Come on. Admit it. Everybody has a drawer full of stuff they bought that either didn't turn to be what they needed, or just plain doesn't work.

Here's my list:

Bogen retractable spike for monopod -- It won't stay fixed in place. The "spike" appears to be a regular screw that was mangled into shape by a pair of pliers. Bogen, shame on you!

Frezzi mic/light mount -- This thing is supposed to hold a microphone alongside a post to mount one of their mini-fill lights. Trouble is, the foot is too long and thin to sit firmly in the hotshoe. There's a screw that's supposed to apply enough pressure to keep everything in place, but all it does is gouge a hole in the hotshoe. No way I'm mounting $1,000 worth of equipment on top of this. Frezzi makes good stuff, so I'm assuming this thing was never meant to work with prosumer camcorders or something. Easily the most expensive mistake I've ever made. I've yet to find a good run and gun solution that will let you mount a light and microphone in seconds.

$50 tripod -- Enough said. Landfill food.

Cheap XLR cables -- Same.

Mini-jack splitter from A2Z Cables -- I wanted this gadget to split the signal exiting an XLR adapter and send one half to a minidisc and the other half to the camcorder. Too much interference or something. I don't know if it's because of the voltage coming out of the mic input from both pieces of equipment, or signals canceling each other or what. No slam on A2Z Cables. It's really well made. I ended up splitting the XLR cable before it enters the adapter, and that's working fine.

Sennheiser MZS-Cam (on-camera shockmount) -- crappy plastic mount shattered. Too bad. It worked fantastically until it broke.

Pistol grip handle for mic shockmount by Mighty Wondercam -- Too clunky, and has a tendency to make pinging noises.

Bogen rubber flexhead for monopod -- This actually works, but only with no wide angle lens or anything else mounted on the camera, including a real battery. I guess it would be great for a tiny one-chipper. You also can't pick up the monopod without the camera flopping all over the place. It's pretty neat though. I don't mind keeping it.

Yup,
Editing systems from Matrox, FAST & Pinnacle Systems.

Libec model 20 tripod.

Nikon R10 Super8 camera (dropped when new, batteries left in for 20 years) given to me free. Too much time invested. Landfill.

Radio Shack passive mixer (never worked)

Heh, I don't have a drawer full, I have a closet. Here are the highlights.

Some Smith Victor lights.
A Mightywondercam.
A cheap-o mixing board (possibly from Radio Shack).
I'm gonna stop, starting to get depressed.

I have some $50 tripods. I use them for holding LCD monitors up. They work great for that. One time, on a dare, I put my XL1 on one. Heh, scary....

Mike Rehmus:
I could use a Libec M20 tripod for something, if you want to sell yours.

MS930 (Sony external camcorder mic)
noticeably worse than the on-board mic. :/

Smith Victor lights
Some cheapo kit stands
a refelctasol from years gone by
Tiffin UV filters

I've been really lucky with DV so far. The Smith Victors, light stands and reflectasol were from my still days. I've made lots of mistakes but luckily very few in this realm.

So the Libec model 20 tripod is no good? Someone here with lots of posts recommended it for my Panasonic PV-DV953. Shucks.

Pinnacle Studio DC10+ capture board back in the analog era... Glad I swiched to digital.
Some battery charger that burned before charging its first battery.
Some bad VCRs.
Allot of bad cables...

Following Cosmin's lead, I think my Truevision Bravado 1000 (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/support/BRAVADO/1000/Windows/UserManuals/B1KMAN.pdf) is still sitting in a file folder in a drawer somewhere. My very first capture board. Blocky MJPEG compression and always dropped frames. But hey, it edited!

The Libec LM-20 is not so bad. I have one. You can't really pan with it, but it's fairly stable and the ball head is nice.

My old analog capture board (Iomega Buz) that actually wasn't
used for much real stuff would be the prime thing. Oh and the
8 MB flash card that came with my digital still camera. Doh.

If you cannot Pan with a tripod, it is fairly useless.

The problem is that when you loosen the lock knob, the entire head then bobbles around like one of those dolls in the back window of a car. If you try to tighten down on it to just prevent the bobbles, it then jerks.

I think my first one was OK for a brief period of time. Then it went bad.

"If you cannot Pan with a tripod, it is fairly useless."

Well, yeah, but if the choice is between the Libec and a plastic piece of junk from the mall, then I would say the Libec is the way to go. That might not sound like it's saying much, but the thing is under $200 bucks. For someone who is just starting out, it's not a bad way to go.

Mine has play in the head too. With the vertical knob locked down, it will still rock, but you have to really be heavy handed before it's a problem. With both knobs locked down, it's rock solid.

Still, I'm definitely saving up for a Vinten.

I have said this before, and will say it often- I spent over $300 on a Bogen/Manfrotto head and legs. I have seen $60 cheapies from Walmart that are as good, if not more fluid. To this day I think it would be nicer to have the $240 difference in my pocket, than to have the name brand stamp.

A Powerbook 5300cs. A legendarily unstable machine. Haven't touched it in years. Surprising to think I never bothered to throw it out the window.

"Mine has play in the head too. With the vertical knob locked down, it will still rock, but you have to really be heavy handed before it's a problem. With both knobs locked down, it's rock solid."

The rock shows up in almost any Pan unless you push down on the handle before you move. And that shows up in the video.

If you try to add enough drag with the Pan lock to help out, the leveling ball joint can slip.

The problem with no Pan capability is that Pan is the most often used camera motion and a jerky Pan is worse than no Pan at all.

If one wants to just lock down a camera, even the cheap plastic stuff does that OK if you don't touch them.

I have a Bogen 3031 head that I got somewhere. Think it cost around $75. It isn't bad . . . much better than the Libec head although it doesn't come close to my Miller Senior Fluid Head.

The Miller cost me $150 used. Probably 30 years old but that's OK, they can be rebuilt to like-new condition. I had one owned by the local Community College rebuilt by Miller for $300. Probably good for another 30 years.

The ball on the bottom of the good fluid heads normally will just screw off so you can mount them on a set of Bogen sticks that don't have the ball head.

My take on all of this is to buy a set of used Bogen sticks and put a good head - like the Miller on top. The sticks are clumsy and heavy but at least, once down, the system works very well.

Charles--use it as an "expendable" in your next Instant Film.

hee hee!

Landfill food:

Any cheap plasticky tripod (had a few)

Vanguard shoulder pod (cousin to the above-mentioned)

Almost anything purchased from Radio Shack

Sprint PCS cell phone (Say Hallelujah, November 24th has come and freedom is at hand--Wireless Local Number Portability is now the law of the land!)

Telex wireless mic system (nightmarish)

cheap off-brand PC

Pyro DV card

Olympus C2500 & D510 digicams

Sony Mavica digicams that use floppy disks

======================================

Not so bad:

Smith Victor...I still have some S-V lights that are older than I am, not real pretty (me or them) but still work fine.

Bogen...I have very few complaints with both of mine, for the money.

I'm with Rob Lohman with the iomega Buzz - thats in the closet/ loft now

My dads 8mm cine camera which is completely bust, I had it working at one point.

To my shame I brought a mini din connection kit (recently)- it came with a few phono to BNC adapters

A £35 on board camera light which uses a ni-cad battery and only lasts for 5 minutes - the battery charger that came with it is broken.

Oh how we laugh ;-)

Cheers,

Ed

My 2p worth of landfill:

1 unbalanced audio cables

2 unshielded video cables

3 anything from Pinnacle


And my most treasured and used possessions:

1 a full copy of Digital Fusion 4 - it does everything bar making the tea

2 my PDX10

3 Lightwave

4 a copy of "Digital Compositing for Film and Video" by Steve Wright


Julian

Julian,

Ever go out to the Steam Museum (AKA the old sewer pumping plant) there in Cambridge?

I hope to go back again next year and do a proper documentary of the place.

My Sony DSR20 DV Deck. It is in the shop for the 4th time. It is a $5,000 boat anchor. Unfortunatly I can't aford to throw it overboard, even though it keeps pulling me under.

Steve

Mike,

I haven't been there for many years - that's the trouble with living on the doorstep!

Funny though, I was just in Manchester to make a short documentary about a steam museum there!!

Regards,

Julian

<<<-- Originally posted by Steven Digges : My Sony DSR20 DV Deck. It is in the shop for the 4th time. It is a $5,000 boat anchor. Unfortunatly I can't aford to throw it overboard, even though it keeps pulling me under.

Steve -->>>

Yeow. How many hours on it? I"ve got around 1000 on mine with narry a whimper.

Dylan Cooper wrote "A Mightywondercam."
What is it about the Mightywondercam you don't like, Dylan? I have seen a number of posts extolling the virtues of this rig. What camera are you using with it? Is it in good shape? For sale?

Wayne

Wayne
Nothing wrong with it at all. It works well and is a decent shoulder mount for the XL1 (which I bought it for) or pretty much any other camera. I just don't use it. I don't find any real difference in comfort between using it and the XL1's normal shoulder mount.
I've thought about selling it, but I'm pretty lazy about getting around to stuff like that. :)

So, Dylan, how much, and which one is it, does it have the ab pad?

cheers

Mike

The DSR20 has about 700 hours on it. Two repairs were while under warranty. One was at the flat rate repair rate for this deck. Sony charges a $450 minimum just to touch it. For this 4th repair I sent it someplace other than the Sony Broadcast Equip Repair Center in Jersey.

Steve

Youch! Care to mention what went wrong?

I figure that when the heads go, the $450 charge isn't going to seem too high for a rebuild. But I would have hated to have to do it a few times over the 5 years I've had the VCR.

Hopefully this time will be a charm.

Mike,

I have many horror stories about Sony service. I refrain because I am not clear on what is considered equipment bashing and good advice here, nor do I want to alienate all of the Sony users. Maybe I’ll start a thread in some appropriate forum (not sure which one that would be) just to let people know what Sony’s flat rate fee program is and how it works, it is far from a flat rate program. We are way off topic, but since you asked………

This latest failure occurred 10 minutes before I was kicking off an 8 hour 2 camera shoot with the DSR20 as the master record deck, post switch. It suddenly decided not to record or play. It was a 2 day shoot so I purchased a Canon ZR70 that night and used it the next day as an emergency record deck. I am now editing 16 hours of tape (just day one) from the iso record in the cameras and trying to make it look like what the audience saw coming from the switch on i-mag. All I would have had to do is title it front and back if the Sony had not failed. Fun and Games.

And yes, the heads have been replaced, luckily that was one of the warrenty repairs or it would have been much more than $450.00.

Steve

I'll probably put the Mightywondercam up for sale when I get from Florida in 3 weeks, unless someone wants it badly now. I bought it used for about $100 last year. No ab pad.

I bought one of those 5" lcd monitors with the battery and all in a black bag, from Markertek. It's just one step away from totally worthless. It's marginally acceptable if you're in a dark room, but under even normal room lighting, it's garbage. When I do jib shots now and need a small monitor outside away from power, I use a $75 Radio Shack little lcd TV. It's bright enough to use in the sun, weighs a few ounces and cost about 1/4 what the crap monitor did (which I'll sell for a low price if anybody want's a worthless piece of junk).

A Craftsman battery tester I bought at Sears. If there is possibly one second of diminished power left in a battery it still reads them all as new. The needle only goes 2 places, dead (the battery must be absolutely dead) or new.

Hey, i thought this was video only. Since it encompasses everything , I'm including my first wife.

VideoWave 3 and 5!

Mono-Pod Belt Brace for cammie.

Short live non-lith-ion cammie light - recharge overnight - 12 min working time.

PCMCIA CD drive . . .arrrgh!

Morphing software . . . .

.. this came at a really good time as I've been revamping my edit-pit . . . I even dug out and threw away Timeworks; Deskpress . . I've most likely thrown away software that Sotherbies will be auctioning off for heaps of cash in a few years time - yeah?

Thanks for the thread . . It's good to know I'm amongst others here - HAH!

Grazie

Not video but..
A Canon 85mm/1.2 (!) lens for EOS. Beautiful, but I always leave it at home. Focus slooooooooooooow, it's heavy, fragile, big, expensive, obtrusive.

A Sony Hi-8 & VHS video recorder SLV-T2000. Never used the Hi-8 part (DV came along). Broke down several times.

Bill, have you thought about returning that monitor to Markertek as defective?

I have a similar unit, it has no black bag but an optional metal sun hood, and I use it in any kind of ambient lighting...makes a handy field playback monitor, plus I press it into service as a studio-style viewfinder when I need to extend the tripod legs to get the camera over peoples heads (and mine). While I certainly don't count on it to be dead-accurate color, it works just fine for what I use it for.

There must be some kind of warranty on it. That's a Delv-Cam, right?

Pinnacle Studio 8 (Actually, I have to thank the makers of that P*O*S software--It made me get off my butt and learn Premier and Avid!) Although this is strictly my opinion, hell must hold a special place for Pinnacle for making Studio 8. Eight Emmy awards my a... ahem, never mind...

Wal-Mart Tripod.

And like another poster stated--anything from Radio Shack.

Did I mention Pinnacle Studio 8? <G>

-Phil

I actually took a Pinnacle product into their headquarters to show them it did not work.

The Directors of Hardware and Software development looked the VP of the Consumer division right in the eye and told him the product was OK. He was livid, incrdulous, pissed and shouting all in about 5 seconds. From all the reports I hear, he didn't win.

I, shudder, almost went to work for them but I just couldn't convince myself that I wanted to work for a company like that.

<personal opinion>

Mike,

I suspect that Pinnacle, as an organisation, is suffering a lot from a combination of
a growth through disparate acquisitions
b cultural differences between divisions
c trying to aggressively carve a long term market position at a time when the industry is turning itself upside down.

They believe (and are right) that the era of high-end post/effects systems and houses running the show are well and truly over, and that the future will come from the ranks of the great unwashed. So they are setting out to own that new market in the same way that Avid (and others) managed to own the market: by building a complete Pinnacle environment that you live within. I think they are wrong here.

As a result you have things like Edition - quirky (so experience of using Edition prepares you for using, well, other Pinnacle editing software). They then tie other capabilities, like DVD authoring, into the same environment, trapping you further/simplifying things even more for you (delete according to your taste). I admit that Edition produces wonderfully high quality results (when it works), but I don't want this attitude anywhere near my workflow.

I understand their objectives for doing all this. The problem is, they are doing it in a market that is running away from them. They do not have the resources and time to properly test everything, to document it all (either accurately, or truthfully) or even to ensure that their internal product specifications are complete/correct. Result - angered customers beta testing paid-for software, and discovering too late that their shiny new purchase won't do what they expect/want.

New DVers have a choice - buy into the easy cheap Pinnacle vision of the world (a sort of MacDonalds of video), or take a bit more effort to build a more open, better working, and more flexible system from individual components (a sort of Pizza Express, if you know that chain - flavourful pizzas, not huge or sickly rich, with a sensible range of optional extras).

I always preferred Pizza Express, so that's the way I'd go:)

</personal opinion>

Regards,

Julian

<<<-- Originally posted by Julian Luttrell : <personal opinion>

Mike,

I suspect that Pinnacle, as an organisation, is suffering a lot from a combination of
a growth through disparate acquisitions
b cultural differences between divisions
c trying to aggressively carve a long term market position at a time when the industry is turning itself upside down.


"That may be true, Julian. But they've exhibited this behavior for over 7 years now. Somewhere in there they could have learned a little bit about caring for customers."

I've been in their position and it is always a matter of choice for the Board of Directors and Upper Management.

About 7 years ago, when Avid was their largest customer, everything was rosy. Then Avid (and Media) got into trouble because they thought the broadcast market would grow forever. The orders for the Pinnacle OEM hardware products started to dry up and, as you say, they started looking for an out.

Hardware products have great gross revenues but when times get tough, the gross revenues really take a hit. They were a captive of their OEM customers.

So become independent of the OEM. But one cannot sell hardware without software in the consumer market and they didn't have much of a software capability. Good software takes longer than hardware to develop. And then they needed to develop a customer base who prefers their software.

If revenues drop, so do the Upper Managers. So what to do?

"Wait! I know! Let's buy some customers!"

Instead of saying to themselves, "we have a great and profitable, if smaller business here," management and the Board decided to buy their way out of trouble.

After all, if you are always in the middle of acquisitions and integrating those organizations into yours, you cannot be blamed if the increasing revenue does not lead to increasing profits, can you?

I've been in companies that tried that approach. It so very rarely works that one would think Stanford B school would start teaching students to avoid that path.

What they (and to be honest, other companies) count on is fast market expansion in the uneducated user sector. Then they present an ever-changing product target that obsoletes yesterday's product before the consumer really understands that it doesn't work. If the consumer want's it to work, then they have to buy something that is supported today!"

<Soapbox/off>

We are saying the same thing:)

I'm not defending them in any way - sorry if my post came across that way. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Pinnacle, and want to air it often:)

Julian

PS to give them their due - the colour correction filter in Edition is now spankin' - it's a shame it's wired into Edition...

I guess I never knew how lucky I was to be using Final Cut Pro! (Premiere also works fine, just more comfy w/FCP having spent many more hours at it) I guess you don't think I should buy Pinnacle!

:-)

Hey, I found a great new use for cheap XLR cables! Because trying to re-solder the flimsy wires back onto the connection points only results in the plastic insulators melting or breaking, you can save time by lopping off the plugs and heaving them in the dumpster, then taking the now-unterminated cables outside and using them as ropes to tie down your tarps on your outdoor machinery. I just covered my tractor and wood chipper that way! Hee hee!

Hey, Westport never has bad weather! Or are you afraid the colors will fade? :-)))

Well, today it does...the auto body shops'll be plenty busy after this!

Yeah, I'm worried that Martha Stewart will write me a citation for faded tractor paint. Actually, I really don't like sitting down on a tractor seat full of water...stupid John Deere design. I have already had to replace the seat cover once.

All things considered, I'd rather be in Vallejo today.