C200: C200 body stability?

P

pmcdonald

Active member
Hello everyone,

I had the opportunity to take our new C200 into the field on it's maiden job last week. I'm pretty happy with it aside from one issue. I found when I used the LCD - either directly using the touch screen or pressing the buttons - it would send a vibration throughout the body that would take a few seconds to settle. The vibration was visible in the recorded footage.

Now I don't think I'm particularly stabby or heavy with my fingers but we shoot doco style content a lot so touching the screen on the fly is something that we need to do from time to time. We never had that issue with our C100. I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the removable LCD versus the body mounted LCD of the C100 but experiment as I have with different mount points I still get the issue. Is this just the way the larger C-class cameras work? Or a problem unique to the C200? And short of detaching the LCD completely and mounting it to the tripod legs - which I'm guessing would still send some vibrating back through the body - is there anything I can do to stop it?

For the record we're using reasonably robust Miller heads and legs. We've never had an issue with camera stability on them before.

Many thanks
 
Hold the outer rim/back of the screen in your hand, steady it and lightly tap the screen while slightly pushing forward with the palm of your hand holding the screen seems to work. If you are on a longer lens, that amplifies the the vibration. Also, less vibration seems to be transmitted through the body if you flip the touchscreen up to where it is centered over the handle like the C300 MKII clamshell. That is steadier than on the left side of the camera on the mount. The whole thing requires a pretty light touch, no problems for me so far but I was shooting with an 85mm focal length, I can see at 200-300mm, it would be even worse.
 
It could be the LCD mount having a little flex to it rather than being completely rock solid.

You could try mounting the LCD to a magic arm or something and see if a more solid mount still translates the vibration.
 
FWIW, shot a four person wide shot with Face Tracking yesterday. Used the joystick to switch from each speaker, they kept swapping off lines to deliver to camera, it was a money ask for a charity fundraiser, joystick worked great, just use it to activate the box with the focus arrows as each speaker spoke to camera. This would have been un-doable using the touch screen, it would have shaken the camera because I had to switch tracking dozens of times at about 110mm focal length. I am finding the touchscreen, while it works flawlessly, it works best in wider FOVs with the touchscreen mounted up high, centered like the C300 MKII screen. Having it low, on the operator side of the camera tends to magnify the shake and having a light, light touch on the screen is key. It's still a useful feature but not as useful for every situation.
 
For focus, use the traditional route, mount the touchscreen on the left handle of the tripod and use the thumb.
Longer cable required ;o).
 
NorBro said:
I think they are called camerawomen...a camerawoman.
Click to expand...

I think everybody is just called a camera operator...

And I hope Eric was joking because that's a terrible comment if serious, and this is probably not the place to make an off color sexist joke either way.
 
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