Monthly Archives: October 2011

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One of the things that we've been working on for the past few weeks is a motorized, wirelessly controlled Cable Cam a.k.a. Skycam. These rigs fly a camera seamlessly across any distance using a rope line. Under the Cable Cam is a pan-tilt head to maneuver the camera position. We should have started the test without the camera mounted, and needless to say we've got a few bugs to work out!!

The problem we ran into was using a cheap Traxxas Remote and Receiver (old crystal type). There was too much interference that caused the motor to go out of control. After replacing our remote and receiver with a much more expensive 2.4GHZ version, we were outdoors flying our rig with no problems. Once we have the prototype finalized, we'll get this sucker into production and at the most affordable cost than any other motorized cable cam system on the market. I'm sure this will be something everyone will be excited about....

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Cable-Cam Prototype (can't show you too much...)

Here's an idea of the type of footage you can achieve with Cable Cam type systems (video below)

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(above) Original Pico Flex Dolly Demo video

For the first time, the Pico Flex Dolly is available Internationally. As usual all of this information will be updated at the main product website https://PhotographyAndCinema.com.

The first retailer ePhoto Inc., has decided to carry the Pico Flex Dolly units (dolly only at this time) and is offering the units for sale in both USA and International to some countries. They have only a limited quantity at this time, so if you've been waiting for the opportunity, the time is now (click here).

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find-price-button Pico Flex Skater Dolly - via eBay

For USA customers, the Pico units were also not available on Amazon recently. ePhoto Inc has also added a listing over at Amazon following the link (click here).

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find-price-button Pico Flex Skater Dolly - via Amazon

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pico-international

If you're not familiar with the Pico Flex Table dolly, you can find some information here: http://cheesycam.com/new-pico-flex-table-dolly/

It's been just over a month since the Pico Flex Dolly was released, and since then it has not sold internationally (including Canada). Sorry people, it's really much more complicated than it appears. There's been quite a few hurdles in the last few weeks, but this time PhotographyandCinema.com has opened up with retail partners who have the experience and capabilities of shipping internationally.

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The deals have already been made and the retail partners are just waiting for the inventory to ship. I know that the retailers are excited about posting the products up as soon as they have it in their hands, and i'll announce where it will be available when that happens. Some retailers will be receiving inventory by tomorrow or Friday, so as soon as I hear the listings are up i'll post that on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/cheesycam

For USA customers, the Pico Flex Dolly is available via https://PhotographyandCinema.com

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First look at a very new product (unreleased) (Patented Pending) that I showcased a few days back. Leo said it looked like a Canon 60D on steroids. Camera mounted is the Canon 7D. This is a prototype version and as far as I know, a very original product idea. I can't really talk about specs outside of the 5.6" HDMI LCD that swivels. I'm not sure how much it will change in the production model. There's built in speakers for playback, an HDMI pass through, and powered by LP-E6. There's an LP-E6 shaped battery case adapter that looks like it uses AAA batteries. So far it's very convenient to just mount an LCD monitor to your camera like a battery grip, and have such a large monitor available. It sort of feels familiar like using a GH2, T3i, or 60D.

There's a few more 'unreleased' products i'll be talking about soon too. For more updates remember to follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/cheesycam

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A Canon T3 (not T3i) bundle shows up on the eBay deals page. Not very exciting since the bundle is based around a cheaper camera strap, SDHC card, camera bag, card case, card reader, lens cleaning kit, and mini tripod. Surprisingly though, they sold over 70 units, several dozen today. You can check out other discounted camera deals over at the page (click here)

Canon T3 Bundle
find-price-button Canon T3 Bundle Tripod, Bag, Strap, SDHC Card

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Screen shot 2011-10-11 at 11.04.52 AM

Vimeo member ephisus uses several strings of Christmas lights wrapped around a wreath frame to create a continuous ring light source. There's a definite catch light in the subject's eyes that smaller diameter ring lights have a hard time achieving (unless you're super close). The trick to making these catch lights smaller or larger is to move it closer or further away from the subject. I like the ring light effect, but some people see it as 'unusual'. If you pull your light source a bit further, you'll just get a clean round dot. Simple build, no soldering, with an estimated cost of about $25 dollars. [Thanks Joel]

These type of stringed bulbs are getting harder to find now that LED XMAS lights are inexpensive to make, use less power, and generate no heat. Check your local hardware stores, but online i've only managed to find two that might output enough light.

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sennheiser-g3-wireless

When it comes to going wireless with audio, you can't go wrong with Sennheiser products. Unless of course you've managed to purchase a counterfeit. Sennheiser will be filing a lawsuit against several companies for selling counterfeit Sennheiser gear, with no real mention on if there are very specific products - could be anything I guess. If you think you might be a buyer, you can follow some steps at their website: https://www.sennheiserusa.com/serviceandsupport_counterfeitalert

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I showed a simple way to motorize a Juicedlink slider, but didn't have time to go out for some full video clip samples. If you're wondering how smoothly it actually works, Vimeo member Chad Johnson has a review and provides some excellent examples of slider movements along with a JuicedLink jingle. You can find all the JuicedLink slider options over at the JL site (click here).

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find-price-button JuicedLink DIY Slider Kit

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A teaser shot 100% on GoPro HD cameras, showing what can kind of 'bullet-time' effect can be accomplished with the worlds first GoPro HD Video array. Firing off dozens of networked still cameras in a single frame is a technical hurdle for most, so a more popular idea is to extract a single video frame from each video clip. This is a time consuming post process, which looks like how this project was pulled off. I can't be sure, but a similar project was done using DSLRs not too long ago. [Thanks Jason]