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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 :)

Helium and High Speed Studio Strobes the ultimate Still/Motion convergence?

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troyword

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So with the Helium sensor at 35MP per frame with 30 FPS in Epic W or 60 FPS for Weapon Helium, these cameras are shooting higher resolution than my dedicated still cameras at crazy fast frame rates. The new Profoto 10 studio strobe packs can shoot 50FPS in burst mode. Are we finally at the stills/motion cam all in one "convergence" many of us have been waiting for? The last link is syncing the camera to the strobe. I always thought that the Motion Mount would be amazing if it would sync with the flash connection on the DSMC1 side handle, allowing still grabs with studio flash at a faster shutter speed while shooting motion at 1/48th with some sort of HDR type workflow. Ideally recorded in two separate folders with still grabs separated from motion, or some way to easily select them in Red Cine X. With DSMC2 Helium is there some way to make this happen? Possibly with some sort of timecode module that sends a flash sync signal? If possible, Helium will finally be the only camera I need for my shoots which are almost all hybrid Stills/Motion. Which would be amazing! Troy
 
Well the HDR capability already lets you record both slow and fast shutter speeds, which you can access separately via the A and X tracks, so what I think you are asking for is a way to sync the strobe to the X track shutter.
 
Yes, basically. The issue is the exposure. For example, shooting motion with the tungsten modeling lights at say 1000 ISO F2.8 1/48th, it would be amazing to be able to shoot a quick burst of stills at say f11 1/500th of a second using a fast strobe. What's needed is a way to utilize the electronic aperture on a still lens to instantly stop down with the x-track exposing at the faster shutter speed. A programmable button on a side handle that would do this would be ideal. It would be the killer solution for stills in the studio.
 
troyword said:
Yes, basically. The issue is the exposure. For example, shooting motion with the tungsten modeling lights at say 1000 ISO F2.8 1/48th, it would be amazing to be able to shoot a quick burst of stills at say f11 1/500th of a second using a fast strobe. What's needed is a way to utilize the electronic aperture on a still lens to instantly stop down with the x-track exposing at the faster shutter speed. A programmable button on a side handle that would do this would be ideal. It would be the killer solution for stills in the studio.
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Not sure if we ever see an aperture move that fast (not even sure if it would be necessary to have f11 for stills if you use 2.8 for motion, btw), in addition you would need to sync on the second track, no idea how to extract that signal now, Weapon already skipped the X port of DSMC1 side handle which let us use strobe lighting for short sequences. I love to be able to pull stills from motion but this is for dedicated jobs when I like the more "filmic" look and the smooth workflow. I usually shoot either for stills or for motion in one pass. Trying to get both in one shot will compromise the outcome, YMMV. I see this as a great benefit and a wonderful additional tool in the box but would never intend to "replace" a stills camera, especially medium format (or even a large format camera with MF back) with proper lighting.
 
The x track is not a seperate exposure. Its the first part of the A track so if you flash during x track recording both tracks are getting an increase of light compaired to the frames before and after.
The only way around it would to shoot in between frames.

Somthing like shooting 25p 180deg shutter and when hitting the strobe/still button the camera utilize the time 1/50 of a second to expose a strobe / still frame. Im sure it would be possible to do such capture as long duration as the wanted exposure time is shorter than the in between film frames time.

Simply that would give us r3d snaps that could be fired during filming and the only limitation would be that their exposures would need to be shorter than the time inbetween the filmed ffames.
 
Ah, didn´t know that - makes sense. What we already did is running the camera at 50fps and having the strobe set to 25 flashes per second. That way you can extract 2 streams at 25fps. But once again, its academic, I´d rather focus on still or motion work.
 
Not strobe-related, but I posted this in the Weapon feature request thread:

Robert Hofmeyr said:
What I'd really love is a more configurable stills plus motion mode. I find Redcode 10:1 is a decent compromise between quality and runtime in most scenarios when I shoot motion, but it's not really good enough for pulling stills. It would be great if we could set up the camera to shoot 2 independent streams for stills and motion, with different parameters, at the same time. For example: 6K 25fps motion with 180 degree shutter at 10:1, plus single frame R3D stills at 1/200 shutter, 5fps, 2:1 compression.
Click to expand...

If we could get a strobe to fire on only the still frames, that would be pretty awesome. But for continuous lighting, we would likely have to balance the exposure of the motion and stills - in most scenarios, there's more than enough dynamic range for this. Another option is if the motion mount ND could be set independently for the stills and motion - I'm not sure if it is fast enough?
 
Well maybe just the ability to sync to Strobes would be enough. Helium will be somewhere between a Canon 1DX MK2 and a 5DS in resolution . So it would be a super capable stills only camera as well. The ability to do two "passes" one video and one stills on a shot without having to reset the camera would pretty cool for certain shoots. Except for the superior autofocus, it would eliminate the need for those dedicated Canon still cameras. I still have my Medium Format back on my much loved Mamiya RZ 67 camera. But I find myself using it less and less.
 
Would love the ability to Sync to strobes. Or is this a possibility that I have missed with DSMC2 bodies?
 
I've seen people sync strobes with DMSC cameras via the sidehandle, but I don't think there's a way yet to sync with DSMC2. I'd love it if they came out with a module to sync stobes on DSMC2. My D810 would be thrown out the window in a heartbeat.
 
troyword said:
So with the Helium sensor at 35MP per frame with 30 FPS in Epic W or 60 FPS for Weapon Helium, these cameras are shooting higher resolution than my dedicated still cameras at crazy fast frame rates. The new Profoto 10 studio strobe packs can shoot 50FPS in burst mode. Are we finally at the stills/motion cam all in one "convergence" many of us have been waiting for? The last link is syncing the camera to the strobe. I always thought that the Motion Mount would be amazing if it would sync with the flash connection on the DSMC1 side handle, allowing still grabs with studio flash at a faster shutter speed while shooting motion at 1/48th with some sort of HDR type workflow. Ideally recorded in two separate folders with still grabs separated from motion, or some way to easily select them in Red Cine X. With DSMC2 Helium is there some way to make this happen? Possibly with some sort of timecode module that sends a flash sync signal? If possible, Helium will finally be the only camera I need for my shoots which are almost all hybrid Stills/Motion. Which would be amazing! Troy
Click to expand...

Answer to your question on still shooting on the camera. Inside the menu, you can choose a trigger option to get only still as well.

Strong advice:

Sell all of your Profoto, and get the Plasma light Wasp is the way to go: It can shoot literally more than Million frame per second without flicker.

Link: https://www.google.com/webhp?source...1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=beehive+plasma+wasp+light

P.S: I am actually selling my all my photo lights, and I can seriously convincing my clients and going with 8k for stills. Currently, I have been using A7RII, and I was happy, but Epic-W or hellium will change my photography method.
 
Minu Park said:
Answer to your question on still shooting on the camera. Inside the menu, you can choose a trigger option to get only still as well.

Strong advice:

Sell all of your Profoto, and get the Plasma light Wasp is the way to go: It can shoot literally more than Million frame per second without flicker.

Link: https://www.google.com/webhp?source...1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=beehive+plasma+wasp+light

P.S: I am actually selling my all my photo lights, and I can seriously convincing my clients and going with 8k for stills. Currently, I have been using A7RII, and I was happy, but Epic-W or hellium will change my photography method.
Click to expand...

What is effective power draw of these and how much heat do they generate? Neither of this info on their website. Thanks a lot.
 
Helium now has a clear advantage to ride with other pro still cameras. I hope Red makes this an easy configuration as I definitely see this as a popular solution for the stills game.
 
Brody_B said:
But Ketch, then what am I going to do with all my Profoto gear? lol :biggrin:
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Ha ha...

Actually Brody you can continue to use, I just don't like shooting Strobes with R3D as even so some shots do come out amazing, I prefer to shoot a continuos stream of amazing images... :)

But in all fairness, even during a recent test of shooting Video for Stills and used powerful strobes, as the area to be lit was very large and needed a very harsh lighting effect, I did love the look of some of the frames, and it is easy enough set up, just need patient and trial and time, and boom you have it... Just prefer continuos lights... :)
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Ha ha...

Actually Brody you can continue to use, I just don't like shooting Strobes with R3D as even so some shots do come out amazing, I prefer to shoot a continuos stream of amazing images... :)

But in all fairness, even during a recent test of shooting Video for Stills and used powerful strobes, as the area to be lit was very large and needed a very harsh lighting effect, I did love the look of some of the frames, and it is easy enough set up, just need patient and trial and time, and boom you have it... Just prefer continuos lights... :)
Click to expand...

For sure. I actually haven't used Red with my strobes much yet, just sticking to what I know well with the 5D. Looking forward to your QnA in November. :cheers2:
 
THIS would be great! I was asking around here for DSMC1 as there was a kinda-sync-port on the side handle, never got a solution for that tho. Asking myself now if some 3rd party could work their magic to sync a flash with DSMC2 cameras.

I'd love to sync a Epic-W or even Weapon Helium to a Profoto Pro-10 :-)
 
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