[Chuck Spaulding]

I just received this monitor and have used it on one shoot: https://www.coollcd.com/669ah-7-inch-tft-lcd-vga-monitor-no-touchscreen-hdmi-dvi_p670.html.

Coollcd, were great, they responded to email and shipped quickly. I placed my order Friday night and received my 8″ monitor Tuesday.

The first thing I did was connect it to my Mac to view color bars. It only has brightness and contrast controls, no hue or saturation. I never use field monitors to set color anyway, although it might be nice getting it a bit closer, but after setting up to bars I was surprised at how well I could judge exposure. I would get it to where I thought it looked good and stop down half a stop. Works great.

Picture quality is OK, certainly good enough for focus and composition. For the price this seems to be a no brainer.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Or a cheaper easier solution is to re-encode your H.264 to ProRes(LT).

I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head but ProRes HQ is about 220Mbs/sec, ProRes is about 140Mbs/sec and ProRes LT is about 100Mbs/sec.

SATA drives can handle ProRes and ProRes LT but generally not ProRes HQ. Unless your shooting out to film you don’t need HQ anyway.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Hi Rick, sorry about the wrong link, that’s where I’m hosing the picture: https://www.frameyourart.net/7D2.jpg

I’m not particularly price sensitive on most things, but when I began shopping around I was blown away at how expensive some of this stuff was and quickly came to the conclusion that much of this equipment is overpriced. Some have argued that is not the right conclusion to make, that you get what you pay for etc., and they might be right. Nevertheless it started me on my quest to see if I could build a quality hand held support for less so I came up with what I have. This might not be the right reason or way to go about building a good shoulder mount but I feel like I have a quality product that works well for my needs at a more reasonable price.

As far as viewfinders go the CAVISION is a very good viewfinder for much less but it lacks a diopter, the Z-Finder is a very good viewfinder but it doesn’t swing out of the way. I wear glasses so I was leaning towards the Z-Finder but for me the perceived value just isn’t there so I went with the CAVISION [which I think is over priced too]. I’m glad I did because what I’m finding is that after checking focus, I swing the viewfinder out of the way quite often. Which kind of indicates that I don’t like shooting with this style of viewfinder on a shoulder mount anyway. I think its good for handheld without any support but on a tripod or shoulder mount I’m going to try a larger LCD monitor to overcome the fact that the LCD on the 7D does not articulate, if it did you might get away with just using the built in LCD.

Sorry for rambling but I’m really not trying to talk people into simply buying the same products I do, I just wanted to give people as much information so they can make an informed choice that’s right for them. Good luck.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Hi Rick,

There are several threads on different sites discussing various camera supports, everything from DIY, RedRock Micro, to Zacuto, After looking at all of these I decided I couldn’t/wouldn’t spend more for the support than I did for the camera. I also knew I was not going to build one myself from scratch.

So I went in search of alternatives which I have shared in the several posts.

I decided to take pictures of my setup so people could see what it is and how it works. What I discovered is that I’m not very good at photographing products but here it is nonetheless.

https://www.frameyourart.net — I don’t know how to embed the image into this post?

This is a shoulder mount system which includes an accessories box, an adjustable back support, a counter wait (not shown), two hand grips, a telescopic support arm (not attached in picture), a CAVISION LCD swing away viewfinder, 15mm Carbon fiber support rods with quick release, and a 4×5 Matte box.

I have placed the accessories box under the camera to give it some additional height but it can also be attached on the back shoulder pad. The camera support can be adjusted to accommodate a larger camera like the EX1, the handles can be adjusted with the push of a button and the telescopic support arm is spring loaded and can be adjusted to rest comfortably on your stomach or waist. As an alternative to that you can attach the counter weight to the back pad and the 7D requires very little support.

Not only is there a substantial price difference between this setup and a Zacuto for example, but there’s probably a bit of an ideological difference too. The aforementioned products are more configurable in the way a photographer might want to use it, this set up is probably what videographers are more accustomed to.

So I don’t think choosing the right camera support is simply about price, although this setup is less then half the cost of a comparable set up from from Zacuto or RedRock, but about how you want to work. Clearly the 7D would benefit from either type of solution, and as you can tell I’ve approached it from more of a digital cinema perspective, which I’m not sure is the right approach. It works incredibly well in a production environment but it “hinders” the “gorilla” aspect of shooting with the 7D. I find myself detaching the camera from the support, removing the matte box (if I don’t need filters) and holding the camera by the support rods. People don’t pay attention to that and think I’m taking stills.

Since I’ve chosen this route the next thing is a follow focus, but I’m not going to pay $1200…

The shoulder mount is from Shape and there are several models to choose from:
https://shapewlb.com/en/products-camera-supports.php
I have the Spider II, which has an adjustable camera platform. This is important for me because I also use this support with the EX1. If you don’t need that then you save even more.

The LCD viewfinder is here:
https://www.cavision.com/viewfinders/MHE52.htm

The swing away support for the viewfinder is here:
https://www.cavision.com/viewfinders/MHE52C2SA.htm

The Rod Support and Quick Release is here:
https://www.cavision.com/rods/RS15IIMQR.htm

The Matte Box is here:
https://cgi.ebay.com/PROAIM-Matte-box-For-15mm-rails-DOF-Wide-angle-lenses_W0QQitemZ400090309853QQcategoryZ3319QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4340.m263QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%252BDDSIC%26otn%3D10%26ps%3D63#ht_4258wt_1027
OK, this one requires a little explanation. I got this off of eBay, its a knockoff from India and it was so cheap, $240 that I thought I would take a chance on it. Out of everything that I ordered, it arrived first, the build quality is surprisingly good and it bolted up to everything else perfectly.

I think everything totaled around $900. Still a bit pricey, but so far I’m happy with everything I purchased and this would have costs significantly more elsewhere.

I’m not trying to talk anyone in or out of anything, just trying to provide some choice.

Anyway for others who are experimenting and looking for ideas I hope this helps.

[Chuck Spaulding]

I don’t know if MPEG StreamClip runs on a PC, but I’m using on a Mac, it is faster and I find a little better than Compressor 3.5.

Its also extremely easy to use.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Well let me be one of the first to thank you for creating this forum and to welcome others. I’m not sure how much I’ll use my 7D in production, but I can’t remember when I had so much fun learning how to use a camera.

[Chuck Spaulding]

I have been conducting the same search. Here are a few things that I have found:
Camera Support: https://shapewlb.com/en/products-camera-supports.php
I got the spider II because it is adjustable and I use this for a 7D and EX1.

Here’s an HD-LCD HDMI monitor: https://www.smallhd.com/?gclid=CM2ly_XVuZ4CFR4UagodxGdRmg
And here’s a less expensive one: https://www.manhattanlcd.com/product_p/7005.htm

I got my Matte box, rods and viewfinder here: https://www.cavision.com/main.html

This makes up a very nice shoulder camera support that costs less than a quarter of what Zacuto and Redrock costs. The Shape Spider is comfortable and built well.

Good luck

[Chuck Spaulding]

Here’s a thought, instead of buying a new Kona card or new monitor, buy Adobe CS3 and then output it [and view it on an external monitor] any way you want.

I realize I’m being a jerk, but I have never used a software that users loved so much that had to make so many excuses for why you can’t accomplish the most basic things.

Drives me nuts!

Why can’t you just choose to display a 16×9 on a 4×3 monitor [without rendering]?

[Chuck Spaulding]

There are many problems with integrating applications together to form a suite of tools [especially for Apple who didn’t create any of them].

One serious problem that the FCS2 suite does not address is the latency associated with such a serial workflow.

For the most part Adobe workflow provides them the ability to share data at the file level, memory level, image processing level and interface level. They actually move the application to the data rather than the data to the application.

If your working on an element in Photoshop and then want to composite it in AE the data is cached into memory and AE simply continues on from there. The only change is at the interface level. This greatly reduces latency and provides consistency between interfaces.

Some of this is evident in Motion3, which is a more open and extensible application whereas FCP is closed. When you search for assets in Motion you are searching at the finder level in FCP everything is at the project level internal to FCP itself. To gain access to assets in a FCP project you need to export the information [XML], in a sense that’s what your doing when you “round trip.” Not very efficient and this is something that has to be developed from its inception which is what Adobe did. They didn’t simply re-write Premiere, they completely redesigned their entire image processing layer that all of their applications use.

I think fundamentally that’s the difference between a software development company like Adobe and a hardware company like Apple. Apple will continue to purchase new applications in order to sell hardware but never reach the level of integration between applications that Adobe or Discreet will.

[Chuck Spaulding]

What version of FCP are you using?

Do the stibs and telly’s plug-ins work well with the fxplug in FCP6?