My wife knows how I do love gadgets, especially those having to do with photography. She found this bottlecap camera mount online. It’s a 1/4′-20 thread with an adjustable (15°) swivel head and a rubberized base that fits snugly on a plastic water bottle cap. I love this thing.
And yes, the bottled water I get comes shaped like a flask.
I can’t tell you how many times lately I’m asked if I have had any experience with the Red One camera. Well, I finally did it. I got a chance to play with one and do some very rough and tumble tests - one with my friend and producer Greg and another with jib op/owner and director, Shane. The verdict? In a nutshell, I really like it (but don’t love it, not yet).
What did I loved? I love the modular design. The menus are great - no more MS-DOS-like looking hierarchy tree. The onscreen information is wonderful and very useful. The onboard monitor produces a great image and it’s light as a feather. The Electric View Finder is one of the best I’ve used. Using it handheld is great - nicely balanced and easily adjustable. The controls are all easy to get to and easy to use. Building the camera is fast and easy.
One feature I really like is the exposure by colors. When activated, the exposure of the scene is represented in colors. So if a window is over 100 on a waveform monitor, the window would be colored yellow, red or even magenta to signify that it is over exposed. Or a chair in the shot that’s would be 45, might be colored green. Very visual and personally, much more useful than a waveform monitor for my needs.
↓↓ Here’s the color scale for reading exposures. Note the over/under stops indicated.
What I didn’t like so much. The Red lens (specifically the 18-50mm zoom) isn’t as good as most. It’s not sharp and it seems to flare quite a bit. Still for the money, it can be perfectly usable for smaller projects. I’m not so sure about the smaller BNC & audio connector. I’m sure I’ll change my mind about this after using the camera. One thing I noticed is that while the shots we got weren’t lit or graded or anything that might go into an actual shot for a scene, the images look and feel very “plastic”. Here too, I’m sure after shooting and finishing a project under proper conditions I’ll feel different about this.
I’m hoping to do some extensive tests before heading out to NAB. Till then, we did some very simple test:
↑↑ Director/producer Greg M. plays with the focus on the camera.
↑↑ This is a fast pan to the right. ↑→ This is a slightly slower pan back to the left.
I wanted to see what would happen with very fast panning shots. So here it is.
↑↑ Everyone who wants a shallow depth of field now has it. We shot this with the focus set to 12″
↑↑ This was to see fine detail. Next time we’ll use charts or a newspaper.
Both cameras were using Firmware Build 15.
What a glorious weekend - shooting a music video for singer/songwriter Sara Mann. It’s for a song from her upcoming album. You can listen to the song, “The End of You”, on her mySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/mannsara The video should be available for viewing by Valentines day. Keep a look out for it.
From a home in North Hollywood, the video includes both a performance and a narrative story element. The project is directed by Guy Julian - a name you’ll see often in the music video section of my resume. We shot the project using the Panasonic HVX200. As you may have read in a previous entry, I recently purchased a Lensbaby 3G and have been mostly using it for still photography. The Lensbaby is a selective focus lens. But after having seen it used on the feature film, “The Butterfly and the Diving Bell”, this seemed like a good device for what we were doing and a fine, real world test for an upcoming short film I’ll be shooting where the Lensbaby will get some use. To get the Lensbaby to work with the HVX, we used a Letus35 Extreme lens adaptor (↓ see photo). The Letus35 is an adaptor for using 35mm lenses on video cameras. Both worked extremely well in this application. The frame below was shot with the Lensbaby without any iris rings (ƒ/2.0). As expected from some testing my friend Clay and I did with the camera a few weeks back, the camera performed as expected. In this configurations, the camera is performing with an EI of 200.
↓ ↓ The following two photos are from shots that we did in hallway were we zoomed out on the camera enough to see the edges of the ground glass and partially see the mirrors on the Letus35. Personally, I love this stuff. It’s reminiscent of things I’ve gotten during telecine. Here we used a Nikkor 50mm (ƒ/1.8) lens.
↓ ↓ Below is the final lighting plan for the performance footage. In this room, hundreds of cards were hung buy fishing line - it’s an element of the song. The Lekos on the fireplace have Alice Blue (incidentally, the color is named after Alice Roosevelt Longworth - her favorite color and who happens to be Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest daughter). These lights flickered by using a Magic Gadget flicker box. They had been meant to wash the room with blue but they ended up being a blue wash for the background. Still good and perhaps better this way. The band is mostly backlit by Dedo lights and 420 Pepper lights which are also on the flicker box. They’re kept low to hit the lens from time to time as they pass through the hanging cards as we dolly back and forth. By and large, we shot wide open on the camera (ƒ/1.7) and with a 1/250 shutter (35°)
↑ ↑ From L > R: Phil Hurley (guitar) / Miles Crawford (drums) / Michael Eisenstein (bass) - Phil is in a band call “Stoneyhoney” -n- Miles has played in “Stomp” for years -n- Michael with his wife Kay Hanley were part of “Letters to Cleo” and is currently producing. If you look at the photo on the left toward the bottom right you see she show’s mascot, Maya.
↓ ↓ For the verses, we dolly in to one set of for two lines in the lyrics, then the set is changed and we then dolly out from the new set. We shot some balloons against a greenscreen and that’ll be composited between the shots. Many thanks to my wife for doing the set design and make-up.
↑ ↑ Guy directing Sara on our New Year’s set.
We had one set that needed to look like a dinner scene. Steaks for the shot where browned using a propane blow torch. Since my wife is a chef and she’s done food styling before, the trick not only worked it was fun too. I know because I got to brown one of the steaks - boys do love fire . The only thing that went on the steaks is a sprinkle of course salt. As I browned the one steak, I was struck by how like painting it was. I would darken an area and them move to the edges and fry the fat and blacken the bone and then darken another area until I felt it was done.
Vendors:
Camera : Indie Rentals
Grip & Electric : Wooden Nickel
Drum set sound dampeners : SIR
Ah yes… your moment of Zen. (Toby, our IT guy, our playback guy and all-round good guy.)
Recently my friend (and director) Clay purchased a Letus35 Extreme for his commercial and music video projects but also for a short film we’re shooting next month. The Letus is an adapter for using 35mm lenses on non-35mm cameras. He brought the adaptor up and a Panasonic HVX200 for a little test and fun. So what did we learn?
Well, for his camera at least, our settings were 73 on the zoom, 50 on the focus, and the iris on the camera is set to wide open, which is approximately ƒ/2. First we wanted to see what the Lensbaby would look like. The movie below is with the Lensbaby and no iris ring (ƒ/2). If you notice the vignette on the left side. That’s the adaptor’s ground glass. We know that we’re seeing it because we didn’t zoom in enough but what we don’t know is why it’s not centered. If we were to zoom in into the ground glass to clear the left edge of the ground glass, we end up with lots of room on the right that would go unused. Research time. The Lensbaby was manipulated by hand.
Here we shot with a Nikon 50mm prime lens. It was at end of the day with the clouds in the sky after a day of rain. We poured water on the ground and shot the falling water at 60 f.p.s., preset the white balance to 3200K, 12dB gain, shutter at 1/250 (35.6° 35mm equivalent*) and the taking lens set at ƒ/1.4.
Letus claims that their lens adapter has a 1/2-stop loss of light and by our estimation, based on how we set up the camera the camera, we rated his camera set-up at 200 E.I.
Conversion formula:
Shutter speed to shutter angle: 24 x 360 / inverse of the video shutter speed = shutter angle equivalent => For example, 1/250 would be: 24 x 360 / 250 = 34.56 shutter angle equivalent
Shutter angle to shutter speed: 24 x 360 / shutter angle = n where , 1/n is the shutter speed equivalent => For example 180° would be: 24 x 360 / 180 = 1/48
FYI, the 24 x 360 = 8640
New year, new toy. I first heard about the Lensbaby from my then 1st AC Koji about two years ago. After much longing for one, today I finally got my Lensbaby 3G. It’s a lens for shift/tilt “like” photography. It creates a “sweet spot” of focus whose size is determined by various shaped iris rings. Here’s an example from paying with it today.
click to see a larger version
Primarily, I got it for shooting food shots of my wife’s cooking. But then, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” used a Lensbaby 2 for the opening scenes that was modified by Arriflex - Lensbaby now offers a PL version. (My shows have to get bigger budgets.) A friend of mine has been hoping to shoot with one for at least a year. (His shows need bigger budgets.)
So now I’ve got one. We might have a music video shoot in the next couple of weeks. We’re gonna see if we can use it with a 35mm lens adaptor (like the Redrock Micro). Let’s hope it all works out. More to follow.
Here’s another pict from today’s play.
A few more from day to of learn by doing…
: : A butterfly at death’s door.
: : Portrait of my friend, Justin. A lucky grab during a production planning meeting.
(So far one of my favorite portraits.)
I’m getting more used to it - learn by doing. I’m finding, as other have, that ƒ/5.6 very nice working stop for the focal length of the lens. The last three photos are all using the ƒ/5.6 ring.
