[Danny Grizzle]

One more good piece of advice: If you are planning to buy a Microdolly jib, call Microdolly and ask Jerry Johnson what he thinks about your tripod choice. Jerry is the Founder/CEO of Microdolly, but he will take your call. Tell him I said hello. We are not old pals by any means, but he knows my name because of our shared interest in log homes.

Jerry is the kind of guy I really like because of age, experience, maturity, and temperament. He is a straight shooter. No embellishment, no marketing hype, no exaggeration. And he knows tripods. When I first told him I was using a carbon leg Gitzo, he detailed all the particulars of how the leg tips would ride on the Microdolly, and how my model of Gitzo tripod would be secured to the dolly. Jerry is the kind of guy who knows the chronology of engineering changes over the lifespan of various makes and models. Don’t be surprised if he tells you to avoid a certain used tripod if it was manufactured between 1998 and 2001 because the locking collets had a reliability problem during that period. He knows his stuff. He may say, “Look for a black rolled pin in the leg pivot, not a silver pin. That’s how you can tell the tripod you are buying has the problem fixed.”

Whatever Jerry Johnson says, you can take to the bank. And he will not try to sell you something you don’t need. Whatever value my comments have had in this thread is based on experience not 1% of Jerry Johnson. Anything he adds or takes away from my comments, don’t bother to verify here because he is the master.

[Danny Grizzle]

re: Stedicam and jib use.

My concern here is the ungainly rig involved. I mean, some of my lenses have tripod mounts themselves. Add these DoF converter rigs, support rod systems, cameras, wireless mics, etc., etc.

It is hard to predict how challenging all this would get when balancing a Steadicam, or even what model would be required.

My plans include walking talking tours with owners of log homes, down halls, up stairs. I don’t see how all this could be accomplished with a 35mm lens adapter rig. Or even with an assistant pulling focus. I love shallow DoF, but not every concept can be produced.

Which brings on the question about intercutting footage.

I will still work with a Chrosziel matte box. so I might be able to do something to take the edge off raw video, either with ProMist filters or post.

Is this plausible?

P.S. — sorry for the long winded posts. I will probably be a flash on CreativeCOW. That’s what happens when you are sitting around waiting for a camera that is on allocation. If you can’t test it, next best thing is talking about it.

[Danny Grizzle]

Thanks, Todd.

My background is still photography and film. Self educated, mainly. I was widely published even in high school, and doing commercial / advertising assignments. This was mid-70’s era, before auto exposure and auto focus.

When I was young, a respected DP told me, “I’d rather start someone from scratch than try and make a cinematographer out of a sill photographer.”

“Well, I’ll show you,” I thought. But, frankly, I understand the point he was making.

i understand the craft involved in film style production. 3rd assistant on a film crew is loading magazines, a critical task. An great assistant cameraman who can pull focus while the operator is working handheld is a marvel. I understand. And it causes me concern. Because of the nepotism factor, my assistants are my children. Not bad, but there is a difference in training someone to the point you can trust them, to the point you can stop thinking for them and doing their job in addition to your own, and simply hiring someone who has an accomplished set of skills out of their own burning passion to be involved in the trade.

I don’t live in a big city, and I don’t like to rent. But I do have a fabulous set of Canon FD breech mount lenses I would love to use again. I’m 50 years old, and some of these I bought when I was 15 years old. I know them, and I trust them. Some guys grow old clinging to their first ’57 Chevy or 60’s muscle car. Not me — these Canon lenses are my thing.

I’m on eBay now shopping for an 85mm f1.2L. I can afford one now, but I don’t think the newcomer will ever be special to me like the 9 lenses already in my old Halliburton case, the ones that brought me on this journey.

[Danny Grizzle]

Smarter guys than me don’t get pinned on specific product recommendations.

I’m not all that sophisticated anyway. I don’t get out much and have zero experience with Cartoni.

But it sounds like you are in the ballpark for a small camera, a lightweight jib with short to medium reach, and thus not a huge amount of counterbalance weights.

[Danny Grizzle]

> Would that be beefy enough for a portable jib and small camera?

I’d only be guessing. And long after you calculate all this, a situation will arise someday when somebody will need to do something you did not anticipate or plan for.

I’m just repeating what I’ve been told — carbon fiber tripods are great, but be careful how you use them. They won’t take abuse like aluminum or wood legs.

[Danny Grizzle]

A single tripod for both general use and jib support will work to a point. It depends on how you configure your jib. If you plan to buy the Microdolly extension kit, like I did, then weight becomes a factor. I shoot with carbon fiber Gitzo legs under my DSR-500. There is no way these sticks would work for a jib.

Anyplace you have seen any difference of opinion between myself and Todd in this thread can almost certainly be explained by the difference in approach you must take between working with jibs of different sizes (lengths) and cameras of different weights (prosumer like my PD-150, or shoulder mount like my DSR-500).

My advice on a dual use tripod: forget about carbon fiber. They are great, but simply not as rugged and reliable when operated outside their official load ratings. Collets will slip and joints collapse, etc.

I think you are looking for aluminum legs, or maybe even wood. Go beefy. This may be a bit difficult on the used market, because you will tend to get a matching beefy fluid head, and that should be avoided. Make sure your fluid head is exactly sized and configured for your camera. Many fluid heads have internal balancing springs. So even within a particular make and model, you need to get the exact spring installed that best suits your camera.

War story: I once had to work with an O’Connor that was configured to carry a giagantic CRT teleprompter plus camera. This tripod was huge. It weighed a ton, but performed great under load. The only problem was the teleprompter was used only about 1% of the time. 99% of the time, shooting with this thing with only an Ikegami mounted was like being in an all-day arm wrestling match.

You can suffer through a mismatch on tripod weight so long as you don’t mind the compromise on weight, and the hassle of hauling the thing. But if you mismatch the head, you will compromise your work.

These negatives are probably minimized by the fact that you are proposing use with a lightweight camera. Bigger cameras mean bigger loads, and magnify all the problems.

[Danny Grizzle]

Both. You can mount a fluid head on the Microdolly jib. That’s the way I shoot interviews, because you can drift the shot a bit during the take and add some lovely 3D perspective & planes of motion, enhanced by using a 2/3″ camera and large aperture for narrow depth of field.

I also do long jib work where I need to get up with, say, a carpenter high on a log home wall. In that case, you must operate from the back, in which case you better consider how you will monitor.

These variables account for differences in rigging time. The interview scenario is simple on a short jib, and sets up in minutes. The high rise jib work is much more involved at every turn, weights for counter balancing, wiring, and monitoring. Thus more time required for setup and strike. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe more, because you will need to re-evaluate lighting once you change perspective radically.

Sometimes, shooting home interiors, I prefer to work with a true CRT production monitor. Even on dolly work. Outdoors, you better include accessories like a Hoodman for your monitoring, if you care to see what you are doing.

[Danny Grizzle]

I think Todd Terry and I are basically of one mind. Except maybe I am a little more old school on having an assistant. I’m also the kind of guy who won’t leave a camera on a tripod while I dart into the restroom. Just the “way I was raised” in the industry, starting in film, working for a fairly demanding DP. Leaving the camera unattended was a firing offense.

BTW- I also feel the same way about having someone dedicated to audio, though I regularly run camera and audio at the same time by myself. I started out a lot more serious about audio than most video guys, and I’m about to get even more nuts. When it comes to spending money, Microdolly is a minor extravagance compared to what you can get into running double system sound with quality mics and wireless systems.

[Danny Grizzle]

Just a note on the Microdolly tripod.

I don’t want anybody to get the idea this is a general use tripod. Not so. It does not have a bowl, and I would not consider mounting a conventional fluid head on it.

Still, it is excellent for its intended purpose. It is lightweight, high strength, and high capacity – rated at 300 lbs. Perfect support for a jib arm.

Microdolly is not the cheapest thing on the market. But I believe Microdolly represents a terrific value in superb design and precision engineering, especially considering every component is beautifully machined. There is no rough fabrication.

Some of this is too detailed to describe. Like the extraordinarily cleaver way the jib is secured to the tripod with the flick of a wrist instead of laborious bolt threading.

Check their website for a show schedule and get a demo. Or just buy one. You will be happy.

[Danny Grizzle]

15 minute setup is worst case scenario. I was thinking back to a specific setup above Santa Fe, NM. Exterior, uneven ground (rough dirt road), tedious leveling, and me doing all the hoofing of tripod, jib, camera, batteries, cabling, monitor, counter balance weights, etc.

Rigging any jib with a one person crew would be challenging, or impossible. With a full size camera, the jib arm would need to sit on the ground or a sturdy table with the camera attached while counter balance weights were added. Short arm configurations might be even harder, because it would tip during rigging unless you staged every piece in a superbly choreographed way. Still I wouldn’t recommend jibs on solo shoots. You can’t really step away without a minder for the camera, and even then carefully as my incident with the 25 year old son proves.

The smaller the camera and the shorter the jib, then the less weight involved and all these considerations are dramatically reduced. Don’t underestimate weight, though, especially with full size cameras and high rise jibs. A 20 lb. camera may require over a hundred pounds of counterbalance weight.

Microdolly allows rigging the jib in a variety of lengths, with extension or not. With the extension, the three structural tubes of the jib arm can be positioned at any length, making counterbalancing a variable. Depending on how much someone were to use the jib, all this could be a standardized, quick drill.

The Microdolly tripod does not have a bowl. Leveling the platform is absolutely critical, and a bit more tedious when done by adjusting 3 tripod legs. But the stability of the Microdolly tripod is superb, as you would expect for a purpose-built support.

I’ve used O’Connor 150mm bowl tripods, and there is no comparison. I agree about the stability and strength of the O’Connor, but have to add that the O’Connor sticks alone can weigh more than my entire Microdolly package. So there is a real tradeoff on weight and portability, especially on a fly away package.

I’ve seen pictures of Microdolly jib arms running on top of the Microdolly dolly and track. This is the kind of stuff cinematographers love to do, if for no other reason than to sneak in some kind of convoluted move that will dumbfound other cinematographers. All fine and good, but I’d be extremely cautious about running jibs on top of a track dolly, especially with full size cameras where there’s a lot of weight involved. The concern varies with configuration – I’m not talking about a little jib on a wheeled spreader.

Like most techniques, less is often more. Maybe a short jib configuration is all you need, just for that subtle move. In fact, this is probably 99% of all quality jib work. We get going on and on about extremes, but these things can easily be overdone. The first year zoom lenses were in vogue, you see a lot of stop-to-stop zooming. Cheesy jib work can be seen on any local cable channel. One funeral home ad where I live has camera work swooping around like a WWI biplane dogfight.

With jibs, we think mostly about lift and drop. But I will tell you that arm swing has equal creative potential.

Back in my college days, I worked production around a lot of large cranes. These were always industry workhorses, often carrying camera, cameraman, and an assistant. Nobody ever got hurt, but nobody ever handed one of the operators a can of Coke without doing a safety check.

I agree with Todd about home built cranes (my distinction being cranes carry people where jibs carry cameras only). Crazy and kids…

I would never consider putting a human on a homebuilt crane. But if you do, make sure your insurance is bulletproof. It may be true that kids run multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. But they are backed up by a lot of savvy engineering and mature supervision. Not to mention tons of training and practice to avoid hard lessons of death and carnage from those that went before.