Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
[Rennie] ” I didn’t want to sign up with Zoom now just to view their catalog, is there a good selection?”
Sadly, no… the catalog mostly seems to be people we’ve never heard of. I picked a dozen or so artists and songs at random to see if they had them… none came up as available.
Zoom could be a really good thing, but they’re gonna have to get a lot of artists/publishers on the bandwagon for it to be worthwhile.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Well, can’t really attest to comfort, but we do occassionaly use a little HV20 as a crashcam, and use the Beachtek with it if we need XLR sound. I can say that it works very very well.
I hadn’t really thought about comfort… I guess I probably will now… hmmmmm.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Sorry to rain on your parade, but this post is not going to make you happy…
This has been discussed here before…. look VERY carefully at the technical specs. There are a lot of little (7″ or so) TTF LCD monitors that say they are HD or “high definition.”
What almost ALL of these actually are, are more or less standard-def monitors that will TAKE an HD signal and display it. However, their RESOLUTION is not HD by a long shot.
That Ikan monitor, for example (if I am looking at the right one), claims to be HD, but look at the specs and you’ll see it’s resolution is really just 800×480.
The Nebtek lists it’s resoltuion as 1200 x 234 (that’s gotta be a mistake) but it’s not really HD either.
The Tote Vision’s resolution is 800×480. Not HD.
The Marshall, also 800×480.
The sad thing is although all of these monitors at some point call themselves “HD,” none of them actually are. Not by a long shot.
In short, they may have great-looking pictures but none of these monitors is going to be good enough for HD use IF you want to use it for critical focus. Something that looks razor sharp in them might turn out to be very soft indeed. If you happen to be shooting with a DoF converter and/or cine lenses where your depth of field is very narrow, these will be especially useless.
Sadly, unless something has come out in the last very few months that I know about, there really just aren’t any small budget-priced TTF monitors that are true HD. The “industry standard” is the little Astro monitors, which are great and a legitimate 1080 lines… but they are roughly the price of a good used Buick (probably around $6000 these days). I think there is one other manufacturer as well, whose name escapes me, but their prices are up there with the Astros as well.
I’m hoping this changes soon… I myself would love some lower cost HD on-camera monitoring. Last year Sanyo announced development of a 7.1″ 1080 line monitor for use in auto headrests, etc., for HDDVD and Blu-Ray players, so the price is expected to be more reasonable… but it is not available yet.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[walter biscardi] “I have never gotten into a deal like this that ever worked out in my favor.”
I haven’t either. In ten years+ of being in “business for ourselves” our little production company has had only two bad debts (knock on wood), but they have both been from deals exactly like this. And they weren’t small uncollectible debts either, one of them was several tens of thousands of dollars.
Unless I was virtually guaranteed of a pretty darn big payoff in the end, we would run from a project like this. But that’s just us, we are too old to be gamblers anymore… maybe it is an acceptible risk for you, but the deal you sketched out is just one solid warning flag after another. Just ask every conceivable question that you can, get everything and more in writing, and cross your fingers.
Good luck!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Technically, no, you can’t use that music… well, at least not all of it, and at least not for free.
You have gotten around having to pay performance or synchronization rights since you are not using an existing recording of the song…
However there is still the matter of the publshing rights, which must be paid to the composers unless the music is old enough to be in the public domain.
Even that can be hazy… you mentioned “The Entertainer.” Scott Joplin wrote that in 1903, so it is in the public domain. At least the ORIGINAL version is. Any subsequent versions or adaptations (such as Marvin Hamlisch’s famous arrangement of it) will have their own individual copyrights that are protected.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Sure Jim… I’ve already written the guy I know, I will see what he has to say.
I’m sure you have looked around at the usual sources (West Marine, etc.). I just checked them out myself and was surprised at what a very limited selection of LED lighting there is. It has been a while (years actually) since I have done any marine lighting, but I would have thought they would have had a lot more to choose from.
Considering the 12-24v power requirements (I wouldn’t want anything that worked only with shore power) I would definitely think LEDs are the way to go. If not LEDs, then I suppose fluorescents would be another choice for a low power / high output combination. You can get warm fluroescent bulbs, so your cabin doesn’t look like a dentist’s office.
You said you were disappointed with the “quality” of light. Do you mean the quantity of the output? When you are looking at lighting instruments check the specs… the output will be listed in “footcandles” or “lumens.” The higher the number, the greater the light output. Just to give you a comparison, a regular old GE 60watt lightbulb puts out about 850 lumens. A 100w tugsten bulb puts out about 1700 lumens, etc.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Sure Jim… I’ve already written the guy I know, I will see what he has to say.
I’m sure you have looked around at the usual sources (West Marine, etc.). I just checked them out myself and was surprised at what a very limited selection of LED lighting there is. It has been a while (years actually) since I have done any marine lighting, but I would have thought they would have had a lot more to choose from.
Considering the 12-24v power requirements (I wouldn’t want anything that worked only with shore power) I would definitely think LEDs are the way to go. If not LEDs, then I suppose fluorescents would be another choice for a low power / high output combination. You can get warm fluroescent bulbs, so your cabin doesn’t look like a dentist’s office.
You said you were disappointed with the “quality” of light. Do you mean the quantity of the output? When you are looking at lighting instruments check the specs… the output will be listed in “footcandles” or “lumens.” The higher the number, the greater the light output. Just to give you a comparison, a regular old GE 60watt lightbulb puts out about 850 lumens. A 100w tugsten bulb puts out about 1700 lumens, etc.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hi Jim…
I checked out your website… first of all, from a fellow sailor (nothing as sweet as yours, I have a 30′ sweedish Shipman28), I am green with envy… you have done a beautiful job.
You have posed an interesting question…. however, this might not be the right place for it. This “lighting design” forum is basically for cinematographers and filmmakers… guys and gals who design lighting plots for film, television, photographic shoots…etc. Not really quite the same thing… unless you want your boat filled with C-stands, big lighting heads, and miles of ugly cable, and big sandbags holding everything down.
There might be someone in here who can help you out, but if so it would just be coincidence… it’s not our specialty.
However, I do have a buddy who has faced a similar need as yours. I don’t know who took care of his design… but I will try to find out. If I have any luck I will contact you directly.
Good Sailing!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Short answer… no.
Long answer… using a 35mm lens on a camcorder by itself does not decrease the depth of field. The DoF is very deep on a small camcorder because of the size of the tiny 1/3″ sensors. It’s principals of physics and optics that really can’t be bent much… the smaller the “target area” of the image, the greater the depth of field will be. This is why small camcorders have somewhat deeper depth of field that bigger “full sized” cameras, which have 1/2″ or 2/3″ sensors (but even the bigger camera have very deep DoFs). The same principals apply to film: 35mm film has much shallower potential DoF than 16mm because the surface area of the frame size is about five times bigger (and just for comparison, a 16mm film frame is going to be roughly the same size as a 2/3″ video sensor).
This is why you gain no change in DoF by just changing to a 35mm SLR lens. You must use a lens converter (which basically projects the image onto a 35mm-sized groundglass and re-photographs it) to achieve shallow DoF.
Yes, some of them are expensive. The “Rolls Royce” of lens converters is the P+S Technik Mini35 (for small cameras) and the Pro35 (for bigger cameras). Yep, they are expensive, about $10K-ish for the Mini35. On the other end of the spectrum are the bargain converters such as the Letus35 (just a few hundred bucks) and the Brevis35 (a little more than a grand, with lens mount). Somewhere in the middle (actually more toward the cheap end) is the unit from Redrock Micro.
I will say that having played with several of them (and am owner/user of a P+S Technik) you seem to get what you pay for. The more expensive units just seem to be better designed, more functional, and work better than the cheaper ones (I must say the Mini35 that we have is one of the best designed and built pieces of equipment that we have ever bought). On the cheaper end though I have seen some very nice footage out of the Brevis35, which is quite inexpensive.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I’d suggest you re-post your question over in the Broadcast Video forum… that’s where you will find the guys with expertise in this area. You’ll find mostly artists and designers in this forum.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com