AF100 + nanoflash story: issue with NOT recording

[george su]

This might have already been discovered, but I thought I'd share the lesson I learned on-set yesterday.

I'm currently shooting a feature with my AF100 and Nanoflash, and it's going very well. The camera and nanoflash are working really well together, and have not had any issues our first 3 days.

Yesterday, we ran into an issue where the nanoflash would not record.

I have the nanoflash to timecode record trigger. When I hit record on the af100, the Nanoflash would flash "lost footage card too slow", and the bitrate changed itself from 280 to 220. Naturally, I thought it was the card, so we swapped cards, but still the same error. We thought maybe it was the BNC cables or the elbows, switched them all out, still no go.

Finally my AC realized that it was his formatting protocol. With the af100 in REC RUN for timecode, we change the hour for each roll number. To save time, he had started to change the timecode hour WHILE the Nanoflash was formatting a new card.

The timecode changing around while the Nanoflash was trying to format was not making it happy!

So the moral is, don't mess with the camera while the Nanoflash is formatting!

 

[Dan Keaton]

Dear George,

That is very interesting.

We can test this in our lab.

Since it only takes a few seconds to format a card or both cards in a nanoFlash, I never personally thought to do anything with the camera at the same time.

 

[Bern Caughey]

With the af100 in REC RUN for timecode, we change the hour for each roll number. To save time, he had started to change the timecode hour...

 

[george su]

Would love to know if you come up with anything!