POV - Tips for mounting your RED ONE on a car bonnet.

[Steve Thomson]

We have recently shot quite a lot of footage using a 'cinesaddle' on the bonnet of a car.
Some of these things may be obvious or already listed but thought it was worth sharing.

1. If you try and use external Hard-drive you will experience dropped frames rendering the footage useless. (Unless you have special shocks fitted to your vehicle) Using the CF cards is the way to go. A nexto CF speed card reader is the best way to quickly back up your CF cards in the field.

2. If you remove the unnecessary external hard drive - also take off the finger-tight screws and bars that hold the drive in place. If you don't - they will vibrate out and end up on the side of the road somewhere.

3. Extended shooting like this will quickly ruin your battery connection.
The vibration eventually causes issues with the battery connection and the camera will start shutting down at the slightest bump.
(A quick fix in the field to allow you to continue shooting for the remainder of the day is tightly duct tape the battery forcing it onto the battery plate)
We are at present having the battery plates changed on our camera to rectify this.

4.We found the best way to power the camera was to use a cigarette lighter converter and the DC adapter. This meant we could completely remove the battery/drive component.

clips at - http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=2&language=en-US&family=creative&assetType=film&p=tongariro%20national%20park&state=f0.AAAAAAAAAAAABAABAAAAAwAAAAIAAAAAAAAAAwABA AAAAgAAAAAAAAADAAEAAAACAAAAAAAAAAEAAAAAAA..&src=standard

Hope this is of some help to someone...

cheers,

[esmilis]

i'd want to add that if you need higher capacity media and can not shoot to cf cards, it is possible to wrap hard drive into something soft and mount somewhere near the camera. Cage has no vibration absorption, and mounting the this way i didn't get a single dropped frame.

reading #3, i guess you can do the same with battery plate

[David Wyatt]

There's also the Element Technica shock-absorbing drive mount and the new 6 ft Red drive cable (allowing you to bubble wrap and mount the drive elsewhere)

[Matthew Rogers]

3. Extended shooting like this will quickly ruin your battery connection.
The vibration eventually causes issues with the battery connection and the camera will start shutting down at the slightest bump.
(A quick fix in the field to allow you to continue shooting for the remainder of the day is tightly duct tape the battery forcing it onto the battery plate)
We are at present having the battery plates changed on our camera to rectify this.

Actually, it won't ruin the battery plate as much as it will just make you realize that RED bought a crappy battery plate to start with. They are now replacing them with much better plates that don't have the same design flaws.

Matthew