Archive for January, 2009

Here’s wishing all of you out there a very happy 2009! Hopefully this global financial fiasco turns out to be a slight canyon in the road ahead.

I got a couple of new toys over the Christmas break. Finally got myself my own tripod. A Miller DS-10 with Carbon fibre 2 stage legs and a Swit s-2010 on camera LED light.

Miller DS-10

Firstly the Miller has always been my dream tripod. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one bad thing about any Miller tripods out there and the good thing is they hold their value. I should know, I’ve been watching eBay for one for months and they still sell for a reasonable amount even if they are worn down a bit.

I finally got the chance to win one from a company that were selling alot of used production equipment. I also bagged the Swit light and a 2 flouro lighting kit from them for an unbelievably cheap price. I believed they were a semi large production house that went bankrupt or something which is sad for them but good news for cheapskates like me.

Back to the tripod, when it arrived I was disappointed to find out one of the tripod legs was stuck and no matter how many times I unscrewed the tightener, the leg would not budge. That disappointment turned into a bit of elation when I realised it was the carbon fibre model and not the alloy version they were advertising. After an hour of unscrewing and alot of pulling and cursing, I finally managed to unscrew the leg tightener completely off and pryed the leg out of its fixture. It turns out that Miller uses a very basic and flimsy mechanism to fasten the legs. They use three very fragile plastic loops that grip the tripod leg as the leg fastener is screwed tight. The problem with mine was that one of the plastic loops found its way underneath its neighbour thus overlapping. This in turn made the leg fasten alot sooner then expected so as soon as I tightened the fastener a quarter of a turn, it would grip the leg way sooner than it was meant to and then it wouldn’t let go. If this makes no sense then I apologise but the fix for me was to use even flimsier plastic present wrapping tape to wrap around the bothersome plastic loop so that it wouldn’t overlap its neighbor. Problem fixed! This was after looking for hours on google seeing if anyone else had this problem which they haven’t which leads me to believe that this is a very rare occurance.

So how does the tripod handle? Freaking unbelievably beautifully! The DS-10 head has the perfect amount of drag for my liking and the tilt and pans are very smooth. The previous tripod I commonly used was a Manfrotto 501 and the difference is like going from an old lemon of a Daihatsu to a well engineered late model Mercedes Benz. I’ve used huge oconnor tripods for large broadcast cams before and sure the Miller isn’t as smooth as them but it is less than half the weight! The carbon fibre legs are damn light and sexy looking and there is no spreader that will get in the way. Even without the spreader the tripod is more than enough sturdy for my little XH-A1 and on fast pans, they exhibit no discernible twisting. The legs have an ingenious rubber feet system where they screw in to reveal spikes for when you are going off road. They also spread out to go very low, lower than any tripod I’ve ever used and when the legs are fully extended, the tripod goes well over my head to about 190cms. I’m in tripod heaven now, the Miller DS-10 is highly recommended. They go for about $1600AU here for the carbon fibre version and a couple hundred less for the alloy version but I got mine for about half that with some minor issues.

Swit s-2010

On to the Swit s-2010. The only previous LED light I have used to compare it to is the Litepanel Micro (correction, I meant the Litepanel mini) on camera kit that I rented out for a music video. Apparently that was a good light which is well used in the industry and it has a price tag to match at around $1600AU. My own experience with it was that it was a huge heavy brick that I had to lug around on the camera and its light output was bright enough to really annoy the talent. It would disperse a very soft flood light and the gels used to alter its color from daylight would often get lost and were a major pain in the arse. Its battery life also was pretty bad, it would last about an hour before the special battery pack needed to be recharged. All in all, a very disappointing experience though it did provide enough light for night scenes which is what its built for really.

Litepanel mini - not really reviewing it

Now onto the Swit, all I gotta say is the Swit is pretty sweet! I got it for a bargain as its worth over $700 here and I got it for less than a third of that. Mine came with a Sony battery adapter meaning it uses the same battery that your Sony Z1 uses to power the light. I haven’t drained a battery with it yet but with a small f570 infolithium, I shot for nearly an hour with no signs of the light dimming. With a huge np-970 battery, I’ve heard it can go for over 4 hours! Thats unheard of for any on camera light out there.

Swit s-2010 riding my XHA1

As for the light output the Swit performs quite admirably. Its got an ingenious way of using its top and bottom barndoors as ways to gel or diffuse the light. The top barndoor when you fold it down turns the light into a tungsten light. The bottom one is a diffuser. Without any Diffusion and gel, the light outputs a spot light in daylight temp that reaches fairly far. Fully zoomed out wide, you can see the spot light effect but with the diffuser, it spreads the light quite evenly edge to edge. The Swit has a dimmer that works quite effective except it doesn’t quite dim down to completely turning off but thats what the off switch is for.

The battery pack uses a clamp that you can attach to the top handle of your camcorder which you then connect to the Swit via a cable. This could help in balancing out the camera to bring some weight to the back and make it less lens heavy. Even with a large np-970 battery attached, the Swit is alot lighter than the Litepanel which uses a noga arm to attach to the camera’s hotshoe. The Swit attaches directly which helps bring the weight down further.

All in all, I much prefer the Swit to the Litepanel for the weight difference alone. The light output is pretty much the same from what I can remember but the ease of use of the Swit puts it way ahead in my opinion..

I’ll post up a couple of videos showing the use of both of my new goodies very soon.