[Todd Terry]

Yeah, I hear you. I was just wondering if anyone had actually used it and what the experience was.

We don’t really do events like this (nor do I really want to, it’s just not the kind of work I want or pursue), and we definitely don’t do any streaming (this event wouldn’t be streamed, but recorded internally)… but the Mevo would allow us to do a simulated multi-cam shoot with minimal crew that can be turned over immediately with almost no editing, which is one of the job requirements. It’s certainly cheap enough to buy and then just toss after the job if we don’t need it again (which we probably won’t), but don’t want to go down that road if it doesn’t do a decent job, obviously.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Hmmm I’d say those are possibilities.

I would want to check as many reviews as I could and ideally test drive them (are either available as rentals near you)? That’d especially be true for the Sony. Don’t get me wrong, Sony makes great stuff and great cameras… but they are definitely known for their electronics and not so much for their glass. I can’t say I really know anyone who says “Boy I just love Sony lenses.” It’s just not what they do well… although I think better now than in the past.

Obviously, both of those lenses are slow as molasses (typical of most all zooms, unfortunately). I personally would just never find that workable as I shoot PL mount superspeed primes 99% of the time usually around f/1.3 so those would take some getting used to and re-thinking how I light things… but if you are married to using zooms then yep you have to sacrifice the speed.

Sounds like you aren’t as married to AF as I thought. Again it just depends on what you are used to. In a couple of decades of directing and DPing I personally never use any auto anything, but it’s what I’m used to. A while back I borrowed a friend’s C100 (with L series primes) and while the images looked great it drove me crazy all day because I was constantly reaching for the focus wheel… which wasn’t there of course. Now… if Canon would put the C200’s pretty amazing AF features on the C300 (which I imagine they will eventually do) I might have to give autofocus a try.

Let us know what you do….

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

That’s going to be a pretty tall order. I’m interested as well to see what anyone else comes up with.

I’d say the biggest hurdle there will be your focus/autofocusing requirements. There just really are no AF lenses that have the same function/feel of a true manual focus real cine lens. They are just two different animals and don’t really coexist. There are some internal-focusing AF lenses that… well, eh kinda feel sorta reminiscent of real hands-on focusing, although in a sort of spongy mushy way (that’s the best way I can think of to describe it)… but their manual focusing certainly doesn’t feel like real manual focusing on an actual cine lens. If, like me, that’s what you are used to focusing with, I don’t think you’ll find an AF lens that replicates that feel.

We’ll see what people say…..

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Well, something for “food video” is pretty generic and open-ended, doesn’t really tell us what you are doing or what your camera needs and requirements are. Other than, at some point, food is involved in some fashion.

That being said, though, the C100 is an excellent camera. Since you mentioned you can’t afford a C300, that leads me to believe that in a perfect world the C300 would be your camera of choice. If that’s true, the C100 should do most if not all of the things that you’d ask of the C300. Can you afford the C200? I don’t think there’s a huge price difference, and the C200 will have several advantages over the C100.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Good deal.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I couldn’t say with certainty, but the sort of common rule-of-thumb is that an HDMI cable shouldn’t run more than 50 feet, and even then it’s pretty rare to see one over 25 feet.

I’ve seen longer runs that use little “boosters,” sort of signal amplifiers that help with long cable runs. More often though you’ll see signal converters that are two little HDMI-ported boxes, but that are connected by ordinary CAT-5 or CAT-6 ethernet cable… that allow for very long runs (hundreds or thousands of feet if needed)…. so you effectively have what is the same as having a super-long HDMI cable (which is also much cheaper, HDMI cable is expensive whereas CAT-5/6 cable is dirt cheap).

I think most of those converters/extenders are in the $500-600 range, but I see Markertek has a much shorter-range one (100ft) that’s really inexpensive, and unlike the bigger/pricier units, does not seem to require power.

https://www.markertek.com/product/nb-hdmi-cat5/hdmi-over-cat5-transmitter-receiver

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Yes you can do that in one of two ways…

If you are lucky enough that one of your monitors has a “pass through” feature for the HMDI port, then it’s easy… you just go from camera to monitor to monitor… but that’s a fairly rare feature and I’d say chances are that neither of your monitors will do that.

The second way, and more common, is exactly what you said… use an HDMI splitter. I’ve never used them in exactly that way, to get one camera signal into two monitors… but our edit suites have numerous HDMI splitters behind the scenes, as we generally need to feed more monitors than we have HDMI ports on the breakout boxes…so we use splitters. They are just little boxes that have an HDMI input port on one side, and two (or three or more) HDMI output ports on the other side. They are probably available wherever you buy electronic stuff… although I think all of the ones we have came from eBay sellers… just search “HDMI splitter” and you’ll get thousands of results, like this one….

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-1×2-HDMI-Splitter-v1-4D-ViewHD-One-Input-to-Two-Output-Top-US-Plug/323180264541?epid=8015073169&hash=item4b3f0b7c5d:g:hlsAAOSwPCVX-WME

Note that these do usually require DC power, so if you were planning to use them on location you’ll need AC to feed the adapters, or rig up the appropriate DC power with batteries. Ours are all behind the racks in the edit suites so power is not an issue.

They work pretty flawlessly.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Suszko] “I’m a crotchety old fart, I guess, but I’m not a fan of company names that are overly whimsical and opaque as to what they are and do.”

I’m now quietly filing paperwork to change the name of Fantastic Plastic to “Whoop-DeDoo!”

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Ned…

That would be a good suggestion… except… thanks to a couple of my COW friends we have now tried three different video sources, recorded onto three different cards, and shot with three different C300 Mark II cameras, and in three different edit suites…. all with the same results.

In none of the cases will the Canon XF utility allow us to “Export to MXF”… the option is simply grayed out. We can view card contents, back it up, set it as virtual media… everything except export MXF files.

If we then pick through all the folders and subfolders (with our bare hands like an animal) and pull out all the individual MXF files… then we can import those into Premiere in our CC suite, but not into either of our CS6 suites. I’m not sure why, since we import non-Mark II C300 footage into those suites daily, and edit 4K (from other sources) in there with ease as well. It’s just the combo of C300 Mark II and 4K that seems troublesome. Which, of course, is exactly the combo I need.

And Canon has been no help about it.

Of course, this is a much more technical post than the B&M forum usually warrants, but I wanted to respond.

It’s a puzzler…

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Yep Rick is right, as usual. You don’t need a frame, or even have to cut your roll of diffusion… just slide the roll onto a grip arm.

And if you want to sound like you know what you are doing, this technique is known as “Hollywooding.”

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com