David Shawl

Hi, I have a shoot coming up that will involve a lot of air travel. We will have a small corporate jet to travel between several countries. We are trying to figure out a way to safely rig a gyro stabilized mount to handle an Sony EX3 or similar camera. We are trying to avoid renting a helicopter just for aerials. We have a pilot who can safely go to lower altitudes for shooting aerials. Right now our main option seems to be a mini tyler gyro mount inside the airplane in the area where a seat would go by a window. Pending much regulation with FAA and other red tape, we would like for a small hole to be made in the plastic/glass window that allows us to shoot through to the outside. The camera would be about an inch of so from the opening in the window. Of course this hole would be custom designed by a airplane technician and will be sealed when not being used for shooting / higher altitudes and speeds. Does anyone have any thoughts of any alternative methods? We have a sizable budget, so we're open to new ideas. I would love to have an externally mounted, remote operated gyro system mounted on the exterior of the plane, but that sounds a bit more complicated. Thanks for your time. -Dave

It might be a long shot, but does anyone know if this exists? I am trying to use this for a docking bracket for a mini-Steadicam device. Maximum weight on the baby pin would be approx 10 pounds. Hopefully this stand would open up to at least a 6 foot height. I am limited to the size of my Pelican 1620 case. If it doesn't exist, I plan to carry a Arri AS-2 light stand separately or strapped onto the case, which has worked great for this purpose. Thanks

Hey Annie, small world. The strike doesn't seem to be resolving anytime soon. I'm going to be relying on those low budget indie jobs come January when I persue my freelance work. I wish everyone luck in their work. -Dave

I have shot titles from within Photoshop with a 16mm Bolex with great sucess. I have a 19" LCD for my computer. I turned off all lights and the LCD is the only source. I shot all the way open. Good luck

Thanks for your response. We concluded that my AC handed me the camera with the mag (which is an original CP mag) detached. I was fooled by the illusion of a properly attached mag since the film was threaded through and the "rubber band" that spins the take-up side held the mag down firmly.

good guess

The yellow fringing in the corners is vignetting from the lens barrel and/or the three filters screwed on the end. It's yellow because the colors in all these shots are misbalanced. We believe that this entire problem is based off a loose film magazine. The last shots in the video, which is clean looking handheld, were the first shots we did after clicking in a loose magazine. I guess our 1st AC never clicked it in properly. A loose CP magazine looks and feels almost the same as a locked-in CP magazine. That's the problem. Thank you everyone for your help.

Yes, we did meter frequently. Probably every two shots. Lighting never changed much for that day.

Even though I never remember taking my eye off the eyecup, I thought CP-16Rs have a reflex mirror so it didn't matter if your eye was on or not. During the shots that were messed up, I very specifically remember checking the F-Stop before each shot, and we never took it off F5.6 the entire day (which includes 10min. of perfect footage on the same roll beyond what is included in the video download). The lens is an older Angenieux 12-120 Zoom, but it didn't give us any problems with the other 40min. of footage that we had processed and telecined. The camera is SO old and usually beat up by the other film students, so maybe some how this was caused internally.

I'm actually not quite sure if we had that particular type of shutter. I'm looking into it though. I thought there would be "smearing" if that was the case. I don't think our footage looked smeared.

Hi-Res Quicktime (60MB)

I remember now that RIGHT before we shot the handheld exterior (the 1st good clean shot AFTER the 4min. of messed up footage) I had bumped the magazine on my shoulder as I was getting into my position on the ground. The magazine disengaged just a little bit, letting some light into the camera BODY. Before all that happened though, we checked the gate prior to the handheld shot and ran off a foot or two, so any light that would have entered from the mag disengagment, wouldn't have affected any of the previous shots that would already be in the sealed take-up side of the mag. I just think it's interesting that AFTER this mag disengagment and then re-engagment, all is well. Prehaps it was never seated in properly at the beginning of the day. But again, we moved the camera for several setups before the handheld one, and the mag was certainly not loose.

Kircules, very true. Despite all these problems, we have around 40min. of beautifully-exposed and composed shots.

I understand that it looks underexposed, but how did it get to be underexposed if I was shooting at the same F-stop in the same lighting conditions as the almost-clean first shot, and the ends shot of the video clip. Why is it arbitrarily in the middle of these good shots? WORKING VIDEO LINK: Lo-Res Windows Media (12MB) I appreciate all the help I am getting. Thanks! (In the video, it's kind of hard to tell what is very bad, and what is decent during some portions, because of video compression)

Thanks for your comments David. This has been driving me nuts because: The film stock is fresh, direct from Kodak, 3 weeks priors to shooting. The F-stop was 5.6 the entire day and I was the DP. I was looking at the iris before every shot and it was always a 5.6. I never once had to change or bump the iris. The camera's speed dial was gaffed down at 24fps. There is no adjustable shutter angle on this model. We had the same filter setup throughout the day: ND 3, ND 6, 85B. After these "messed up" shots, there is about 10min. on the same roll that is perfect footage from the same day, same location.

I am getting the neg back next week. The lab DID look at the negative after I called to complain. They said that the problem was on the negative, so they blame my camera.

This actually was a 385' shortend of a fresh roll. The remainder was used in the first shot seen in the video, where the guy is walking to a door. Perhaps when the shortend was being made in the changing bag, there could have been a problem.

Hi, We were shooting a few weekends ago and just got back our BetaSP from the transfer. We shot four 400' loads on one of our school's CP-16Rs. Out of about 45min. of footage, about 4 minutes exhibited a heavy grain, color misbalance, and general chaos. Everyone at my school knows that almost every one of the 20 CP-16s has some sort of problem. I just want to know if this problem we have, shown in the video, is a fault of the camera, or the fault of the lab. The lab claims that the problem is shown on the negative, and is not a result of the transfer. They claim that my camera must have "been bumped" into or the iris must have been changed. We were on F5.6 the entire day and never changed it. Here is the video transfer (60MB Quicktime) (RIGHT-CLICK, SAVE AS), which includes plenty of notes (stock, filter, etc..) in the beginning to get you familiar with our situation. There is a good amount of compression to make this a reasonable download. Here are some video caps from the footage. Thanks! -David