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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 :)

Weapon invades Hawaiian Islands for shoot with Crash and Dino

Phil Holland said:
Dino - Is that due to the MINI-MAG not being the camera?
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Good catch...very little sleep in last 96 hours...camera is back at RSH, so someone else is going to have to answer that question.
 
dino g said:
Good catch...very little sleep in last 96 hours...camera is back at RSH, so someone else is going to have to answer that question.
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Looking at the screen image posted on REDUSER, it's clear there's no media in the camera.
 
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Michael Tiemann said:
Looking at the screen image posted on REDUSER, it's clear there's no media in the camera.
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yes there was no media in the camera and no brian cells firing in my head at the time...when i shot that i had been awake 39 hours. prior to the 39 hour session, i may have slept 4 hours and that was after a 30 hour session, so not an ideal situation for critical thinking, sadly the camera is not with me anymore. to be clear it was a 6k weapon, so i do not know about record times for the 8k.
 
Here is a little more information.

The menus as of now are very similar to what we are experiencing with dragon. everything is where you expect it to be. as i said earlier the thumbnail images of clips n playback is quite useful and actually the whole playback experience is quite nice. sadly i did not have time to go through things at prep as i picked up the camera late on friday and i flew out saturday morning. when i arrived, we went right to work and it was non-stop for 4 days until i left. I literally had an hour off to walk around. so that is why auto-black balance was such a surprise. what is also very nice is the weight of the camera or lack thereof. i did not weigh the camera but it is very very light. we used a very rough setup to power up the camera, i took the front part of an ET hybrid 19mm baseplate and screwed it onto the top of the camera toward the back. then i put some 12", 19mm carbon fibre rods through the holes and connected a red one battery quick plate with a red brick. we used a keslow magic box which takes in the old red one power lemo and has an output cable that is 1B ( epic/dragon and now weapon power). the magic box provides a sync cable as well, however in the particular build we had, the gpio was not enabled. Brent did arrange for one of the engineers to send me a newer build with GPIO enabled, but we never loaded it up as we were a bit fearful of changing things in the middle of the shoot as they were running so smooth. incidentally the GPIO menu was the same and very intuitive if you already know the menu system from epic/dragon.


as far as the dynamic range and softness of the highlights, for us it was just a feeling kind of thing as we did not have time to really test it. the camera had a skin tone OLPF and we had Low light OLPF's on the dragon we had with us, so it was not really fair to compare the overall look between the camera. but we were very happy with how things held up and we did push the limits with bright sun and heavy clouds coming in an out during takes. there is a nice feature you may have seen at NAB or in pictures and that is a trigger on the top handle. although we did not make use of it, i can see how it would be great for hand held low mode type shoots like are done for skateboarding.

another great feature if you noticed was no monitor cables....so there are two points where you can mount the monitor. one on the top toward the front and the other of the side just above the mini mag slot. the first place was convenient for studio mode and the second was imperative for steadicam. it was very easy to switch between them, just a few spins of a non-tool thumb screw and it was in and tight. it was great to not have a mess of cables on the camera, very clean.

as far as the fan design we did run into one little issue but it was easily resolved. the intake for the fans is on the top of the camera. for the steadicam setup we placed a low mode plate on top of the camera and then placed a gyro above the middle of the camera for balance. unfortunately it landed 50% on top of the intake fan. at first in my normal adaptive mode setting, the camera seemed to be getting hot quick. but instead of spending the time changing the camera configuration, which we had no time for, I just changed the fan settings to manual with each setting for both roll and preview at 90% and 90%. i am sure i could have experimented more and found an exact number that would have equalized the camera, but we had no time for that. I figured at 90% it will not burn out the fan and it will provide enough air movement to keep things rolling, and it did. one of the differences with the fan settings is now it is allowing you to target the sensor temp and not the core. we did not push it to over heat so i can not tell you what the highest temp the camera can be is, but i do know we got to 73 before i changed the settings to get it down.

ok that is all i have for you now, more later, thanks for reading this.

dino
 
Thanks for the info! I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

Do you think that your steadicam issue is fixable with the proper prep time? And would you have had that same issue if you were flying an EPIC? Or was that problem WEAPON specific?


Also, I'm really happy to hear that they changed the target temperature control from core temp to sensor temp!!!!! It's such an unbelievably minor issue, but I always thought it was weird that blackshading is based on sensor temp, but you could only control the core temperature.
 
Marcus Friedlander said:
Thanks for the info! I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

Do you think that your steadicam issue is fixable with the proper prep time? And would you have had that same issue if you were flying an EPIC? Or was that problem WEAPON specific?


Also, I'm really happy to hear that they changed the target temperature control from core temp to sensor temp!!!!! It's such an unbelievably minor issue, but I always thought it was weird that blackshading is based on sensor temp, but you could only control the core temperature.
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regarding the gyro placement, i think it will be easily resolved if there was a top plate. as an example there were at least 4 companies including red that made top plates for epic and dragon. so for weapon i am imagining that these companies and others will do the same, by having a top plate whereby there are many quarter 20's and 3/8th holes, and also there is physical space between the top of the camera and where these holes are, there will be airflow to allow the cooling system to work properly.

this happened with epic as well, as you may recall those of you who were on reduser in feb of 2011, jarred release a camera to mark pederson in december of 2010, then another in 2011, then a camera to gibby in late january and then to me in early February. when i picked up that camera from jarred i had already booked the next month solid, i mean every single day for at least 30 days, starting the next day. but there was no hardware available to mount gear on the top or even bottom plates or baseplates. so i went to Element technica which was conveniently on my home from RED and rummaged through there stock of plates and risers that they were building for the 3D rigs and came up with some solutions that made it all work...

in the case of the weapon, i picked up the camera at 5pm on friday and flew to hawaii at 9am on saturday...there were not a lot of options other than trying to use what i had laying around from red one, epic and dragon builds. unfortunately i did not think it through in terms of using the steadicam and specifically mounting gyros.

having said all of that, although it was sort of an issue for a few minutes, once i decided to set the fans manually to 91% and 91%, the temperature stabilized and went down, thereby resolving the problem. it was not a long term solution as i do not think it was good for the camera for the fans to be humming at that rate all day everyday.

bottomline is the physical side will be resolved i am sure as these cameras hit the streets. the software side is already there. it was very easy to go into the menus and find the fan settings. it was basically the same area as the dragon.

I am sure i am not telling you everything we experienced so feel free to ask questions.

the future is bright ladies and gentlemen...


dino
 
dino g said:
If you own a weapon or use a weapon on set, you MUST buy Fool Control! It is a life saver...
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Thanks Dino. Nice reading your WEAPON notes and glad you liked my app... Wireless camera control with WEAPON built in wifi will be a no brainer.
 
Glad to hear. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!

Cant wait for WEAPON!!!!
 
Thanks a lot for answering the fan question.

I still wonder why they put an exhaust at the bottom as usually hot air flows upwards?!
Can we invert the fan rotation :-)!

Pat
 
Patrick Tresch said:
Thanks a lot for answering the fan question.

I still wonder why they put an exhaust at the bottom as usually hot air flows upwards?!
Can we invert the fan rotation :-)!

Pat
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good question, perhaps someone from red will chime in.
 
Patrick Tresch said:
Thanks a lot for answering the fan question.

I still wonder why they put an exhaust at the bottom as usually hot air flows upwards?!
Can we invert the fan rotation :-)!

Pat
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dino g said:
good question, perhaps someone from red will chime in.
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Some time ago when I got to sit down with Jarred for a bit he said one of the surprises while developing Weapon was the particular airflow direction that RED has used for the brain. I think they found based on the general design of the components and how the airflow can be maximized having the intake on top and the exhaust on the bottom provided the best solution.

Oddly, the same is true for this latest workstation build I just did where I have the main intake on top and in the front, additional fans within the case directing the airflow path, and two main exhaust points out of the rear.
 
Air flow.

Maximum 'suck' is 1 atmosphere. Maximum 'blow' is >>> much greater. Sucking is 'more difficult'.

Air has an 'impedance' - it pushes back when blow into a space, and 'pulls' when you suck from a space.

Given the choice of :
1) Sucking from a confined place -> blowing into an open space. or
2) Sucking from an open space -> blowing into a confined space

The second option creates higher airflow.

Other efficiencies employed (other industries) include ways of reducing turbulence around the intake (use of a secondary material around opening), and altering the shape of the exit so that the change of air impedance is gradual (less eddy currents = less noise, and faster airflow .... B&W)

If the Sensor is the most critical component to be cooled, and the electronics happily live at a higher temp - could the airflow enable cooler air to hit the sensor before the ASICs?

AJ
 
Antony Newman said:
If the Sensor is the most critical component to be cooled, and the electronics happily live at a higher temp - could the airflow enable cooler air to hit the sensor before the ASICs?

AJ
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Hello AJ,

It's what happended with the older design (Epic). But I'm happy they killed the front fan.
I don't know if there is an exhaust fan but there was probably not enough space to put a fan in the lower part of the camera to blow air in from the lower "open space" to the top "confinded space". Therefore they problably choosed this design as you explained the air flow efficiency.

Now I wonder if 1 fan placed on the right postion is allways more efficient as 2, one used as a blower and the other as a sucker? If your aim is to have the less RPM (and noise generation) I wonder in the low speed spectrum of a fan if the natural hot airflow don't play a significant role thus it's lower position?

Pat
 
Another advantage is when the intake is on top and you're shooting in say Death Valley (somewhere really hot) it easier to place ice packs or other augmented cooling near the top of the camera as opposed to the rear/bottom of the camera.
 
There are two intake fans on the top of the camera on the back edge. The intake ports are about and 1 1/2 inches square. Additionally, there are two exhaust fans below in the rear of the camera where the hd-Sdi, sync, control, hdmi and 12v power were on the epic. As I said with the top intake ports covered 60% by the gyro and its mounting plate, the camera was still able to stay stable with regard to sensor and core temp.
 
Mark Andersen said:
Another advantage is when the intake is on top and you're shooting in say Death Valley (somewhere really hot) it easier to place ice packs or other augmented cooling near the top of the camera as opposed to the rear/bottom of the camera.
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I am not sure if ice packs can ever be used again as were used on the red one. The red one had a heat sink on the top of the camera. The heat sink was designed over a space of about 7 inches by 4 inches in arch shape. It was a perfect shape to drape an ice pack over. Moreover, because it was already a heat sink the ice pack cooling the heat sink was the perfect complement to an inefficient system.
There is nothing like that on the epic or the weapon. The fans and intake and output of air are much more sophisticated than the red one and provide for an easier way to move air around to keep the fire and sensor at optimal temps.


.
 
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