I personally think that the 21 inch HD-SDi monitor is overkill and really expensive. You just want to have a hd monitor that you can use when shooting with the EX1 or EX3 right? Those FSI monitors are nice, and they will look good, but that is a real investment. Perhaps think about renting it for certian jobs?

If you really want to buy, try the IKAN 8000HD. It does not have HD-SDI, or scopes but it has all BNC connectors and uses component HD out of the camera. It is 8 inches, can display 1080, 720, 480p, costs just $795 and can be powered with Sony L series batteries or A/C. It is made cheap, but for the money it works well. It was just reviewed in TV Technology. I have used it, and it is im my “COX Sprinter” blog. The picture is sharp and colors are good.

I have also used the Lite Panels Mini and really like that on camera light, especially for under $400.

I have not mounted the matte box without the Letus yet. But keep in mind that you can remove the shotgun mic, not sure if the onboard stereo mic (built in) would get in the way…I will check that out.

By the way, I was looking at the MF Nikon Nikkor AI lenses on Ebay so that I could use them on the letus and on the D300 I am about to purchase. I want to share lenses to save money obviously.

I am not sure if I should be buying digital camera AI lenses or film camera AIs. What do you suggest?

I am thinking of buying either some Rosco light panels or some LED lights from properter people so that there is nice light with little to no heat. Fast breakdowns with ultra light fixtures that will run on batteries all day long. What do you think of these? Do you ever use this kind of light fixtures?

On your RedrockMicro mattebox I am wondering if you have mounted it on the EX1 without the Letus? I am wondering because some of the matteboxes I understand fight with the mic on the front of the EX1. Is there plenty of clearance between the mattebox and the front of the EX1 without the Letus?

The secret to getting no reflections on that glass is to use very focused and directional light. Every light I used, except for the two key soft boxes, was focused fixtures (they had Fresnel lenses). I was also keeping light reflections to a minimum because I knew exactly where the “sight lines” for the beams of light were coming from. The soft boxes had to be placed just right and flagged off to remove the reflections on the back display cases.

Yes, we were using HD-SDI out of the cameras to power two monitors. One of the monitors was a Sony CRT. This CRT had an “A” and a “B” HD-SDI input on it. This was great because at our “video village” the producer was able to switch between the Paul camera and the John camera. The second monitor was a Panasonic LCD with just one HD-SDI input. We fed the locked down two shot to this monitor. I set these two monitors on a table and the producer watched them and took time code notes through out the interview.

I do not know anything about that FSI monitor. We use Tektronics all the time, but these things are big bucks.

I used the monitor and the camera vf to first set the back focus (with a bf chart). I used the camera viewfinder for critical focus when setting the subjects. The black and white high res hi def crt eyepiece viewfinders are sharp and brilliant.

As for shooting this interview, I do this stuff all the time. This one is only different because I set up a time lapse camera in the back and wrote a blog about it.

Good luck and Happy New Year.
-Tom

You mentioned specular highlights from all the glass to the left and right of the interview. I am wondering how you managed to cut down this effect and still have orange light through those cases. What was your process.

I am also wondering if you were using HD-SDI out on the 900s? Or was it three cables out and audio seperate and timecode out seperate? What kind of monitors were you using? I am thinking of purchasing an FSI monitor that is HD-SDI with waveform and vectorscope and stuff all built in. I’m wondering if you have experience with these and if they would have worked for you on this Were the monitors used for critical focus or did you use in camera means for focus? Other means? Please explain.

How’d you get so lucky as to get to shoot a Paul Pierce interview?

In this case, the Pierce interview, I set the Sony EX1 to record one frame ever one second. I also set the camera to 16FPS shutter for the motion blur effect. The seven hour event was boiled down to the length of this video, just under six minutes.