My first real shoot with the AF100, thoughts...

Rick Burnett said:
The battery that came with the AF100 worked substantially better than the aftermarket batteries I bought. While they initially came up at 3 hours 30 minutes, they lasted only about two hours. While I am glad I had them, as I used both extras I had, I will be investing in the Panasonic batteries in the future because they last as long as they say they will.
Click to expand...

Rick,

I suggest you invest in the larger Panasonic batteries. The one that came with the cam is fine, but bigger is sometimes better.

www.abelcine.com/store/Panasonic-VWVBG6PPK-7.2V-5400mA-Battery/

I have three of these, & in combination of the standard battery, I've never had a problem getting through a long day's shooting. But note I shut off my camera whenever there's a break in shooting.

What's the 4-way charger? I carry two of Panasonic's standard charger, & love their compact size while traveling, but it would be great to charge more batts in one go.

Best,
Bern
 
Jan,

The problem I was running into is I wanted the best of all worlds :) I have found keeping the waveform up to be the single most time saving aspect of the AF100. Having never had one, I never knew what I was missing. So I liked having my LCD out and ready to go. While the EVF is good, without question, on a lot of shots going from DP6 to the EVF can be difficult to me, and when I am using really long lenses, I often bump the camera when trying to look in, or when my eye comes away, since I was so focused on the EVF, then I go to two eyes, it can be a little disorienting is what I found (as I did try it). What would be nice is a user button that allows me to leave SDI on, then having the buttons switch EVF to LCD even while the LCD is open. I wanted to leave the LCD open just to get to the controls underneath. The biggest problem being the WFM button.

I went to this shoot thinking it was just a small film project, but how mistaken I was. Showing up for the crew meeting and seeing 75+ people running around, let me tell you the shock that set it for a few seconds. And Barry, you will be happy to know I did bring your book with me in case I ran into something I couldn't figure out. I had spent the days before the shoot reading all about setting white balance and making sure I understood that. We were shooting a lot of day for night as well so I had to switch between color temps pretty fast. It was a breeze to do.

Pertaining to editman's suggestion of a shoulder rig, yes, I am in the process of putting one together right now. I am talking with one company that I've seen an AF100 on their rig and it was rock solid. The other 2 camera setups had shoulder rigs and I could see how they used them very well. Now, I might not have used them for all the shots they were doing, I definitely saw where they shined. The biggest one was profile tracking as people are running by. The director wanted a tiny bit of shake to the shots. I tried handheld with my 85mm but it was just too long a lens. Tripod no matter how low I set the tension was still fighting me on some faster moves. (Yes, they were okay with the skew because it is so minimal with the AF100, I showed them a playback). After the pain in shooting that shot, I knew I needed to try something different.

I wish I would have thought of cardboard and gaffers tape, awesome suggestion. I was honestly just so hyper focused on making sure my settings were right and listening to the directors wishes, my mind wasn't free to process solutions. I was already dealing with my ikan articulating arm had broke somehow and I had to use a different solution (which I just randomly threw in my bag) and the fact the night before I realized that floating my AF100 on the blackbird was just not going to happen yet. I am so disappointed by this that I am going to go and talk to Rich (CMR is in Raleigh) and see if we can brainstorm a solution. I absolutely LOVE the blackbird stabilizer having used multiple setups and I'd like to help him come up with a possible solution.

The weight of the AF100 is a double edge sword. On one hand, the weight really helps on the tripod or whatever handheld I shoot (and I am sure with the shouldermount) to keep the image more stable. But it hurts on the non arm stabilizers. I also put the AF100 on the directors glide-cam BEFORE we added weights to the bottom of the setup and that was just a no. It was heavier than the blackbird at that point FULLY weighted.

While I wasn't able to be with them M-Th this week as they finish principle shooting, once done, I will ask the director if I can post any screen grabs from some of the non important scenes.

And I will tell you, summer cannot get here fast enough. They had a mac and a windows machine the DIT was operating to copy footage. We could look at the footage on the windows machine, but not on the mac, on the fly.
 
Bern Caughey said:
Rick,

I suggest you invest in the larger Panasonic batteries. The one that came with the cam is fine, but bigger is sometimes better.

www.abelcine.com/store/Panasonic-VWVBG6PPK-7.2V-5400mA-Battery/

I have three of these, & in combination of the standard battery, I've never had a problem getting through a long day's shooting. But note I shut off my camera whenever there's a break in shooting.

What's the 4-way charger? I carry two of Panasonic's standard charger, & love their compact size while traveling, but it would be great to charge more batts in one go.

Best,
Bern
Click to expand...

I don't remember the company, but someone had posted a charger that B&H carry that can charge 4 batteries at a time I thought (or maybe it was 3). This would be an AWESOME thing to have when on tight schedules like this production was. Thanks for the heads up on those batteries. I was not shocked the off brand batteries were not amazing, they were a stop gap till I could get the funds to get the Panasonic ones. With the included battery and the 2 generics, I was able to do a 15 hour shoot. I was also good about not letting my AF100 stay on when not needed. Since the turn on time is so fast, it's no problem. I had one bad DP6 battery I will need to get replaced. I lost my DP6 at hour 14. I was also good at keeping it turned off when not in use. 4 batteries is a must for a 15 hour shoot, using their batteries. I didn't have time to go back to the DIT village to charge things on this shoot.
 
Great inputs, thanks for sharing the experience Rick! I am curious (unless I missed that in the previous posts) to know what was 1st unit shooting with, and if different from the AF, how it intercut....?

Thanks again for this great review.
 
Rick Burnett said:
How much time does it register you can run without powering nanoflash?
Click to expand...
Well, as of now that's the only way I can test it, because my Nano cable isn't here yet. But just on the camera, with LCD shut, at 1080/24, it shows three hours 30 minutes. If you turn SDI off you can get an extra three minutes out of it.

I expect that with the Nano it'll probably drop to two hours, which is still pretty darn awesome. I don't know if folks remember the VX1000, but that was the cam that started the whole DV revolution, and it had an internally-mounting battery (which meant that batteries could only get so large, and no larger, as there was no room inside the camera for a bigger battery). Best/biggest battery we could get back then was about 40 minutes. So two hours of simultaneous AF100/Nano is great, three and a half hours of AF100 is great, they're less expensive than the factory battery and it has the nifty four-LED power scale.
 
timtorpedo said:
Great inputs, thanks for sharing the experience Rick! I am curious (unless I missed that in the previous posts) to know what was 1st unit shooting with, and if different from the AF, how it intercut....?

Thanks again for this great review.
Click to expand...

The first was shooting with 2x 5D, a 7D and a t2i. Lens wise they had Tokina 11-16, Canon 85mm 1.2 I think, Canon 70-200 and a 1.4x extender, a 35mm 1.4, a 65mm I believe, and maybe a 50mm F1.4, and a 16-35mm Canon as well (I think, I don't remember all the specifics). I had a chance to look at some of their footage as well and it looked REALLY good. They really knew the limitations of the Canon cameras and were working around them. They did have some issues of moire/aliasing on some shots and they used me for shots where moire/aliasing and rolling shutter would be very challenging for them (and the AF100 really shined on those situations).

For my AF100 settings, I had already set it up to match closer to my 7D as I like the look, with the difference of adjusting the master ped to give me a bit more shadow detail. My feeling was, if I wanted it crushed more, I'll do that in post, because if I need to push the image around a little more than I want in post, having that bit of extra detail I found does help give you a little more freedom.

I don't remember if I mentioned my lenses yet either. I am waiting on the Birger mount so I was limited in what I could shoot. On day one I just shot with the 85mm Bower F1.4. It worked TREMENDOUSLY well. On the second day, I had picked up my Nikon 50mm F1.8 a friend was borrowing and had that available to me. I used it maybe twice. I'll be honest that at S35ish size, I don't often use 50mm. But, I was glad to have it in case. (I prefer 30mm on APS-C as my go to lens). However, I had a few really challenging shots that I really needed wider, so I ended up using my 11-16 Tokina and just used the ISO and ND to get an acceptable exposure. I thought about using the shutter speed, but on these shots, I really wanted that fixed (they were all overcranked).

All that said, given my experience of looking at 7D and AF100 footage, it will be no problem. In fact, the director said he'll add a little grain to the AF100 to match the Canons :) And I agree, the AF100 is THAT clean. Given I already desaturated, and that we were shooting 3.2k in daylight for most of it, I think that makes it a lot easier.

I also wanted to say that the skin renditions I got I thought were PERFECT. It matched what I saw with my eyes AMAZINGLY well.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, as of now that's the only way I can test it, because my Nano cable isn't here yet. But just on the camera, with LCD shut, at 1080/24, it shows three hours 30 minutes. If you turn SDI off you can get an extra three minutes out of it.

I expect that with the Nano it'll probably drop to two hours, which is still pretty darn awesome. I don't know if folks remember the VX1000, but that was the cam that started the whole DV revolution, and it had an internally-mounting battery (which meant that batteries could only get so large, and no larger, as there was no room inside the camera for a bigger battery). Best/biggest battery we could get back then was about 40 minutes. So two hours of simultaneous AF100/Nano is great, three and a half hours of AF100 is great, they're less expensive than the factory battery and it has the nifty four-LED power scale.
Click to expand...

If it gave me a real 3 hours I would be VERY happy with them, with nothing else attached. I like the price and VERY much like the indicators. Thanks for the heads up. After shooting with the AF100, I really don't feel I need a nanoflash. Not even for VFX work. The image is so clean, even whatever chroma contamination I see at boundaries is pretty minimal to me. MUCH cleaner than 7D at same ISOs.
 
I do have a question though, one thing I was worried about is the microphones in the AF100 while gunshots are going off. I will be shooting louder sounds in the future and I am wondering if I need to protect the internal microphones somehow. Anyone have any experience with this?
 
Also, not very exciting, but I can post a picture of my setup. This is called the super easy setup :) That is a DP6 on top with the sun hood (which was priceless). Although I recommend airing out the sun hood first before using it. Not sure what they use to make it, but I certainly smelled some interesting chemical smells from it for the first few hours using it :)

Yes, I need to get a better SDI cord that is not 30942385 feet long :) That is the Bower on front with the lens hood it comes with. And of course my manfrotto tripod and head that I like so much.


AF100.jpg
 
Talked with smallHD, they said "Hey, did you put the new firmware on there?" And I said, "No, forgot too" :) I will be trying out the new firmware and see what happens in the blacks. Apparently this is something they already addressed and I wasn't paying attention! Woohoo!
 
africanmarty said:
when i read "I was careful to stabilize myself during hand-held shooting to minimize shake as the third party lenses can not be stabilized through the camera's on board OIS control" how are you guys doing this ? with shoulder mount rigs ?? if not whats your secters ??
Click to expand...

I use the Glidecam 4000HD as a steady cam but also as a monopod and general support. I, and this could potentially be a painful predicament, jam the bottom into my crotch, bend my knees and it becomes a very stable shooting base that's quick to set up and great to use. It is a very stable setup, I can do pans and tilts and it quickly reverts back to being a steady cam. I like it so much that in many cases I've used this method rather than setting up a tripod.

You can also hold the Glide Cam in both arms as a jib.

Great tool and I'd hate to shoot handheld without something like this.
 
Last edited:
I had mine on the Glidecam 2000 I believe and I thought the whole setup was too heavy WITHOUT the weights yet! :) I've talked with CMR and I am probably going to go to their site and find out the best solution for me. There are some things I can do to change up my Blackbird a bit more to reduce weight, take the handles off of the AF100, and if all else fails, try a vest arm setup with it.
 
Do you have the wrist support Rick? If not try it before going with the whole vest. It enables you to use the glidecam much, much longer. For me it's not an issue. With the wrist support I can get my shots and have shot with it all day. (okay, yes at the end of the day my right bicep is sore as hell)
 
I did not have the wrist support, the owner of the Glidecam had been using it with the 7D. Guess I am going to have to up the weights at the gym! :)
 
Get the wrist support. It is a life saver.

Also, the first time I used the Glide Cam with the AF100 I wanted to take the damn thing back or sell it on ebay. I just hated how heavy it was (I use 4 weights on each side at the bottom). But, I forced myself to try it again and again and have come to really love the thing. It's just very versatile and quick to set up shots with even if you're not using it as a steady-cam.

Plus, in Los Angeles you really get hassled here by cops for permits if you're using sticks. With a steady-cam or used as a mono-pod as I described above this becomes a non-issue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top