Oh, and the Birger Mount that was supposed to arrive at the beginning of the week… it hasn’t even been shipped yet. I should have known better…

• Link to the person who tagged you
• Post the rules on your blog
• Write six random things about yourself
• Tag six people at the end of the post
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up

So, without further ado, 6 random facts about me:

I…

1. Have had all hair lengths between 1/4 inch and about a foot long
2. Hated learning languages in school, but find myself speaking 3 languages fluent, and have another 4 I once started
3. Love cats, have never understood dogs
4. Don’t really like anything stronger than beer — well, except for Cointreau and Baileys
5. Wore at some point two watches, at some other point none
6. Make — according do my daughters and wife — the world’s best pancakes

And to round this off, I am curious to find out six random things about and from Hallvord, Stu, Jessica, Shane, Marcus and Matthew.

20.000 gigabyte of data. 2 1/2 million individually renamed frames. $4.7 million dollar.

Some background footage:

Some facts

• The TV ad was shot using 200 Toshiba Gigashot Cameras: the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence
• This particular technique, viewing looping action in 360 degrees, has never been done before
• The rig was custom built weighing approximately half a tonne, including 200 cameras and electronics
• The rig measures 14m diameter circle and 1.8m high
• The 200 cameras were all triggered using a single remote control
• Once the rig was built, four focus pullers spent three days focusing and aligning all 200 cameras
• The time spent processing footage from 200 cameras was over four weeks - 24 hours a day seven days a week!
• New offline and online editing software had to be specifically built for the job
• In terms of data, this is one of the biggest jobs a post-production house has ever taken on - 20TB of data

Credits

Production Company: Hungry Man LTD
Director: Mitch Stratton
Editor and editing company: The Whitehouse / Christophe Williams
Post-production company: The Mill
Music: Crystal Castles – Air War
Voice-over: Kira Lauren

(from the Press Release)

Am again surprised at the high built quality of everything. Solid feel, not too heavy (maybe going to the gym in preparation for delivery has helped, too).

Because of the sudden rise of the dollar, we had to slim down our package, one of the things that went out was the ET Arri base plate. Having read about the wobbliness of the shoulder dovetail, I was very happily surprised at just how steady it did connect the camera to our Sachtler Video 20 III head. As a light-weight setup, I would see no problems using this on paid work.

The 7″ Pro LCD (the only thing I have splashed out on — besides the camera) is gorgeous, lightweight - and I love the ability to be able to control camera functions from it. Would love the function to re-assign the two brightness buttons to something more usable. Some banding, but I can live with that.

Mounting

Since Birger turned out not deliver on his promise, I am glad to have ordered the Nikon mount. This came not installed, but thanks to Douglas´ youTube video, installation was a breeze (one of the many benefits of having kids is ready availability of balloons; and yes, I did use a red one). The only change is that now you have to unplug the i-cable connector.

Besides my lovely set of Contax Zeiss primes, that I cannot yet use, I have a cheap, old, dusty, crappy, plasticy Nikon zoom with stuck aperture blades. But heck, I could throw it on. Did a few pans around the room, and could already enjoy just how better the camera handled the highlights and contrasts than any camera I could afford before. Would love the option to have the histogram displayed while changing the shutter angle.

By now it was Time For Some Sleep.

Day 2

Next day in the office I updated to Build 17. Turns out you need a magazine to do that. Luckily an hour later the friendly postman dropped by with 4 8gig cards from Lexar. On the first attempt at updating I got the rocketio error. Remembering that this might be connected to the CF module (all the hours on reduser were not wasted), I took out the CF card and re-inserted it. Now it worked. Bootup is 10 seconds faster than on build 16. LOVE the 1:1 zoom function. Occasionally, when switching modes, the screen turns black.

When I tried the black shading, the camera just eternally displayed the Matrix screen (nice touch, btw) until the battery died half an hour later. Through trial-and-error I found out that you have to format the magazine at first. Suggestion for build 17 release: before black-shading, check that the magazine is formatted. Even better: when an unformatted magazine is inserted, give automatically the option to format it right away - heck, I would love the option of automatically formatting whenever the magazine is empty. (I know I will get scolded for this suggestion…) Another suggestion: in the maintenance menu, display the date/time of the currently used black shading functions.

The same postman also brought an adapter cable that allowed me to hook up the camera to one of our 24″ dell editing screens. Not perfect colours, but great for the director.

Finally I could do some recordings. Even with my crap lens, the picture quality is just light-years ahead of what similarly priced cameras can deliver. I am soooo thankful that we could skip the HDV crap.

When we went from a small miniDV camera to a fullsize DVcam camera, that step was evolutionary. Two years back I thought the next evolutionary step would be an HD camera. Then I heard about RED. First it sounded too good to be true. Glad it wasn´t. Very, very, very glad.

This camera loves power. The electrical one. It sucks a battery that would´ve lasted half a shooting day on the DSR570 empty within an hour. So I ordered some more batteries.

Also ordered a 2.8ghz MacBook Pro, but that will take 2 weeks. Anecdotal evidence proved that a MacBook air is not suitable for field-use :o)

Well, that wraps up my first and second impressions of this ***-kicking camera. Thanks for reading.

Some thanks

Jim - for making his vision a reality. It really shows that this camera was not made by a company whose goal is to make a profit, and does so by making good cameras. RED is about making awesome cameras and then (and only then) turning it into a profitable business. And having fun along the way.

Redheads - everyone at RED for building this revolutionary (pronounced “badass” in Jarredian) camera. I don´t know you, but I command you! Thank thee! Keep it up.

Jarred - for Reduser. Without it I would not only be flabbergasted, but wouldn´t have met all the people I already have. Thanks to everyone participating on this forum.

Justin J. - for keeping up with my “occasionally” changing order. Thanks for all your help.

Douglas Underdahl - for (still) being the only one that actually delivers an alternative, non-warranty-voiding mount. Douglas went further out of his way and sent me a GDX (sp?) mount without before I sent him mine, thus avoiding my camera sitting around for 2 weeks. His mount arrived today, installation was a breeze and the original mount is sent off today.

Brandon - for jumping to my rescue and sending me his better Nikon lens. Arrived yesterday and our RED rocks even more. I can only imagine what it will be like with the Contax lenses.

Gunleik - for letting me play with his RED and thus sealing my fate. We reserved our camera a few days later. Enthusiasm does rub off.

Are - for tipping me off about the contact at FedEx that not only sped up the import (all paperwork was done and all fees paid while the camera was still in transit) but allowed me to pick up the camera from the airport, thus giving me a whole weekend to play with the camera.

Hunter - for making this light-weight solution for the battery. I finally can put it to use :o)

A friend told me I could save buckets by getting a so-called CISS system, continuous ink supply system.

Looking on eBay, there are many different offerings, all from cheap Asian to custom-built solutions for each printer. I chose an offering from down-under rihac. Installation is just a bit complicated, but if you manage to install memory in your computer, you´ll be fine. Rihac provides an extensive installation manual, which is adapted to your specific printer model.

The result: cheap printing (did you know that drugs - the illegal type - are cheaper than printer ink?), never having to worry about which colour might run out just as an important printing job is up, and saving the environment.

Rihac uses very good ink, and I did some printouts just before installation, and afterwards, and could not see a difference. Some reviewers wrote that the Rihac ink is more light resistant than the original one.

Bottom line

If you rather spend money on film gear than ink, get yourself a quality CISS system. Search on eBay, there are many different providers. I for one can recommend the one I chose, but find out for yourself.

Happy printing.

Director(s): David Morgasen , Yaroslav Kemnits (Director of Special Effects)
Writer(s): David Morgasen
Producer(s): Dmitry Lesnevsky (Exec. Producer), David Morgasen (Exec. Producer), Elena Muravina

Let´s see who is first to guess all 4 cameras used in the header graphic?