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Choosing your lens – which stills lenses for video? | Matt Allard
| DSLR News Shooter
This article looks at things to consider when buying lenses:
The second thing you have to decide is whether to get a prime lens or a zoom lens. There is no right or wrong choice here: it comes down to the individual operator and what he or she needs the lens for. Zooms can save you a lot of time as you don’t have to keep changing lenses, you don’t have to move around as much and you don’t need to buy as many lenses. When looking at a zoom lens you want to make sure you get something that has a constant aperture eg f2.8. If you have a zoom lens with variable aperture, the aperture will change when you change the focal length – this is a major pain for video.


Nikons biggest error yet - talking lenses | Sam Morgan Moore | Dslr 4 Real
Canon DSLR owners looking to move to cameras like the Sony NEX-FS100 have been faced with a problem because their Canon lenses aren't easily used in manual mode, but Sam thinks this disadvantage may soon be an advantage
I told Robin ‘El Skid’ (who is considering the FS100) that he had made a schoolboy error investing in Canon glass

Now I’m not so sure and here is why..

[...] We all want external control for a comfortable rig, or to control the lens while its on a crane or steadicam

Well I want external control anyway


Do You Make Marks on the Lens or Follow Focus? | Evan Luzi | The Black and Blue
If you pull focus, do you place marks on the lens, or the follow focus? Evan lists the pros and cons for each:
Lens
Best Accuracy: By far the most accurate, unless the lens housing comes undone, in which case you have bigger problems to deal with. A more accurate mark makes pulling focus a much easier job to do because, when you mark on the lens at 8 ft. 5″, you know everytime you pull to that distance it will be exactly right.


How to build your own video equipment | Eric Warren | MatadorTV
Collection of videos from YouTube showing how to make budget Steadicams, shoulder mounts, camera mounts, dollys and jibs.



Film Shot with Canon 7D Bought for $4 Million, Hits Theaters Later this Month
| Michael Zhang | PetaPixel
“Like Crazy” will be released on October 28th and was was shot using a Canon 7D. Not sure what the budget for the movie was.



Some Really Cool [FREE] FCP Plugins | Steven Trauger | StevenTrauger.com
A collection of free plug-ins and tools for Final Cut Pro (most won't work with Final Cut Pro X)


In case you missed it: 5DtoRGB v1.5 | Chris Marino | Wide Open Camera
Short post and video about this conversion utility for "cameras that record to the AVC/H.264 video format":
5DtoRGB’s algorithm takes your HDSLR footage from the YCbCr color model and interpolates the chroma subsampling in the footage and transcodes it to a RGB color model. This new file will play nicely with any NLE, compositing software, or color correction suite.


7 Pro Tips to Surviving the 48 Hour Film Project | FilmmakerIQ
If you're thinking of taking part in your first 48 Hour Film Project, this advice could really make a difference:
Tip 2: Separate out Preproduction, Production and Postproduction duties
As a team captain you really don’t have much choice but to be involved in every step of the production of your film. However you will see much better results if you delegate various stages of film to different people. Why? – Because each person will be required to put in less but more highly concentrated time into their part of the project.


Alcatraz BTS | Vincent Laforet | Vincent Laforet Blog
Vincent goes to Alcatraz with a Red Epic and five Canon 5D's (for timelapses) as well as a 3D microphone:
We used the the Mitra 3D audio mic and got some pretty stunning results. Normally I would hire a sound engineer but in this case we couldn’t have gotten an extra body on the island. And to be honest we weren’t asked to do audio – but I was able to "throw it in" if you will – given how little effort we had to put into collecting the audio. (But pls don’t misinterpret this – there is NO SUBSTITUTE for a solid audio engineer on all of your jobs. None.)


11 Most Influential Cinematographers of All Time | OnLine Degress Hub
A look at the work of Janusz Kaminski, Wally Pfister, Conrad L. Hall, Jordan Cronenweth, Haskell Wexler, Charles Rosher, Gordon Willis, Vilmos Zsigmond, Gregg Toland, Sven Nykvist and Kazuo Miyagawa.




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