but I didn't use the RED sholder pad at all. I made 11cm long, 19mm rods, so I put everyting from the Camera top. Camera asisstent didn't turnd the Chroiszeil MattBox, so we could not use the flags on it, but I put some Black Wrap on top and tape it, if necessery, and this works well! :-)

 

I also got me the GoldMount to V-Mount adapter so I use original REDcam batteries on my Artmis cine! :-)

 

Anyway here are the pictures, I hope it helps :-)

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/stoneddog90/REDcam

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What not to put on a steadicam flyer out the side of a minibus :|

 

but hey it worked..

not the most beautiful photo but you get the picture.

Did a shoot recently.. didnt get a photo unfortunately with red, canon zoom lens, wireless follow focus, matte box, top and bottom rails.. wasnt the best idea as the arm wasn't doing anything really had to hold it up and after a whole day got a bit heavy.. but hey it was fun.

post-5098-1230606598_thumb.jpg

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