Josh Rogers  
Okay, so welcome to episode number one. This is the pilot recording for our first episode of the off the rails podcast. My name is Josh Rogers, and I'm joined by my two friends and CO hosts Colin Sullivan and John David Wright. We've been friends for quite a while Cole, Solon and I have known each other for probably a decade and a half at this point. And John David and I have become friends over the past like 234 years sometime, like right after COVID, I think. But so I work in this kind of intersection of cameras and technology and like some IT stuff, we all kind of our camera adjacent. And that's mostly what this podcast is going to be about. It's going to be about some film tech, industry news, stuff like that. And then we all generally follow Apple pretty closely. So I feel like that's pretty common. But we I think we have a unique take on Apple news. I'm gonna let Cole Cole introduce yourself and then JD can go ahead.

Cole Sullivan  
I am Cole Sullivan. I live here in Nashville, Tennessee. Josh is in San Francisco, John David is in Birmingham, we've all kind of kept up from state to state. I don't know if any of us have lived with John David, but Josh and lived in the same state twice. Now, I am stopped by time post production and production, DP AC side of things on production, and then an editor in the post world. We all kind of share a little bit of that. But I'll let John David, take it from here.

John David Wright  
I guess we all live together before we knew each other.

Cole Sullivan  
Yeah, everything is back to Louisiana. It does.

John David Wright  
I'm John David, right. I am freelance editor colorist DP, a little bit of everything. But those are kind of what I specialize in and do the most.

Josh Rogers  
We all kind of have this jack of all trades, master of none tendency, which I don't know if it's served us well or not. It hasn't bitten me in the butt yet.

John David Wright  
I mean, I wouldn't say Master of None, because I feel like we do our fairly

Cole Sullivan  
masterful, and well, quite a bit. I

John David Wright  
mean, let's not like why like we all produce high end stuff, and we keep getting hired and keep getting paid to do it. So you know, I think we all do

Cole Sullivan  
good work. We all have an exam, the

John David Wright  
industry as a whole is switching, you know, like, you used to have to specialize in one thing. And now I think people really value. Like, I know, for me, like I get hired on a lot of stuff, because I am a Swiss army knife. Like I think people are enjoying that a lot more. And, you know, I think it adds value. Like, if I'm a scene for somebody, like I can dive into the camera stuff, I can help them with exposure. You know, there's like a lot of different circumstances where you know, there's a lot of different hats you can wear. If a set requires that, and then you know, if the set needs a little bit more, then you can jump in and specialize.

Cole Sullivan  
Yeah, we've all had either currently or at some point or a mix of both church background freelance background where it's either you're scrappy, or you're just trying to pay your bills. And I think in the middle of that we've all kind of just taken a deep dive into lots of different areas.

Josh Rogers  
Cool. Well, we have a pretty, I think, a good structure to follow for this podcast, we've at least done some preparation, we have a document we're going to follow. And it's sort of following what I think is really great podcast structure. That, I don't know if they pioneered it, but at least is most well known to me by the ATP podcast, the accidental tech podcast is something that I think the three of us do kind of keep up with. And I definitely listened to pretty much week to week. So we will have, we'll start the show off with a little bit of follow up from last week. There's no follow up this week because it's episode number one, we'll kind of go through some industry topics or whatever. And then we'll have a little post show after after we kind of wrap things up just talking about maybe like some things going on in your personal life or things that are maybe just not quite related to the main topics of the show. And we'll try to keep it to maybe an hour hour and a half each is our goal at least and we'll see where we land. Okay, so our first topic is we're recording just after NAB 2024 And so I want to talk about a couple of things that I saw when I went there. I wish you two could have been there to join the it would have been a blast and I know you regret not going so maybe next year.

John David Wright  
A year we got sent a year and a little bit yeah

Cole Sullivan  
we got jealous the Josh's NAB trip at all plan to sync your trip last year

Josh Rogers  
so first first thing up at NAB I want to talk about is that it was a huge year for broadcast fiber backs. We got two big announcements from two of the biggest players in you know, camera world, red and airy are both making proper entrances into like the live cinema broadcast conversion worlds we got the Alexa 35 Live, and then the red. I don't even know what they're calling it. It's like the red fiber adapter module or something. They don't actually have a name for it yet, but got to take a look at both of those. And they seem like really well thought out products. The Aerie the area Lexa 35 Live looks like a solid like single unit. Really great. And for those of you who don't know what a fiber BAC entails in a broadcast like environment, basically you have a full camera chain and a Brian in the broadcast world. So you have a camera chain consists of the camera, and then that camera usually has a CMT fiber connector on it and this fiber connector carries power, the video feed back and forth and a bunch of other miscellaneous signals it can be audio or teleprompter feeds. And then also allows the camera to be controlled remotely over that fiber because that fiber on the other end connects to something called a CCU which is a camera control unit. And that is like the breakout box for all of the video signals. So you can tap the you can tap an SDI feed for your program or send camera return back in or pull microphone feeds. through it. It's basically your big, big Dongle for the camera. And then connected to that CCU is an RCP, which sits next to you know in engineering on in the truck or in the control room wherever and allows a remote shader or operator to control iris and blacks and kind of paint the cameras to do your white balance and control Indies. That way they're doing all this that way, the camera operator only has to worry about pointing the camera where it needs to be focusing it. That's kind of the main things. So this is a huge thing in the live world. And there has been a trend over the last few years of we want to get cinema quality video in our television broadcast. And that started out a few years ago, I think we started seeing it like the Super Bowl and some NFL games where they had like an a 7x or something on a on a gimbal like a ronin gimbal and they would cut to it and because normally in football and sports super deep focus everything's you're seeing everything from the player in the foreground all the way to the crowd in the back is like tack sharp or nearly tack sharp. But now when they would cut to these like celebratory shots in the endzone, that's kind of when they would use them as after the after touchdowns. And you'd have these super shallow depth of field gimbal shots and it was kind of jarring at first. But I think we're seeing more and more of that play out especially for like live events like concerts and things like that. So that was a this is something that's really been great for the industry now that you have manufacturers taking it seriously

John David Wright  
there was a beta of the red fire back at the Super Bowl actually there were some images rolling around where they had I believe it was a V raptor where they had it like mounted onto the goalpost. And there was a fiber back on there this was like before there were like super strong rumors about it. And I found a photo and sent it to a friend at Red and I was like What's this and he was like I don't know so you know but there there had been rumors for a while that red was doing something like that and cannons sort of tried to dive into there and but in the classic cannon way never goes like full monty into it. They've

Josh Rogers  
been like all the other manufacturers and do use the multi dine fiber backs which are like a third party thing that you just kind of slap onto the back of your camera and make a couple of like SDI jumpers. It's not a fully native product like that's I think that's I should say that's probably why the likes 35 line team

John David Wright  
with those that's like the big downside

Josh Rogers  
I will see I didn't even realize that I guess it depends on the cat the camera control protocol you're very like

John David Wright  
for for most of them it's really just for SMPTE fiber and power and like some some comm like a lot of them. There's not enough integration for live painting.

Josh Rogers  
Yes, so to have a first an actual properly thought out first party solution gets you the cool thing about and we'll get to the red stuff with but with the Alexa 35 live there using the scar Roy RCP to do all the camera control and what's really great about that is you can control every setting that you could as if you were sitting at the camera on this RCEP and the RCP is super configurable to there's a you can connect to like a web server through like a web browser you can like dial into the IP address of the RCP and you can totally customize and configure the layout what each knob and button does. You can make any button and not do anything so you can upload you can upload let's apply like this. white balance settings like I think you can even on the Alexa 35 there the grain settings the image textures I forget what they're actually calling them but you can even like change those over the over the through the rsap textures.

John David Wright  
Does the scar holy work with the red stuff? I know the red essentially said like, we're going to fully support the Sony RCP later on. But I don't know enough to know like, is that an interchangeable thing? Like do different fiber backs have to officially support the RCPS? How does that work?

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, I don't know. I can't speak for everything. But I know for the red stuff. You can use the scar who had the scar who is one of the manufacturers that they're supporting. At launch. It's going to be the scar, Scar Hawaii, they're going to be fully feature compatible with the standard Sony RCP, which is kind of like an in the industry standard. Yeah. And then they've the guy at the red booth at NAB also told me that they're going to be coming out with their own RCP, which is very interesting. If true. I'll be really intrigued to see that. That'd

John David Wright  
be cool. I mean, reds always had good industrial design. I think that's a pretty well supported statement. I mean, besides the whole naming schemes, and all of that, like I feel like they're like the design of their products has always been cool. And pretty well thought out. And yeah,

Josh Rogers  
I've been coming around on red. I used to be pretty anti red for a little while. But I've been slowly evangelize to about it over the last three or four months by one John David Wright, who bought a Moto X and then has been singing its praises.

John David Wright  
It's good been working a lot with the Raptor XL. And it feels like the dsmc three line is kind of what reds been trying to do since the red wine honestly, like feels it is very stable. Like we took the Raptor XL to the Philippines for a week. And it was 90 degrees and 90% humidity and for for those that have traveled working with film, and especially in Southeast Asia, like you know how, how just demanding that environment is on gear. And we never had an issue we had out well, I will say we had one issue with some dirty power. But that's because we didn't bring power conditioners and we tried to hardwire an interview that we were doing off some dirty power. So I just had to pull battery. And I was able to shut the camera down like it. It wasn't frozen, but like something in reds like pre boot checks didn't fully clear. And so the light on the side didn't go green, it was yellow, so it wouldn't let you record so I powered down at let me power down I pulled the battery and then pulled the hard power for like 10 seconds and boot it back up and it was fine. So I think just voltage was not where Red wanted it to be during the initial boot cycle. But once it powered up and I plugged the mains back in, like it was fine the whole time. And that interview took freakin forever. Because, you know, they were English as a second language. People that we were interviewing so we were it was like three or four hours of interview interviews in the camera was fine. Like you have no idea what they're saying either. I mean, we did like you got to pick up a little bit. They spoke good enough English, but it was a challenge for sure.

Josh Rogers  
That sounds like something that would have cooked an older read, which speaks to their improvements in reliability. Probably so and I think that's why we've been seeing reds kind of rolled out. I think aside from Sony, we've been seeing red rolled out most commonly and in the live environments and this is only this new red pro fiber back SDN. I'd have no idea what they're calling it. I don't even know if they have an official name for it. I'm sure they do. Is it like the neck? It's not even on days, even on the dread website

Cole Sullivan  
that Connect modules just send a Connect

John David Wright  
module is that's the likes. That's the single mode fiber thing that's

Cole Sullivan  
on broadcast Connect module instead of cinema Connect module.

John David Wright  
What about the Raptor egg? The Raptor raptor egg back

Josh Rogers  
now that they're owned by Sony dinosaurs, or sorry, not Nikon me now that they're owned by Nikon, I feel like I wonder if they're gonna dial back on these crazy predator names like they've been doing in the past.

John David Wright  
They're leaving Jared as CEO of red former CEO. They're leaving him as a an

Josh Rogers  
advisor. Yeah, something like that. He says it's not an artificial term. He says it actually doesn't mean advisor because you know, that's usually what they say when they

John David Wright  
rolled. Yeah, I mean that when, when acquisitions happen, they usually contractually make them stay. Yeah. For a couple of years. I don't know, he seems fully bought in, but I don't know. Would you take the money and run?

Josh Rogers  
I don't think he can. I think he's too invested.

John David Wright  
It's not that much money. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Josh Rogers  
That's an interesting thing. We found out it was something of what $64 million.

John David Wright  
It was something.

Josh Rogers  
It must have been this came out pretty recently. I should have the acquisition number was quite a bit lower than we were expecting. And I was I think we jokingly texted each other. We're like, want to know, is that cheap? I'm like, man, we could have scrounged up $64 million from somewhere it's

Cole Sullivan  
approximately 85 million for approximately percent ownership

Josh Rogers  
read must have been near death. They must have been like at bankruptcies door and

John David Wright  
I don't think they really made any money.

Josh Rogers  
I mean, but every money I'm not talking about making any money, they were negative large amounts of money.

John David Wright  
That's kind of what I was getting into like every camera upgrade before this V raptor X upgrade. They lost money on. Like, they cared about their customers so much that they were willing to lose money on all of those upgrades for all those years. And like, think about it their flagship cameras. What $40,000 $30,000 Yeah, that's not another that's not enough. You're like 80k for Venice ish. Same Same with an Alexa 35 Like, like 30 to 40 is nothing especially for like on paper specs wise, like the best cinema camera on the market.

Josh Rogers  
And so we've officially come around to why our podcast is called off the rails because we started Pax and we're down to

Cole Sullivan  
we don't think we touched on the area back and it actually has a name and the rent back of the red back.

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, no name, but it does look like a pretty solid product. It's not quite as nice as the the new airy back because there are, I think the Alexa 35 does have some like external connectors that are going but it's like covered by this nice metal plate where you can't like they can't be jostled dice, but the Reds are just kind of like out there and even the power situations a little funny although they did make an improvement. And I'm gonna do a terrible job of explaining this but the way the AC power adapter goes into the camera, it doesn't go directly into the camera's AC port it goes into like this the the power on the fiber back which then allows you to do accessory power instead of having before if you wanted to power accessories and you were on AC power, you'd still have to have a battery on the camera because it wouldn't back feed that voltage through the battery back. So if you had things plugged into the detach or like a two pin Lemo or something like that those probably wouldn't be getting power. So now with this

John David Wright  
now TSMC three cameras Oh, even without the fiber racks

Josh Rogers  
oh well that's good then they pointed that out to me as a feature of the thing so I thought that was a new a new thing but maybe that's just new to dsmc and three in general like you're saying

John David Wright  
I could be mistaken but I feel like I hotswap stuff with hard power and it's fine I mean it I wonder if they were dismissed explaining it because you could hard power into the fiber back and then the cameras going to get power through the V mount because that's how because that's how the fiber back is connecting to the camera it

Josh Rogers  
could have been that I misunderstood or there was Miss explained like I said I don't shoot with red very often or rarely ever. So they also released a monsoon. Yeah, I will soon yeah. They also released a monitor that's going like a big like seven inch viewfinder monitor that goes in the back that looks really nice. If I walked up to the read booth and saw it on I was talking to the guy there and I said don't take this the wrong way. I mean this is a compliment. This looks like a Sony monitor like a Sony broadcast viewfinder, do the Finder as a monitor. It's so nice. It has like all the built in like tally lights and stuff on the monitor is super easy

John David Wright  
to measure on the side too.

Josh Rogers  
I think it does. I don't have the photo of it right in front of me but I remember it being pretty easy to adjust and like had a great a really great like matte screen was like easy to see. We'll see once they're out on this Still HD logos on there no small HD logos that I saw, this seems to be not one of their third party partnerships, which is an interesting choice, maybe that'll change by the time it's like actually in production. This could be a prototype unit, we don't even know this product still is not on res website today.

John David Wright  
Well, they didn't even announce it on Instagram during the show. Like until a couple days after. It kind of felt like red sales guys and engineers like we're kind of fighting with not fighting, but like, talking with corporate of like, hey, let's like tell people that like this is at NAB, like, the show so huge and read all for the last couple years has always had this like off the beaten path, like really small, they don't even really have a booth like you kind of have to.

Josh Rogers  
They were tucked away in a meeting room this year that you had to go out of the conference hall or the escalator, and like down, they didn't know where they were, they had a small presence. They had a small presence in the Nikon and Mark Roberts motion control booth. But it was literally like a single commodo on a tripod. And it was like to read employees stand next to it, which you know, I guess, financial situations as dire as they were. Maybe that explains it? I don't know.

John David Wright  
I mean, they probably just didn't have much time to prep, maybe so. And they had a they always have a lot of cameras. Committed to, you know, other booths and partners and stuff. Like I think Atlas had some red.

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, basically, every booth had a red and an Alexa. So you have super exciting stuff coming for like cinema conversion broadcasts, I think this is like an area that we're all very interested in to see come to fruition. There's no pricing for either one of these products yet that I've seen. And I can only imagine that the area one in particular is going to be eye watering. Because the election 35 is already $100,000 basically add on the really high tech fiber back and fiber. But anything in cinema is expensive. Broadcast is more expensive, usually. Don't know why, just because they can. But so and man, it's gonna be really interesting to see when the pricing comes out. But if they can be competitive, I think they will start beating the pants off of Sony because I think the image is a lot nicer.

John David Wright  
I think they'll come in about the same price as Sony, because they did mention and one of the tech talks. If you buy a Alexa 35 Live system, there will be a license to get the full cinema.

Josh Rogers  
I don't know package if you will, like just like they've always done in the past with their log area raw or anamorphic or whatever.

John David Wright  
So that would be a pretty penny license, maybe

Josh Rogers  
the maybe the live licensed version five figures. I bet. Yeah, maybe the live licensed version will be less costly, since it's since they're going to kneecap it. And you can unlock the similar features later if you wanted them.

John David Wright  
I mean, I bet with the CCU and the whole thing like I bet you're still at $100,000 or easy. Oh

Josh Rogers  
yeah, I mean a Sony 150 This is gonna be more than a Sony camera chain. It's gotta be and a Sony camera changes starting at like 130 140,000 for anything decent and that's not including lenses, obviously, that's your bare bones. So other things that I saw that were pretty exciting. DGI had a pretty big booth. It was their biggest booth ever. And they were demoing their new LIDAR pro autofocus feature alongside some new Ronan's the RS four and RS four pro pretty light on drones in the DJ booth this year that not anything of late the Inspire three was their big thing last year. But the new ladder processing looks to be really awesome. You can put put the LIDAR sensor on to any camera and then you can use if you're doing handheld you can there is sort of like what looks like a detached severed piece of an RS four handle that you can attach to like an Alexa or whatever. And wire that into the the LIDAR pro calibrate your lenses and then you can just tap on this little one inch screen on the hand unit where your subject is and it was lock on to him and track track the subject just like just like it does on the existing Ronin version of it.

John David Wright  
There's another cool feature to where you can like there's a scroll there's like a front scroll wheel like there is on the smaller Ronan's you can scroll through different focal points so like it'll do You face detection and you, you can scroll through the different faces and it has a little like square which I thought was pretty cool also.

Cole Sullivan  
And Gary's gonna see that little screen, how much of his like a fat finger on that screen and how much you can actually do something that you're trying to do. It feels like it's about the size of thumb. But I haven't seen it in people are starting to gain traction, but I don't know that I've seen it in a lot of hands yet.

John David Wright  
It's in pretty limited quad quantities right now. Like it's sold out everywhere. backordered. Like, it's kind of hard to get your hands on one right now. So time will tell for sure, but definitely seems promising.

Josh Rogers  
I saw a video about it by Robert Machado. That was pretty. It's pretty good. And then who's the other guy that I'm thinking of? I can't remember his name. The original like movie guy.

Cole Sullivan  
Chris hair,

Josh Rogers  
Chris hair. Chris hair had a really great video where he had it rigged out on Alexa with an ingenue. Easy, he did a couple of different setups showing it off. And he said it was really impressive. And it worked really well. And they also did, I think some primes. It was super impressive. JD Who

Cole Sullivan  
was the guy at Cinna gear, Atlanta that had the folk with autofocus.

John David Wright  
So conversion, Moon smart focus.

Cole Sullivan  
Yes, I remember. I guess that was a year and a half ago or so. Like, that's crazy at the time, and it was still so hacky. And it's

John David Wright  
gotten a lot better. Like it's actually in a box with like old evoPOWER now, where before it kind of just looked like a Raspberry Pi kind of a situation.

Cole Sullivan  
Yeah, it's cute. Um, but I think I don't see that. Like it. prosumer Yeah,

John David Wright  
I can't really remember all the details of the moon at this point. But I feel like it had to integrate with a fizz system that like a Preston or a high five. So it's cool. You know, it's cool that I mean, this is basically like a standalone thing. The focus Pro. Yeah.

Cole Sullivan  
And they focus overlays and their their advertising 20 meter to detection, which is crazy if that stands

John David Wright  
on, like a pretty wide field of view, too. But yeah, I think it was like over 100 degrees.

Cole Sullivan  
I really I thought I thought it was

John David Wright  
probably should brush up on these details beforehand. But anyways, I remember reading it and was like, Oh, that's really impressive. I want to try it.

Josh Rogers  
Alongside the ronin like handle I forgot to mention they also have a three channel and unit. Now that seems pretty nicely built. I mean, it's no high five or Preston but

John David Wright  
no, but I mean, I'm sure you all remember that that first gen DJI focus thing as a piece of junk. So like, it looks really good. Like all of all the all the super high end drone people are, are they're all buying this and that

Cole Sullivan  
mean it's 1900 bucks, or lighter or a hand unit focus grip and a motor. It's

Josh Rogers  
a little intense. That's literally a 10th of the cost of what it would cost to buy an area hand unit. Yep,

Cole Sullivan  
yep. Not to mention us any tape or any sort of

Josh Rogers  
measure. Yeah. And a cine tape. Yes. So true. Yeah.

John David Wright  
You can another cool thing. Ignite Digi the wizards out of Tasmania. They created a CAN bus adapter so you can hardwire that the DJI three channel can unit into the DJI transmission. seven inch monitor. Insane send the signal that way. So that's awesome. So say you're flying an alta. You know, like, however far away you've got focus Iris zoom control for however far it is like three miles or whatever. Like you're running out of battery before then but still, like it's pretty impressive.

Josh Rogers  
I'd be terrified to fly a drone three miles away. Yeah. If you could even legally do it, it would be a dot there's no way you could maintain visual line of sight. At that distance. You'd have to have a or chase vehicle.

John David Wright  
You'd have to have a beyond visual line of sight waiver.

Josh Rogers  
last big topic. There's so much that I saw but try to keep it somewhat succinct here at last big thing to talk about at NAB was Blackmagic had some pretty big announcements that they they dropped so there's a new Blackmagic URSA cine, which is a 12k full frame like or like LF sized, open gate sensor that I kind of didn't see coming at all. I don't think anyone did. They had the Ursa 12k Previously they announced and it seems like it kind of flopped and so I kind of figured they were done chasing that that super high resolution train but no, they're back at it. It seems like a really well thought out camera it's it has an integrated V mount on the back so they're adopting new battery standards and has this really cool AC screen on the other side that seems kind of reminiscent and recall back to the original Ursa if you guys remember that hilarious, large, like what was an 11 inch screen iPad that folded out from the side.

John David Wright  
Wrong side though, that's the problem.

Cole Sullivan  
The the notice was, is on the right side, the Pyxis is the one that was on the operator. Sorry, I'm

John David Wright  
getting them all mixed. Yeah, the tiny little box camera. As

Cole Sullivan  
I'm scrolling through the website here to your point, JD, they sell the Cine 12k the pics is three versions of the URSA Mini Pro, a cine camera 6k a pocket pocket Pro, a pocket 6k, non Pro, three versions of the studio's like there's only four form factors and there's 12 cameras.

Josh Rogers  
I don't understand why they don't like old versions, and like, they should have a single version of each style and I don't know why they do what they do. But

Cole Sullivan  
you know what, I dropped my pocket. They dropped

John David Wright  
the pocket name. Did they? Yes. So which forks can you throw it cannot fit this in your pocket, you haven't been able to Epsons literally the first one that took Nikon batteries. That first Pocket Cinema Camera was awesome. The one that looked like a point and shoot.

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, that person was awesome. You could put an SD I remember shooting with this in like 2011 or 2012. I bought

John David Wright  
one because they put them on sale for $500. It was it

Josh Rogers  
was shot true risk to an SD card in 2011 or 2012 whatever this was, it was amazing. And I kept waiting for them to do another camera like that. And it's it's never going to happen at this point. But they

John David Wright  
should I took it to Portland and was like shooting B roll and coffee shops and like no one no one was the wiser. And I guess you can kind of do that with current pockets. But yeah, back to the point like that. So they put the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6k formerly known as the pocket camera on sale from from 2600 bucks to $1,600 which is an insane deal. First of all, but all all of the press release was Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6k for $1,600. And I was like why are they like, like they're they're bigger cameras for that cheap. That's That's insane. And so I started looking at it. And I couldn't find it because I was like searching the wrong thing. I was like, What is this? Anyways, I was just an even more confused when I was trying to look for this sale. Because I didn't realize they dropped the pocket name.

Cole Sullivan  
Well, they kept it for the pro version. Yeah, the 6k Pro, but not the non Pro. Yeah, there's

John David Wright  
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6k G two Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6k Pro, and then Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6k

Josh Rogers  
I'm so confused just listening to you. And I know about these cameras. This

Cole Sullivan  
is feeling like Google acquiring nest. This is the same thing

John David Wright  
terrible. This is worse than then the Apple Pencil lineup.

Josh Rogers  
Like this is more configuring.

John David Wright  
It might be the most confusing lineup, like in tech camera period. Yeah,

Cole Sullivan  
I think you're right.

Josh Rogers  
More specs about the 12k it can come in a variety of different lens mounts which is cool. You can get it in airy, Pl LPL or Canon EF so they all support like full frame mounts which I think it's funny that there's no Sony E mount or Fe mount. I think Sony had like actually filed I remember hearing a story about Sony coming after freefly systems for their Ember camera with a head of native email. So maybe Sony's that seems like a weird stance to take but okay, so they're not letting people use their their mount. It also has integrated indies, which is not something we can say about all cameras. That's a tick box against Red in my opinion. And then all So they have this crazy frickin new NVMe eight terabyte recording module that has like the size of a tape cartridge that goes into the back of the camera. And it's just straight raw doggone some MDOT to NVMe SSDs on this camera and fast bro yeah if you're gonna be able to record 12k Like uncompressed raw I guess so. My my my wallet hurts thinking about buying media for this camp, not the media for the camera because it's actually unlike all other camera manufacturers. Arey it's actually reasonably priced, but the harddrive space. But the hard drive? Yes, sure. I mean, that's what I'm saying. The the media is reasonably priced, but the storage you're going to need to hold all the footage that you shoot with this. Oh my god. You thought you needed a petabyte server?

John David Wright  
Yeah $1,700 For the eight terabyte

Josh Rogers  
I have a quote which is not at all I have a quote in my inbox right now for the area high speed media pack for the Alexa 30 532 terabyte cards for the Alexa 35 $16,000 God gotta love him gotta love air think about it though.

John David Wright  
That's That's six terabytes. That's not bad.

Cole Sullivan  
Sure, yeah, this this media Doc is only two grand for rescue. Doc Yes, I

John David Wright  
really like black magic rackmounted anything in that form factor is going to be $2,000 Doesn't matter what it is?

Cole Sullivan  
They just take five bucks off

Josh Rogers  
they take a look at it and like that looks like 2k

Cole Sullivan  
Sounds about right. Do we

Josh Rogers  
have a win pricing on this first city it's 14 it's 14 995 Yeah Friday about right about $15,000 If you want the if you want the ETF top handle kit it's a another like 50 100 bucks it becomes 16 495 Honestly, I can't wait for this camera to come out and get my hands on it because I have always thought Blackmagic Colorscience looks really good. And they just keep pounding on these other manufacturers and I look I don't make any secret about it I'm in theory sell out I love shooting with my area cams. The code the image that comes out of the Blackmagic camera I think it's probably the closest to collects a look straight out of camera it's

John David Wright  
incredibly close 35

Cole Sullivan  
millimeter sensor huge.

Josh Rogers  
I need to go on the f8 lens toolkit once a large format it's extreme I want to see actually how it does compare to Alexa LF

John David Wright  
but think Alexa LF is wider?

Josh Rogers  
Yeah probably just slightly this is probably a slightly taller sensor

John David Wright  
really the only thing that's hold held BlackMagic cameras back is their reliability like if they fix that like they're they're honestly like really great to shoot on their menus are super straightforward it would they were the best. I think they were the best menu systems in the game before dsmc Three actually, I think red kind of gives them a run for their money in that regard. Now should we do

Josh Rogers  
a hot takes camera menu system ranking? Sure. I'd say I'd go the last Sony Sony is in the basement. Got

Cole Sullivan  
to read is right below Sony. below or above? I'd say it's a blank. It's the old read menus. It's

John David Wright  
above you can search at least what's the full size keyboard

Cole Sullivan  
it was just like a PC. That's all that it was it's just still worse

Josh Rogers  
man Sony so bad. I think they're the new like, especially the Sony like the FX six the FX nine in the Venice ones I think are like god awful. At least like FX three which is sort of you know, a seven s three that has like the more photo style menu. It's at least a little better. They improved it but it's still bad. It's still bad. But then on the other side of the ocean, I'd say you've got the Blackmagic

John David Wright  
Right, right at the top and black magic number one actually. And then I'd say yeah,

Josh Rogers  
I'd say airy right below that. dsmc three

John David Wright  
I would group them all together honestly, like I think

Cole Sullivan  
you know, I think very touchscreen friendly. Which is

John David Wright  
I mean SOS red with some of their cameras. That's yeah, I mean, Commodus only screens I haven't

Josh Rogers  
used again, this is where my lack of shooting red in a while as is be falling me. That's gonna change to see in a couple weeks. Yeah. So it's, it's great. Yeah, so back to the BlackMagic cameras. So we touched briefly on the pixel 6k which is just kind of a rehoused blankstein and get this string of words out correctly as a rehoused black magic six kiss Cinema Camera 6k Pro it's not no it's not

John David Wright  
pro pro cinema cameras 6k Cinema Camera

Josh Rogers  
six case it's a rehouse version of that for slightly more money it has this goofy screen on the side but is the box camera that many people including myself have been begging them to make now that it's here I'm not so convinced I actually want what they have concocted my body it's their camera and we'll see what happens. It's super cheap. Not it's more expensive than the the I'm sorry I'm gonna keep calling it the pocket because it's the pocket form factors call magic pocket, but I don't know we'll see.

John David Wright  
It's only it's only $400 More Yeah, why

Josh Rogers  
is it $400 I guess because it has the EDS sitting doesn't even include the ETF though I don't think

John David Wright  
it's got the big ol screen on the side that's going on the wrong side by the way here is the way ads gonna that's gonna add some cost. But yeah, it's three grand naked basically

Josh Rogers  
does the Cinema Camera Pro have Express slots, I know the Pyxis has CF Express type B which is nice.

John David Wright  
Let me go back but y'all looked it up while I continued on this. So three grand for the Pyxis 6k. By default comes with the L mount. You can get it in an EF mount which is nice locking F mount or appeal and then you can pay 100 200 more dollars to repeal mount which is cool and then you get a side rosette plate which everyone should be buying for $60 and then for 1700 bucks you get the Cine e Vf and they specifically say cine on their full HD OLED Yep. Which is cool. It's got buttons on top like looks kind of like the older EBVs and then this is kind of cool. This is a Nanda red single USBC cable for power and video.

Cole Sullivan  
Now she can do it that cable, you can plug your phone in and strap it to the side for hotspot.

Josh Rogers  
I love that they decided to include that photo in their marketing materials because everyone was mystified about why you would do that. I mean it makes sense. You could do some live streaming stuff but it's cool.

John David Wright  
If if you have a red ETF, a red or USPC RMI cable you cannot plug it into anything else

Josh Rogers  
just uses the connector that's the only thing about it. Right well classic

John David Wright  
read they flip two pins so it only works with your stuff.

Josh Rogers  
Circling back to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6k Pocket Edition call it does have CF Express IPS so is the Pyxis so literally, it's just a rehouse pixel, it's literally just a rehouse Cinema Camera 6k And then the other bombshell that Blackmagic announced and I'm going to read from Why am cinema article here it says vs. Cine 17k Bringing IMAX filmmaking to the masses and my jaw about hit the floor when I heard about this. It's it's going to be the the URSA Mini 17k will be black magics new high end, top notch flagship counter attack to the wait for it. Arri Alexa 65 outtake this is what people were asking for. They said Christopher Nolan, no thank you. I want to shoot my YouTube videos and IMAX.

John David Wright  
This is tech tips. First, man, it

Cole Sullivan  
is on b&h And the key features are 17 case sensor, and airy LPL lens mount that has all of the information that is listed awesome

John David Wright  
wide lens mount to

Josh Rogers  
That's crazy. That's a really brings it

John David Wright  
on so full circle.

Josh Rogers  
Oh yeah that for I always forget about that. I always think they're like partners, I forget that DJ actually owns a house of

John David Wright  
literally bought them.

Josh Rogers  
I can't wait for this camera to come out again. Like I'm so psyched to see what happens with this one thing again, the data rates oh my god, what is the data rate going to be for the 17k files that come off of this camera? It's going to be some hysterical numbers

John David Wright  
going to be insane. You can Blackmagic has a data rate calculator on our website and I think you can plug in 17k Actually, please,

Josh Rogers  
please go do that while I continue to talk about some other things here. So it's a 17 case 65 millimeter sensor. So it's a super wide sensor. It almost looks like it's about a 239 to four Oh ASP ratio, it's probably not quite that wide, but it's horizontal sizes 50.8 millimeters and vertical 23.3 millimeters and a diameter of 55.9. So nearly 56 millimeters of image circle needed to cover the sensor, which brings into question what lenses are even available to cover such large sensors. I mean, like, we've gotten around the full frame limitations for a while, you know, cinema has typically been super 35. When we started making this push to full frame, you could there was you could use like photo lenses so everyone's using a lot of like Canon EF or Nikon glass that covered these full frame sensors. But now that we're getting to beyond full frame and into IMAX and like very like tall sensors, there's only a handful lenses that come to mind that cover the Alexa 65 or IMAX. I know there's some panel visions. I don't and this is so out of the world that we run in so I'm not super familiar with the details of this and Panabaker

Cole Sullivan  
has medium format glass. Okay,

Josh Rogers  
they're the they're the airy DNA primes. Yeah,

John David Wright  
I know they've done a lot of really housings for some of these features like a lot of possibly medium format lenses, they'll do some cinema housings.

Josh Rogers  
But again, these are lenses that had to be rehoused to work like the list of lenses, there's like the

John David Wright  
old pan of vision ultra 70 stuff that they shot the Hateful Eight on like, it's proud, it's probably you know, you can count on on both your hands kind of a thing. There's the

Josh Rogers  
lights or like a thali is those are pretty well known large formats. I always forget about

John David Wright  
those I'm curious

Cole Sullivan  
if these markets even line up if the Blackmagic customer base even relates to the same people that are using lenses they cover 65 mil

Josh Rogers  
No not at all I guarantee you I guarantee you that's going to be the complaint when this camera does come out everyone's going to be what lenses can I get that cover this because you can only get these lenses from like rental houses

John David Wright  
you could buy the the values, right you can but

Josh Rogers  
like who has bought them or will buy them these are just not readily available lenses. You can't they're not met like most most cinema rental houses don't even have like I have a great rental house in the bay area here. 20 minutes from our house. I went there earlier today. Shout out shader camera really great. They don't have any lenses that would cover this sensor. They have really great selection of stuff, too.

John David Wright  
They have an awesome selection. But why would they not like no one's shooting this? I mean, I guess we could shoot. You could shoot for the sphere in Vegas now. You know, it isn't 15k Well,

Josh Rogers  
they're using the sphere in Vegas is using they develop their own sensor, which we should talk about, oh, we should talk about maybe some other time that they developed this big sky camera system that is an incredible feat of engineering shoots some crazy stuff. Like the logistics of shooting with a camera are mind boggling.

John David Wright  
I know but that's what I'm saying like like this is going to be you know what? $20,000 They haven't said pricing on it. By multiples of them. I'm just kind of guessing based on what the 12k costs but also in in the photos. There's like two pretty long wireless antennas. Like I wonder if there's wireless video built in.

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, I don't know what that's about. That's a first for for Blackmagic to have big have the big antennas off the back of the camera in the areas

John David Wright  
to lf I don't think they really do it anymore. The

Josh Rogers  
Alexa 35 has like some short stubby antennas on the back that I think those are. They're not the Wi Fi antennas because the Wi Fi antenna is built in I think it's the short range air he calls it the E MIP. For your for your high five basically are your W four.

John David Wright  
Like these look long like these look like it would be for Wi Fi like Teradek

Josh Rogers  
antennas. Yeah, so maybe it is wireless video. They haven't said any who

John David Wright  
knows there's a 10 G Ethernet port on the side which is cool. So

Josh Rogers  
until this camera was announced there was not a camera that you could buy that shot IMAX format aside from something that we stumbled upon on eBay just the other day, which is an IMAX film camera like a full on IMAX film camera was for sale on eBay for something like $400,000 I'm gonna have to pull up this eBay article

Cole Sullivan  
really quick still for sale.

Josh Rogers  
Of course it's still for sale.

John David Wright  
$400,000 Yeah,

Josh Rogers  
I don't even know where did someone steal this off a truck.

John David Wright  
I mean, it's listed by this company called pre owned camera. They've got 91 reviews. I thought IMAX owned these cameras. That's what I thought too, but I don't really know. Honestly. I mean, I'm surprised Christopher Nolan doesn't buy it. It get his money back. It's

Josh Rogers  
his for free.

John David Wright  
Probably. So this

Cole Sullivan  
cameras currently in Los Angeles and we should see if how trying to go. Demo while we're there. Just to see if we can go see it. Say we're interested. We

John David Wright  
should not be fun. They'll ship it to you for $2,000

Cole Sullivan  
It comes down to five separate cases.

Josh Rogers  
Why does it not come with free shipping at this point? $2,000

John David Wright  
for shipping 18k images world's highest

Josh Rogers  
resolution? I love the the title of the eBay listing it says it's 15 perf 65 millimeter IMAX format camera. And then the sub the tagline or like the subtext is one of a kind, most unique camera on eBay. And, you know, I think that's the correct statement. Ordinarily

John David Wright  
a rental only item this camera goes for $16,000 a week and insurance for $1 million.

Josh Rogers  
Why is it insured for a million dollars? If you're selling it for 40k? Something's off? They say it's totally functional? Or is it brilliant? Can't

John David Wright  
find someone to buy it for $400,000 They said it fully functional tional and it passed the test and 2024 it's

Cole Sullivan  
available for rental and sale. Where do you buy film for this?

John David Wright  
You can buy it from b&h. Yeah, look it up. It's amazing. It's pretty funny.

Cole Sullivan  
It takes up to 30 volts. Wow, just the logistics or the 30 the logistics

Josh Rogers  
of trying to use this camera. I don't even want to begin to think about it. There's so non standard everything film reels are so heavy, everything in like modern cinema is so standardized and like pretty, like well figured out. And this just throws a wrench into everything. It's like apparently 30 volts, some weird voltage, like film on top of whatever is already that so then add IMAX and the way that this camera works, and I'm sure you know what's going to break because there was that interview interview with Florence Pugh when they were shooting Oppenheimer where they were like doing some some nude scene or whatever and the camera just make some god awful noise in the middle of the take as the film jams through the gate. And they have to like radio in this camera surgeon is how she calls him and he comes over and starts like I guess like takes the front of the lens mount off whatever and starts poking around at the camera and I thought it was funny in this interview she like kind of was like well, just sitting here and now's my time to learn so she's just kind of like, covers herself up and rolls over to the screws over to where the guys you know tinkering on the camera and starts to ask him questions about what he's doing to fix the camera and I just thought that was a really great gem from that interview.

John David Wright  
Oh hey, there's two IMAX MT lenses included in the camera package, a Zeiss hosam blod 40 millimeter and 50 millimeter

Josh Rogers  
oh well they should be put in that in the title if

John David Wright  
converted for cine use with manual Follow Focus gears that's included in the $400,000 price Yeah, and repurposed for shooting on 15 Perfect 65 millimeter film well, that needs to be in the title. For those that don't know a perf is the little like holes on a film strip. So if you picture a film strip 35 mil is three perf. So it's as wide as three holes. 65 mil is 15

Josh Rogers  
per and it goes to the camera the other way, instead of top to bottom. It goes side

John David Wright  
by sides. Yep, literally five times as big. It's insane. So

Josh Rogers  
yeah, can't wait to be shooting some 17k IMAX footage on my brand new Blackmagic camera when this comes out.

Cole Sullivan  
I feel like that wraps up our NAB talk. The next thing we had down is chatting a little lighting. I wish I would have seen some of these things at NAB. Hopefully we'll see them at Cinna gear. I think kind of in the same place. We're talking about broadcast cameras and cine cameras and how things are kind of merging changing a little bit. I feel like the prosumer lighting category is changing a lot. Aperture we've kind of talked about a lot is the household name. But JD is a huge fan of them. And sarcasm very much. Not as great as everyone thinks they are still a great light for the price. But interestingly enough Nan light and lightning looks and looks as the brand of Nan light. But Nan light and Godox are both some serious competitors for aperture lights. So recently I've been digging into that. I think as far as panel lights go kind of been researching. There's obviously the sky panels. There's the new sky panel X that came out kind of at a different price here. The aperture Nova panels are really cheap. Mostly good things about them but the Google Docs and Nan Lux panels are very interesting. Higher CRI and a lot better price point a half ago

John David Wright  
docs panel it's basically one by one I think it's like 15 by 15 inches I only got the buy color one because I don't need RGB for my one man band type of stuff and it is ungodly bright. Like it's It's insane how bright it is

Josh Rogers  
that's so surprising to me because I'm I always thought that Kodak stuff was like, knockoff brand stuff. And then like a couple weeks ago, you guys started talking about go docs. There's

John David Wright  
some cheap stuff that you don't want to buy but it's it's specifically the their new line called no lead. k n o w l Ed. Oh,

Josh Rogers  
okay, that makes more sense. I want you set up know what I was like about you're like no led and I was like, That is a weird name for a life.

John David Wright  
It's still a weird name. I don't really know what it means. I guess we can ask them at City Year. But yeah, they're good. They're really high. CRI SSI, the brightness is insane. They're able to get that because there's one thing aperture didn't really do very well is focus on cooling. They're kind of like apple in that regard, I guess. So like, go to oxygen and light they've really focused on cooling and heat sinks and there's a fan and my Godox panel. The neon light has some like light matte. Like fixtures and the entire back is a heatsink. Basically it's like a metal heatsink. So they're just they're on they're really just able to push those LEDs a lot harder. So, but I mean, it kind of makes sense. They're like, aperture was first to the game. Like I feel like they're catching up in some respects. Go duck started

Cole Sullivan  
in strobes? Correct. And kind of their way into continuous lighting. Yeah,

John David Wright  
along. I mean, I feel like they've been in the game for a while. And but they're just recently and into the continuous like cinema market. I remember when I bought my Godox panel. I don't know, it's probably been nine months now. I ordered a softbox for it. And the softbox from b&h was backordered like six weeks. Just just because like they're basically like, they just haven't been out very long. So they're still developing it. They have an app, that's fine. But yeah, I think it's overall, I think it's good for the market like the same way I don't like BlackMagic cameras, like I still think it's good for everybody like they are pushing the envelope. And I think aperture did that. It just kind of forces the industry to move along faster.

Cole Sullivan  
Yeah, I remember and 2020 We all did a shoot together. And the gaffer in the shoot on the shoot in San Francisco, we were asking for an s 360. And he kind of came pushed back a little bit. I think these were the nine looks the Dinos at the time, which I don't think they're still around. But he was pushing pretty hard for the 1200s. And he was recommending to dyno 1200s For the same price per days at 360. And we loved them then and nothing I kind of forgot that they existed or even made decent lights. But there's that

Josh Rogers  
all of our first interactions with those lights. Yeah, we

Cole Sullivan  
had three of them on that shoot.

John David Wright  
Yeah, cuz we had two in the ceiling and then or the ceiling

Cole Sullivan  
was as 60s. And then we had Oh was it or a key and then 600 or 650 refill. They were great at the time. And they've improved them since there's a lot of for now, light fixtures and and Lux is pushing now. But I think the one thing that aperture still has a lead on as the 600 C. I don't know that anyone is necessarily competing with that light at that price point. But the panel lights for sure. There's a lot of

Josh Rogers  
competition. I don't see the color versions of those panels really getting used like that often. It's mostly your by color.

Cole Sullivan  
The color is great. Your magenta shift, like a green shift is really I think the biggest to kind of push for it have

Josh Rogers  
a full RGB light just for your budget just for your 10 shifts.

Cole Sullivan  
I mean, at that price it's another 500 bucks or something. Yeah,

John David Wright  
I mean, why not?

Josh Rogers  
I know I just I just I'm just saying I think it's funny to to have an entire RGB W whatever full color fixture and then only utilize the tent.

John David Wright  
I mean it gets it helps it make it more accurate Godox competes at the 12 120 400 wattage price point, but which those are really nice. They have a custom mount. It's not Bowens, it's, I forget what they call it. It's like Godox mountain or something. But but it's got it's got what they call like a smart connector. So when you connect a lens on to the fixture, the fixture knows what lens it has.

Cole Sullivan  
An analyzer does that as well. I had the first time I'd use the 2400 for nail a few weeks ago, I took that cone and put it on like 45 degrees off. And I snapped it in and the light just like giant caution light popped up. I was like this accessory can't be used. And I looked at it and then spun it the right way and it has some pins and electronic pins that don't know what reflector is on. And if it's even supported by them, which is fair. Why is it put? Well, you could put something on there that's not supported and just melted.

Josh Rogers  
I guess so. Yeah,

John David Wright  
I mean at 2400 Watts, like,

Cole Sullivan  
right you can't run that at full off a house power but just so weird doesn't

John David Wright  
necessarily feel like a DRM. DRM in your lights is

Josh Rogers  
just a weird take. I don't know.

Cole Sullivan  
For sure from doing stupid things.

Josh Rogers  
Cool. How many of these lights are you looking to buy? Like, what's your like? What's your criteria here?

John David Wright  
What are are they installed? Are they gonna live on a grip truck? Like what are we doing? The goal is

Cole Sullivan  
installed. I think for grip truck location lights, I lean more towards vortexes something that's a little more rental house friendly, weatherproof, sealed. Yeah. But something in a studio as long as I think we JD had talked a little bit about the Nova panels. And that was kind of the route I was originally leaning in. I know you mentioned one day you had a gaffer that was working on install with them and he was like, hey, DMX just stops working on him. And it just does that like Well, that's a pretty big con for something here installing in the studio.

Josh Rogers  
That's the thing that the DMX just if that if that's a reproducible thing across multiple fixtures. That's a serious problem that aperture needs to be on yesterday.

Cole Sullivan  
The other I mean even the wireless DMX side wired seems easy. I feel like we've had that down for years now.

Josh Rogers  
50 years DMX is old news. Yeah, all of the wireless

Cole Sullivan  
for aperture. So we had some NAND light and some aperture on set. And you have to reconnect the aperture lights with the app every time you'd lock your phone or walk away and the light just stays connected in this I mean that alone is every few seconds saved on set but back to what you were asking about the these this specific purchase looking for studio lights something with color for a cycle install five to 10 fixtures that hopefully are DMX stable don't need weather signaling to good oxes feeling like a good play feels like that's out of nowhere but I'm glad to hear it I wouldn't have said that six months ago JDS did it keeps buying red and Go Dogs and now we're all slowly getting on board is

Josh Rogers  
like the little whisper on your shoulder

John David Wright  
don't have unlimited money anymore guys. Thinking outside the box Yeah,

Cole Sullivan  
but you're still not buying min Frodo

Josh Rogers  
you're having a lower you're having you're you're having to lower your standards. Well,

John David Wright  
it's still not a standard lowering because like this stuff's actually good. I think it just like opened my

Josh Rogers  
mind magic is actually good.

John David Wright  
Reliability things man, if you shoot at the wrong ISO, you get freakin scanlines on your sensor. I

Josh Rogers  
don't think that's been a problem for a while.

John David Wright  
That's happened to me. Meet me and Cole. Forget and then, um, and I asked the guy I rented the camera from and he's like, oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that. And I was like, well would have been nice to know. Before shot a whole day

Cole Sullivan  
should be gaff tape on the camera that says Do not put

Josh Rogers  
in 1250 Well 50 out what camera was it

John David Wright  
a pocket pocket 6k

Josh Rogers  
That is not some pro everytime encountered.

John David Wright  
I know. But that's the thing. Like they it's a $3,000 camera like they're not all good. gonna be the same like stuff's going to like. Like the QC and reliability is not going to be there like I had an earth I was had an Ursa on a Steadicam for something once I was first day seeing and I hit the power switch to power it down so I could change batteries and it would not power down I just had to yank the power and I tried I tried multiple times and so I rejected the media and then I just yanked the battery off and stuck another battery on there and then the power switch decided to work again. But at

Cole Sullivan  
that price, you can just buy a new camera twice and you're still cheaper than their competitor option

Josh Rogers  
read read it read introduced the Comodo as like a crash camera and it cost twice as much as more than twice as much as 6k does. $6,000 for the OG it was more than that when it came out there wasn't it?

John David Wright  
I don't know. All right, I think we're gonna wrap up this episode but we have kind of a reoccurring topic if you will, that we want to talk about every week because we don't want to take ourselves too seriously. And there's always something funny that happens on set or whatever so we're gonna tentative title but I think it might stick it's called dumb over the week, so or bi weekly, whatever the frequency of this podcast

Cole Sullivan  
is done in a week.

John David Wright  
But yeah, so just you know, something funny that happened to one of us on set that we can laugh at each other. And the person on the hot seat this week is Josh So Josh, tell us what happened. I crashed the drone

Cole Sullivan  
and that's the end of the podcast

Josh Rogers  
it's a lot of it was a low point for me it was very humbling

Cole Sullivan  
you who don't know Josh has been a drone pilot flying heavy lift cinema cameras worth for what a decade million dollars for probably a decade and

Josh Rogers  
went on and off but yeah about literally Yeah. Oh my god, it has been 10 years. It's been more than 10 years. I started in like 2012

John David Wright  
y'all did basically everything in New Orleans right? Yeah, we did a bunch of stuff whenever I

Josh Rogers  
still live in Louisiana a friend of mine and I we did a bunch of cinema stuff a bunch of like TV commercial stuff. There I mean, there were still a lot of like LA crews that were coming in for some of the bigger stuff but we kept pretty busy. Just flew a lot of Inspire and a lot of like, Alexa inspires money maker man, I'll tell you, but anyways, this I crashed a Mavic Thankfully, it wasn't anything big. I was doing this little small shoot for a school. It actually wasn't this week. It was a couple weeks ago but right at sunset there's this beautiful school out in an east bay here and in the Bay Area in California. If shooting right at sunset, beautiful campus on on a mountainside just got too wrapped up in the shot and was like kind of scraping over the roofline and just peeked into the side of the frame. I saw this like old FM antenna, just get into my frame. And before I knew it, the drone had crashed onto the roof. And I thought it was honestly if it hit the antenna and fell probably like 10 or 15 feet. And I've seen the Mavic recover from things like this before. And I thought it was going to recover but it did not it hit the ground and I had to go find a school administrator or something and we got up on the roof found the drone and it was completely destroyed. Shockingly, I thought I like I said I thought it was gonna be fine. But the camera was like completely severed from the body. The body shell was cracked. It had like rip the motor off of a mountain. I was like, Man, this thing only show mice it was mangled. I don't I don't know how.

John David Wright  
How fast are you going?

Josh Rogers  
Not fast at all. It was like a nice slow, sweeping spot like our sleeping shot.

John David Wright  
I mean, I've ran into some trees and stuff and just break some propellers and you can start flying again and trees are a lot softer than antennas. Yeah, that's true.

Cole Sullivan  
No more malleable. But you had DJI care.

Josh Rogers  
Yeah, thankfully, I had the DJI care and I was really sad. I had to use it, but I'm really glad I had it. And I haven't sent a DJI item for repair in a long time, though, probably the last time I did it was I was still living in Louisiana. So this is 767 years ago or something I think and not an easy process DJI has moved has become a much bigger company in the in the meantime. So the DJI care repair process was actually super, super simple. There was two options. You could have them ship you one in advance or you could wait for them to receive yours and then they would send you the new one. The only difference was if you wanted them to ship the new one out first they would put hold on your credit card for the full value and then they would drop the hold once you Got it. I didn't do that option just because I wasn't in a rush. I've got other drones if I needed one, and I didn't have anything coming up. But even still, the turnaround time was like less than a week, it was like five or five business days. And by that from when I shipped it off, so I had a new one and they sent me a brand new, like retail packaging. Mavic 370. It didn't have like the extra stuff that the same package has, but it was like a retail package. Drone only as cool. One thing I did miss up though, unfortunately, was I forgot to remove the ND filter from the drone I sent in so I'm now missing an indie 64

Cole Sullivan  
From my kit bomber, you're not getting that. But

Josh Rogers  
it may have been it may have been cracked. Yeah, I'm not getting it. But it may have been cracked anyway. But you know, I can go one step up or down and probably be fine. It's not the end of the

John David Wright  
world. It's fine. You can go like 400 800 ISO on that thing. And it's

Josh Rogers  
so yeah, visual observers and flying drones. Good idea. Don't get too buried in the screen even when you're lulled into a false sense of security because it'll, that's when it'll get you.

John David Wright  
Maybe the FAA knows what they're talking about as the first drone. I've crashed

Josh Rogers  
in a very, very long time. So I at least feel okay about that. It's not a right. It's not a recurring thing. At

John David Wright  
least you get to use your DJI care. Yeah, it expires I

Josh Rogers  
want to say at the end of the summer, like in July or something because I've had this drone for almost two years at this point. So I need to crash it again soon. Make

John David Wright  
use of that mine expires in like 80 Something days. For those listening we have the same one. Yes, we do have the same drum. The

Cole Sullivan  
currency crashed into

Josh Rogers  
extremely overpriced Matic three which they didn't do promptly after we bought it had come out with the Matic three pro cine in which I had I was

John David Wright  
so mad because the other day so how to shoot at the lake. I was going to film boats as they were voting. And so I wanted some polarisers you know, just to kill some some of the glare and I was trying to find some indie polarizer combos in the only ones I could find. I even ordered some because it was unclear which Mavic three it was for and there's just there's barely any third party support for the Mavic three cine because it was out for like three days. And then DJI was like JK, here's the Mavic three pro with three lenses on it. And the ND filter. I like try it was from Tiffin it was in the circular polarizer combo. And I tried to fit it on. And it was it was barely like, like barely off. Like, I bet they could have made those prongs in the same spot. And it would have fit just like on both drones just fine. But DJI had to sunset our $5,000 drone, like two months after it came out.

Josh Rogers  
It was actually six months. I just looked it up the Mavic three cine came out November 5 of the ces 2021. I don't know if I believe that. If that's the case, it was much longer than six months. It was a year and six months. And then this is the Mavic three pro cine was May 25 of last year. So that's been a year. That feels right. It

John David Wright  
just didn't. I don't know, it felt like it was way shorter than that. But I don't know. Okay,

Josh Rogers  
well, that wraps it up for this week. We'll see you when we decide to record again, I think we're trying to shoot for a roughly biweekly schedule. We'll see what on this. I'd like to I'd like to stick to that because I do enjoy doing this. And I think you know we have some we have a good time doing it. So I'd love to keep that up.

John David Wright  
Yeah, we'll see who listens. If you'll enjoy it, let us know. Yeah,

Josh Rogers  
please send any feedback you may have. You can send us an email. I'm sure we're going to have an email for the podcast link below in the in the in the show notes. Or you can find us on Twitter or whatever. Instagram is probably a good place to reach us. Yeah, I

John David Wright  
don't check Twitter very much yet. So we'll get into that. So yeah, we'll

Josh Rogers  
see you on the next one. And Till then,

Cole Sullivan  
bye. My

Josh Rogers  
cold lights are cool, but you want to know what my favorite lighters? What is it? It's this dinky little flashlight, the Rovi Vaughn e eight, are you whatever it's called. It's this little tiny BIC lighter size flashlight that I think all of us have since purchased. And it came up in our group chat like two or three days ago and I was an immediate Instagram instant. Amazon buy for me.

Cole Sullivan  
Y'all got one, right? Yes,

John David Wright  
I did. Someone Someone had. I don't remember who it was gold someone was. Yeah, Cole Estrada, etc. Oh, yeah, they carry a flashlight. And I texted my friend Stephen, who is like, if anyone I know would have a good something for this. I knew It was him and of course, he sends me a link to this $50 flashlight on Amazon. And at first I was like, seems to like Amazon cheap looks,

Josh Rogers  
has a weird name it has all it has all the makings of a bad Amazon so

John David Wright  
many red flags, but I trusted him and it's great. It's like 700 lumens it's got like a 300 milliamp lithium ion battery in it you can do a triple A battery as a backup. Which is crazy because it's a triple A batteries basically the the size of this entire thing. It's got a UV light

Cole Sullivan  
it's got a spot daylight a warm flood.

John David Wright  
It has a 98 CRI light on the side has

Cole Sullivan  
better than aperture

John David Wright  
I hate that pet like 40,000k I mean it's not hard to do better than that look

Josh Rogers  
I love a good gadget and this scratched all the right gadget itches for me i It's been in my pocket every day since then. It's this it's it's got two little buttons on it and an infinite combination of different lights. It's got a low a low regular light a really bright regular like front facing flashlight and then on the side it's got a really dim like nightlight that you can turn on and then it's got a UV light for whatever you want to do with UV light but it's cool if you it's actually really great for charging up your watch if you have a watch that has like glow in the dark loom on the on the hands or on the the indices you can charge up your watch

Cole Sullivan  
the other day I have a glow in the dark marker for placing props on set oh my god spot and I started using the flashlight for it's got it's not a very bright UV but you get to work right you get really close you can see that or is

John David Wright  
it like dry erase? Yeah, man,

Cole Sullivan  
I saw somebody late to that I saw

Josh Rogers  
Tiktok about that hack for like product photography or like time lapse

John David Wright  
or like this film industry is the best there's there's all these little stupid hacks for for something that somebody knows and you ask how how how they found out about it and it was you know it's all like word of mouth like Yeah, it's so fun.

Cole Sullivan  
Yeah is a food photography at anyway but

Josh Rogers  
we haven't even mentioned the best part about this flashlight is that it's a USB C rechargeable which in turns out is an extreme rarity because I have been carrying around this little $20 anchor flashlight that I still think is really great and as bright but recharges with like Gosh dang micro USB cable and I have practically limited everything except type C out of my backpack except for this one. Cable I need to charge that flashlight and now that's finally gone. We'd looked at like I was even looking at really nice flashlights like Streamlight or is it surefire is the other like, good brand? I looked. None of them have like, non stupid looking. Good pocket size USBC rechargeable flashlights and this dang Amazon one just as the silver bullet and the battery on it lasts quite a while.

John David Wright  
Yeah, I haven't really needed to charge it yet. So we'll see. Have y'all

Cole Sullivan  
been on Ruby fonts website?

Josh Rogers  
I have it's a disaster.

Cole Sullivan  
I have bad news. What they make pins karabiners

John David Wright  
Oh, that dude they made they have they specialized EDCC

Cole Sullivan  
they make rail mounted lights for pistols. There's good stuff on

Josh Rogers  
there. None of the other stuff I feel like was particularly interesting to me. I was very happy with the flashlight to be one and done by a pin. I got too many other hobbies to fund.

Cole Sullivan  
They have a little tactical flashlights 5000 milliamp, anyone. Maybe we'll buy a second really fun.

Josh Rogers  
So everyone out there by the Rovi Vaughn flashlight and then go right on the Amazon reviews that the off the rails podcast sent you there. We'll see if we can get some. There'll be our first sponsor is Roe v. Vaughn. They'll be great

Transcribed by https://otter.ai