This is big news, for all those people struggling with the 500D/ T1i and it’s 20fps 1080p or 720 30fps with lack of manual control and can’t afford a 7D then this camera is for you. It’s retailing for just $800 body only!
1080p: 1920 x 1080 pixels at 30fps (actually 29.97fps)
1080p: 1920 x 1080 pixels at 25fps
1080p: 1920 x 1080 pixels at 24fps (actually 23.976fps)
720p: 1280 x 720 pixels at 60fps (actually 59.94fps)
I went over to Ealing Studios last month to meet Chris Jones, co-author of “The Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbook” and the soon to be released new pocketbook version. I have had the green edition since it came out and it’s an essential purchase. The new pocketbook is an updated version with all the new developments. Hence my involvement. Read more
We have all seen the announcement today of the oversized Apple iphone/ tablet thingy called the “ipad”. It looks the next gadget to have for sure…but what intrigues me is would it be possible to get an adapted version of the Canon live view software for the Mac onto the ipad, connect up a USB lead to the Canon HD-DSLR cameras and we would have a very nice monitor that doesn’t disable the camera’s LCD screen, like we can do with our laptops currently…I know it’s not running OSX but surely it must be possible…?!
We have the camera connection kit which turns the dock connector into a USB port…so it must be possible!?
Am not saying I want to use the “iPad” as a dedicated monitor, for that I recommend a dedicated monitor! But just something instead of giving director my laptop which is current situation.
Only one thing though…SURELY Apple had seen this MadTV spot from 2006 before they decided on the name?! Please do not watch the below video if you are a bit prudish!
It’s about time someone came out with a four battery charger for the Canon LP-EP6 batteries. So far nobody has. When I finish a day’s job with my cameras I have a row of single chargers to charge my batteries. It’s messy, especially when I travel with them.
I have come across the Delkin dual charger which is certainly better than what I currently use. It charges two batteries simultaneously, tells you how much left there is to charge and is pretty cheap….about $50 gets you a dual charger and two plates. The charger can charge all sorts of different camera’s batteries so you need to make sure you get the plates for the EP6 batteries.
It’s the end of my Dubai shoot. We haven’t got everything in the bag so I will have to come back at some point to finish it off.
One of the best things I did whilst here was move hotels on my own money so I could have a killer view to do lots and lots of timelapses. I moved to the new Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. Initially I was on the 4th floor and here is what I put together of some of my timelapse tests last week.
I showed them to my producer and he loved them, I said it would be much better if I could be higher in the hotel, so he made a couple of calls and I got moved to the 18th floor where the views were spectacular.
I also went out and did some other timelapses, from the ground looking at the same buildings as i could see from my room. Of the world’s most expensive hotel, also some of and from the world’s tallest building.
Both my 5DmkIIs and my 7D were used as was my Lumix GF1 which was used for a large number of the shots in this piece including the star timelapses.
I was mostly in aperture priority mode. The second shot was done over 24 hours from my balcony and the camera took a shot every 15 seconds. The others varied between 1 second and 4 seconds. Mostly AV mode but the shot of the Burj al Arab and the one from the top of the Burk Khalifa I had in manual so when it got dark it looked dark.
When shooting timelapses I find I tend to throw away about a third of them as they don’t quite work. But I am getting better, learning from my mistakes. After all it’s only by making mistakes do you improve! I am using a plug by CHV for FCP called Long Exposure which evens out some of the flickering. It’s very cheap. I also graded this strongly using Magic Bullet Looks. Don’t forget you get 20% off of MBL from Redgiantsoftware.com by using the code Bloom20
Lens wise I used the 70-200m F2.8 Canon. 16-35mm F2.8 Canon. 24mm F3.5 TS Canon, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, Panasonic 20mm f1.7, Olympus 17mm f2.8, Canon 24mm F1.4, Sigma 10mm Fish Eye
I mostly shot aperture priority mode to cope with the light change Sometimes in manual. You don’t need expensive cameras to do this. The GF1 is a cheap camera and there are even cheaper ones out there like some of the powershot series with built in timelapse. It’s great fun, very boring to shoot but ultimately the most rewarding.
GF1 in action
Shooting on the world's tallest building
The world's most expensive hotel!
I must say that I really had a lovely time here. I enjoyed Dubai much more than last time. Big thanks to all the crew. To Arun, thanks mate despite the accident! Ryan, Elie. To Ian for hiring me again and to Graeme for being the jolliest man I have ever met.
I want to dedicate this film to Sky Vasser, daughter of my friend Vanessa Vasser whom I worked with on “Nightshift” who died at a tragically young age. I only met her a handful of times but she had enormous personality that I will never forget. My thoughts are with you Vanessa.
How catchy is that for a blog title topic?! Well this blog will say what it says on the tin..
I have shot probably thousands of interviews in my career. 99.99% of them with sound recording onto the tape/ card etc of the camcorder. Nice and simple…it works…
But recently though I have, as you know, been using those HD-DSLRs (or Video DSLRs as I used to call them until everyone started calling them HD-DSLRs!). I haven’t done a huge amount of interviews with them though, certainly not one man band. Most of the time I have a separate soundo but on this job in Dubai I have been doing the sound myself, although I have an assistant.
I have been doing timelapses ever since Sky the company I used to work for got their first Avid machine and were able to speed up footage. I used to shoot on Betacam SP, shoot one scene for 4o minutes (which of course pissed off the editor as they have to real time digitize) and get them to speed it up X number of percent to effective give me a timelapse. Not the most elegant way, but certainly the only way for me to do it for a number of years.
The advent of tapeless cameras like my Sony F350, Panasonic HVX200 and PMW EX1 it became far easier to do timelapse. You could actually record one frame at a time over a prelonged period of time. So no wasting media, fast ingest time and the ability to truly control your timelapse with things like slow shutter for low light, taking one frame every 10 minutes or more if you wanted to. Suddenly the creative possibilities of timelapse where at my fingertips!
It wasn’t until I started using DSLRs though that the true power of timelapses were at my fingertips. The ability to create noiseless low light timelapses was very exciting. It was Tom Lowe from Timescapes.org who got meaddicted to this. He is the master of DSLR timelapses.
Most fun and rewarding for me are the star night time timelapses like the ones in the middle of my Skywalker Ranch film. These are mind blowing but take enormous patience. As each exposure takes about 30 seconds and you need 24/25 frames for each second of footage. That’s a long wait!
You see with stills timelapses you take loads of photos and then stick them altogether and create a video file. It’s actually very easy.
First off you need a camera that can do timelapse. The Nikon D300/s, D700, D3/s all have timelapse built in. The Canon cameras don’t. So you need something called an intervalometer. Different cameras need different ones. The official Canon one for the 5Dmkii, 1dmkiV and 7D is the TC-80N3 but you can also buy some cheap Chinese versions. Here are links to ones I have used for the cameras I have with me: 5DmkII, 500D, GF1.
Get yourself a nice sturdy tripod. Make sure you are on ground that won’t wobble like some pavements/ sidewalks, have enough battery power and enough card space. Ideally shoot RAW if you can but I often shoot JPEGs especially for the epic ones that last all night or longer.
The tricky bit is controlling the exposure because once you start you don’t want to start changing the settings on the camera or it will look like crap! Even lighting situations like daytime or nightime are easier as you just stick the camera in manual and away you go. If you want long exposure longer than 1/30th of a second on the 5dmkii then take it out of live view mode for video and put it in stills mode. You can then shoot long exposure timelapses in live view mode. You can shoot timelapse in live view mode or just normal stills mode. I like live view mode as it shows me what I am getting but it eats up juice, so if you are doing long ones make sure you have a main power supply for the camera or a battery pack. Live view mode also means the mirror box isn’t constantly opening and closing and therefore is also quieter. The GF1 is live view mode only.
Oh one thing…take your camera out of auto focus! It will screw up your timelapse completely! Manual focus only!
There is a finite number of clicks your shutter can take on your DSLR, this can vary from camera to camera. Yes, this will shorten the life of your shutter, but not your camera. If your shutter does eventually fail on you then it’s not the end of your camera, it can be fixed. I have been quoted £200 if it needs it, others may quote higher or lower. Your 7D + 5dmkII shutter should last you well over 200,000 shots.
If you are doing timelapses of something that will have a drastic light change that’s when it becomes difficult. Day to night and night to day are tricky as you really need something on auto, the iris, the shutter or the iso.
Aperture Priority means the iris stays as you set it and the camera adjusts the shutter to compensate. Shutter priority adjusts the iris to compensate whilst keeping the shutter to what you have set it at. I prefer keeping my ISO locked down at something low to keep the image clean.
Don’t forget if shooting with a shutter that changes then when it gets dark your photo can take much longer than a second to expose which means you will capture less stills per minute therefore making any timelapse you do shorter in footage duration.
With the intervalometer make sure the frames are set to — as if you try and put a number down then you will get max of 99 frames which is useless! Also set the interval to what you want between shots, I often make it just 1 second between shots.
The problem we have to deal with is flicker. This happens in auto mode due to the metering of the camera. It decides whether to open up the iris, drop the shutter etc to compensate for subtle light changes so frame by frame the exposure changes. This causes flicker and is a pain.
There are a number of post ways to get rid of this. Many swear by a PC solution using VirtualDub but as I don’t have a PC I cannot use it. Other use After Effects to even out exposures very successfully. I have some plug ins for final cut but they don’t work that well.
The way I create the video from the stills using my Mac is very easy. I open up Quicktime Pro 7, not Quicktime X. Quicktime Pro 7 is hidden in the utilities folder of Snow Leopard. Open up image sequence. Make sure photos are all in one folder and then click on first photo in sequence. You are then asked what frame rate do you want the video to be at. I selected 25p as I am shooting 25p for this documentary. So I need 25 photos for 1 second of footage. More if I feel I may need to speed it up later. Quicktime then creates a massive 5K file that I then save whole. You can also export down to ProRes Full HD using crop, but this often creates banding, so I tend to bring in the whole large file into Final Cut and use all the extra information to do things like digital zooms and pans etc without loss of resolution. This is what I did in the video at the bottom of the post in Dubai. Digital pans and slow zooms all done because I have all the extra resolution.
You could set everything to auto. Including ISO. I did this for my 36 hour timelapse in San Francisco and I had no flicker. Go figure!
I am staying at the Atlantis Palm hotel in Dubai whilst I film the documentary using the Canon 7D on the Royal Family of Dubai, the Al Maktoums who commissioned the film on their history. I am making this with Talkabout Media and Media Prima. I am filming about 20 odd talking heads, filming dramatic reconstructions and getting general shots.
I chose the Atlantis as I knew the view looking to the city would be spectacular and it is. I just need a different room now as am having issues with this one as there is a massive light to the right of my balcony giving me nasty light pollution.
So far, I haven’t got the perfect timelapse. I am still trying and every night I will keep on trying!
The below timelapse is mostly 5DmkII with 24-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8, TS 24mm F3.5 lenses and the first and penultimate shots are done on the little cheap GF1 and look great! Most of them are set to aperture priority but this isn’t working for me. As you can see in one of them, which flickers badly…
I will keep trying and work out the best way. I won’t give up just yet! Do share your tips and solutions below!
EDIT: I HAVE FOUND A MAC FCP POST SOLUTION TO FIX MY FLICKER ISSUES AND IT WORKS PERFECTLY. GENARTS FLICKER REMOVAL. Unfortunately it’s only available as part of a large VERY expensive package which I have owned for about 3 years. Be great if Genarts could make that one plug in available separately. I will keep on the lookout for cheap alternatives. Below is the Vimeo “De-flickered” version. Click here to see the original version with the flicker in it.
I am hoping to get permission to film some stuff around the hotel as it will make a beautiful short. My B-Roll guy is coming here this work whilst I shoot more interviews but I want to shoot more myself with my glidetrack as it will be a lot of fun and will look great…
A follow focus is one of those bits of gear that a lot of people want but can’t afford. I use a Zacuto one for my DSLRs and my 35mm adaptor and it works superbly, but it’s not within the price range of the keen amateur, hobbyist, student or broke professional! So what do you do? Well you can always focus off the barrel of the lens. This is fine for a lot of handheld work and actuality but for narrative work and controlled focus pulls there is nothing better than a follow focus because you really want to take the hand off of the lens otherwise you introduce vibration into it and your focus pulls aren’t as steady or rarely as smooth. Both of these products were supplied to me as review samples.
First off is the incredibly cheap D-Focus V2, made by David Aldrich and distributed by Jag35. I first my Dave when I did the Joshua Tree short film on the GH1. He and the Jehu Garcia came along to hang out and I saw his V1 of the D-Focus. This V2 is a lot better than that one! Really nice guy and one of the new breed of entrepreneurs out there making really cheap accessories for this affordable cameras.
The key thing about this follow focus rather than the other one I am reviewing in this article is it’s use of industry standard parts. 15mm rods, standard 32 pitch gears…so it will work with your other gear. Generally follow focuses need to be mounted to the camera using a rod system. I still recommend rods as they are the easiest way to mount a follow focus and can be used for a matte box and other stuff but Dave has come up with a budget DSLR plate for $50. So couple that with the price of the $120 follow focus and you really have a budget set up here…and it works.
Unfortunately that’s not all you need, with a gear based system you need…lens gears…until now Dave was using Redrock ones, but he and Jag35 have come up with their own lens gears and they are again dirt cheap! Way cheaper than the old Redrock ones they used to recommend. Redrock ones are $160 for 3 lens gears. The Jag35/ D-Focus ones are $30 dollars each. The great thing about these gears is that they are adjustable for difference lens barrel diameters. When buying a Redrock one you buy one for the size of the lens. What Jag35 and D-Focus have cleverly done using screws is made the diameters adjustable with 4 different size screws that attach to the inner part of the lens gear changing the size of the lens gear. Theoretically these gears should be usable with other follow focuses. You can just buy one and switch between lenses but it’s not worth the hassle. At this price buy one for each lens. Taking it off and changing size is not super fast so best to leave them on…also even if you aren’t using a follow focus having the gears on help you focus manual easier too.
There are 4 different size screws, here are 3 of them!
Lens gear with screws on
The DSLR plate
The DSLR plate works fine. It’s nowhere near as good as a proper rail system but it’s a lot lighter and a lot cheaper. When you want to move the D-Focus into a different position for a different lens using rods you just slide it along, with the plate it’s a little bit more fiddly, undoing a bolt, moving part of it, lining it up and then tighten down. As I said, not as good as rails but a great cheap alternative.
Underside of plate
The design of the follow focus wheel is nice and chunky, it has the optional (but essential) marking disc on it above. It also takes standard follow focus cranks and whips, am sure these guys will be bringing out their own one soon too.
It’s a really affordable piece of kit, way cheaper than anything else out there and the huge advantage of it using standard sized gear means you can use it with other gears, other follow focus etc…
It works pretty good. It’s not perfect and I wouldn’t expect it to be for the price. The follow focus system I use is close to about 8 times the price but has taken a lot of beating from me day in, day out and is utterly smooth with zero play. I found this one to have a little bit of play in it and not as silky smooth as I would like and as everything is exposed I would treat it gently. I wouldn’t call it a pro piece of gear as I don’t think it could take the daily punishment pro gear is put through.
So of course it’s going to have downsides but if you want a follow focus and are on a budget there is nothing that comes close to the D-Focus V2.
I am going to give it the following marks out of 10.
Build quality: 6.5 Compromises have be made to keep the price point low
Ease of use: 7 A bit fiddly with the DSLR plate
Value for money: 10 Nothing else out there that come close to this
Overall: 8 People say you get what you pay for, well I think you are getting a lot more than you pay for with this. It’s an absolute bargain. Will I switch from my expensive follow focus for this? No. But For anyone starting out this is a terrific way to get into the great habit of using a follow focus the professional way. Oh, one more thing. There is nothing stopping you using this with a depth of field adaptor like the Letus or Jag35.
Here a couple of helpful set up videos from David.
Next up is the IDC run and gun kit from IDC photography
I saw someone with this when I was down in Venice Beach and it really intrigued me, then I saw that Rick McCallum from Lucasfilm has one so I had a play with it and liked it. I contacted IDC and they kindly supplied a review sample of the 7D and 5DmkII version (there are slight differences so make sure you order the right one).
First off this is not a traditional follow focus by any means. It doesn’t use gears…it uses a modified skateboard wheel!
Again using a plate similar to the D-Focus DSLR plate it attaches to the bottom of you camera and the wheel pushes hard into the lens focus and you simply turn the wheel to focus. That’s it really! It works really well with my Canon lenses which have loose focus barrels, I did try it on the same 50mm old Nikon lens I used for the D-Focus above and it struggled as the focus is a bit stiff. It relies entirely on friction to work and if there is too much resistance from the lens it will struggle.
The Run & Gun kit comes with a modified Hoodman Hoodloupe. Now I have reviewed to Hoodman before and said it was OK. Just OK as it had no proper way of mounting onto the camera other than bands and there was no magnification. I find it essential for any loupe to magnify the 5d/ 7d screen to get focus. The Z-Finder magnifies 3x to give you 100x screen in your eye. Yes it’s blowing up pixels but it makes focusing a hell of a lot easier. This Hoodman does not do that. No magnification, just a macro lens. So yes it works but I don’t recommend it. What IDC have very cleverly done is modify the Hoodman so it attaches to the plate and is held in place against the LCD screen firmly.
How the Hoodman is held on
It’s a peculiar beast that I dismissed upon first viewing, but after using it am surprised at just how usable it is. It makes focusing a lot easier than off the barrel as it takes vibration away from the barrel of the lens just like any follow focus. It doesn’t use gears so you save money on that and doesn’t use rods. It’s basically a follow focus device for people who have no desire for a pro follow focus device but want to be able to focus better and this does that superbly.
The Run & Gun kit costs $488 but I don’t recommend that, as I really am not a fan of that hoodloupe…although it is better than nothing, You need a loupe that magnifies, like the LCDVF or the Z-Finder V2. Buying the follow focus without the viewfinder costs $358 so the Hoodloupe is costing you $130. If you don’t have one as I said it’s better than nothing but I do recommend looking at alternatives. The Follow focus itself is pretty good and works a hell of a lot better than it should!
I am going to give it the following marks out of 10.
Build quality: 7.5 No complaints, seems pretty good, but without any long term testing it’s hard to mark this one.
Ease of use: 7.5 Piece of cake..no gears means less fiddly but not as accurate as a proper follow focus.
Value for money:7.5 For what you get it’s pretty good, whether you go for the viewfinder option or not.
Overall: 7.5 It’s not a proper follow focus so if you are looking to get into proper pro gear this is not it. Look at the D-Focus. But, if you just want to be able to have the ability to focus nice and easily this is very good and gets the job done. The skateboard wheel is very soft so I can’t see who it can damage the lens in any way by pushing against it all the time.
I finally got my hands on a pre-production Canon 1Dmkiv this weekend. I could have had one about 3 weeks ago but it clashed when I was in the US unfortunately. So I scheduled it for this weekend and took up the offer of director Albert Hughes (of The Hughes Brothers) to come visit him in Prague. A great place to test out the new camera and it’s almost legendary low light capabilities.
Albert taken on the iphone using the Hipstamatic camera app
Albert wrote to me mid last year after seeing my work online and we have been in touch ever since, through his making of “The Book Of Eli” which he shot on RED. This gave him the taste for digital filmmaking and he bought a 5DmkII and a 7D. I almost met him in person in LA but it didn’t happen due to crazy schedules. Albert lives in Prague and it’s only a 2 hour flight from London for me.
So I took the 1DmkIV with me, 2 spare batteries, lots of cards, my new Manfrotto tripod 055XPROB with 701 HDV head as i wanted something even more lightweight than my usual Miller DS20 and something that worked directly with the Glidetrack as it doesn’t have bowl. A pain for levelling but great for the glidetrack. This is the same Glidetrack Shooter SD that I used at Lucasfilm for my short film there. I also took a tonne of lenses. 16-35mm f2.8 L, 24m F1.4 L, 24mm f3.5 TS L, 35mm F1.4 L, 50mm F1.2 L, 85 F1.2 L, 70-200mm F2.8L. Some Singh-Ray and Fader ND Variable ND filters, my Zacuto rig and some warm clothes.
Prague was COLD. Last time I was this cold was probably when I filmed in Siberia!
I didn’t do any day filming. I just wanted to do everything at night.
I started off by meeting Daniel Bird, who cut my Greenpeace commercial, I hadn’t met him yet so it was a great to chance to thank him for the great job he did on it. He lives in Prague too.
We did some filming around the river (that’s Daniel on the bench in the film), around the Charles Bridge, which unfortunately had loads of scaffolding on it so was not looking at it’s best as you can see! Then Rick McCallum who I had just spent a week with at Skywalker Ranch, met us on the bridge after just flying in, jet lagged of course! Another Prague resident!
Rick and Daniel on the Charles Bridge
Rick stayed with us for a bit before going back into the warm and to get some sleep, Daniel went off to do some work for Greenpeace, so I carried on and walked to the main square to do some more filming.
I was out until about 11pm, when my nuts officially fell off due to frostbite!
We went out again the next day, myself, Rick, Daniel and Albert. It was even colder. Rick had his 7D, Miller DS20 and some lenses. I had the same gear as before. We did some nice high shots and some timelapse from up there (which I didn’t use!). Oh and Rick….I need your footage for the edit! You forgot to give it to me!
Rick with my Panasonic GF1 and Zacuto Z-Finder
Should have covered my ear
1DmkiV on the Glidetrack and Manfrotto
Rick and I stuck with the cold the longest and we did some nice stuff in the main square, including the money shot…Rick eating a massive hot dog. Love that shot. I was about to pack up and go when Rick went home but I just didn’t feel like I had nailed it, there wasn’t enough. There was something missing…so I started doing some timelapse shots using the stills mode and the cheap ebay intervalometer from China that I had with me. I even did one with me static in the middle of frame for something different. Boy did I get some looks! Then the magic happened. It started snowing beautiful lush snow flakes. Into 720 50p mode I went and got some lovely shots of the snow coming down to slow mo in post using cinema tools (tutorial under er…tutorials!).
Thank god for legendary 1DmkiV weatherproofing!
So that was the filming….how did I like the 1DmkiV? This is based on the pre-production model…
Very much…first off, it’s a beast. Rugged, just how a camera should be, more and more cameras these days like the EX1 etc are just not that robust. This is the first camera I had used in years that I didn’t worry about. The 7D has great weatherproofing, the 5DmkII is not bad either. But the build of this camera is superb.
As I said, built like a tank. I like these batteries a lot more than the piddly little ones you get with the 5dmkii and 7D. These last a good 2-3 hours of shooting. I didn’t use the dual slot with the SDHC slot, but nice to have.
The light sensitivity is great. You can shoot pretty clean at 3200, but i did notice a fair bit of noise at 6400, especially with any lenses which were either stopped down to F2.8 or F2.8 max. You could really see the noise in the blacks…I had a pretty neutral picture profile and tried HTP, but didn’t make any difference. So really I was trying not to shoot over 3200. This is great as I find the 7D a bit noisy at 1600 at times and the 5DmkII too noisy at 3200. So a nice big step up. Noise is fine for actuality, but when you want something clean I want to avoid it.
There are no concessions to video users on the outside of this camera. Those lovely dedicated buttons for video on the 7D are not here. Although all the frame rates from the 7D are here, 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p, 60p. The proper variants of these too! This is primarily a stills cameras, especially for sports and news snappers. The video is there and is great but it doesn’t wear it colours on the outside.
The crop is an odd one. I.3x.APS-H. I understand why but for video it’s a bit of a pain. With the L/ EF series glass with have nice full frame lenses and we can get some great wide angle shots with them. I love my 16-35mm lens. Gorgeous, trouble is on here it’s only 20.8mm at the wide end and there are no specific APS-H lenses out there so you are limited to full frame glass and that crop factor. APS-C lenses are a big no-no on this camera. You will get a massive vignette if you use them as they are designed for cameras with a smaller sensor.
For me that’s the biggest downer to the camera. The inability to use and REALLY wide glass. A full frame 1DSMKiV would be very welcome!
Get past the change in layout of the buttons (or lack of them), the extra weight and you will be rewarded with a very powerful filmmaking tool. Giving you the ability to shoot in places you wouldn’t have been able to before. Don’t forget though that most of what you are paying for is for incredible stills performance. If you aren’t interested in that you are paying a hefty premium for this camera as it’s twice the price of the 5DmkII.
Do I want one? Of course! For the low light sensitivity alone and of course the tank like build quality. Perfect for me. Shame I don’t have $5000 lying around!
I only had the camera 48 hours and my goal was to make a film. I didn’t get a chance to do low light comparison tests, rolling shutter tests, moire tests, aliasing test. Simply no time. Hopefully someone with the camera for longer than me can do this. All i managed to do was make one pretty Christmas film!
On a quick side not. My previous advice of rendering down your timelapses in Quicktime Pro 7 to full HD is a bad idea. Save as whole because if you render them down you can often end up with some nasty banding. You may end up with a huge 5K file but at least you don’t get banding!
The film is in black and white. It just fitted the best, also the lighting in Prague is a nightmare, horrendous orange lights mixed in with more normal lighting. Luckily the black and white just fitted. Please don’t ask to see the colour version. This is how I want my film to look.
Music is from one of my favourite films “the Hudsucker Proxy” by the Coen Brothers, underrated. The original music is called Spartatcus by Aram Khachaturian and was adapted by the great Carter Burwell. It took me most of the day to figure out the best music for this…went through about 6 tracks and edits until I came up with this.
I personally recommend the 7D version as it covers the same ground as the 5DmkII version but in more detail.
our first touch...
In a few hours I get on a plane to Prague where it is VERY cold. I am meeting up with Albert Hughes to do some shooting on the 1DmkIV. It’s a stunning city and should look great with this camera in low light.
Prague at night, not shot on 1DmkIV
I only have it for a two days so it’s unlikely I will get a chance to do any side by comparisons between this, the 7D and the 5DmkII but even from one very short test shot I did it’s way cleaner at 3200 ISO than the Canon 5dMKII and 7D are.
Z-Finder V2 or 1DmkIV
I will be updating this blog over the next three days or so finally culminating in a short film made out there.
On Sunday, Lucasfilm’s Rick McCallum will be joining us which will be very cool as we had a great time over at Skywalker Ranch last week. In that vein below is the very first shot I did with the Canon 1dmkiV prototype. Don’t worry, it will get better from now on !! Read more
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