Today, I'm going to show you how to turn this into this.
Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and I'm just a small-town girl living in a lonely world.
-[Gerald] Get out of my set! -[beeping]
Sorry about that. I don't know how he got in here,
but I'm Gerald Undone, and today I'm going to be showing you how
I made my wireless controller for the Pocket 4K.
Now, there's not actually anything about this
that's exclusive to the Blackmagic.
You could do this for any camera, but the Pocket 4K
doesn't have face-detect autofocus, so I pull focus
manually, and I like to be able to see what I'm doing when
I do that, so that's why I use all this.
I used to have a wired option that I used in my old setup,
but since I'm much further away from the camera now and there's
more obstacles in the way, we're going to go wireless.
This build was motivated by this little guy here,
which is the Blitz Lite 300 from Ikan, which is exactly
the same as the Hollyland Mars 300 that you see
all over YouTube, but for less money. I've got quite a few
products from Ikan that are basically redistributions
of other products because I find that I often
save a decent bit of money doing so,
like this wireless focus module here,
which you can find online as the PDMovie Live Air,
but I got it from Ikan for, I think, $60 less?
This video isn't sponsored by Ikan.
I just wanted to give you a heads up on that
because I think you can save some money, and also,
that way you know why I chose the products I did
and where the prices are coming from. All right, so let's get
to building. Now, my original build for this involved using
the iFootage Cobra Monopod,
a little miniature tripod thing, but I looked around, and I don't
think you can really buy this anymore by itself unless you
want to order it on eBay, and I think there's only one.
So instead, we're going to be making this work with the
Manfrotto Pixi, a little tripod thing
because these are much cheaper and much easier to find.
This one was only $20.
So, let's start over here with the monitors.
So this is the Atomos Shinobi.
Never mind these, these are just for
making it look better flat, so there's no reflections.
So this is the Atomos Shinobi. There's a lot of different
monitor options that you could use. It's actually, probably
doesn't matter that much if you're gonna be indoors
and just using it to shoot yourself,
because then, you know, sun and brightness
and all of it isn't that important.
But if you are going to be shooting outdoors
or just want a slightly better general-purpose monitor,
I think the Shinobi is a great bang for the buck at $299.
There are cheaper monitors out there,
and you can use whatever you want for this build.
But, we're not just going to go straight ahead and attach this
to the tripod because first, we want to attach
the ability to use a rod mount onto the monitor.
Now, what I'm using for that is this guy here.
There's so many options you could use.
This, this one is very flexible and up to you.
This is actually from my DJI Ronin-S,
this is the riser plate, and then this piece is part
of the focus module mount that you can get for the Ronin-S.
But, there's so many different things that you could do.
You could get some stuff from a SmallRig or whatever.
Basically, you just need the ability to hold a rod
and to attach it to the bottom of your monitor,
which is probably going to be 1/4-20.
[screw rustling]
So, this is what it looks like, attached.
Basically, we can have a little rod coming out here now,
and this is in the bottom, and the bottom of this plate
offers more mounting options for 1/4-20, so we can attach
that to the Pixi, and we'll go ahead and do that now, actually.
And we'll screw it into the back one.
I think that'll probably be better for weight
distribution in the long run.
So, we'll tighten that down, and now we'll have our
monitor mounted onto the tripod with a rod there.
So now, when we grab our focus module, the one, like I said,
the Live Air Compact, this is $239.
Like I said, the prices may vary depending on whether you get
the PDMovie one or the Ikan one and where you get it from.
And, there's also a second version out now,
like the Live Air Compact 2, which I think is $299.
Again, prices may vary, and the difference is this one
has a built-in battery that you use a micro-USB port for,
where the Mark II version has removable batteries.
Now, for this build, the micro-USB port is actually
gonna be incorporated in here,
but if you go for the Mark II version
or if you're using the Tilta Follow Focus unit,
then you have to adapt the build to work accordingly for that,
but for the most part, it should be pretty similar.
So, we're just going to take this thing
and mount it onto the rod that we've got here.
When we're looking at ourselves like this,
we can just pull focus like that.
Overall, I actually quite like this system. I've used this one,
and I've used the Tilta one, and I keep going back to
this one. I just find it a lot easier to set up. You basically
just power on both units, and it just pairs and starts working.
And if you're using a lens that's not saved or you've
never used it before, it's really easy to calibrate,
you just turn it to one-stop, turn it to the other stop
and then start to turn it back a little bit, and then it just
goes the rest of the way. It takes, like, ten seconds
to set up. So next up, we're going to transmit our video
wirelessly, and that's where we're going to use this
Ikan Blitz 300 thing. Now, this is actually pretty good.
I was expecting it to be just OK for the money,
because, like I said, the Ikan one is cheaper than
the Hollyland one I saw, by I think, about 60 bucks.
I think this one, at the time I got it, was 399, but I've seen
it going over from, like, 400-450, where the competition,
which is exactly, it's exactly the same,
just a different sticker on it is 450, up to 550, so you know,
you can save anywhere from 50 to a $100 getting the Ikan version.
And I found absolutely no differences between them,
and I found it works great. On the unit
that goes on the camera, you've got an HDMI in
and HDMI relay out, so you can go to another monitor on the
camera there and then this one also has two HDMI outs as well.
So, you've got a lot of options for setting it up
to different screens and combinations like that.
You can power it either with a Sony L-series battery or with,
there's a DC plug option down here,
which is what we're going to be using again.
I'm actually more excited about this unified power thing
than I am about the wireless transmission,
and then on this side, there is an on/off switch,
there's a firmware upgrade port, and then some, you know,
link lights and that kind of thing. I have the one on the
camera already on so you're going to see when we get this
all built that all I have to do is flick on the switch, and then
it just takes a few seconds for it to communicate, and then
it just puts it on the screen you don't really have to do
anything or press any buttons or set anything up, and I never
even set up any kind of syncing or pairing when I got it.
It just did it on its own, so that's pretty great.
Now, for this to attach it, I'm going to use the
1/4-20 on the top of the monitor as well.
There's a couple of different ways you can go about this.
The unit itself comes with this little module that you
can screw down onto it that gives you a 1/4-20
on the side if you want to mount it that way.
And there's also a 1/4-20 just built into the bottom,
so you can do it this way, which you might find to be
a little bit tall, or we can do it on the side,
which is the way that I'm going to go about it.
Now, you could use something like this, which is just sort
of like a little SmallRIG 1/4-20 on one side,
1/4-20 on the other and then you can adjust it around.
We're going to see if we can make it work a little bit
more low profile with just a simple 1/4-20
to 1/4-20, 2-way male adapter thing.
But what I would recommend, I'd recommend you actually just
have a bunch of these, if you like to do attaching things with
other things, it's one of these, it's like squishy foam washers,
and this will make it a hell of a lot easier to attach things
without them spinning in a position that you don't want.
So, for instance, if we screw this in here
and then say we start to thread this onto the top
of the Shinobi, well maybe when it's actually tight, it's, like,
pointing the antennas out at you, and you don't want that.
With this little felt washer thing,
you can get it tight in a bit more flexible of positions.
So, we're going to go ahead and screw that on.
[quiet scraping]
All right, perfect. So now, we've got a decent
amount of resistance. I don't actually know where I got that
foam washer from, either from the hardware store.
If I can find some, I'll put them in the link
in the description, but just, if you can, buy yourself
a little packet of those and keep them around. But anyway, now
on the front, we have the indicator lights and easy access
to our on/off switch. But on the back, we have our HDMI
and power connections so that we can manage our cables
a little bit better. And we can even bend
the antennas up like this to make it.
I don't know, a little bit cooler and a little bit
more organized. All right, now we can finally get into
the powering stuff, which is something that I've been
[chuckling] really excited about with this.
Now, this is going to inflate the cost quite a bit, so at this
point, we could say time out, and if you wanted to keep the
rest of the cost down, you could just put a Sony L-series battery
in here and one on here and then that's pretty much it,
and then now, you'll be probably the cheapest option,
'cause you can get a pair of those batteries on Amazon
for, like, I don't know, 50 bucks and they're decent,
and you don't even need the big ones for this combination.
But, if you something that you can set it all up with just
one V-mount battery, have the whole thing last
for quite a while and not have to take out multiple batteries,
that's what we're going to set up now.
I get excited about this stuff, but whatever. OK, so first up,
we have this little guy here, which is an adapter that goes
from Sony L-series to V-mount, and this is on B&H, I think,
for $85, so not exactly cheap, but anytime you start
using V-mount batteries, the prices just go up.
I guess it's because now you're in "professional equipment."
But anyway, so we'll take this thing,
and we'll attach it to the back of the monitor,
and now our monitor will support V-mount batteries.
And, I've got a small, little V-mount battery here from Bebob.
I've done a video on these guys before, they're outstanding.
Shout-out to Tommy Callaway for telling me about
this company, but their batteries, these are the only
batteries I would buy now, probably, uh, you can get these
really compact ones 45, 90, a 150 watt-hours, I think,
is the biggest one, but they're the same form factor, they just
get a little bit deeper. They're fantastic,
their quality is great. I love it, just everything about them.
Bebob is my #1 recommended battery now.
I got this little guy, 45 watt-hours
and strap him on the back here...
-[clicking] -And now, like, I know we're
bulking this up quite a bit, but just check this out.
We've got a unified power source, and it's that small.
We've got an indicator light on the side to let us know how much
battery power we have, and we've got a USB port and a D-Tap port.
They have this cool design where you can actually put
your D-Tap plugin either direction, so I have one here.
So, typically, you'd be able to go in one direction only,
but in case you wanted to manage the cable the other way on this
guy, you can flip it over and plug it on the other side.
It's just a really cool, novel idea, and I think that's great.
OK, so now let's rig our power up. So, I've got a couple
of things here. First of all, I've got a micro-USB cable
and this, we can connect to the...
-[wrapper crinkling] -the focus module on here
to keep that juiced up all the time.
And then, I've got this guy here,
which is D-Tap to DC plug, and that's how we're
going to power the wireless video transmitter.
OK, so first of all, let's take our-- now these,
I should mention, these Bebob batteries have both USB and
a D-Tap port, but if you don't, you can get something like this,
which is, goes in D-Tap on one end
and then gives you another D-Tap on this side and a USB
port on the other side, and this is handy if you don't
want to have to have things plugged into your battery.
So this L-series to V-mount battery adapter
thing on this side here, it's got a single D-Tap that
you can see down here, and so you can take this thing
and plug it in here, and now...
I think that that's fine, yeah, and if it doesn't interfere,
we should be able to take out.
-[clicking] -Just make sure that
our clearances are good there, they look good.
So now this is attached to the battery plate itself
and not to the battery, so we can swap out batteries
without needing to disconnect anything.
And-- is that still go in fine? It does, yeah.
The clearance is a little bit tight, but it's OK.
This one's from Rolux, which is a company that
has other brands, like, in the US, they, they
distribute to IndiPro Tools, which I've recommended
before for, for power adapters and stuff like that.
But I ordered this one on Amazon, and it showed up
as Rolux, but if you see one of these at IndiPro Tools,
I've got a few of those, and they're also pretty good.
So, we're going to take our USB cable here
and plug it into the bottom...
of this... adapter thing,
and then we'll take our D-Tap to DC connection,
and I'll plug that into the top of that there,
so as you can see, we've got the USB coming out the bottom
and the D-Tap coming out the top.
All right, and then our HDMI cable, we use HDMI out 1,
and that's going to go into the Shinobi.
So now, we've just got three cables, and we can manage
this easily with the same Velcro cable ties that I took off.
If you don't have, [chuckling] I recommend these in, like,
every build video. If you don't have a big set of Velcro
cable ties, get yourself some and use them everywhere.
Keep yourself organized. All right, so let's tidy up
the cables here and then we'll wrap up.
[soft clicks]
OK, so that's all built, now let's boot it up
and see if it works, so we'll turn on the Shinobi,
and we'll turn on the wireless unit here, and the focus module
automatically turns on as soon as the cable is connected,
which is one thing that I don't like, I wish that
there was an on/off switch, because otherwise,
we're going to have to unplug it or take the battery out.
Now, as far as a few of the other prices that
I didn't mention, the Bebob battery is going to be this,
doing this, you know, universal power upgrade
thing is going to be the most expensive part.
This battery is $245, and then you're going to need,
probably, about $20-30 in cables as well,
and then the $85 battery plate adapter.
So, that's going to inflate your cost by,
probably, $330-$350 or more if you want
to use a bigger battery, and you can definitely do that
for cheaper if you just want to go with individual batteries.
Maybe that's the better option for you,
but I like unified power systems like this.
I think I've said that, like, 20 times in this video already.
So, if you want to get the battery out quickly, we can just
turn this thing this way, loosen it a little bit,
and then now, the battery has clearance.
Put a fresh one in and then just, sort of,
lock that back in. We can now see,
we can see that, what we're seeing,
we're seeing ourselves here now.
And uh, I don't know how well you can see this,
but if we take a look-- is that--
in the frame and focus, I'm going to do my best
here guys, but we can see for latency, so if I move
my hand here, then you can see it move on the screen.
Does that make sense? Just so you can see what
the latency is like. So, I would say...
about half a second, which, for this purpose, is fine.
And then, as far as run time goes, you should be able
to get a few hours out of this combination, but you can use
a bigger battery, obviously, a bigger V-mount battery if you
need to have it run longer or you can just switch them out,
and it boots back up and gets everything going within,
like, 10-15 seconds, so you're fine
even if you need to hot-swap batteries.
And then, over here, you can just press the button
on the side and see how much juice you have left.
We're obviously fully charged. Anyway, I think I'm at the point
where I'm starting to ramble now, look.
The screen where you can see yourself,
and you can focus, and it's wireless,
and I've got it on a little Manfrotto Pixi.
Enough said?
-Alright. I'm done. -[beeping]
... where the Mark II version has actual, removable [fumbling]
-[beeping] -And on the back,
we have our in and out ports.
-[throat clearing] -[beeping]
...where the Mark II version has actual--
where the Mark II version has removable--
-[beeping] -And then I've got
this guy here, which is a--
[Velcro snapping]
-[beeping] -I have a bunch of these
if you like to do attaching things, uh, with other things.