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Marell electronic bubble


Thomas English

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i know this forum is not the place to put every new steadicam product thats ever released... but ive been on the quest for a cost effective electronic bubble for a while and i know a few other operators have....

 

well marell are making and finishing a new one right now... around a 1000 ukp it will have a bubble , frame lines generator and cross hairs... inline BNC ... a few different ways to display the bubble on your monitor... sounds wicked

 

he reckons with 3 "gravity sensors" and a prossessor it calculates to overcome the angle of circular rotation... spin... centrefoogal and all that.. its not perfect but it works and u cant beat physics apparently

 

their just price fixing right now over the next few weeks... so lets not all ring and enquire otherwise they ll put the price up.

 

im very excited

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that bubble+frameline gen is gonna be 950ukp.... which is good

 

i know a lot of the people looking for bubbles where people with mk-v rigs. howards new d-box which will be easily replaced will have a bubble in it... so hey! its bubbles all the way.

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Been using the new marell bubble yesterday... wicked

 

 

I was able to have 3 outputs on this one... with a video distribution amplifier built in. So I have 2 "clean" outputs and one bubbled output

 

It has more sensors in it to measure and calculate against G-forces.

 

The software is very versatile. I can position the bubble anywere i like as well as fully adjustable lines and all sorts. different shadings .

 

My favourite bit is the battery level indicator. Measures the number of volts your sled is powering it and the rest of the sled with... like it! i hate it when you move up to do a shot and your bloody batteries out! all ready to go... this will end that. I suppose it only measures the 12v side of my sled but seeing as that runs out first (more load with FF, TX etc) this is fine.

 

So i tried it out... I love the MK-v evolution sled because of its ability to have anything nicely gaffered onto it . I mounted the bubble dirtectly underneath the post. best place as its on the rotational axis. I went through the menu to set up what orientation of the bubble (it can be mounted any which way up or sideways) . I planned on 3Mvelcroing it to the base of the basebox.

 

It has all sorts of sensitivity settings and damping... i love it... i can practise my donjuan loads now! can t belive i ve survived so long without

 

The only thing is .. the last few promos i shot the editor seems to have chosen all the shots where the horizon is dynamic! like a computer game flight sim.... oh well tools for the job!

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hi tomas can u seand me a pic of the electronic buble alone....cause i want to se iit for a long time.....

ihave also a mk-v evo sled with a mk-v lcd monitor .....what about puting the thing in the front of the base of the seld ....and not on the bottom

thanks man....and cant whait to see your pics...

ps ...haw much its the thing?

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yo gnespolo

 

yeah, u can put the bubble any which way wherever u like. I ve put it directly underneath my post because....

 

on paper (maths) the closer it is the the centre of rotation the less it will suffer from centrifugal forces when whip panning. ..... i.e. the further the sensors are away from the middle of spin the more they ll be tricked to give a false reading

 

- i am however not an old boy steadicam op. so i dont know whether this difference is substantial to make a difference in the real world of operating. i ll leave that to somebody that has played about a lot with bubble positioning . on paper and my study of maths.... it makes sense. the extra 15 cm away from the centre of rotation may make no difference at all especially when considering that when your whip panning u probably dont look at the bubble.

 

si, yo penso todo es coolio

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yeah, u can put the bubble any which way wherever u like. I ve put it directly underneath my post because....

 

on paper (maths) the closer it is the the centre of rotation the less it will suffer from centrifugal forces when whip panning. ..... i.e. the further the sensors are away from the middle of spin the more they ll be tricked to give a false reading

Thomas,

now I'm a bit confused, you could place the bubble anywhere you want, given that it is compensating G-forces.

 

Best

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yup, it should be fine.

 

but i feel its better to give your kit the best advantages possible.

 

To my mind there are two types of "forces due to acceleration" that could throw a bubble off.

 

i - the reaction due to rotation (due to circular acceleration) also known as the centrifugal force from rotating your post. spinning the rig could creat a false reading.

 

ii - the reaction force force due to acceleration, i.e. accelerating left or right rapidly could knock off the the bubble and give a false reading. accelerating to the right could make the camera appear to have leant to the left. or accelerating forwards could trick the sensor into thinking the camera has leant backwards.

 

However, as I mentioned earlier, this is about as far as i am qualified to comment on the innerworkings of bubbles. Dave Ellis said that there were 4 sensors instead of 3. With the fourth designed to compensate for these mistakes- however he did say that a small level of error could not be completely eliminated, rules of physics and all that.

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no, i have nt.

 

According to this forum the FBX is very good as well.

 

Marell make a lot of the electronics in the mk-v sleds, so i already knew about their high quality work and service.

 

I got my video distribution amplifier in the marell unit too. However i would love to try the FBX. I suspect it will be a while before anyone tries them out side by side with the XCS unit.

 

thomas

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