Evan Walsh

I have an A-Minima Mag I can sell. The mag is in excellent condition, unfortunately I don't have any daylight spools for it.

There's only a vantage LA as far as I'm aware. With the 35mm format 1.3x you'll be limited in the wide focal lengths as the 1.3x s16 set goes to 14mm where the 35mm only goes to 28mm Typically 35mm lenses are safe to use on 16mm camera's, as always test first if possible to avoid a mirror strike incident

It would have to be an older unit like a WFU or a yellow radio WCU-3 and I believe your motor options would be limited to CLM-1 or 2's. A friend who purchased a 416 inquired with Arri about upgrading it to the white radio band but they did not have it done, I don't recall the exact figure but it was fairly high. If you're looking for a streamlined wireless solution for a 416 you'd probably be happy with the new CForce RF motor with a WCU-4. They're new and available, offer lens mapping and daisy chaining for motors. The receiver is built into the motor unit and in the case of the 416 with one cable you would get power and run stop.

The Cinetape is meant to be a confidence checker as well as another measuring tool for focus, it works great in some situations and not as well in some others. Setting it up: When you put the Sensor on the camera, "The horns," you want to set it as close to being on axis with the lens, picture it directly above the lens, positioned over the center of it, as close as possible without anything obstructing its sensor such as a matte-box or french flag. Once you have the horns positioned, and it's connected to the display/control box, you set the film plane offset. The Cinetape doesn't know where it is positioned in relation to the film plane so you must calibrate it. By pointing the camera at a flat surface; a wall, slate, clipboard etc. you measure out the distance to the object it is pointing at and you adjust the offset until the Cinetape reading matches your measured distance. The last thing you do is adjust sensitivity, the higher the number the more sensitive it is going to be. Everyone has their own preference but 45-65 is a good place, not too slow that your numbers are behind and not too fast that they become unreadable. When to use it: The key to using a Cinetape is knowing when it is and isn't going to work and work accurately. If you attempt to just match the numbers that the Cinetape is displaying you're going to run into focus issues sooner or later. You will get the best results from a Cinetape when there are no obstructions or people crossing in the frame. For example a push in/out on one subject or one subject walking up to the camera will probably give you the best readings. The focus puller should have either measured out marks or made eye marks for the shot and the Cinetape will help you to fill in the blanks. It's helpful in preventing pulling too fast or too slow or if something unexpected happens, The dolly/steadicam/actor might stop short of their end mark or they go past their end mark, you can use the Cinetape's distance to help you adjust it on the fly. Say you're doing an unrehearsed Steadicam shot on film, it has lots movement from both the camera and the subject and focus cannot be checked through the viewfinder or from the low res video tap image. Most focus pullers should have the ability to judge a distance by eye and this is where a Cinetape is helpful to fill in the blanks and see if you judged the distance right. You think the subject looks about 6' away from the film plane, the Cinetape says 5'9" and there's nothing obstructing, its a safe bet to set focus to 5'9. Towards the end of a take the subject moves behind a column, you think they look about 9' away but the Cinetape is saying 7'. This is when you would ignore the Cinetape and trust your best judgment of the distance. The Cinetape has a range of around 20'-30', if you're on a 1000mm lens and the subject is 150' away, the Cinetape is essentially useless. The Cinetape also cannot read through glass, so if your subject is behind a window, in a car or in a mirror your distance readings will not be accurate as the Cinetape will just read whatever solid is in front of it. The Cinetape takes its readings in a cone shape, this means that it has a wide area that it is sampling and it is going to display the distance of any object that is large enough and within its sample area. If your subject is 12' away but they are standing behind an object like a dumpster, the Cinetape is likely going to display the distance to the dumpster instead of your subject. This is why it is best used in conjunction with measured focus marks so you can tell when the Cinetape is reading your subject or if it is reading the wrong object in the frame. A common limitation with using the Cinetape would be the over the shoulder shot. The hero subject you want in focus is on one side of the frame and the other actor in the scene is closer to the camera on the other. Say the hero subject is 4' away and the closer subject is 2'6" away. As the scene plays out you're likely going to see the Cinetape jump back and forth between the close and the far distance and you need to know to ignore the 2'6 reading. If you were just matching the number to the Cinetape during the shot, you're focus is going to be going in and out. Some assistants will adjust the positioning of the horns on a shot like this to help the Cinetape clear the closer subject and try to only sense the hero subject, results may vary. There's lots more to it but I'd say thats the meat of it.

You want an analog to digital converter, these would allow you to use modern monitors and recorders from the analog tap on the SR. Some converters only convert analog to SD-SDI, some will scale the video up to 1080p which is helpful because some monitors/recorders won't work with SD-SDI and need HD-SDI to function. Atomos analog to digital + scaler 1080p HD-SDI/HDMI out Wicam Analog to HD-SDI 1080p HD-SDI only There's cheap analog to HDMI converters all over amazon, I've seen people use them but I cannot speak to the quality/reliability. If you get a monitor with an analog input will work without a converter. Tvlogic 5.6 and the older 7" models will accept an analog input but the signal will terminate at the monitor. Older SmallHD's like the AC7, DP1 probably more but I can't think of them. You can find cheap Transvideo Rainbow analog monitors these days +/-$300

I recently found this guy who is based in queens while researching video taps for an XTR. He advertises options for SR's he might be able to help you out. http://www.az-spectrum.com/sr3ccd.html

I've ran an XTR+ off of regular anton bauer dionics with no issue. If you are concerned with over voltage and cannot build or buy a 12v regulator, you can elect to not charge the batteries fully and check their output with a multimeter before use. As stated before most Lithium Ion batteries will be in the 15-16v range when fully charged, a battery at 75% will be in the 14.X range A higher voltage shouldn't have an effect on the running frame rate of the camera, the only risk it would pose would be to the components on the boards and video tap.

There are many good one's that do the same things. I own a Leica disto e7500, it works in direct sunlight and has a builtin camera used to target the laser when its no longer visible in hard light. It also has many functions like adding and subtracting different measurements as well as a Pythagorus function which is great for calculating distance from the film plane to the subject when you only have the camera height and the distance to subject below the camera.

Sure, sometimes theres some play in gold mounts but nothing a little soft side cant fix. I have also never seen a gold mount eject off of a camera from rough operating or inversion before, but I certainly have seen several v-mounts do it. I know this also has to do more with cell quality and configuration but you'll often see owner ops with 10-12 v-mounts to do a job that 8 Anton Bauer's would. There's a lot of v-mount brands out there so some are definitely better than others but I've been conditioned at this point to view v-mounts as lower quality batteries but that's just my prejudice. This is also a regional and production market thing, major rental houses in the U.S. will rarely stock v-mounts and if they do it won't be in great supply. Most of their cameras, monitors and AKS will be already setup for gold mount so it'll be a long while if ever before gold mount declines in the U.S.

Looking for a Heden M26T motor (for analog microforce) with swing arm if anyone has one they would like to sell.

Try Abel Cine LA, I think they are still servicing Aaton's to some capacity.

You'd be fine with a clamp on, just secure it to the body. Arri LMB15/25/Pro have a hole on the bottom to allow a safety chain or rope to prevent the matte box from falling away from the body in case it does fall off.

Lambda 3rd axis attachment is bulky but can achieve this. Dom's suggestion of using a T-Rex or Skate Scope is a great low impact way to do this especially if in a tight space. The trade off is you'll need lots of light.

Preston's intention with lens mapping on the FIZ3/HU3 with pre-printed rings was to evenly space out the rotations of any lens based on their close focus distance. Not 100% evenly spaced, but pretty close. It was designed so that it would more or less make every lens feel the same in your hand in terms of its focus throw so that you would only need to "learn" one range. It does a pretty good job of this, close second being Arri's WCU-4 (if you look past the list of limitations and bugs that unit has). When you map a lens in a preston HU3 you can essentially turn the focus wheel at an even pace from close to infinity and the MDR will ramp the motors accordingly on any lens. Aside from the Preston HU3, WCU-4 and Cmotion Cvolution all other wireless focus systems that I am aware of do not offer any remapping of the lens to pre-printed rings. You can see the difference when you are manually marking up something like a Preston single channel, Arri SXU, RTmotion or bartech, half of your ring will be the distance from 9" to 2' then the marks will become closer and closer together towards infinity. Some of these units also offer lens limiting which can be used for hard stops or to select a specific range of the lens if you know you'll only need a certain portion. the WCU-4 and the Preston HU3 and Single channel will translate the selected lens range to the entire rotation of the focus wheel, I cannot tell you if this would produce a linear function as I have never really used that mode before but it does work nice if you know you need to slam the focus to a very specific point without risking going past it. Example: say an 18mm Cooke S4 has a close focus of 9" and a Super Speed 18mm has a close focus of 9". When you are using the 9" ring on the preston, the two lenses will require the same amount of turn on the HU3's focus knob to reach their 6' mark. Meanwhile if you were pulling off a manual follow focus on the same lenses, they would need to be turned different amounts to go from 9" to 6'. Here's a crude representation in case I worded this in a confusing way. Manual follow focus / most single channel wireless 9" 10" 12" 1'6" 2 2'3" 2'6" 3' 3'6" 4' 4'6" 5' 6' 8' 10' 15' 25' 50' ∞ Preston HU3 / WCU-4 with lens mapping to pre-printed rings. 9" 10" 12" 1'6" 2' 2'3 2'6" 3' 3'6" 4' 4'6" 5' 6' 8' 10' 15' 25' 50' ∞ Your closest focus distances will be the furthest apart and the index marks will gradually get closer together as you approach infinity. This is why on these non re-mapping systems you need to speed up and slow down your focus moves as you would if you were pulling off of a manual follow focus or lens barrel.

It definitely takes a lot of practice and time to get decent at it. A big part of it is to learn it the "old fashioned way" with a tape measure. Sure, you will see everyone staring at a monitor these days but they will often do that in conjunction with reference marks. It is very easy to get lost in the monitor if you try to attempt a take, especially a critical one, just by staring at the monitor and trying to sharp on the fly. Another big thing is to understand the physical characteristics of the lenses and how they differ. Some lenses are cam driven on the focus which gives you a more evenly spread out focus scale (Cooke S4's for example), others are helical and will typically have a more compressed and uneven focus scale (Super speeds for example) which will require you to consciously ramp the speed of your pulls. Every lens will have its own "curve" and knowing how that affects your pulls for each is as important as knowing your depth of field. example: Depending on the lens/focal length, pulling from 20' ->15' might be a slight turn of the wheel while pulling 8'-> 3' will be a much greater turn of the wheel. Both were distance changes of only 5' but if you were to make both pull's at the same speed, the 8'->3' take would have likely gone soft. Like AJ and Giacomo said, go to a rental house and ask to setup up the pieces of gear you will be interacting with while on a job. Most rental houses will allow people to come in a try out gear for free as long as its available and not leaving the premises. Jobs where you are the 2nd, practice pulling focus on people and things around the set while you're on your lunch break or if your camera has down time. Take measurements, make marks, record takes with and without looking at a monitor and see how you do. If things don't come out sharp think about where you went off and how you can correct from there. Practice makes perfect.

I own a 058 that's roughly 4 years old and it looks and works as good as the day that I got it. Tvlogic's are built like tanks. The 056 vs 702 for focus? I would say 702 wins. 056 is not a very bright monitor and is roughly 720p where as the 702 is daylight view able and 1080p. The 702's also have many handy features that you can assign to the pages and access quickly. The 056 has a single assignable user button located on the back which is sometimes annoying to try to find without looking. If you want a small monitor for judging color and exposure, Tvlogic released a new 5" OLED that seems to be having a good reception, VFM-055A. Of the 056/058 and 702, I would have to say the 058 is my favorite monitor. It's sharp, reliable, has nice colors that you can adjust if you need/like and can accept most any digital signal out there. The 702 is a decent monitor but it cannot accept 3G signals and in my experience will render certain signals in very strange ways strobing/ghosting or other image artifacts.

75mm @ T4 and 4' away gives you about 1.5" of depth (according to pCam). Assuming for less in reality, that shot didn't give you a lot of wiggle room in terms of focus. A few things are at play here. Even though you had your marks all set, the Steadicam could have been an inch or more past the mark you had made for 4' by the time you got there on the wheel. Even when you get all the marks and rehearsals you want, an early or late steadi op or dolly grip can make all your marks go out the window and you just have to handle it on the fly and/or ask for another take. The index marks on the lens themselves become increasingly further apart as you approach close focus and they're all slightly different for each lens in terms of the º of rotation on the focus rings. It comes with a bit of practice and adjusting to each lens and wireless follow focus system to get the feel for how much you need to ramp the speed of your turns depending on which direction the camera/talent is moving. If you're pulling at a constant speed throughout the range that may have been the root of the issue you're having as you would need to start turning a bit faster the closer you get. For example, Preston's intention with the pre-marked rings on the FIZ 3 is to even out the rotations of the focus scale so that every lens feels more or less the same on the wheel. Where as if you were using a bartech or other single channel system (Preston, Arri etc.) you would be subject to the normal ramping of the scale. Push in's can also be a bit tricky simply because the closer you get the less depth you have, a long focal length + talent not hitting marks or moving in and out can increase the difficultly to these shots. Lets say 75mm @ T4, pushing in from 10' to 2'6", you go from 9" of depth to .5" of depth.

I saw you said that ronford head was out of the budget but if you need to do that in the future, Cartoni makes a 3rd axis attachment for their Lamba heads that gives you the ability to roll the camera. See here

I've been needing a laptop for a minute now and was going to wait and see about the new one before making a purchase. After seeing its price tag and features I'm definitely not going the new MBP route. I wanted to get some opinions on purchasing a laptop. I do have some Mac specific apps, nothing crazy, mainly Shotput pro 6 and a few others so I'd like to stay Apple for now. Would it be foolish to spend money on a suped up previous generation MBP that I could still get a few years out of, or would the better route be to dump mac and just buy a good Windows laptop?

I think you might have gotten it mixed up, a 180º shutter angle would translate to 1/48th of a second exposure time. If the camera you're using doesn't have a shutter angle option, you could turn it up to 1/144th or 1/240th exposure time to lessen the motion blur. Spike Lee's 25th hour has some high shutter speed sequences and the movement of the actors is very sharp if that's what you are going for.

A friend put me on to using shooting range bags. I have this one and love it, only cost me about $70. Lots of interior space and pockets, comes with a smaller bag inside with zippered pockets and dividers. Good for leaving the bigger bag on the cart with the less needed items and keeping the smaller bag with the essentials by your side.

If unsure always ask a technician at the rental house. You can also consult a product's website/operation manual to find the acceptable input voltage range. Teradek's for example can accept between 7-28 volts, you could safely power it off a 12V 2-pin lemo/ptap cable or a 24V power out on a Panaflex. Not always, but sometimes you can find a label with the acceptable voltage range near the power input of a device. If I understand this correctly, RS ports (3 pin Fischer), will pass through what ever power is being fed to the camera, either 12V or 24V, where as the 2-pin Lemo's will be regulated to 12V (in the case of the Alexa at least). One thing to consider if afraid of frying accessories is polarity. Many accessories will use the 2-pin Lemo connector for power, but different brands can use different polarities. If you used a Bartech's 2-pin Lemo cable for power on a Teradek you could damage it. I took this from Media Blackout's 2-pin Lemo page, "Pin-1 positive voltage, (Bartech, Letus, Redrock, etc.), and Pin-1 ground (GND) (Teradek, Preston, Paralinx, Arri, etc.)". Just be sure to not mix up cables between the accessories when shooting.

When shooting film it would be a bad idea to try and pull focus off of a monitor. Most film camera's will have a standard definition video tap and even if they have an HD tap, it still wouldn't be advisable to pull focus off a monitor. The video tap is best used for giving a director an idea of the shot and for the AC to judge what's in frame or camera information if you have it set to display that. Video taps are essentially small camera's pointed at the ground glass, they can appear very grainy and dark. Sometimes everything could look in focus and sometimes the image will be so soft in general that everything could appear out of focus. For best results with film, the AC should measure during the rehearsal and pull focus off those marks. What could appear in focus on a video tap image could be completely different from what will be on the film. However, if you do go incredibly soft on a shot it will be apparent on even the lowest quality video tap and you'll know you need another take.

You would need two motors to pull focus and iris at the same time, you could do it from a single motor driver if it can control 2+ motors at once like the 3 axis systems from Arri, Preston, Cmotion etc. Sometimes an additional hand unit like the Preston single channel will be used for someone else to adjust the iris and the 1st AC will only worry about focus.

Find a strap that is long enough for you to sling it across your body in a messenger bag style, I find that it takes the weight off your neck and makes having it on all day less uncomfortable. When you're using it you can keep most of the tension/weight going across your back and less on your hands and neck. In this configuration you can also slide the unit around behind you when you need to get it out of the way to do something instead of it dangling around in front or having to take it off.