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Steadiman posted:I love this kind of ingenuity, the kind of clever ideas only low budget can create. One of the very few advantages of shooting low budget stuff, it really unleashes the creative part of you to make things work and look good within severe limits. Great stuff We shot a music video this weekend and they needed some "head in jars" gags and ended up doing this trick of doing a wrap-around photo of some folks heads in the office and then printing/laminating/lining these giant jars with them. The distortion of the water and some wig hair in it makes it almost impossible to tell there's a just a 2D photo in there. Very cool. Also our DP (for a different gig) built an awesome rear end stabilizer out of speed rail and strong bungies for our old workhorse Red One. Works well enough that we leave it perma-built now!
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Jul 3, 2014 04:55
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1st AD posted:God I'd hate to run with a RED One all day regardless of the rig. Do you have a photo of your rig and someone using it? Only one I have at the moment is from when we were testing it out. Once we determined that it removed enough of the shake to be worth it, he fleshed it out a bit more with better bungies and mounting. And yes Jesus H Christ the Red One all loaded up is so goddamned heavy it's ridiculous. 
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Jul 3, 2014 05:24
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Slim Pickens posted:I just ripped off the dana dolly junior, pretty much. Also Matthews just released some "slider oriented stands" which might be nice. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1047272-REG/matthews_249561_the_slider_stand.html
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Jul 7, 2014 15:52
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1st AD posted:I hate shorts like that because people are really bad at acting in those, whether it be through lack of skill or because of the writer's awful voice and dialogue infecting the entire script. That's gorgeous as poo poo. AND under two minutes. Perfect. Speaking of gorgeous, I'm as straight as they come, but I'd probably jump that hat maker. Good lord that guy is ridiculously good looking.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:15
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Steadiman posted:Hey guys! I have some news for the thread....I made an app! Figured this was a nice place to share it too, so far the response has been overwhelming (it got released a few hours ago). It's called "Shot Assistant" and it's basically the app I always wanted. It's like a multitool for people who work with cameras, at its most basic it shows you level/pan/tilt but it has a few extra features that I think make it pretty unique and useful for on-set use. For one thing it does ranging, basically you store whatever angle your shot is currently at and the app will guide you back there with a bunch of visual cues including colors (useful for peripheral ranging). Also it has a seismograph which can be used to hunt down vibrations in shot. Finally it's made to be used with multi touch, the whole screen is a button and the functions change depending on how many fingers you use to touch it! This allows you to set it and store ranges without even looking at your device NIce! Passing this around to our guys today. edit: Also US link is here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id961651001
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Feb 4, 2015 16:05
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Chitin posted:Directing a spot next week, preproduction is done, now comes the part where I can't get anything done because I can't stop thinking whether I've forgotten something. You have. Your true test is how you deal with it in-line!
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Mar 21, 2015 04:36
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We're shooting a documentary now, or at least the preliminary bits, on a D600 and 5D MkIII. There's a big "event" happening that will be 3-5 weeks longer and we'll break out our Red and about 3 other rented cameras for that, but for all the preliminary logistical stuff we're just using DSLRs. They work fine. We have a boom guy that we take with us whenever we can, but I just plug the Zoom H4N on the DSLRs and frankly it's just done as well in the situations we've been in so far. A lot more leeway of course since it's documentary filmmaking and it's ok to have some wild sounds in there. So far in our shoots the one thing, other than the Zoom, that is nearly necessary in my opinion is an external monitor with focus peaking (or Magic Lantern on Canon's). When you're run and gunning, stuff can look in focus on those tiny DSLR screens but often will be a hair off and can ruin a shot. Also STABLE FAST memory cards. Do. Not. Cheap. Out. I almost lost a bunch of footage the other day because a cheapass Transcend card corrupted on the shoot. Luckily Undelete Plus was able to recover it (none of the free options I tried such as Recuva helped). Um, other than that... good tripod, monopod (if you have lots of shots where you'll be running and following - handheld on DSLR is not good in my opinion - stabilize wherever you can), good lenses of course, a slider is nice if you can afford one... it really adds a little extra something to establishing shots. That's all I can think of for now.
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Apr 21, 2015 15:03
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DNova posted:Oh, of course, whoops. There is going to be a lot I will have only one of with no way to re-shoot. Some stuff I plan to have some GoPros or similar cameras on as secondary or subject-worn. You're making me paranoid now though! Well you wouldn't rent locally. You'd rent online and have it shipped to you. (BorrowLenses.com etc). Also this thread re-sparked interest in the Pocket Cinema Camera now... I'm thinking of trading in my DSLR for one since I rarely ever use the camera function of my D600 except to take photos of my baby.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:00
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1st AD posted:The time to buy it was last year when it went on sale for $500, that way you could spring for a Speedbooster. God maybe they'll do another sale like that this summer. I hate that I missed it.
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Apr 22, 2015 04:01
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I've had a drat Pocket Cinema Camera in my basket for like the past 2 weeks and just can't pull the trigger for fear that an update is imminent. Is there any sort of clues/hints/leaks that are common with BMD that signify an incoming update? NAB just passed and nothing on that front other than the similar Micro... so I'm guessing if they had something they would've shown it then. And I doubt they do another $500 off sale. Should I just pull the trigger?
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May 7, 2015 00:37
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1st AD posted:If you need the camera, yes buy it. If not, don't. I need the camera so I'll buy it... my post was more inquisitive into bmds update schedule. I feel like I'm about to get it just before an update happens. Most likely unfounded though since nab just happened. And def getting the ef to bmpcc speed booster to take advantage of all of our nice Canon glass.
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May 7, 2015 03:25
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32MB OF ESRAM posted:If you can wait until July they just released a new camera for the same price with WAY more features and a better form factor than the Pocket Cam. That thing has to tank the sales of the pocketcam when it's released and I bet they cut the price again to get rid of them. Yeah I half-mentioned the Micro. Awesome little camera, but it seems to be geared towards drone flights and action cam use more than everyday "normal" use with the no screen and expansion port, front facing menu buttons and all that jazz. And then you gotta wait for all the 3rd party cages and what not... which who knows how many will come out since it's been marketed as more of an action cam solution. Although the global shutter is a nice draw. Maybe I'll just grab the Video Assist that releases at the same time. I wonder how the sensor depth is and if it'll use the same speedbooster or just the standard EF to MFT. It's all moot anyway since I'd like to purchase in the next week for a documentary. Just doing the standard mental hurdles as I get closer to the "press buy" moment.
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May 7, 2015 13:05
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Great! All the justification I need, mashing buy now.
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May 7, 2015 17:26
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1st AD posted:Make sure you have a decent power solution if you're gonna use it for docu work. I have a v-mount battery with an adapter for the BMPCC, but I've heard that certain cell phone battery chargers with a 12v tap can also work. Yeah I'm getting the V Mount adapter as well. I have full access to our camera room at work (even for personal projects) so I'll be piggy backing off of our glass and batteries and other stuff.
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May 7, 2015 18:27
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DNova posted:Does anyone have recommendations for how to safely manage footage when shooting "in the field" for extended periods? Somewhere with poor internet infrastructure, so uploading is probably not an option. My best idea so far is to keep a stack of SD cards with footage and use a laptop to make backups to blu-ray discs. Another option would be to buy twice as many SD cards and then each one gets copied to a second card. I would get a laptop, two (or three if you can afford it) external HDDs and use something like ShotPut Pro (http://www.imagineproducts.com/?main_page=product_info&products_id=2) to do checksum transfers to multiple drives simultaneously. And then if you ever get to a spot that has internet for a few days, back up to the cloud if possible (depending on how much footage you have). quote:Could you or anyone else please talk more about this? What are the options for carrying tons of battery capacity? https://vimeo.com/89122776 That's iKans' BlackMagic solutions, but it should give you an idea of what he's talking about. What camera are you using?
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May 7, 2015 20:14
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DNova posted:Buying a few external hard drives wouldn't be a budgetary problem but I worry about mechanical drives in what could be some rough handling situations. I think I would probably have at least 1 external in any case but I'm kind of paranoid. They should be fine as long as you aren't doing rough stuff WHILST transferring. You should get a pelican case(s) to house everything as well if you're doing some rough travels (or hell, really you should always have them). Definitely don't just throw anything in a backpack and head out. That said, if you have the budget, you could probably do an SSD solution...you'll just have more drives and spend more money. Traditional HDDs are gonna give you the best amount of storage for your buck of course.
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May 7, 2015 20:32
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:I'm baffled that they're billing this as an action cam when a stabilized, ultrawide, lightweight micro 4/3 lens straight up does not exist. I imagine the "standard" lens they're imagining here is the panny 14mm pancake, but without a heavy speedbooster that's a 42mm equivalent. I guess you could get the 8mm fisheye but it adds 1/3 of a pound which is not going to make drone operators happy. Even then, that's what you would call a "medium shot" for a go pro. Also, again, no stabilization at all. I think it's less "extreme sport action" and more "cinema action" maybe? So not really in competition with GoPro. More as a replacement for people that try to put f'ing GoPro footage into movies. So you're still rigging it up pretty decently (not mounting on your head or anything) where weight isn't a *huge* issue.
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May 7, 2015 22:04
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BMPCC + Cage + Extra Batteries + Extra 95/mbs Cards + Speed booster sober ordered. About to kick this documentary into high gear.
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May 8, 2015 20:48
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DNova posted:Talk as much about this as possible thank you. Sorry did I go overboard? Just got a little excited.
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May 8, 2015 21:24
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DNova posted:No no I am completely serious. You're where I want to be in ~12-18 months. Tell me all the things. Ah, poo poo gotcha. Totally misread what you wrote. I'll take it to PMs so we don't gunk up the thread!
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May 8, 2015 21:27
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Got my Pocket Cinema Camera in and holy lol poo poo people aren't joking about the battery life. Took a fully charged battery and *only updated the camera's firmware* and it's already down to 50%.
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May 13, 2015 17:42
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the_lion posted:I hadn't seen Bolex footage until now for some reason and yup, that poo poo stands out bad - average grade or not. Hahahah no way. I kept hearing it was bad, but never actually saw any footage either. Just assumed the difference would be something that didn't really stand out to me...but dear god no. That poo poo is legit bad.
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May 21, 2015 13:23
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So Amazon had a "Mystery Camera" sale the other day for $599. I got a wild hair up my rear end and bought it because I can just return it if I didn't like it. Turned out to be a Panasonic DMC-FZ1000. Of course they advertised the mystery deal as regularly going for $899 and turns out it's only about a $150 savings. http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Lum...ords=dmc-fz1000 I'm actually thinking of actually keeping it as a sort of all purpose camera for this documentary we're doing. I have a pocket cinema camera for money shots, a Nikon D600 for "less than money shots" and now this... We also are involving a bunch of students that want to learn so now I'm feeling like it might be a good camera to user for interviews/let the students use. Am I being dumb? I should probably just return it for some other piece of kit shouldn't I? edit: Nah, I'll just return it. On second thought the kids can just use their iPhones! BonoMan fucked around with this message at 15:29 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 15:25
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DNova posted:Talk about your project!!! Typically film school students kind of band together to all help each other's projects.... but they might need volunteers you never know! I'd straight up go to some of the faculty and ask them. Give them your info. Some may scoff if they feel you're trying to latch on without actually attending (aka "paying") but the worst they can do is say no. As for our project, it's pretty simple right now. It actually got pared down a bit. A local high school has an old church on their property... your typical one room whiteboard early 1900s Mississippi church (that they bought from the original location/town that owned it about 15 years ago). The high school is holding a $40Million funding/donation drive (yes... forty million. It is not a poor school) to build some new on-campus facilities. One of which is a healthplex that will be on the site of the old church. Well there happens to be a town about 15 miles away that wants the church. This town used to be big in the 1800s along the Natchez Trace and has an incredibly crazy history. There really isn't anything at all left of it anymore of the old town, but they did hold a farmer's market out there for the past few years. I'm talking this crazy picturesque "nestled in cedar trees with lights strewn about" farmer's market you only see in movies. It got so popular that a group of incredibly wealthy people got together and decided to develop the land. At first I thought it was a dumb idea, but they are building a totally sustainable village out there. Restaurants that have their own butcher shops that source their cattle from *literally* 50 yards away across the street. Rooftop gardens to do farm to table meals, an amphitheater, mercantile, barber shop, cooking school and a myriad of other things. It's super cool. Most of it is already built and it just looks like this old antique, but incredibly modern town. Anyway they decided they wanted the church because it'd be a great place to hold weddings, events, etc and the look totally fit this vibe they are building out there. But of course to MOVE the Church they will have to cut it in half, remove the roof, halve the walls and hinge them down. A crazy three week project that culminates in a long single day move (weather permitting) to go out to its new location. So they've hired us to do a mini-doc on it. Originally the idea ballooned out to encompass the insane history of this almost extinct town, but I had to pump the brakes on that as it was getting unmanageable in scope. We've spun that off into a separate project. The school that's doing the fundraising is providing student volunteers to help out wherever they can (and they get service hour credits). As for the technicalities, so far we've been shooting on our D600, 5D Mkiii, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cam. We'll be doing a timelapse with a GoPro 4 of the entire dismantling process (and reconstruction). We'll take our RED One MX (almost time to put this baby out to pasture but it still shoots a beautiful image) and BMPCC out there for some nice cinematic shots and when the move comes we'll supplement our package with four additional cameras and crew to try to capture the entire process as well as possible. In the meantime we are shooting all of the preparation work (meetings with architects, the moving company, deconsecration of the church etc) and compiling as much research as we can on the history of the church. That's very little "camera talk" but it should give a background for any future technical talk. I'll try to keep the story stuff to a minimum from here on out!
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May 22, 2015 16:19
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ButtWolf posted:My boss wants to start making films. We're in manufacturing and other than making little promotional videos we're clueless, but both have passion for film (and he has money). He's not going to want to break the bank on.a $40,000 camera. What is the best option for around $3k? I've seen some really nice.stuff shot with Ursa but I see mixed reviews about Black Magic. BlackMagic is fine, they just have some hiccups here and there from being a relatively small company. But lemme tell you... $3K isn't going to cut it. That MAY get you a body. Then you're talking lenses, lights, tripods, grip gear, kittting up your camera, all of the post production equipment you need to actually do stuff with the footage. The body ends up being the cheap part. What kind of movies do you want to make? Going out and buying a bunch of gear isn't really going to make you filmmakers... especially gear you're unfamiliar with. If you have the money then you should look for people that have gear, but want people with ideas and money to make films with. Team up with them!
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Oct 20, 2015 04:17
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ButtWolf posted:Yeah, we realize everything will suck at first. We just need a jumping off point. We want to do the work and learn the trade not just pump out a product. I figured spending maybe $1500 on a body, $700 on lenses and $800 on tripods and extra batteries and miscellaneous gear. We'd probably end up making a lot of the gear DIY. Right now, it's wanting to learn and it's a hobby, in hopes that we can eventually do something worthwhile. We want to have fun with it. We have Adobe sub so I have speedgrade, premiere, after effects, etc... (Haven't used em yet). I'm not a complete noob to cameras and editing, just need a lot of practice. Another small piece of advice - don't even worry with SpeedGrade. Use the free DaVinci Resolve Lite instead. Speedgrade is TERRIBLE. Premiere has some Lumetri built in tools, but if you get into actual color grading (which should come further down the road I'd wager) - DaVinci is way better.
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Oct 20, 2015 16:17
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........... what am I looking at there?
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Oct 22, 2015 17:13
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32MB OF ESRAM posted:Looks like a DIY viewfinder Tommy Wisseau style. No idea what the heck kind of camera that big one is though, maybe a high speed? My google-fu tells me it's a microscope camera from http://dagemti.com/hd-camera-imaging-solutions/ edit: you beat me to it!
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Oct 22, 2015 17:19
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thehustler posted:Very quick question, is it standard or good practice for people shooting shoulder mount back to a production mixer to loop the SDI or whatever cable they are using up through their belt? So that if someone stands on it they can feel it and react to it? It is alllllwayyyys good practice to have strain relief on every single cable you can do it for. BNC, Stingers, headers on lights. All of it.
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Nov 3, 2015 18:59
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FreudianSlippers posted:I'm doing a thing this weekend that's heavily inspired by this bit from Chunking Express Use the "Speed up normal footage" method and just add blur in AE via CC Force Motion Blur or Pixel Motion Blur.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:52
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Thoogsby posted:Was thinking about renting either a Ronin M or a MoVI M5 for two days to shoot some narrative stuff. I only really need it for a day but two would give me a day to muck around with it and get everything balanced. The thing is I can't find any real comparisons of the two on YouTube etc. which seems odd since it seems like choosing between the two would be fairly common for people looking for a gimbal in that price range. I've only used the Ronin so I can't comment on the Movi, but I definitely found the Ronin a little cumbersome for single user mode. That said, definitely get it for two days as you said. Trying to get used to it and get your shots on the same day is probably just going to result in compromised work.
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Sep 12, 2016 16:01
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Yeah when you get into the, like, Nikon D52XX series stuff... the settings aren't that easily controlled. It's infuriating and I could only ever see it turning people off to photography.
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Sep 18, 2016 03:53
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1st AD posted:Do you have an actual teleprompter (or like one of those iPad teleprompter rigs)? Because the text should appear right in front of the camera lens. He mentions he doesn't in his post... but I'd suggest trying to get one or DIY one ASAP! Because other than them memorizing their lines or structuring it like an interview where they are clearly looking at the "interviewer" off camera... it's never going to look good.
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Sep 28, 2016 18:37
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magnificent7 posted:Use After Effects to track their face, and then replace their eyes with a pair that are looking right at the camera. HA! I've done this with (admittedly) shorter shots before.
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Sep 30, 2016 18:11
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keyframe posted:I really wish this thread was more active. Yeah c stands are expensive. You can get some used/banged up ones from rental houses for "cheaper" sometimes. Just don't get the spring loaded Mathews stands... Those are the worst.
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Jan 29, 2017 17:27
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That camera rules... I sold mine unfortunately a while back but I loved it. My main two pieces of advice (other than the speed booster which you're already getting) is that you cannot see that lovely screen in the sunlight... At all. Like it's really not usable. So have an external viewing solution. And the batteries don't last long either. I'd recommend a V-Mount adapter and couple of V Mount batteries as well.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:24
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keyframe posted:So Blackmagic is announcing a new camera and something resolve related tomorrow at a live stream: Of course. Two loving weeks after we just bought an Ursa mini.
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Mar 1, 2017 18:14
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powderific posted:It's the Ursa Mini Pro and it looks great if they actually ship it in a reasonable timeframe. ND filters, way better controls, can do the 4.6k res to ProRes, interchangable lens mounts. Available today. Hopefully we can swap out our Ursa Mini from BH no problem. ND's are nice but the interchangeable mounts would be great for us.
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Mar 2, 2017 22:07
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keyframe posted:Yea shouldn't take months man. This bm guy posted on their official forum saying they will be full filling orders very fast. Hope you get yours soon. Just sent our Mini back and ordered the Mini Pro. Guy on phone said the same as you. They're shipping them as they come in and he expects ours to ship tomorrow or the next day. edit: Also what sold my boss was the B4 mount. We can now use our old Fujinon Varicam lenses sitting there gathering dust! BonoMan fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 19:22
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Also lol you can bundle a PL Mount Ursa 4k in with the Ursa Mini for only $500 more. Talk about fire sale. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1325261-REG/blackmagic_design_bmd_cineursamupro46k_pl_bdl_ursa_mini_pro_and.html
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Mar 16, 2017 13:25
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