It is here
 

Good Morning,


Well, I am pretty impressed. I received my monitor yesterday. I could not get an image using the yellow video plug. Dug out an old s video cable and it was just fine.

Found my component cable for the H1 this morning and plugged it in and all is well.

I am very impressed with the overall quality of the product!!!

I need a shade to use it outside, through a misunderstanding i did not get one with it, basicly my fault.


Sense I will use it primarily for steadycam work and some wildlife blind shooting I made a simple rear mount.

I simply drilled a 1/4 hole in the rear battery mount for my xlh1 and attached it. Free and easy.

I hate having all the extra cord. Has anyone every tried cutting a component cable to shorten it?

Here is a picture.

Hi, Trevor!

Thanks for Your opinion!


I hope tomorrow my DP1 will arrive. I am so excited.

PS: special thanx for pictures :)

You're quite welcome! Enjoy!

update
 

Good evening,

Well, I got the dp 1 out this afternoon in bright sunlight (no hood) and was shooting some close ups with the zoom at 300 mm. This monitor came though in spades!!! I can now easily focus perfectly, see the color (instead of my b&w fu 1000, which is awesome in its own way) and I must say I am very impressed. This will improve my video immensely and I will loose less footage due to less than perfect focus.

This is one of the better investments I have made!!! I was filming a robin pulling a worm out of the ground and I could focus on individual feathers in its face!!!


Dale and Crew, you have not only made a fine product, but it is a terrific service to the video industry!!! Definitely fills a void that was surprisingly unfullfilled till now!!! and for a reasonable price at that!!!!!

Thank You!!

Hi Trevor.

The LED issue was one of unknown magnitude. You're probably correct that it is minor, but we don't know, do we? I thought that a power switch in uncompromised series with the power supply would be superior.

How do you remove your battery? I nearly went for a butter knife to prize it out. I will say that I like how the cable between battery and camera snakes into the battery when it is in the clip, but despite its sleekness I worry about fracturing it.

As to the battery requiring a different transformer than the monitor, this would reduce cost and reduce the amount of gear one must haul around. I mentioned it as number 7 in a list of diminishing magnitude. It's likely that SmallHD has barriers to taking such approaches, but I'm even more sure Dale and company would see the double win such an alteration would provide.

I'm looking forward to using this, my first monitor. It is sharp and compact. Though I have no standard for comparison in brightness, your collective impression tells me I made a good leap of faith in pre-ordering.

tone

couple points
 

Good evening,


1. To disconect the battery you must remove the plug from the battery, not the monitor. I pulled from the monitor and the little light stayed on and being i had used the battery for a fair while it was enough drain to kill it the rest of the way. Easy solution.

2. The yellow video cable will only work on my dv cameras. the hd camera i can not get to come up with it. Interesting my plasma down loads via the yellow cable just fine, do not get that one.

3. The battery clips in and out just fine as far as I am concerned, if it were to break a spare bracket comes with the spare battery.

4. Where can one get short component cables for an xlh1??? I hate coiling up feet of cable, also makes balancing the steady cam a lot tuffer!!!

Will amnd this with color adjustments tomarrow.

I disagree. The buttons are not elegant. First of all, they are unlabeled. That alone would be easy to overcome if they had a model that followed any other panel I've ever used. But instead, they have a strange left/right thing. It's not a deal breaker by any stretch, but it's just not intuitive, and a reasonable gripe. At least they could have been labeled. It's also a bit strange that they are in back, where you're not able to see their results. I guess that's the logic behind not labeling them...

I don't want a 25 page manual, either. But a downloadable PDF from SmallHD's web site isn't too much to ask for, I don't think. It would be great to be able to understand some of those esoteric menu items a little bit more fully and quickly.

I'm of the mind that this monitor works very well on a dolly or mini-jib. As such, it belongs in the middle of the monitoring chain. Yet, it has no loop-through capability. That would have been a nice added feature. I understand the limitations are in keeping with its price point. I'm just saying that it should do the job it was intended to do, and do it completely.

All that aside, and especially given its price, this monitor gets a big thumbs up from me. It has a few shortcomings, but all in all, a great value and a nice picture.

never said they were elegant ;-) just said they're pretty darn easy to learn. i can blaze through the menus after using the DP1 for only a few days. not trying to start a shitstorm here, but it isn't as bad as some people make it out to be.

labels perhaps could be added in a later model. loop through... yeah, that would be neat, and maybe we'll see in a later model. there's always the possibility of using a splitter, which would offer the same functionality.

overall I'm really enjoying the DP1. good stuff!

I've really enjoyed the quality of the DP1. I'm just finishing my shoot in Guatemala and only had 1 problem with it. 3 times on the shoot the monitor would display a random set of vertical colored lines when I would turn it on. If I just powered it off then back on again it would be fine. I need to email Dale when I get back home and find out what's up with that.
Here's a pic of me with the monitor in Guatemala.

Filming in Antigua, Guatemala #2 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Hi Dale,

I've got a similar setup to yours. I run my Sony CF unit where you've got your monitor and have my monitor off to the left of the cam with a Noga arm. You can buy an extra cable (D5 terminal to component RCA) from a number of places online. I had an extra one so I cut that down and placed some RCA connectors on the other end. It works great and I don't have to contend with the extra long wire. The replacement part it DTC1000 for the Canon. It runs about $50 so it isn't cheap.

Do you or anyone else know if there is a way to get zebras out through the component out on the XL H1a (or event he XH A1)?

Also, how is everyone going about calibrating the monitor. Are you just using the bars coming out of the camera?


I just finished shooting a two day dance show with the DP1 and it worked out great.

Thanks,
Garrett

I've just been using the bars out of the camera for initial calibration and then tweak a little here and there...

OT: Hey, guess I missed you at the screening on Sunday; looks like you were involved with a few of the films...

Hi Leo,

Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to the screening. I was shooting the dance recital. I worked on Launched and RE:Invention.

How were all the films?

Thanks for the info on calibration. Is there a blue only setting on the DP1?

Garrett

Too bad, it was a fun day; 19 films in all. I thought a few were really good, including ours; unbiased opinion of course ;-)

We didn't win the Phase 2 member award this time but still waiting on whether or not we won any others... Maybe we'll catch up at the pitch session if you go?

Unfortunately there is no blue only option. Sometimes I pipe an image in and use that instead; gets close enough...

Cheers,

Where is the DP1 manufactured?

North Carolina, USA baby!

Thank you!

no prob buddy! the build quality certainly shows - it's American for sure!

You certainly don't see iKan or Marshall putting their monitors in beautifully machined aluminum 'unibody' enclosures! heh... heh...

power
 

Hello All!!
Has anyone tried runny this monitor into an anton buaer battery yet
curious to see how you do it. The 2 1/2 battery that you can get wont get me
through a day I would like to run it into my 120 brick is this possiable?


Thanks Shawn

I can't speak for the anton bauers, but I can tell you that the smallHD batteries are well worth the (small) cost. I bought two, and with one in the monitor and one on the charger at all times I can go all day with only seconds of monitor downtime. If I must, I can power the monitor with my Tekkeon MP3450 which will certainly last all day, except there is that obvious weight/mounting difference.

Hmm. Interesting question. Mechanically it should be easy. If you have a plate with a powertap on it, then its just a matter of buying an AB powertap to 2.1mm dc adapter cable. Nebtek has one for $55. (which seems oddly high). If you don't already have a plate/tap, then I reckon you could buy a different battery solution for less than the plate and keep the ab for other stuff.

Bigger question is the voltage. Hey Dale, does the DP1 have a published operating voltage range?

If the dp1 is listed as "12v" and thats it, it makes sense. Batteries are often inexact. If a circuit is designed for a 12v battery, it will almost always have a few volts of tolerance. However, there will always be a voltage where something burns up, so you have to err on the side of caution. If the dp1 smokes at 16v, then a 12v battery should be fine, and so would a 14.4 that is run down a bit, but a freshly charged 14.4 could spit out 17v and kaput. (depending on the battery design/quality/etc.) If it smokes at 22v, then the 14.4 should work fine. etc. Since the range is only published as "12v", then I'd suspect the safe range is a few volts in either direction and thats it.

So the three obvious solutions are:

1. If Dale says the 14.4v is safe, you buy the physical adapters to hook the hytron up.
2. If Dale says you need to stick with 12v, so you buy a 12v voltage adapter that spits out a safe 12v from your 14.4. (Pretty cheap and sold for hooking laptops up in cars)
3. If you don't already own the ab tapon plate and also need to convert the voltage down, then you'd probably be able to buy a whole 12v solution (smallhd or otherwise) for the cost of the plate/tapon cable and voltage converter... and free up the AB.

Hope that helps,
-Andrew

calibration experiences?
 

Hey all

question for those who have managed to get their hands on the pre-release models...

How easy/hard is it to properly calibrate? I can see that as a focus assist these would be great, but a big issue for me is knowing that what I'm shooting is what i'm recording in terms of colour/exposure etc.

I think I read somewhere that these don't have a blue gun mode?

First off, I have not attempted to calibrate the monitor at all. Given the lack of any documentation and the semi awkward controls, it was not a high priority.

I can report using the monitor to shoot a ballet performance. I color balanced all the cameras by shooting a grey card on stage, so color balance at the monitor was not an issue for me. The great surprise was that the improved resolution (detail) greatly improved exposure control. I previously used a 800x480 monitor which improved focus relative to the XH A1 LCD screen, but now the SmallHD resolution revealed the detail in such things as white ballet tutus. If you have ever shot a ballet, the exposure challenge is that some hot stage light catches a white tutu which goes all white and blows out the detail. The image was not perfectly color balanced, but wow was it sharp. I stopped looking for zebras on the A1 LCD, and just set exposure for good detail on the SmallHD… worked perfectly.

Also, if anyone is interested, I made a simple bracket to strap on a Tekkeon battery to the back of the monitor. The monitor used about 40% of the battery in about 2.5 hours.

Hi Terry,

Do you have any pictures of your strap for the battery?

I recently shot a dance recital and ballet too and it was so much easier with the monitor. I've been meaning to calibrate my SmallHD but haven't had the time since I'm now editing the shows.

Thanks,
Garrett

re calibration
 

thanks for the info Terry re yr experiences so far. Sounds very promising. Has anyone else had success calibrating? I'm confused about the blue gun option as I think I read on one of the posts that it doesn't have this but on the website it says blue option is included?

I too am waiting for someone to post a detailed calibration specification (hint hint SmallHD folks). Also, I’ll try to get some Tekkeon battery mount photos up this weekend.

Tekkeon Battery
 

Attached are some photos of a quick battery mount for a Tekkeon battery. It is just a scrap aluminum plate screwed to the back, capturing two Velcro straps.

Color Setup
 

6/28/09
By request I will report some observations about color balance options, although I am happy with the out of the box performance. Bottom line: Seems mostly accurate, but reds seem less saturated. It looks like a jpg in Adobe RGB, displayed in an sRGB color space.

Testing Methods:
Set up a Canon XH A1 in a room with natural sunlight through a skylight. Step 1, set aperture for 100% zebras on white paper (4.4). Step 2 White balance to a grey card. Step 3, introduce a color chart and compare to DP1 display. As I said very close, with less saturated reds. Photo 1: color chart, Photo 2 color chart on monitor. Note, there is a slight blue cast on photo 2 that was not apparent live. (photos taken with an old Nikon 990)

Looking in the setup menu, there is a color temp option with choices: normal, warm, cool, blue, red, and green. Photo 3 is color bars from the camera in normal mode, and Photo 4 is in “blue” color temp mode. Not sure if this is really a blue gun effect. All modes except normal looked unreal compared to the actual color chart.

Photo 5 is the color adjustment screen. As I said, I am happy in factory “normal” mode, but I just learned that those spyder monitor calibration systems are now inexpensive, so I might get one and use it for all my monitors including the DP1.

For what it's worth I've found a cheap and somewhat effective way of getting the blue gun effect is folding up a CTB gel until all you can see is blue only, which may help out in calibration if the blue only effect isn't really as advertised.

It's no doubt this monitor is amazing (I've yet to purchase one), but advertising having a blue only mode, when... from what I gather, is just a "color temp" setting is very misleading.

SmallHD General Ordering will start July 1st!

This e-mail was sent from the folks at SmallHD today:

The DP1 went on sale at 9PM EST from smallHD.com. Soon it will be integrated into
my 5D Glidecam X-10 Stabilizing rig. The the testing of HDMI vs Composite signals
and the evaluation of how best to snake either cable down the center post will ensue.

Hey Guys,

Been a while since i've had a go here. Thanks to everyone for providing feedback for the monitor, and i'm very glad the general opinion is positive.

We've been extremely busy trying to make good on our promised deadlines, so i apologize for not getting in here sooner.

One thing that just popped out at me reading through this thread, was this here above. I wanted to just inform you guys, that the monitor does have true blue gun. The "color temp" label is probably a bit misleading, but what it is, is full RGB color balance control. You have individual R, G, and B values that adjust from 1 to 100. There are then 6 presets, one called "blue", that you can save any configuration of these values to.

To achieve blue gun, you just go into the color temp menu, select "blue" at the top, and then drop the R and G sliders down to 0, and Blue to about 60. This will only show blue color values, and does exactly what blue gun will do.

Then, for calibration, you can switch over to the picture mode menu, select whichever preset you want to save to, and adjust your contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation.

From what we've seen however, LCDs perform differently from CRTs, in that the colors "shift" a lot less than the "guns" of a cathode-ray, and performing regular blue-gun calibration isn't as necessary. However, this is just our opinion and requires further substantiation.

Hope this clears things up. If anyone has any other questions, feel free to bring them up - i'll stick around.

Thanks!
Dale


Also, btw - we are in the process of developing very in-depth documentation in the form of a wiki. We are shooting tutorial videos and graphical instructions starting tomorrow, and are very adamant about doing it right and often. Sorry it took til now - hopefully we'll make it up by offering very well-rounded documentation.

Thanks for clearing that up, Dale... and sorry if I sounded harsh :) It was only based on what others had said.

Not a problem at all - no apology necessary. Just glad we're on the same page :)

Dale

so is there a coupon code for dvinfo members.. wink wink nudge nudge...

Yeah, I think it's "YOUSHOULDHAVEPREORDERED" lol

Not knowing anything about blue gun calibration, I actually went through the calibration process with a guy on my production team yesterday. It took him about a minute to figure out and become comfortable with the controls of the DP1, and we were soon running through the process of blue gun calibration on the monitor. It turned out really nice actually, and although reds/oranges are just slightly less saturated than they should be (as stated earlier) everything else is just about spot on with what I'd expect from a calibrated monitor.

Overall I'd say the process is pretty darn easy, and if you know how to calibrate using the blue gun setting you should have no problem doing it on the DP1.

My ONLY gripe about the process is that the on screen display does not allow you to see all of the color bars at once, so you just have to take that extra step to move the OSD around to see certain parts of the screen when you need to during calibration.

Nick: If it were up to me i would... but then i might not have a job...

Trevor:

Glad to hear your calibration went well - one thing that may help you, is you can drop the opacity of the OSD menu all the way down to the point where you can basically see through it to the bars - its not perfect, and since you were moving the menu around you probably already knew that, but just in case....

I've been researching HD field monitors for some time now as I prepare to receive my new SGblade package and so far, I'm happy to say that SmallHD's DP1 is in the lead over Marshall and Ikan's comparable models. Is the ordering end on SmallHD's website still a little backed up? Is pre-ordering the only way to get a discount? And lastly, have I missed the pre-ordering phase?

Sorry to bombard everyone with late questions, but I'm also worried about the battery options. One of the things that I liked about the Ikan monitors is the ability to choose specific battery mounts for power. For instance, I shoot almost solely on a Canon XH-A1, so its nice to be able to order the Canon battery mount with the monitor and use the batteries I already have to power the monitor. Are there any similar options with the DP1 or are we pretty much limited to buying DP1 batteries?

Hi Sean,

Ordering on the website is just freely open now. There is a little notification on the top of the store page that keeps constantly updated notifying you of if you were to place your order right then, your DP1 would ship in X days. No more discounts right now - that was a preorder thing, and to thank the many people who had been following us and waiting patiently for about a year.

As for the batteries - the DP1 is a standard 12v input, which means you can pretty much use any 12vDC source you can lay your hands on, as long as you have the proper barrel plug (which is the very standard 5.5mmOD x 2.1mmID)

We made our battery because we wanted to see some new thinking in terms of field monitor battery form factor. While we fully understand the idea behind having less battery types to worry about and have chargers for etc, the form factor of a camera battery makes absolutely no sense in the monitor realm. Cameras are long, monitors are (nowadays) wide, so affixing a 6 inch long battery on the back of a 1" thick monitor is just wrong, and thats why Ikan is forced to implement nylon straps just to make sure the thing doesn't come flying off when it's jarred.

However, we're not trying to force anyone to adopt a new standard, and we are going to be rolling out alternate battery support, starting with AB D-Tap and RED power support. This will just take a little time, as we want it to make sense, and not be something we just implement, and then have to start defending a subpar implementation.

So no, you're not limited to buying DP1 batteries, but (for now) you are limited to buying 12v batteries, like the Tekkeon, etc. Let me know if you need specific examples.

Thanks
Dale