HPX-500 Vital Accessories?
 

Hey Guys,

My company is in the market for this camera.
I wanted to present a list of Accessories for this camera. What do you bring on every shoot with HPX-500 (aside from the common things like P2 Cards and the Lens). Like Porta Brace CBA-HPX500 Camera Body Armor, or Chrosziel's C41150HPXK3C mattebox system.

Any help on these Accessories would be much appreciated!

-C

How will you be using the camera? ENG? Talking heads? Theatrical?

Hard to say without knowing.

Theatrical with some ENG.

PortaBrace CC HD-1 (?) quickdraw case (note the french flag on the matte box is too wide for this (& probably other) cases - needs to be removed 1st)
Anton Bauer Tandem 70 & Dionics
Sennheiser ME80 shotgun
Marshall HD 7" LCD on a Noga 8" articulated arm
CaVision 16:9 2-stage mattebox, clamp on model
polarizing, ND grad, soft filters
various wireless & hardline mics
Miller DS25 head & sticks
LaCie 2big 1TB RAID 1 (2 disk) drive for offloads (important thing is the RAID 1 - the data is mirrored as it's offloaded - very safe)
laptop for above, also to run P2CMS, edit metadata on SD card, prompter,etc

whole bunch of other poo not directly related to the camera

Bob,
Do you have a model number on the CaVision 16:9 2-stage mattebox?

Thanks,
Brad

MB4510-H2
Didn't want to *have* to use rails w/ mb, so went w/ clamp-on. No issues (other than the flag can't be removed easily from mb, so entire box comes off in quickdraw case. OEM hood goes on.)

Here is the list I came up with:

HPX-500 B&H KIT

Anton Bauer Twin Charger

7" HD LCD Monitor

Chrosziel Mattbox w/ follow focus, rods

Porta Brace Camera Body Armor

Porta Brace Camera Bag

P2 Player / Recorder

Other than the miller sticks, what is a good Tripod / Head combo.
Anything else I'm missing?
Thanks!
-C

Tripod - the Miller DS25 is a slightly older model of what I think now is called the Arrow25 fluid head. I've got it on single stage Miller sticks. New, I think they were around $4000. That seems to be the **rough** mark for pro-level support. There was a review in one of the trades about 9 months - 1 yr ago, sorry forget which... try a Google on "tripod review", include the terms Miller, Sachtler, Manfrotto. My best advice is whatever support you buy, it'll LONG OUTLAST the camera & everything else, so DON'T CHEAP OUT here.

2nd, what do you need the P2 box for? Lot of $$ if you don't have a specific usage in mind. It's not a newer P2 Store....

Thanks Bob - Quick question: Will the The SHAN-TM700 Quick-Release Tripod Adapter be compatible with any standard tripod or do I need something starting a the pro level?

My current support is Gitzo - Here is the addy. Will this support the HXP-500 with the TM700 or am I playing with fire?

-C

The shan-tm700 will attach to any pro tripod plate, which in turn slides into the fluid head. It looks like the Gitzo has a plate, not quite sure what the large "nuts" are on top of the plate in the close-up pic. But I'd assume if it has a plate, it should work.
As for support, I'd be concerned that it's right on the hairy edge, weight-wise. The sticks load spec is 22 lbs. The fluid head weighs 6.2 lbs. The 500 weighs 19 lbs (w/ lens, VF, mic, battery) approx. Sooooo... you over. Add a monitor onto the 500, and you're about 40% over rated load.
If budget's an issue, I'd take the $ from the matte box, and put it towards part of a new tripod system. I mean, I jokingly refer to the matte box as the "client box".... mostly it's on the 500 to impress the client. Though it looks MAHvelous, it's far from a critical bit of kit. (Not saying there aren't some situations where it could be.) And what about the P2 player/recorder? Do you have a specific need for that? That alone would pay for a nice set of sticks.