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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Birger Lens Mount Reservations

Erik,

please take your time and finish this Birger mount so we can have good fun with it.
Then do a good tutorial video to teach us well how to install it.
And maybe when you have the time, try to post more about the short that broke your Red. Communication is important you know.
And I'm sure people will calm down and stop going with the wind talking about every new mount that comes each week.

Cause you have a very good product I know.
 
Wait... I thought it was finished. But it's the warranty that's throwing a wrench into the works.
 
None of us doubt Erik's product. We all think it's going to be amazing. That's why everyone is so passionate about it and so disappointed when it gets pushed back yet again. I'll be a lot less frustrated if I can be shooting while we're all giving Erik time to perfect it. I'm not blowing in the wind, I'm just jumping at anything that ships so I can keep moving forward.
 
maxwax said:
I asked Amy to send me mine without waiting for the warranty, but if this thing ships before then and it works, (which I'm a little doubtful of, because Erik has already told us it's impossible)
Click to expand...

see attachment. Will this be stable enough? Why not?
 
The mounts that damaged the cameras drew more power than the camera was speced to provide for less than 1/100,000 of a second, once per power up, and once per lens replacement. The protection device in the camera did not stop this from happening. On two cameras, this only damaged the port. On the third camera this fried a board. On all three cameras this did not immediately do damage. On my camera it took months to fry the AUX232 port, on the others, hours.

The official diagnosis that I and the two others were given by RED is that the I-Cable was pinched, causing a short. My camera may have actually had a pinched cable. One has to understand that in development "things" happen. We beat on the camera pretty hard to make sure everything was going to be okay. While the suggestion that Birger isn't even skilled enough to install it's own mounts is amusing, it certainly doesn't reflect the realities of development.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that after a few power up hours, the other two cameras suddenly pinched their cables. It is just not a plausible explanation. I am not suggesting that RED is covering anything up. I think they have simply drawn the wrong conclusion.

The fact that too much current was being drawn, for even the briefest amount of time, is Birger's fault. 100%.

We have a saying here at Birger. If I can see it I can fix it. We saw it on Monday. We fixed it on Wednesday. This did not require a circuit change. We moved to the AUX12V on the back of the camera because it provides more power and both correctly sees and protects against this fault.

I personally feel that the new PL mount on the front of the camera, while it does solve many problems, also introduces many. I find it unfortunate that RED appears to have rushed the changed mount into production, and prefers to change the boundary of what may be disassembled on the camera so late in the game, rather than fix some poorly thought out design decisions.

I found it very challenging to put the I-cable back in the track machined for it in the PL-mount. I wonder how many Nikon mounts have been assembled onto the camera and resulted in the same piched cable situation, shorting out a board in the camera. If this track were simply wider/deeper or the I-cable were detachable at the front face of the camera, there wouldn't be any problems. I also wonder how many of these cable have seen damage during the initial assembly procedure at the factory.

Personally, I think the best solution suggested to date is that a customer be allowed to pay RED to remove the I-Cable. Suddenly no more possibility of shorts. Rather than make a camera be a PL or Birger camera, how about making it a PL/I or an anything (change at will) camera?
 
Erik,

Thanks for the explanation and keep at it. I still think your mount has great potential for the hordes that want to use other lenses. Since I'm in the Nikon camp, I have the Red dumb mount option, but am still holding out for the Birger to work things out and function as it should. I'd really like to have the bluetooth controller, it's a great idea.
 
birgerEngineer said:
Personnally, I think the best solution suggested to date is that a customer be allowed to pay RED to remove the I-Cable. Suddenly no more possibility of shorts. Rather than make a camera be a PL or Birger camera, how about making it a PL/I or an anything (change at will) camera?
Click to expand...

I would be up for this... Thanks for keeping us in the loop Eric.

I am going to wait out the storm and hope that this is all sorted when 3066 is ready. Please keep working on those Knobs :-)
 
Make it fool prove and one can find always a bigger fool.

As I said in my previous posts, all power out from the camera should have fusible links, usually small 100 ohm resistor that will burn if power leads are shorted. Phantom power specs for instance clearly specify that you can short the power without any damage to the supply.
USB supply is the same, short the power and nothing will happen.
On the RED I am not sure if you can short the AUX 12 V out?
I remember that we had cable cut on the RED audio in early cameras, before new xlr-XLR cable was introduced with the resistor inside.
The whole camera did shut down on this event.
Again I am not sure if this was main power supply inside the RED camera detecting the short and kicking in or just a coincidence. But it was nice that it happened instead of frying the audio board.

These main power supply protections are good for total short but not good for partial short, millisecond short or overload. Usually it will not kick in on time.
 
I-Cable

I-Cable

Thanks Erik for posting the info about the I-Cable. Removing the I-Cable makes so much sense. 1. The Birger Mount will not pass iris info to the camera using the I-Cable anyway, it will do so with the RS232. 2. The I data is also not even used by Red yet, there are currently no data pins in the PL mounts so this will have to be a future mod anyway.

Hopefully Red will agree that with the I-Cable removed there will be NO REASON to prohibit users from removing the inside Red plate. Nothing to short. We can then get back the flexibility we were all expecting with this amazing camera. I do also hope that they will allow professional camera repair technicians/companies to remove the I-cable so that people in other parts of the world will not be burdoned by international shipping and customs.

With the I-cable removed we can go back to swapping the mounts ourselves.
 
I can´t help thinking that this is a discussion that should go on between Birger and Red. But since it is in the open, and I do not see any benefit of the i-Cable - especially as it apparently is not even enabled - I second Erics suggestion, having the option of getting the Red One without the cable.

Someone else also suggested that the iCable could be disabled via Firmware - if that was the case, even better so for those who have already taken delivery of their beloved camera.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Yeah, how much do you think an /i cable would fetch on eBay? Quick, before the site is flooded with them.

Did anyone order the Cooke RED set of /i lenses?
 
Where does this leave reservation holders at the moment? Specifically those who do not want to take delivery of the current mount and void their warranty.

It seems perhaps that Red and Birger have finished their discussions.

I just have a feeling things are in limbo because no-body knows who is taking the next step here. Erik is not pleased with the current situation and/or having cameras sent to him for installation. The board don't seem happy with this either. Red seem to not want to budge on the warranty.

Red have been very quiet since the meeting, which either means they are thinking about their view on this, or they see no need to repeat what they have already said. But Im sure I'm not the only one who still thinks there are issues between the two companys that need to be talked over more.
 
Is there no way to simply put insulation tape over the i-cable connector and tuck it out of harm's way inside the camera body, so it will still be available in the event you or a future owner of your Red One still has the option of using the Cooke /i lenses?

Removing the cable makes some cameras non-standard, which may affect resale.

But at the moment, I'd take it's removal if it allowed technically competent owners to swap mounts without voiding warranty.
 
Martin Weiss said:
I can´t help thinking that this is a discussion that should go on between Birger and Red. But since it is in the open, and I do not see any benefit of the i-Cable - especially as it apparently is not even enabled - I second Erics suggestion, having the option of getting the Red One without the cable.

Someone else also suggested that the iCable could be disabled via Firmware - if that was the case, even better so for those who have already taken delivery of their beloved camera.

Thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...

After reading the past posts it looks like just the i/ contacts were removed from the PL mount going to the i/ cable but cable may be hot and probably it can't be disabled in firmware, otherwise why they removed the contacts. I remember build 14 had phantom power disabled from the same reason, of peoples plugging the mikes with big capacitor in it and causing 1/100000 sec spike load on the phantom 48V supply, blowing up the circuits or causing camera to shut down.
Here it is no brainer since phantom power should withstand the complete short so no one could be blamed but RED audio board designer.
RED corrected it by supplying the mike cables with internal resistor that adjust the mike/line audio level but also acts as a current limiter.

The same thing is happening with RS232 port that Eric did blew up.
Capacitor in the Canon mount was shunting the supply for the fraction of the second in RED RS232 supply port.

The only difference here is that RED RS232 auxiliary port power supply specification doesn't allow for shorts or over-currents, period. Eric should put some inductance and small resistor to prevent capacitance current spike, and then we could use RS232 port instead of going all the way to the back. Even better is to use current limiting diode.

So the camera that was damaged was not damaged from the i/ cable being pinched but as Eric suggested from constant power surges cussed by the Canon mount internal capacitance. In the other statement that RED suspects the i/ cable being pinched, all this is just a speculations. Once you have audio board fried and some pinch marks on the i/ cable you will never know.
I will not speculate, but the RS232 board connector is on the same audio board that doesn't protect phantom power so it looks like all power out from the audio board is designed without fusible links or current limiting diodes.

Watch your cables guys, any cut or pinch will blew up the audio board.
 
I can only emphasize that, without a Birger that I can swap out myself without voiding a warranty, I will not be buying a RED. I have always believed the Birger was, by far, the most important "accessory" for the camera, the one which really made ownership financially feasible for a host of prospective buyers (including myself) and the one which also happens to offer the most intriguing electronic control and technological integration.

I implore RED to adopt a more reasonable warranty policy regarding this product (whether that entails removal of the i-cable before shipping or what have you) so that reservation holders like myself can still realize the hope of owning this camera.
 
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