Red Power Error/Crash

[Dan Finlayson]

This past weekend I had the opportunity to shoot a short film on an Epic-M. We powered the camera off of Red bricks from the Red One. All we had for accessories was a Bartek follow focus. On nearly every take on our first scene, the camera stopped recording with a "Power Spike (C)" warning. The only option was to shut the camera down.

We tried rolling without the Bartek, which did not fix it. We tried all our batteries (we had 6) and they all produced the same effect. It seemed to get better when the batteries were more drained, and the error was more frequent the hotter the camera was, but it did it enough that we had to rent a different camera (not an Epic...) to finish out the shoot.

I talked to Red (thank you support staff) and they suggested that this particular camera body should be sent in to be checked out. Has anyone else encountered this issue? More specifically, has anyone had this happen with official Red bricks? I've heard this can happen with 3rd party batteries, but no one has posted anything about Red bricks causing any problems.

[Dan Finlayson]

So far, no one else has seen this? Could this particular Epic be a dud?

[Curran Giddens]

They sent me a lemon...

[Max Fischer]

They sent me a lemon...

Curran, details please? Not trying to "gawk at the deadly car wreck," just trying to be informed... And this really was the purpose of the Epic M, testing, feedback, etc...

Thanks in advance...

[Curran Giddens]

I never was able to test it for myself. Dan will know more about it than I. What I can tell you is that this issue should have been caught during QC before it shipped.

They were using a brand new Red Battery Plate (shipped with my M), brand new 2B-to-1B Power Adapter Cable, and Red Bricks (2 were mine and 4 from the rental house).

If I had any good news from tech support I would love to post it here. It also would have been nice to at least send me an email (or call me back when I leave a message) saying that they received my camera and were looking into it. But I have not heard one word.

Very disappointing.

[Brent@RED]

Nick will let you know directly if we have anything to report on this camera evaluation.

BC

[Rich Schaefer]

I have had probably 4 of the "power spike" shutdowns on my 4 days of shooting so far.

It's early it the program just like my early R1 days. For me it has been a very easy 8-second re-boot each time. ;) (Loving the 8 second boot!)

Tomorrow I will install the new firmware and do testing. 3 days of Epic shooting this week.

Prost,
Rich

[Dan Finlayson]

Are you powering the camera off Red Bricks, Rich?

While we were shooting the first day, there was only one take where it didnt shut down. What's interesting is that we shot one other scene on the camera -- it was an exterior and it was a cool day -- didn't crash on us once. It was on a partly drained battery too.

I had a chance to test the camera during some time off on set and it crashed about half the time. 6 different batteries, with and without the Bartek. The only constant I could see was that it crashed more frequently on fully charged batteries. But it was a loose correlation at best.

Dan

[Stacey Spears]

I encountered the power spike message once while running off the AC adapter. I have not run into it while running off of fully charged Switronix (XP-L95RED) batteries with the RED Belt Clip.

Dan, did you every try a factory reset on the camera?

[Dan Finlayson]

I tried a factory reset as well as reinstalling the firmware.

I was also the first person to record anything on the camera. Formatted the cards for the first time!