[Mike Caruana]

SanDisk 256G cards work. I called B&H to check before ordering and was told to update the firmware on the camera first.

I love the camera. The codec is excellent. I find myself using the internal codec much more than the SDI out since the cards can hold a lot more footage than uncompressed output and quality difference is not that noticeable, even for greenscreen keying, which is why I wanted SDI out in the first place.

The only downside is the mx wrapper the codec uses. I’ve had other people borrow my camera (or record footage for them) and they were unable to use it. There are extra steps — You have to use the Canon utility to grab the files off the card, combine them together, then convert to a mp4 or avi. I have the mx presets in Adobe Premier Pro, so the file can just be dropped on the timeline, but I’m not even sure how I got them there. I think they were installed with BlackMagic software.

[Mike Caruana]

Forgot I was even on the waitlist for this (been using a pair of Ghetto Flos). Got a call a few weeks ago, ordered it, and it’s now setup. Here are my impressions, without playing around too much:

First, there is no way to place this light a foot away from the screen, like the video shows. It will not light evenly. Standard rule of half the width back works best — with my 8ft screen and the flowlight 4ft back, everything is perfect. I did have to flag off reflections from the ceiling since I don’t have much height to work with.

On the plus side, it is very easy to set this up. Even though the light is 4ft from the screen, talent can get closer than flos, since there is little to no spill (just so long as the divas I am using are positioned so they don’t hit the screen). I like the green LEDS, in fact, I was able to use this light without a screen on a white wall and key it perfectly. I was about to replace the Ghetto Flos with Tegras so that I could have more control, but that’s not necessary now.

Dimming is nice. Let’s you get it even, a little closer, and slightly darker than talent. Keying is a breeze. Was able to simply use default settings in ultrakey with CS5 and get it perfect with no tinkering.

Overall, I highly recommend the flowlight, especially if you are using a cheap setup (ebay umbrella kits, ghetto flos, etc) or need to start from scratch. What I would love on the next version, if it is even possible, is to be able to control beamspread height and width so that you can get it closer without hotspotting or having to flag off reflective surfaces in tight spaces, but I’m happy with mine and keeping it.

[Mike Caruana]

Solved.

An hour on the phone with BM tech support, they were unable to resolve it, but I finally figured it out. Here’s the solution if anyone else comes across this:

The BM presets force you to use the their card as the playback device, no matter what you try to change in preferences–>audio hardware and you can’t change the playback settings after you create the sequence.

To get around it, create a new sequence, open up the BM preset you want to use, go to settings, change the editing mode to custom, save the preset and use that instead. It removes playback through BM and the rest of the settings are the same.

Wasted the whole day racking my brain out on this, hope it helps someone else.

[Mike Caruana]

Ralph & Sareesh:

The 5D Mark III is a non-contender at this time. It can’t do a clean 4:2:2 HDMI out. According to Canon, it will be available in April and Magic Lantern’s current solution places bars on the feed.

ATTN Canon (If you read these boards):
Wake up!

There are people like me out there, just starting out with no significant investment in glass who will simply go to whatever manufacturer offers what we want, drop 5K right off the bat, and continue to invest money in glass, accessories, updates, new products, etc…

I WILL NOT purchase your significantly more expensive line of products just because you have decided to hold back technology and force us to that path. I have been able to get a clean HDMI feed out of my 2 year old $500 Vixia Camcorder, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be available on every other product you sell with an HDMI out port.

[Mike Caruana]

I tried reinstalling, that didn’t work. Then I tried reinstalling from the original disk, then uninstalling then reinstalling from the new drivers again and it finally worked.

Thanks

[Mike Caruana]

What output are you using on the camera?

You can’t use USB. There’s no live output. It either has to be HDMI or HD-SDI.

Based on the issues I’m having with my Vixia, try setting the capture input to 1080 59.94i. Every other setting seems to give me a blank screen.

[Mike Caruana]

Thanks for all the great responses. I am definitely sold on the EX1R but may wait a week to see what happens with prices (although I doubt it will drop being a pro model).

In the last two days, B&H has dropped the pre-order price for the Canon FX105 from $4300 to $3995 and the HS21 is now $499 (expires today)! Probably because they have a few people over at the CES looking at what’s coming down the pipeline for 2011. I may order a Vixia for the heck of it to start playing around with and then use it as a family/vacation camcorder later on (I’m not going to want to lug my EX1R to Hawaii, etc…)

[Mike Caruana]

Hi Craig,

Since I already had a quad core machine with 8GB RAM, SSD, and another RAID0 array in the same box, plus a QNAP TS-809 NAS, all I would need to do is spend $189 for the black magic card. That would get me up and running quickly for what I need to do. Later on, when I need to take the camera off-site I can invest in the nanoflash, but for right now the upfront funds would probably be better spent getting the EX1R instead of a camera in the 3-$4,000 range + nano.

I guess I could record to both the camera’s flash and hard drive at the same time, so in the absolute worst case scenario at least I have a lower quality flash backup to work with, but my plan would be to copy the footage over to my QNAP array as soon as it’s captured so there are 2 copies of it.

[Mike Caruana]

Hi Craig,

One of the reasons I decided on the EX1R over the Canon Xf305 was the availability of that DVD and the sheer number of users that have this camera (the other was the larger sensors).

I still wonder if anyone has hooked this straight up to a capture card like blackmagic and gotten the same results as with a nanoflash (I understand this is impossible unless you happen to be shooting cable range of your computer). Theoretically, it should work.