Browsing: Production

The art and science of making media.

Production Multiquip Inc. PSG6 Studio Inverter Generator

DVi contributor Craig Chartier saw a lot of really cool stuff at NAB this year. Most of it wasn’t even shipping then, but everything is available now. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Craig presents his “best products of the year” for 2012 in this four-page buyer’s guide. A lot of these items weren’t available for sale yet when they were first shown at NAB, but all of them can be bought right now, and the links to buy them from B&H, or directly from the manufacturer, or in some cases on Amazon, are included at the end of each description. There are no $10,000 items on this list. They are ranked in no particular order of importance and they cover several areas of production.

Camera Support

Another NAB, another Vinten review! Yes, it’s that time again: tinker and test, tweak and note, dust off the keyboard and set about disseminating the information. This is something of a “two for one” deal. This was necessitated by the fact that Peter Harman at Vinten kindly sent me the Vision blue5 for the review, and very nice it is too. However, it’s COG/ Mass graph quickly demonstrated that all of my Video cameras, even piled/ bolted one on top of the other, weren’t going to get the Counter Balance system to play ball in a fit. Cue: a mad scrabble to prise one of the very first prototypes of the new CB100 (more of that anon) out of my business / design partner / machine and powder coat shops in Texas. As I write this (eight days before copy deadline) it’s currently shown as “somewhere between Chicago (?) and New Zealand,” just what I really didn’t need.

Camera Support

The three levers, tilt, pan and slide plate lock, all have 6-position spring loaded lever arms allowing easy re–positioning at 60º intervals, although the latter two are not retained, so can easily be wound clean off the head. They all look readily replaceable in the event they take a fatal smack.

I have read somewhere that there is an issue with the slide plate lock lever swinging above the head plate and thus not allowing a “hippy” camera system to lock, or only with difficulty. As that lever only requires a 90º swing from full lock to off, and vice versa, and the lever arm is repositionable in 60º increments, if you can’t configure the lever arm not to swing above the head plate, you simply haven’t grasped how these levers work. This is a non-issue, and it’s simply not true.

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