talking pixels

Archive for February, 2009

General Phase One Tether Troubleshooting.

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Here are our main tips for shooting tethered with Phase backs while running C1 3.7.x. Phase is generally very reliable and these few tips will help it stay that way. Many of the tips will be applicable to working with C1 4.x too.

Good quality FW cable. 30′ can work smooth if its an excellent quality cable in good condition. Always have a 15′ cable in your bag tho for trouble shooting and backup. Cables from Granite (http://www.granitedigital.com/) and UniBrain (http://www.unibrain.com/) have excellent reputations.
RAW Format set to IIQ-L or S. There was a glitch in 3.7.8 that selected the wrong format on install. Always double check your RAW setting. The compression with IIQ-S is barely noticeable in the final files & the whole system runs much much smoother under pressure. On fast paced shoots, most of our buffer crashes have been avoided with IIQ-S. However, with slower paced shoots, IIQ-L works great and provides the best possible quality file.
Run the back from a battery. If you are having connection issues, it may help to install a battery in the back and override the power source in the back menu. This can be a lifesaver when shooting to laptop when you have no power to plug in your computer. Your laptop battery will last much longer when it doesn’t have to power the digital back too. Note that when the battery gets low you will get strange behavior until a fresh battery is installed. Be ready for it with a freshy charged battery. Also, when mounting a camera on a tripod, plan for battery access.
Use a Pro computer. High bus power is key to working with Phase trouble-free. We recommend using a MacPro and installing a FW PCI card so you have mulitple FW ports to choose from. MacBookPro laptops work great, but be prepared to use a battery in the digital back as laptops have less bus power, especially if the laptop is running from battery. BTW, an iMac is not a Pro Computer. You can use one, but you better have a backup.
Have a Clean computer. A well maintained computer is more important than most people realize. Shoot to an internal drive, not over FW to an external. Don’t shoot to the desktop. Free hard drive space is your friend.
Start a New Session and/or Delete .plist files. C1Pro is generally a pretty robust software that performs well. At times strange behavior can fixed by creating a New Session or deleting .plist files from the Library. This can reset many of the programs settings to default and commonly fixes strange behavior. Uninstalling/Reinstalling the software can help as well, but definitely try deleting .plist files first.

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Posted in Break It Down | No Comments »

Stop the Water Bottle Madness

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Get yourself a SIGG bottle & use it. We must stop producing all these plastic water bottles. The below sad photo is from one day of a studio photo shoot. As an industry we need to stop this madness.

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Posted in Behind The Scenes, Green | No Comments »

Reinforce your Tenba Tower case

Friday, February 6th, 2009

We’ve been working on reinforcing our Tenba Air Tower cases for travel and shipping. As purchased, our Tower cases have proven to be inadequate protection from the Airlines & FedEx. Luckily, we have not had problems with our Monitor cases.

A FedEx Packaging Engineer visited us (because we filed a pricey insurance claim) & showed us exactly why the case consistently fails to protect our Towers (our claim was denied due to “inadequate packaging”).

Damage is likely caused by the case falling off a conveyor belt. Conveyor belts move freight thru shipping centers & are above hip height to prevent back injuries. If the case falls off the belt onto a cement floor, there is a good chance of damage.

The case is most vulnerable from top impacts as there are large air gaps between the case lid & the Tower. You can easily dent the case lid by pushing firmly with your hand. Try it. A heavy impact to the top of the case will crush the lid and contact the Tower, commonly dislodging RAM or video cards, or even bending the computer handle. ”These air gaps must be filled with padding,” said the FedEx Engineer. If it had been up to his standards, our Tower would have been replaced. Because it was not, we are left with damaged machines & voided AppleCare protection plans.

We have implemented his suggestions to reinforce our cases & hope to no longer see this kind of damage from traveling with the Big Guns.

Below are pictures showing what we have done and what you should do too if you travel with a Tower. We don’t promise this will protect you from the Gorillas, but it should do a much better job guarding your precious computer from impact.