My K-3 setup

Joe Lotuaco · December 13, 2006

I'm just a lowly first year film student, but I've always loved seeing pics of other people's DIY setups on the boards here so I thought I'd post mine from my final project's shoot yesterday. I actually got the idea for the video tap from someone else here on the forum who made one for a bolex I think. Anyway here are some pics, it's not the most elegant and probably not the safest setup, but with a 45min window of time to load in, setup, shoot, break down and unload the location with just me and my actress, I was in an extreme rush...

I need to get a proper fluid head. I only had a photo ball head on my tripod, luckily I didn't have to do any fancy panning tilting moves. And that's a 90w halogen spot from home depot gaff taped to the top of the camera with a piece of 1/2 white diff on a 660w lamp socket. You can also see the 5in LCD that I gaff taped to the tripod for the monitor.

Here you can see my dolly and the nice mess of wires. I did my best to keep everything relatively tidy, but with no one to wrangle as I dollied, I had to get creative. Not pictured is the standard cable release on the front release button that lets me run the camera "remotely". This setup allows me to do some fairly simple and short dolly moves, but so far I haven't been in a situation that a shot was beyond the capabilities of this setup.

The band clamp is only on there to keep the camera centered on the viewfinder, but it's not completely tightened down. The piece of gaff tape is actually the main support for the camera. This allows me to very quickly and easily take the camera off when I need to do critical focusing and/or framing. The camera is a very low lux standard color CCTV camera and was $50 off ebay and works wonderfully. I use one of those universal AC adapters that I had lying around and I have a BNC to RCA adapter so I can use a portable DVD player for a monitor (I borrowed the LCD from a production company I work for). I also had to get an 8mm lens so that the image of the viewfinder would fill the entire frame of the CCTV camera. I think I paid $12 off ebay for it. So for about $75 I got video tap that works very well for monitoring framing when on the dolly. Not the greatest, but it works for the kinds of little projects I do.

Jonathan Bowerbank · December 13, 2006

faaaaaaaantastic

So long as it serves its purpose when you're framing a complicated dolly shot, I'll say cheers to that!

It's so great how much people like to play with their K-3's, I'm interested to see some really bizarre things that people have done.

December 14, 2006

I'm just a lowly first year film student, but I've always loved seeing pics of other people's DIY setups on the boards here so I thought I'd post mine from my final project's shoot yesterday. I actually got the idea for the video tap from someone else here on the forum who made one for a bolex I think. Anyway here are some pics, it's not the most elegant and probably not the safest setup, but with a 45min window of time to load in, setup, shoot, break down and unload the location with just me and my actress, I was in an extreme rush...

I need to get a proper fluid head. I only had a photo ball head on my tripod, luckily I didn't have to do any fancy panning tilting moves. And that's a 90w halogen spot from home depot gaff taped to the top of the camera with a piece of 1/2 white diff on a 660w lamp socket. You can also see the 5in LCD that I gaff taped to the tripod for the monitor.

Here you can see my dolly and the nice mess of wires. I did my best to keep everything relatively tidy, but with no one to wrangle as I dollied, I had to get creative. Not pictured is the standard cable release on the front release button that lets me run the camera "remotely". This setup allows me to do some fairly simple and short dolly moves, but so far I haven't been in a situation that a shot was beyond the capabilities of this setup.

The band clamp is only on there to keep the camera centered on the viewfinder, but it's not completely tightened down. The piece of gaff tape is actually the main support for the camera. This allows me to very quickly and easily take the camera off when I need to do critical focusing and/or framing. The camera is a very low lux standard color CCTV camera and was $50 off ebay and works wonderfully. I use one of those universal AC adapters that I had lying around and I have a BNC to RCA adapter so I can use a portable DVD player for a monitor (I borrowed the LCD from a production company I work for). I also had to get an 8mm lens so that the image of the viewfinder would fill the entire frame of the CCTV camera. I think I paid $12 off ebay for it. So for about $75 I got video tap that works very well for monitoring framing when on the dolly. Not the greatest, but it works for the kinds of little projects I do.

You're shooting film in a church. That is a righteous act.

But fear the "abomination of desolation".

If you see a HD camera in a holy place... you have two options.

1. Run like the wind.

2. Smash it to bits... and then run like the wind.

Glad you shot film!

F.R.

Joe Lotuaco · December 14, 2006

You're shooting film in a church. That is a righteous act.

But fear the "abomination of desolation".

If you see a HD camera in a holy place... you have two options.

1. Run like the wind.

2. Smash it to bits... and then run like the wind.

Glad you shot film!

F.R.

Actually we filmed in the Great Hall at my school, it's actually in the building that houses the film department. It's basically a large cathedral/ballroom type room built in the early 1900's I think. It was built as a gathering space for the whole school. The school is The City College of New York and most of the buildings are of the same gothic architecture and the buildings were built from the actual rubble from when they first started building the NYC subway system. I haven't been into filmmaking for too long myself, but I'm already in love with film as a medium and prefer it to anything digital.

And I too would like to see what other people have done with their K3's or anything else of the "DIY" type.

Edited December 14, 2006 by Joe Lotuaco

Dennis Kisilyov · December 28, 2006

The band clamp is only on there to keep the camera centered on the viewfinder, but it's not completely tightened down. The piece of gaff tape is actually the main support for the camera. This allows me to very quickly and easily take the camera off when I need to do critical focusing and/or framing. The camera is a very low lux standard color CCTV camera and was $50 off ebay and works wonderfully. I use one of those universal AC adapters that I had lying around and I have a BNC to RCA adapter so I can use a portable DVD player for a monitor (I borrowed the LCD from a production company I work for). I also had to get an 8mm lens so that the image of the viewfinder would fill the entire frame of the CCTV camera. I think I paid $12 off ebay for it. So for about $75 I got video tap that works very well for monitoring framing when on the dolly. Not the greatest, but it works for the kinds of little projects I do.

Dear Joe,

Could you expand on the properties of this CCTV camera, brand, lens mount type (c/cs mount typicaly), is it what you call 1/3 CCD or 1/4 CCD secuirty camera, It looks like a half size Sharp 1/4CCD.

Thanks in advance.

Joe Lotuaco · December 28, 2006

Dear Joe,

Could you expand on the properties of this CCTV camera, brand, lens mount type (c/cs mount typicaly), is it what you call 1/3 CCD or 1/4 CCD secuirty camera, It looks like a half size Sharp 1/4CCD.

Thanks in advance.

The camera is a 1/3" sharp and is a c/cs mount according to the specs. The 8mm lens I bought for it is a c-mount as well. Here is the link to the ebay auction.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=270054784307

Dennis Kisilyov · December 28, 2006

The camera is a 1/3" sharp and is a c/cs mount according to the specs. The 8mm lens I bought for it is a c-mount as well. Here is the link to the ebay auction.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=270054784307

Thanks kindly, This helped alot since my ebay seaches yelded 5000 matches on CCTV cams.

Incidentaly, if anyone in the forum is looking for a mountable hi-res video display for a DIY video tap, I've used these for building in-car computers. They're great, just watch out for the VGA only ones.

http://www.xenarc.com/