150mm bowl...

Adam Frisch FSF · July 22, 2004

I've just completed a shoot in Britain. I'd ordered a Sacthler 9+9 or O'Connor 2060

fluid head with a 150mm bowl, but for some reason those are not very used in Britain.

What I got whas the s.c. "Moy" head. Which simply is a brit version of the Mitchell

head.

Excuse me, but I have never in my life encountered a more insane system to level the

camera. If this is how it's done in America and the UK, then there's absolutely no

wonder it takes 145 days to shoot a feature in these countries. Let me explain: to level

the camera, my assistants had to raise each of the legs sequentially on the tripod to the

correct level. Besides being very heavy, inaccurate and cumbersome it also completely

screws up the initial composition. "Now the camera's too high" I heard myself saying as the

assistants had to redo it all over again by starting lower, eventually, just maybe, hitting the

composition I set out to get. I kid you not, at least 30 minutes was wasted on this insane

exercise each day.

Everybody else in this world manages to shoot with big, heavy 535's on 150mm instant levelling bowls with zero problem, but somehow they're deemed "unusable" or "flimsy" in the english speaking nations. What IS up with all that?

David Mullen ASC · July 22, 2004

I had the same attitude coming from 16mm after film school -- why aren't ball-heads used instead of Mitchell flat-bases for 35mm?

So I insisted on using a 150mm ball-head on my first 35mm Panaflex feature. Well, no matter how much you tighten down a ball-head, they can slip with something as heavy as a Panaflex (especially when using a Dutch Tilt head as well). A number of times I tilted straight down and the ball would slip. And by the time you've cranked down the locking knob to keep it tight, the effort it takes to loosen it to make adjustments, while steadying this big heavy camera on a loose head, doesn't save you much time over levelling a flat-base using the sticks. And I simply feel safer not having the 35mm camera on a ball head because, like I said, it's a lot of weight to suddenly be loose and rocking around as you try and level it.

Also, the majority of time on a feature film, the camera sits on the dolly, not on sticks, and you can level it with the levelling knobs on the dolly. Anyway, I had to operate the B-camera on a number of days on "Shadowboxer" and we were generally on sticks and I did not find it very hard or time-consuming to level the camera by adjusting the legs. Takes a few seconds (and you should only need to adjust two of the three legs at the most to level it -- and if you're on dirt ground with spikes, slightly kicking out or in the legs can level it).

What's time consuming is making more extreme height changes safely on legs, which is why I prefer being on the dolly - plus when you raise or lower the camera on the dolly, you don't have to relevel it as with sticks. Sticks are a pain, but levelling them isn't the biggest problem.

Mitch Gross · July 23, 2004

In general a good AC can level a Mitchell plate head in just a few seconds without significantly changing the height. I'll se a 150mm bowl on smaller 35mm rigs but when you have a big camera with a big zoom and 1000' mags it can certainly be a problem. I have more of an issue with operators who insist on using a gear head when I wish them to specifically use a fluid head for a shot. They curve in different ways when tilting, the gear head describes a circle with the center above the film gate and the fluid head describes a circle with the center below the film gate. It's not often, but this can sometimes effect the perspective of the tilt.

I always liked the old-school system to levelling a Mitchell plate head on sticks. Carry the thing over your shoulder, plant one leg into the ground in front of you and then pull back the other two to perfectly set that bubble. Slick.