Digital Video - December 2008 - (Page 22)

THE MAKING OF ROMAN SERVOCITY Here’s the problem: I can either buy an assembled pan-and-tilt unit from www.servocity.com or buy individual gears and servos and muddle through. I’m busy shooting a kidney transplant video for the UCSF Medical Center. I buy the expensive ServoCity head. Oh dear, lift your fingers off the joystick — Zap! — it bounces back to the center position, taking the pan head and camera with it. Tricia takes the springs out of both joysticks. But even now, the slightest touch jerks the servos. I e-mail tech@servocity.com for a lower gear ratio. No reply. Phone: “Office hours are 9 to 4 Monday to Thursday.” Curse. It’s Friday. Can I leave a message? Of course not. E-mail again. No reply. Next week, I phone again. Success. I speak to Tom. He’s great, except he sends me the wrong gear. Phone again. Speak to Kyle. He says I have the wrong gear. As if I didn’t know. Speak to Tom. He’s sorry. New gear on the way free of charge. No, they charge me. Oh dear, phone Tom. Damn, it’s Friday. Whaaaa! severe pole withdrawal. “Sorry, Ron, I’ll have to take the job away.” “I don’t blame you, but leave it here, come back next Friday. It will be finished. I promise.” And it was. MOMENT OF TRUTH I scurry home. It’s been three months since the tubes arrived. Tripod up. Ron’s new tripod connector clicks a tube into place. Add poles and secure with Velcro. Slide on the pan-and-tilt head. To balance, Tricia adds sandbag counter-weights. Manfrotto Super Clamps stop them from sliding off. Run the six servo wires inside the CF tubing. Plug connectors into the ServoCity joystick. The tension mounts. This is it. SWITCH ON! The pan head does three fast rotates — swish, swish, swish! All six wires snap. Sheeeet!!! Leap into the car and see my friend Mars, who works in the Marin RC Model Shop. I dump the lifeless metal on the counter. “Look, Mars, all six wires are broken.” “Not a problem, you already have Hitec servos, all you need is a Hitec transmitter and a couple of receivers. $220 for the transmitter — plus two receivers at $36 and a couple of rechargeable NiMH batteries at $25. Not a big deal.” It isn’t. Mars wires it up. Martian magic! The radio control works! Now to transmit the camera signal back to my monitor. Supercircuits.com has a 2.4 GHz wireless video link for just $88.99. Nah, at that price, it can’t be any good. Why, the SM Lectrosonics audio-only wireless system is over $3,000. Surprise! The SuperCircuits video link is not only cheap, it delivers a clean, razor-sharp image. Red light, yep, we’re recording, with 131 minutes left on the 16GB card. Video link receiver is behind joysticks. It’s a standard-def picture in the monitor, but the camera is shooting true HD. The link shows me that the camera is up and running and how much time is left in both SDHC card and battery. Look ma, no wires! FIRST, FIND RON If you’re going to build your own boom, you’d better find a precision engineer named Ron. Ron installs the new gear. He’s also going to make an aluminum fitting to mount the tube onto my tripod and a gizmo to hang the pan-and-tilt unit. Ron’s so good (he also makes gadgets for Pixar) that he has very little time. I drive there once a week. “Hi Ron. How’s it going?” A month passes. Two months. It’s tough, I’m suffering NEW Litepanels Micro ADVANTAGES > Bright, soft output > Heat-free LED technology > Dimmable from 100% to 0 * 7+ hours runtime using Energizer®e2 Lithium AA batteries The perfect camera light fully dimmable & powered by AA batteries FINE-TUNING Today I discover that I can’t pan a camera that’s fixed to a 60-degree pole. Do it and I get a crazy angle. Ron says I need to hang the camera from a ball-leveling thingy. B&H Photo has a Bogen double-ball mount. Only $35, plus Ron’s time to mount it. A B&H special order it takes six e-mails and over a month to arrive. I’m beginning to think $30,000 for a real Polecam might be a bargain. The head needs balancing. I’m back with Ron making sure that the center of gravity is spot on. I’ve placed spirit levels on both sides and fine-tuned the balance with stick-on lead weights. with minimal color shift > DV affordable > 1.5 hrs run time from 4 AA batteries* WITHOUT Litepanels Micro WITH Litepanels Micro OUT AND ABOUT Once erected, a tripod with a 20' pole is almost impossible to reposition. The solution is to fix the tripod to a wooden platform in our pickup. The legs go into metal rings screwed to the wood. Five bungees hold the triwww.dv.com Ph: 818 752 7009 • Fax: 818 752 2437 ® w w w. l i t e p a n e l s . c o m http://www.servocity.com http://www.Supercircuits.com http://www.litepanels.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - December 2008

Digital Video - December 2008 Contents DV Expo Gallery First Look: Ultimate 35MM Lens Adapter Vidock GFX Pro Videostudio Pro X2 Instant Expert The Making of Roman Close-up: Dave Ruddick Crypto Camerawork Click To Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - December 2008

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