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PowerCubes on the PROII


Iain Baird

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But the weight is no fun either, throws me back 6-7 years when we used to have to fly 535B's from time to time. Not as bad as the BL-4's we used to have to fly before the 535 came out though.

 

FYI:

Charles was doing "Fired Up" with the Genesis and the SSR and I was doing a movie with the 535B, color tap and Plastic Mags, I came out to set and weight the set ups and his set up was a pound and a half heavier then mine...

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But the weight is no fun either, throws me back 6-7 years when we used to have to fly 535B's from time to time. Not as bad as the BL-4's we used to have to fly before the 535 came out though.

 

FYI:

Charles was doing "Fired Up" with the Genesis and the SSR and I was doing a movie with the 535B, color tap and Plastic Mags, I came out to set and weight the set ups and his set up was a pound and a half heavier then mine...

 

With the SSR deck? Really, wow?

With the SRW deck and the HD Transmitter, it feels about 535B weight from what I remember, but not BL-4s weight. But I haven't flown a 535B since 2004 or so, and haven't flown a BL-4s since like 2001, so it's hard to remember exactly.

With the SSR deck it should be closer to the LW2, unless he was flying a bunch of stuff like Cinetape, DM1 motors, etc.

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Now if they could just make the SSR decks more reliable and drop a few pounds off the camera weight and it would be fine overall.

 

 

 

I am currently flying the Genesis with the SSR deck and I am having absolutely no problems with them. I have found them to be very reliable. As a recorder I think they are terrific. (albeit still somewhat large/weighty, because they are designed to withstand rigurous production requirements )

 

With one button playback (and no way to accidentally erase ) I have stopped carrying my archos. I do miss fast forward and rewind though as they playback from the top of the take. ( my director likes to keep rolling... a few takes in a row. )

 

Genesis with SSR is still somewhat power hungry. I had Panavision supply a bunch of Dionic 90's (some of which are a bit past their prime.) i am reserving mine only for my monitor (PRO II base )and in case of emergency so they won't have the life sucked out of them.

 

Best,

 

Rich Davis

LA

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Now if they could just make the SSR decks more reliable and drop a few pounds off the camera weight and it would be fine overall.

 

 

 

 

I am currently flying the Genesis with the SSR deck and I am having absolutely no problems with them. I have found them to be very reliable. As a recorder I think they are terrific. (albeit still somewhat large/weighty, because they are designed to withstand rigurous production requirements )

 

With one button playback (and no way to accidentally erase ) I have stopped carrying my archos. I do miss fast forward and rewind though as they playback from the top of the take. ( my director likes to keep rolling... a few takes in a row. )

 

Genesis with SSR is still somewhat power hungry. I had Panavision supply a bunch of Dionic 90's (some of which are a bit past their prime.) i am reserving mine only for my monitor (PRO II base )and in case of emergency so they won't have the life sucked out of them.

 

Best,

 

Rich Davis

LA

 

 

That's good to know Rich, I haven't done a show with the SSR's it's just what I was told from a 1st AC and why the producers didn't want to use them. Do the SSR's allow speed ramping? We are going to be doing a bunch of that on this show I start Monday, so that could be part of the issue to if the SSR's don't allow ramping.

 

Compared to the SRW, the SSR seemed light when I put it up for a "test" run.

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Mike,

 

They do not do the ramps... You have to fly the SRW -1 for high speed. Bummer.

 

Compared to the SRW-1 the SSR (Solid state recorder) is about half the weight, give or take maybe 1/3 . (not sure of exacts I don't carry a scale like Ron... or nearly as much Lisisgav for that matter. )

 

 

Much more reasonable to carry but still heavier than the ARRI D21 I was carrying... but was connected by fiber to the DIT.

 

Good luck,

 

Rich Davis

LA

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Rich:

 

The SSR does have "cue and review" (visual fast forward and rewind) as I recall but I can't remember exactly how it is done--I think you hold down a function key and then use the forward/backward clip buttons or something. Dominick at Panavision can tell you.

 

I also found the SSR to weigh half as much as the SRW.

 

Michael:

 

We didn't have any trouble with the SSR's on "Fired Up" (the first SSR show) and I have to say that I haven't heard much about them since, but I would have thought that I might have heard about dropped frames.

 

p.s. sorry I didn't get back to you on this via phone, I've been hectic with work and it slipped my mind.

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"The SSR does have "cue and review" (visual fast forward and rewind) as I recall but I can't remember exactly how it is done--I think you hold down a function key and then use the forward/backward clip buttons or something. Dominick at Panavision can tell you."

 

Cool Charles Thank you... I will play around more on Monday. Dominick is slammed right now... Not a single film camera being prepped there when we were prepping.

 

Best,

 

Rich Davis

LA

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Hey Michael,

 

I did 3 straight shows on digital last year (F23, Genesis, RED), and I agree with Rich & have the camera house supply the batteries for these power hungry cameras. Panavision supplied me with Powercubes for both the F23 & Genesis, and Fletcher Chicago supplied Dionics for the RED. My Dionics only worked a handful of times last year on 35mm commercial jobs, where I'm sure I would have killed them dead in 6 months if I used them on the digital feature work.

 

I'm sure this practice will save us thousands of dollars a year in battery replacement. Production has never questioned ordering batteries with a camera, but I'm sure they would question a higher sled rental to cover (what digital cameras have resulted in) almost disposable batteries. I did spend $1000 on IDX mounts, so now I have both.

 

A couple notes about the F35 (or F23) while ramping. You need the VTR with the cache board option. The VTR stores frames in the cache memory, then dumps them to tape in an edit mode. What's weird for operators is that the tape transport is starting and stopping, and quite noisy. The first time you hear it, not only is it distracting, but you think the VTR is malfunctioning. No worries, it is normal operation while in ramping mode. Also, once set the camera into ramping mode over 30fps, someone from camera should let the gaffer know that he has to accommodate enough stop for 60fps. Even if you are ramping from 24fps to 40fps, the deck is in a 60fps mode, and needs that much light. If you are not ramping, and shooting say a straight 48fps, then normal light levels apply.

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Thanks guys.

I'm sure that's why we didn't get the SSR decks on this show. They wanted ramping and remember them saying something about the SSR decks not being able to do that.

Yes, as I remember the SSR deck is about half the weight 6-6.5 lbs compared to the 13 lbs of the SRW deck.

It was just one 1st AC that said something to me about SSR decks dropping out, but I've heard nothing other than that. I enjoyed flying the SSR deck, it was nicely weighted for me. I actually don't mind a bit of weight when flying, prefer it to ultra light cameras. When I fly the RED (have done 2 shows with it now) I actually add a bit of weight to it.

The F35 with the SRW deck and IDX HD transmitter though is a bit much in weight.

Hopefully I won't get a ton of Steadicam shots with this pig. When I did a show with Mimi Leder, she had me wearing the rig all the time, all day long (like 1-2 shots a day on the dolly, all rest steadicam). With the F35 and SRW deck on board, I would not be able to do that day after day.

 

No prob Charles, talk to you all later.

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For the Oregon shoot, we got the SRW-16 (or 1.6 whatever the official name is) from Panavision Hollywood. That deck makes it possible to "ramp" the camera without the Deck actually being physically attached to the Camera...

 

Saved on weight and battery power.

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I realize this thread has veered off on a few tangents since started but here's an update now that I've had a chance to try out the new batts.

 

The camera that I used was an F35 in single piece mode using the SRW deck. A fairly heavy setup but to go cable free I'm willing to fly the extra weight. Of course the promised cable free (SD transmission is fine I was told!!) Turned into cabling some of the time, DP's get hooked on that HD signal.

 

In prep when I had tested out the rig with the IDX batts and the Camera in single piece I didn't like how long the post was so I stacked two E-10s for the front battery mount to add some bottom weight and shorten the rig - more weight but a sacrifice for operating comfort.

 

I started the shoot using two powercubes powering the camera and two E-10s powering the monitor and transmitter. The first shot was a series of shots establishing the hero walking down the street. The director wanted a montage of shots so we were just walking up and down the street covering different parts of the body - never cutting of course - how I hate those 50 min tapes sometimes, why cut when we can just reset back to ones and keep shooting. Thankfully a lens change was in order and a break was given, time to check the power. The powercubes were now reading 1/3 but they were the same ones I had used during prep so they started the day reading 2/3. The E-10s were still reading full. We repeated the montage exercise on the next lens for about another 10 mins of rolling time. The camera was now reading 11.7 volts - close to the bottom of acceptable - I think it cuts at 11. Time for a battery change after about 20 mins of rolling. Because I only have 4 powercubes and 6 E10’s I decided to change the setup a little and used 1 powercube and 1 E-10 paralleled to power the camera. Powercubes can deliver up to 10 amps and the E-10 can deliver up to 6.4 amps so on it’s own the E10 could never do the job but sharing the load it seemed to be fine. This setup was ultimately the one I used for the rest of the show and it worked great. We were getting between 30 and 40 mins of rolling time from the batts. To improve this even more in the future I will keep a Block battery beside the Steadicam Stand so all of the little camera tweaks and log changes that happen between takes can be done on House power so to speak.

 

I must admit that knowing what I know now about the HC AB batteries coming out soon I probably wouldn’t have gone forward with this exercise. However I couldn’t be more pleased with how the IDX batts performed. It will be a while until they can prove their longevity or ruggedness but so far so good.

 

IAIN

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I realize this thread has veered off on a few tangents since started but here's an update now that I've had a chance to try out the new batts.

 

IAIN

 

To veer it back off tangent... Re: SSR We did have an issue after my last post. The solid state recorder has a redundancy ,I believe , so if you have a dropped frame etc.. You can go to the B side and or reboot and you can retransfer it NO PROBLEM. BUT, you have to discover that as you are transferring to HDCAM SR. If you just roll and walk away you can miss problems... Problems that can be solved if you catch them but not if you don't watch your transfer. At this point I would say it is fairly imperative to have your "loader or DIT of whomever is transferring from SSR to tape watch CAREFULLY and check tape thoroughly before they erase the drive. We lost a series of takes.(because we just keep rolling because it is tape) I have now subsequently heard that there have been other productions that this has happened to.

 

I also feel it is imperative for us to guide our crews regarding this issue. If Productions and the studios decide that it is too dicey using the SSR, we are going to be the ones who will suffer. So please heed my warning so that we don't lose this important tool.

 

I hope this made sense I am tired. But this is an important warning to Genesis SSR users.

 

Best,

 

Rich Davis

LA

 

PS I would be happy to explain in more detail just call or e mail me. 818 681-8742

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Rich,

 

Not good news. I can already imagine that this will scare people away from using these solid state mags. The thought of flying these beasts in one piece mode with the SRW deck for countless resets and roll times scares the crap out of me. Too much weight to do our best work for extended periods of time (in my opinion). I'm not one to be macho - I'd rather be thinking about composition and story telling than my screaming legs. Lets hope Panavision gets behind this and solves the problem immediately else I see a lot of tethered two piece mode in our future.

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