battery hell in Beijing

[Josele Bernabe]

My camera shut off in tanger yesterday, and I have no idea, but thanks to all you, now I know where to start to look, I guess could be maybe they disconect the fans.

 

[Dustin Cross]

I just finished a three week shoot in Austin Texas where every day was over 100F and I had several shut downs every day. Only had a couple heat warnings. My camera just shut down, we lost atleast 2 takes per day with no warning at all. Check the footage at the end of the day and the camera just didn't record every now and then.

It didn't help that the production refused to listen to me about the camera not liking extreme temps. They would still try and do 15 min log series of takes in 107F plus temps in direct sun with the fan turned off for sound.

I shot all over South Texas and Las Vegas last summer with my camera and had no heat problems. This summer my camera refuses to work if it is not in AC. I think something with the audio upgrade might have something to do with this.

My camera rarely gives heat warnings, it just shuts off, locks up, or doesn't create a file with no indication that it didn't create a file. That was with ice packs on the camera all the time. Also playback doesn't work at all unless the camera is in cool AC.

I think I need to send my camera to Red and see if maybe my thermostat is broken or not properly connected or something.


Dusty

 

[Justin Chin]

I was in South West China shooting at 8,000 feet at 100+ temps. No shutdowns and out of 57 days of shooting we lost 1 take (not from heat). Generally, we would just put a rain slicker (from a day pack) over the camera and it was fine.

 

[jason.lee.wong]

i'm one of the few industry standard RED DITs in beijing.

never go out without a clear solid understanding of the camera, or without a DIT.

the concept of a DIT is still very new in China, and it is extremely difficult to find nomenclature on the details of how to operate the RED beyond point and shoot for those who cannot speak English or work for one of the RED camera companies here.

 

[forest]

Red Overheating

Red Overheating

As an international Red One rental house in China we're very experienced with the Red One in the Beijing market. Many rumors abound in China on all things Red and they are very hard to displace as too many people with very little knowledge and technical understanding discuss issues. We're also seeing many of the rental houses themselves putting rumors out into the world and also blaming the camera for problems that are actually caused by their own lack of understanding and technical ability.

The newest rumor coming out of China is that one of the rental houses has a so-called "Red 2".

While the Red One camera body gets very hot during normal operation, we have only had a Red One overheat and shut down on one production. However they were pointing some huge lights pretty much directly at the camera inside a studio setting. The camera is rated to operate normally at 40C ambient temperature. Most important is to set the internal fan correctly - usually auto - and if necessary, use a reflective cover to block direct sunlight and/or studio light from heating up the camera body.

Furthermore we use high-capacity SWIT batteries that can run the camera an average of 2 - 2 1/2 hours. We also use a T-back which allows us to switch batteries without having to shutdown (power-cycle) the camera. We've never been in a situation where our teams got into duress due to lack of battery power.

Please visit our website: http://www.simvideo.com or http://www.simvideochina.com for more information and contact details.