Angle Finder
 

I found it difficult at best to use the 5d viewfinder, especially with a hoodman attached. I now use an Angle Finder C (Canon), which provides 1.25x and 2.5x magnification. I work on the left side of the camera with the follow focus and have great results. Check out the pic.

I'm curious, what follow focus, rails, and matte box are you using?

-- peer

Cine Follow Focus
 

Peer,

Here's the link

Cine follow focus sunshade kit for D90 canon 5d mark II - eBay (item 350184027844 end time Apr-03-09 20:41:44 PDT)

A company from India ... great price (under $700 + shipping $45). The quality is good, no problems, everything works, got it within a week after I ordered. Contact me directly if you want to come and see it.

rjwaylonis@mac.com

Hello Dan. Can you tell something more about the 5.6 Ikan you're trying? Colours, seeming sturdyness, and all?
I use a Marshall 7 inch on my rig (actually dv/hd cameras + 35mm lenses adapter). Love it really, but cumbersome and not easy to really be correctly counterbalanced, at least during extended shoulder shooting.
Many thanks

I thought that until I tried to load the Canon software on my wife's Samsumg NC10 netbook. It wouldn't even load because the netbook 'didn't have sufficient screen resolution' for it.

So. no go.


Poo

Avey

The specifications do call for a 1024x768 16-bit display. Whether that screen size is really necessary for all functions is another matter. You should be able to at least install the software by temporarily hooking up an external monitor that does meet the requirements. I need to try this myself as I wanted to use an MSI Wind to control the 5DII when it is on a motorised pan & tilt head on the 7m (22') pole that I have for elevated shots.

Just to confirm that I was able to install the EOS utility on the MSI Wind with a 1000x600 screen by plugging in an external monitor & that the software works OK using the laptop screen. One caveat is that the Wind is running OS X Leopard but I imagine that it would be the same result if it were running Windows.

If you only were living closer to me, I'd like to check it out (but I'm in Bay Area). Do you happen to have more pictures of it? I also wonder if you could measure the upper french flag's width for me? Are you still happy with the follow focus?

-- peer

Wayne and Nigel.

I tried out the Canon Software on an equivalent netbook 'hackintosh' - the MSI Wind U100.

Managed to install the software using an external monitor set to 1024x768. The EOS Utility opened fine but the 'adjust' part of the windows (if there is one) is below the bottom of the MSI 1024x600 screen. However I was able to remotely view the 5D output and record still and video material. The lag is quite substantial for viewing and I counted approximately 3-4 seconds between stopping a pan and it ending on the MSI screen.

The MSI's puny Atom CPU seems to be struggling most of the time and I managed to crash the app at one stage. But it does work and it does provide a usable image for framing and focussing. Haven't yet had time to play with the rest of the software.

Maybe some of the real 'geeks' out there can suggest a way to scale the 1024x768 EOS Utility windows to the MSI's 1024x600 screen (even with distortion).

Sorry, in my excitement to report that I had been able to install on the netbook I forgot to mention the slowness of the display & responsiveness of the application. To be fair I didn't spend much time testing. It may be a Mac thing as while it perform better on my MacBook Pro it's not as responsive as I would like. The previous version of the software for the Mac just hung on Live View. I have tried the software on a Windows laptop where it worked OK but again there was quite a lag in responding but the system was an old 1.5GHz P4.

I should probably put Windows back on the MSI Wind to see whether the Canon software performs better. I can always set it up dual booting with OS X & just use Windows when using the Canon software.

If you want to use a small laptop, I guess one option would also be one of those tv tuner pcmcia cards and monitoring the composite video out of the camera.

Just wanted to add my experience with the Ikan V5600 (5.6"), the little guy seems pretty ideal. It weighs a bit over a pound with a small sony L-series battery attached (got a bunch of cheap ones off ebay). It's really not much bigger than the on-camera screen but it's just big enough to get focus, and it has a higher resolution than other 7 or 8 inch monitors. The image quality isn't amazing and it stretches the frame when recording, which is weird but it still allows for critical focus during recording and decent playback for situations where you don't have (or can't afford) a larger field monitor.

-Nandan
Land of the Lost