Arri SOFTBANK D4 Tungsten light kit/ CASE KIT - ARSBD4K

So I needed a new light kit and I started to look at what was available for the price range. I have had many kits over the last 15 years, consisting of mostly Lowel lights. So naturally I’m a fan of lowel lights. The DP is an awesome light I have 3 of them, I also have an army of Omni light, a Riffi 55, the cool and small Pro light. But I wanted to look at options, one other thing I have is a work bench of old/broken lights and parts, and was looking for a kit that would last and was built a wee bit better than the lights I currently own so I looked at Arri. The tough thing on choosing Arri lights is that there are so many different kit configurations that it’s hard to choose. Open face, Fresne, etc..

So I did some research and found I could get Fresnel light and get more power with less wattage, even though it’s a 19^th century technology. Fresnel’s lenses have greater ability to focus the light beam brighter than typical lenses and also have a more consistent intensity across the beam of light being transmitted. I also knew I wanted a variety to complement the lights I currently own. The Arri D4 4 light kit had this and more. The kit includes 2-150w Fresnel’s, 300w Fresnel and a 650 Fresnel. The 650 with the supplied Chimera Video pro XS 16”x22”Softbank and speed ring gave me my key light, 150w rim light 300w background or rim light and a 150w for accent light.

I found this kit quickly became my kit of choice for interviews and every day shooting. Another thing I enjoy on my Arri kit are the stands, these stands are sturdy, and taller than most other stands. The lit comes with basic scrims, barndoors and a set of lamps. The total wattage for the kit is 1250 watts. I also suggest purchasing additional scrims for this kit. I had never spent this much money on a light kit before and had a hard time parting with the money, but once I got the kit I was pleasantly suppressed at the quality, craftsmanship of this kit.

The two main lights the 650 and 300w light have very long cables which were really nice on shoots. Less stingers to carry knowing my light will work in most situations. Also having 2-150W lights is real nice, these are superb accent lights and can be used just about every shoot.  The biggest down side to this kit is the 150W lights have shorter cables which can hinder their placement, also the kit is heavy! 50 Pounds not including the extras we like to carry. Overall this is a nice kit, simple and basic. 

Summary: Someone needed a basic kit for interviews, good started kit.

Target Apps: Videographers, wedding, corporate, commercial

Price tested $2,274.00

What’s Cool: longer cables on key lights, craftsmanship, has the basics for any shoot

Missing; Better case whit wheels, larger case for caring extras

Tech specs: 4 Fresnel’s 2x150w,1-300w, 1650w, softbox, 4 stands, case barndoors

Raiting: Solid

Litepanels Micro LED on Camera light

I have been looking for an on camera light replacement for my frezzi for years but nothing was as good until now. The Litepannels Micro LED is amazing. This light is a must have for your camera bag no heat and lots of punch. You need a fill light outside it does it, a key light for a quick interview it does it. This daylight balanced (5600k) uses 4 AA batteries to operate.

Is dimmable comes with a gel holder and a filters for tungsten, warming and diffusion. The housing is plastic and not built as well as my Frezzi was but it’s more powerful and doesn’t get hot! There have been countless times I burned my and tweaking my Frezzi, no more with onlyt 3watts of power consumption it dosent get hot.

 Now I don’t like on camera lights, nothing looks worse than an interview with a light on the camera so I built a custom cable for my Frezzi to get it off the camera, this light has no cables I can put it anywhere no strings attached! It can also mount on a light stand if I want and get a nice key light, I have even shot photography with this little light. 

Litepanels recommend using E2 Lithium Batteries, you will see a difference they cost more but they last longer 7 to8 hrs and the light works better with them.

Next time your subjects needs a little more punch or lighten up the shadows in the eyes; reach for your Litepanel Micro LED and you will be a believer like me that this light does wonders. After a few shoots you will wonder how you ever got by without having this in your bag.

Price tested $296.00

Pros: Light weight, powerful light, dimmable

CONS: light weight construction not very strong, dv power cable not included at that price

TECH SPECS

Lamp Type LED Array

Mount Type Shoe Mount with Adjustable Head

Power Source

6VDC from Four AA Batteries
5-12VDC from Optional Source

Power Consumption 3W

Power Connector

AA Batteries Internal
Litepanels Proprietary External

Dimensions (WxDxH)

3.3 x 1.5 x 3.3"

Weight 4 oz

At the end of 2008, I had a small budget for some cases for my gear. While doing research on different cases for my gear, I stumbled upon Cinebags. Cinebags is a company out of California who make gear bags, back packs and stuff. I was really impressed with their line, so I ordered the CB-10 Cinematographer V2 bag and an AC pouch. I decided to order the special edition bag with a cool embroidered dragon.

Before big shoots, I always go through my stuff and load up the gear I’ll need. My camera has camera stuff; my light case has lighting, etc. But my DP gear, IE meters, charts, laptop, etc always got tossed in my back pack or put in my camera case that is, until I got my Cinebag. It’s awesome! All my stuff is accessible in one bag, all the time. How did I ever get by before this?

I now have one case that has my director’s finder, spot meter, light meter, incline meter, camera charts, P2 cards, P2 drive all in one convenient location. One stop shopping! This bag rocks.  It even holds my 17” notebook with room for my camera charts.  The bag is very sturdy and has 6 removable interior compartments grouped in 3’s. Each compartment is padded and has a place for business card or labeled placard to identify all 6 compartments. It also has a front zipper space perfect for small items like zip drives, etc.

There is also a flap portion for holding highlighters, pens, small zipper compartment for biz cards. One of my favorite features on this bag is the adjustable opening for the compartment section. It has 3 stages of snaps to open the bag; this is nice on location because you decide how much you bag opens. You can un-snap and have the bag open full open or just a few inches and not spill everything out.

My Ac pouch is something I have needed for a while but the budget was always pushed aside for one new gadget or another. Not this year, I purchased one from Lindcraft and received one from Cinebags and side by side it’s obvious that the Cinebags AC pouch stands out. It’s not just the color, mine is grey with a reflective stripe on the flap vs black from the other company.

The pouch is grey, which I find it easier to find stuff in low light. The nylon is a better grade and the belt loop has grommet and sewn, versus just sewn. They both have the same amount of compartments, but I like the styling and the construction of the Cinebags AC pouch better and the Cinebag AC pouch immediately became my only AC pouch. 

Cinebags is a fairly new company and is definitely creating exciting products to make our life easier on the set. I highly recommend their products, and will be purchasing more as soon as my budget allows.

Check out there web site www.cinebags.com/index.html

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The year of 2009 will be a busy year for Wonderdog and I. We are planning on 4 short films and entering a short for the Tacoma 72 hour film festival. my first shot with be a detective drama/suspence an should be about 40 to 50 minutes long. Its about 2 detectives in the city of Amocat on a stake out. This will be shot on the Panasonic HVX170, Red rock M2 and Canon EOS primes. Stay tuned for behind the scenes pics and a trailer. Primary Photography should comence mid march.


Next up is Olga's Mothers day. I will be cinematographer and she will be writer/director. This story is about a mother and son relationship. This short will also be shot on the Panasonic HPX170 with the M2 and Canon primes. Olga is planning on blogging this project and some of her other projects as well.


Stay tuned to learn more about 2009's exciting projects.

Meet the Wonderdog Crew.
Olga- Producer/translator/prompter chick/Patron/Boss

Scott- Cinematographer/director

Brandon- grip/ photog/dolly grip. prankster

Mark aka"wondergrip" you name it he does it. nuff said..

Brenden Link-Grip, slateboy, Intern, soon to be college grad.

Dennis- Audio, all around fun guy, speaks like 3 languages, plays Jimmy Page in Zep tribute band

Erwin- Host/problem fixer

Im in the process of shooting a safety video for a Puget Sound company and this is the first real test of my new HPX 170 camera. We are shooting in many different locations, construction sites, wharehouse, manufaturing sites, etc... we are using a teleprompter for 90% of the shots, the other 10% im using my HVX 200p.

Here we are on location...in a trench with the HPX 170, teleprompter and Baby legs I got on ebay for $18.00. Me on camera, Olga on prompter, Brenden on slate and Dennis on sound. Brandon is taking this picture. we are averaging 10 hour days and 10 set ups a day for 6 scenes. each day has at least one dolly shot and this day was mostly out doors. we used Mole 2k juniors with full CTB most of the day. One of the biggest challenges have been our prompter, it dosent like moving and the outdoors to much.

This shot was the last shot of the day.

Mark the wondergrip levaling the dolly track Saturday.

Making final tweeks and testing the track. Thomas(extra) Dennis, Olga, Me and wondergrip Mark.
Lights:Molequartz 2k and Mole 2k Junior with frost. just off camera to the left was a B&M Nooklight 1K, also 2 2k juniors were used for backgroung accents, and arri 650 with 1/2CTB was used in BGND.

Making final script changes before the fist take this weekend, our safety vests were a location requirement.
See B&M Nooklight, this light is amazing it's output feels like 1.5k. I used it as a hard kicker light, you can see its effect on my hat and shoulder.

Olga makes final wardrobe ajustments as Denis takes a reast on the dolly. You can see the Molequartz 2k as our key light and an Arri 300 to light the boxes. Here is a final shot of the scene as seen by my still camera.

The sandbag is not in the shot. there is a 2k with amber hitting our extra, Molequartz with egg crate as key, arri 300 lighting the boxes center frame an Arri650 fill light on out talent and aJunior 2k lighting up the back wall over our talent's head.

Come back soon for more details and updates on this project,
Thanks for reading.

Scott

I have shot a few things with my new camera now and plan on writing a review. the things i like and dislike, things to think about before you buy! I was lucky to get this camera in late September thanks to the guys at Professional Video and Tape in Portland. 

I got one of the first 5 cameras given to them from Panasonic in Japan.

Check back soon!

thanks

As a RedRock regular I enjoy my M2. I use it every chance I get, but the thing that bugged me the most was the fact that your image was upside down. This meant you had to turn all of your monitors upside down, not to mention the issues in post and slating. Needless to say it was time consuming.

In February of 2008 RedRock announced the Micro X a product that would flip your image in front of the camera...no more upside down monitors, etc... Could this be? YES! I immediately reserved mine on the redrock web page. A few months later it was announced that my number had come up and I could purchase the Micro X. I paid for express shipping because I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this amazing piece of equipment.

In a few days my Micro X was here. After unpacking and watching the tutorial online I was up and running. It took me about an hour to set up the MicroX and start shooting my test footage. Note: You need a smaller achromat that is part of the kit and I didn’t understand this at first, but soon had my old one disassembled and the new 55mm achromat on. I had heard lots of rumors about losing too much light, etc but the light loss wasn’t bad at all. I’m used to my system needing  more light in general and over the last year I have learned to work around it accordingly.

WOW was the first thing out of my mouth, plus a smile from ear to ear for about an hour knowing I would not have to explain to clients about the upside down monitors on set anymore. My first impression was the image was it looked sharper than ever, after posting a few comments on my amazement and reading others at RedRock’ online forum everyone seemed to have the same opinion. This thing ROCKS!

Everything is sharper with the MicroX. Since installing  my Micro X on my HVX200 I  have not taken it off. I shoot everything with it, SD/HD... Everything!  The first project I shot with my MicroX I won the Grand Jury Award for the Best Film in the Grand Cinema 72 Hour Film Competition. I would have never been able to do this without the MicroX because of the tight turn around (72hours) of the film competition the “old way” would have taken
too long in post, but with the micro x it was simple.

If you have been wondering how you could use your M2 more, than this is the product for you.
Since I got my M2 I have shot more with my M2 than the year I had it without it, not to mention the amazing look you get with the M2. It ads an edge to your Video and is very cost effective. Hats off to Brian and the guys at RedRock Micro for looking out for me the little guy on a budget it just keeps getting better and better.

I advise any who shoots with an M2 to get this product, it will change the way you shoot everything.

http://www.redrockmicro.com/forum/
http://www.redrockmicro.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/991156 an army of two short film
http://www.vimeo.com/scottgribble/videos lots of M2 clips

I know what you’re thinking, “Global warming is a big corporate guy issue”, I’m just a small production company in any town America. But in today’s every changing world everyone should think globally and act locally. My company Wonderdog Media,  a production company in the Seattle/Tacoma Market, is trying to help reduce our carbon foot print on the this planet called earth.

About a year and a half ago, my wife and business partner Olga and I sat down and asked what can we do here at Wonderdog to think globally and act locally. After a thorough examination on how we do business, we’ve concluded that the immediate changes we could take that would have the most impact on our environment was in the reduction in the amount of media stock used in the company.  In the eight years we have been in business, Wonderdog has been utilizing various formats: mini DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO,  Beta sp, DVDs  you name it even 3/4inch. We have way too much tape stock and still do! I suggested we should look at the tape-less cameras.  Back then the only real camera on the market was the Panasonic HVX200P (now there is the Sony EX camera), so we invested in our Panasonic HVX 200 P2 camera and 3 P2 cards-an investment well worth it.

It took some time to get up to speed on the “new“technology but after a few weeks, I was shooing 85% of my projects on P2 cards SD and HD. After my first shoot I was wondering why I didn’t do this sooner.

How does shooing on P2 cards help global warming you ask?
No more UPS trucks hauling my tape stock to my office every 3 to 5 days, no more tape stock also means no more plastics (case, Tape) made with Oil.  Also the cost savings of tapeless is huge.

The next thing I purchased was a fire Store FS 100. This is a 100 gig hard drive that connects with my camera via fire wire and allows for more storage and longer shooting times, and with firmware updates can shoot variable frame rates now and is real nice for longer shoots. The FS-100 can hold 100 minutes of  DVCPRHD. The advantage of the FS-100 is that it also works with my other fire wire cameras. Since I have bought this drive, I no longer shoot with tape stock on any of my other 6 cameras. Unless the client has specific requirements for the use of tape stock or if we are a gun for hire and tape is a requirement. Other than that no tape.

One advantage of the fire store unit is that it can shoot in native AVI, AVI Type II, QuickTime and Avid OMF files, which allows for faster access to edit the captured footage.  It also allows the ability to post clips via ftp or burn dailies on set to the client for them to view that evening on there laptop.

I live for the day when I can shoot direct to disc and upload the files to any client any where in the world.  Life without shipping charges and hassles would be bliss No more Fed Ex charges just imagine how much that would save a year!  Fortunately most of our clients are local, and this allows us to save a lot of time and money while doing our part to reduce Wonderdog’s impact on the environment..

One of the things that has changed for us going tapeless is that we need loads of computer storage space. We have expanded our storage tenfold since 2003. We currently have 15 TB of storage which allows us to have back-ups on our back-ups. You must have a real tight naming convention to keep all these files in order or life will suck!

Olga came up with the idea to convert all of our paper work in the interactive form maker program of the latest Adobe Acrobat version.  All of our invoices, bids, contracts, project tracking is now an emailable interactive electronic form. Going paperless has allowed us to save huge!  We spend less on paper which means less waste to local landfills, less trips to the local office supply store and saving on auto fuel usage. Our accounting software, Quick Books allows for each employee, officer, and vendor to digitally track time for company projects, and billable hours. Each week the logged timer files are emailed to Olga for AR/AP processing.  These files are easily processed through the accounting software.  There is no need for double entry of timer activities. Our clients just love the emailed bids and contracts!  There is a quick turn-around to approve bids, and process work orders.  Clients can even pay their bills online!  It truly is a win win for the client and for the company as there are no checks to write, no envelopes or stamps, less paper, less carbon, are you starting to see a trend?. 

Another thing in the office we are doing is with faxing. We have a client that sends and receives 12,000 pages of faxes a month, 12,000 pages, that’s a lot of paper! As they did we decided to move to efaxing.
What is an E-fax? E Fax is an electronic fax or email fax. When a client sends a fax it doesn’t go to our fax machine it goes to the person needing the fax via email.  We now can fax from our laptops and desk tops, a client can fax me a script and I don’t have to move, I get an email in my Outlook with an attachment of the fax.  Each employee has there own personal fax number so they can get there faxes from where ever they are via email. Our clients really love this feature. I even had clients when I’m on the road with them have there office forward a fax from  there office to my laptop then I forward the mail to them with the PDF attachment. Another advantage to E fax is accountability. You immediately know when and where a fax was sent.

In today’s production environment we all have high speed internet at our office, and a way we can take advantage of the band with is we have converted all of our phone lines to Voip. Voice over Internet protocol. Our Voip modems connect to our traditional Lucent partner phone system and our clients don’t even notice the difference. Having this technology allows for a substantial cost savings on a monthly basis. Another  benefit is simulring. This allows up to 7 numbers to ring at the same time when a client calls our office. No more missed gigs.

When our lease was up we spent a few months looking for office space keeping the green in mind we decided to choose an office that had lots of sky lights giving us sun up to sun down natural light. When we moved in to our new production facility this year the savings was immediate saving on our electric bill, another thing we did was to convert all of our incandescent light bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs, not only saving us money, but helping the environment.

In our future are LED production lights. We have a 2 year plan to replace the majority of our production lights with energy efficient LED lights.  No more sitting under hot 4 hot 1k lights not only good for the bottom line but good for everyone we share the planet with.

It is time for all of us to our part big or small to make less of an impact on the planet we call home, if not for us for our children I have 6 so I really need to. Even if global warming isn’t your thing you can make simple changes to your office and daily production routines that can have a positive impact on your carbon footprint and your bottom line. With everything sometimes there are larger costs up front but the Savings you reap will go along way to reduce your carbon foot print and help the planet at the same time.

With that money saved go buy the newest gadget for your camera, or that much needed vacation.

Online Resources:
www.adobe.com
www.quickbooks.com
www.Panasonic.com
http://www.ge.com/products_services/lighting.html
www.firestore.com
www.lowellights.com
www.vonange.com
www.flolight.com
www.efax.com
www.microsoft.com
http://www.ledlightbulb.net/
www.kinoflo.com
www.litepanles.com

check it out at http://www.vimeo.com/991156

Won Best Picture for the Grand Cinema 72 hour film festival.

Brothers set out on a journey only to stumble upon a man in the woods. They begin a struggle for life or death only if they can find their way out of the woods. Is it fact or fiction, you decide. 5 minutes long. part of the 72 hour film Competition may 3rd, 2008. shot in only 6 hours and edited in 12 hours.


Equipment: HVX200p, RedRock Micro 35, Micro X, Canon fd 28mm,24mm,35mm,50mm. p2 cards 720 24pn, edited on Avid Media Composer/w mojo SDI, encode for 720p for web with Sorenson Squeeze thanks for viewing.