Nick Gardner

I would be very surprised if the foton covered anything more than s-35. I have owned 3 or 4 foton anamorphics, never tried them on anything bigger than dragon, but I just had square front primes on a venice, and they had massive vignetting at 6k, well, because, they were never intended for it.

Nick

If anyone is interested, lens showed up. Granted I am not using it on a full frame camera, using it on a Gemini, but it's really a pretty mind blowingly good lens for $3k. Mechanically it is top notch. We'll see if it holds up.  Came with shims, but dead on out of the box. Held focus throughout the zoom range, marks dead nuts on. Really a great solution to the I have to go shoot corporate videos or doc type stuff and need a general purpose zoom. 

Very pleased.

Nick

Howdy,

My Ang. zoom is in for service, and I'm not sure how long that's going to take, and this was so cheep, I picked one up.   It'll be here in a week.  All of the tests I have seen online have looked really good, and I have been pretty impressed by some of the cheep chinese glass coming out (the Rokinon cine lenses for example).

Wondering if anyone has had any real world experience while I wait for mine to show up.

Thanks in advance,

Nick

The old arri HMI fresnells are great lights. I used to have 4 6ks, 6 4ks, and 3 or 4 2500s. The magnetic ballasts work just fine as far as you play by the rules as far as frame rates go. They are also really, really reliable. I did a shoot in Europe for 6 months. We shipped a container of these old HMIs over there and ran them nonstop in the sleet and rain, and they never missed a beat. Light quality is excellent. They are quite happy to run on modern electronic ballasts as well. 

They are big and heavy, but a 4k can be put up on a stand by one guy if you do it right. Put the light on the ground with the yoke parallel to the ground, put the yoke in the stand, and walk it up from the head. Definitely easier with two guys, but doable.

The quality of light out of a big fresnel is hard to beat.

Nick

Look at the Z cams. They tick almost all of your boxes and make lovely pictures. Cheep too.

Nick

Sold

Price reduction to $5k. An excellent deal just got better.

Nick

Sure you can buy them, or have the electricians make them up, but all of the ones that are for sale from amazon, HF etc are LED bulbs. They are hanging outside all over my neighborhood. They have little leds inside that look like filaments. Just saying clarify before you buy. That said, the ones from home depot sure look like the real thing.

Nick

All of these I have seen are LEDs.

Nick

I have for sale an as new Varizoom Cinema pro Jr head. This is the Talon's slightly younger brother. A little lighter and a little less payload. Fantastic head, I just don't need two. Camera capacity is 35lbs. Comes with jibstick pro controller with soft stops for pan and tilt, zoom and focus controller for jib operation, 100' control cable, 30' power cable, power supply and case. Head is 100mm ball, but it is easily adapted to mitchel and there is a mitchel option from the manufacturer. Works with all of the same control systems for the talon, Advanced controller for motion control, hand wheels, etc.

This is a link to the exact package I have for sale.  https://www.varizoom.com/product/vzcinemapro-jr-k4/

Retail is $8995 I'm asking $6k

Pm me, and I'm happy to email pics of actual head. Please feel free to ask any questions.

Nick

SOLD

Hi there, thanks for the interest, but unfortunately this head sold right about the same time of your inquiry.

If you are still looking for a head, PM me, I have another head available.

Nick

Selling my Hot Head Remote head. Everything works as it should. very responsive and precise head. Comes with hand wheel controls, spare cables, and custom light weight tilt axis to lower the weight of the head. Pick up in Baltimore, ship via freight, or can deliver within 100 miles. Great if you want to learn wheels, also a good candidate for a motion control conversion. Ask any questions.

Lots of pics listed here -

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?180546-Hot-Head-remote-head

Hmm. That is unusual. What's your serial number?

Nick

I am sure it locks the head in place when it's in gear, what about when it's in neutral? The locks at the handwheels lock the transmission drive shafts. if in neutral the head should still move. The other two locks physically apply pressure to pads locking the axis in place.

I looked at my head today, the tilt lock should compress a pad against the side of the tilt carriage. If you look in through the front of the head with a flash light, you should be able to see it clearly. If the pas is in place, and the knob still does nothing, check to see if the pad is moving when you tighten the knob. The knob is keyed onto another part on the shaft, and if it's spinning freely, something is amiss.

Nick

The part missing from your head is the pan lock. Basically there are two sets of locks. One locks the wheels in place, the other set actually locks the head in place like brakes on a car.   Your wheel lock are certainly unique. If I had to guess by looking at them, it looks like you could engage the locks while keeping your hands on the wheels which could be handy. I'll be at my studio today and take a look at my head.

Cheers,

Nick

Oh, and regarding the dovetail plate that comes with it, mounting an RBQ on it is pretty handy. Then you just pop off from whatever your other head is and back and forth, camera cart etc.

Nick

The issue with the modern bridge plate is annoying. I solved that problem by filling in the cut outs on the bottom of the bridge plate. I Just made inserts that fit into the voids and were flush with the underside to keep the pin down until the plate slides all the way over.   If I recall I made them out of 1/4" aluminum bar stock. Any local machinist should be able to modify the plate for around $100.

B is as was previously stated, Eyepiece leveling bracket. Pretty much a necessity with a gear head.

That knob is the tilt brake. If tightening it does nothing, it needs to be adjusted. If you decide to go that roue, I'll go figure it out on mine and let you know what the procedure is.

How is the cable tension? Is there a little plaque somewhere with instructions for tensioning the cables? It's pretty straight forward, and if it's not slipping, don't mess with them.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Nick

Howdy,

I was wondering if anyone knew off the top of their head what an Elemack 3 way leveling head was rated for weight wise. I want to make a mitchell adapter for a Jimmy Jib base. The elemack cricket could certainly handle the weight, it took a full on riding crane. I have put the jimmy jib base on a chapman before, and in general I think it will be fine, just trying to track down an actual number for the elemack mount to mitchell 3 way leveling head.

Thanks,

Nick

Hi,

I know all of the theory, I have a long history of shooting at high speeds, both on film and digitally.

I am interested in peoples real world experience working with flicker free ballasts.

I had a job today where we intended to shoot with the studios Hive plasma lights. On a test day it was determined that they didn't have enough oomph to get an exposure at 930 fps (Phantomflex 4k). I had previously tested a modified ETC source 4 par with a 575 HMI globe and a german electronic ballast and found it to bee flicker free. Going tungsten was not an option, so on short notice we used 7 of the 575 fixtures.

Initial set up was a 3/4 key 6x6 silk with 3 of the 575s punched through that, double edges one 575 each, and fill being another bounced into a 4x4 muslin. That put us at a t1.3 at 800iso 930fps 360 shutter.

We rolled like that for the first half of the day. There was no pulsing, strobing, rolling bars, or other cyclical artifacting. Shortly after lunch we switched to a longer lens that was a 2.8 so we pulled some diffusion and marched some stuff in. The foreground lights were fine, but the light on the background was flickering a little bit. Again, not a cyclical thing but more wandering. We were unable to make it go away by swapping out heads or changing power to different circuts. As we were tighter we replaced that instrument with one of the plasma lights and marched it in. This got rid of the majority of the problem, but when looking at the waveform monitor, you could still see it jumping around a bit (but within acceptable levels.

That was the only problem we had all day. I understand that there are no guarantees with HMIs and high speed, yadda yadda, but my gaffer and I are trying to track down the source of the issue since we were fine most of the day. I am wondering if since the light that was causing a problem was with a spot lens and no diffusion, and by it's self, if it could have been arc wander, but the fact that the Hive still wasn't solid makes me wonder if it was mains harmonics or some other voodo.

Any thoughts or opinions would be apreciated.

Cheers,

Nick Gardner

PS- The ballasts are Mitronics and are PFC

Hi,

I have an Elemack cricket in great shape, but I could top off the hydraulic fluid if i wanted to. It's a little low (not much).

Should I just use standard hydraulic jack oil or is there a better alternative?

Thanks.

Nick

Hi Olex,

I am waiting on the lens to arrive, i'll send you some picture when it gets here. Thanks for the help ;-)

Nick

Howdy,

I recently purchased a front element lomo 500mm anamorphic 35BAS14-1. Just wondering if anybody here has experience with it and any info. It seems like there are more than a few rental houses with this lens and there would appear to be a half dozen or so in private hands.

Any info would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Nick

The russian 25-80 is a great doc lens for 35mm sized sensor cameras. It was made by Ekran, then there was an optar version, and now I believe it is sold by Elite. 2 pounds, t3ish and very sharp.

Nick Gardner

I have for sale a set of K-35 super speed lenses. 18mm t2.8 24mm t1.6, 35mm t1.4, 50mm t1.4

These lenses are in BNCR mount. There is a dent in the filter threads on the 24mm. There are coating rub marks on the rear element of the 18mm.

Asking $7000

please contact me at arrinick@hotmail.com with any questions. I'd be happy to email you photos.

Thanks,

Nick Gardner