Notes On Video

Episode 50: Sony NEX-VG900 Camera Review | Caleb Pike | DSLR Video Shooter A look at the full-frame sensor NEX-VG900 consumer video camera: The Sony NEX-VG900 gets a 4/5 in my book. I loved working with a full frame video camera. And having APS-C as an option that can be turned on is brilliant. Check out my review for more details and demo footage. C300 Fringe Test | Randy Noland | Vimeo There's been a bit of back and forth on whether this software update fixes color-frining on the Canon C300 . Some Canon techs have even denied that it does... This video is a quick C300 Fringe Test after Canon Factory Service installed firmware ver 1.0.7.1.00. Sorry for handheld but I had 10 minutes to shoot. I tried to mimic pushing to extreme over exposure.I think the fringing issues have been resolved. New footage from the M4/3 Blackmagic Cinema Camera shows promise as shipping on the EOS version of the camera resumes | Dan Chung | DSLR News Shooter Good news that the EOS Blackm...

END OF THE WORLD SHOOTOUT - PART 1 | Shian Storm | Vimeo Not the most polished, professional test ever, but we had 1/1000th the budget of Zacuto, and very little time. We do our best to stress the BMCC, 5DMKIII, GH3, and Hacked GH2 in a High Dynamic Range shootout. We went to some lengths to mess with the framing so as not to have the sensor crop give away which cam is which; primarily so that you'll focus more on which one(s) you like instead of trying to identify each cam. These comparisons have been graded down to the lowest common denominator to be as "equal" as possible. But in Part 2 we'll show you the raw footage. END OF THE WORLD SHOOTOUT - PART 2 END OF THE WORLD SHOOTOUT - PART 3 The Year in Tech: Reflections & Predictions | Daniel Hayek | Vimeo Comments from: Jared Abrams, Philip Bloom, Vincent LaForet, Joe Marine, Patrick Moreau, Jonathan Yi offer their thoughts on the year: Joe Marine: Blackmagic Cinema Camera (while it's still not te...

An Afternoon Music Video Shoot with the Canon C300 | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine For most of the shoot, Rick’s switching between a Tokina 11-16mm and a Tamron 70-200mm. He likes to use the 11-16 on the Glidecam for the wider field of view. “You know, with the C300 you have to shut it off when you change lenses,” he points out as he switches the lenses. “A year with the Canon C300″ | Philip Jonhston | HD Warrior Dislikes… 1. Don’t like the LCD attached to the XLRs, makes sound recording very cumbersome. 2. Would prefer a dedicated switch on the side of the camera for ISO like the C100. 3. The CF flap doors can be fiddly to open. 4. The LCD can get stuck if you tighten the knob too much. Top Tech – Canon CN-E & Zeiss Compact Primes | Australian Cinematographers Society | Vimeo Tom Gleeson, Member of the ACS Technical Committee, and Mike Seymour, co-founder of fxguide, look at the Canon CN-E range and new Zeiss Compact Primes. They note that the Canon line lacks ...

IKAN D7W IPS PANEL MONITOR REVIEW | Rick Macomber | Vimeo Rick takes an indepth look at the $1,169 ikan D7w : The new ikan D7w IPS panel field monitor is here. First revealed at NAB 2012, this monitor comes with all the bells and whistles you would want packed into a nice 7 inch 1280 x 800 HD screen. It has waveform, vector scope, RGB parade, 4 panel view and priority view. Add to that peaking, pixel to pixel, false color, clip guides and DSLR scaling all with a viewing angle of 178 degrees. There's 3G SDI and HDMI loop thru, a headphone jack and a mini USB port for firmware updates. I tested a BP-950G battery which lasted about 3 1/2 hours. Our Top 12 Posts of 2012 (or, the Tyranny of the Listicle) | Filmmaker Magazine I only got to number 9 in the top 12...though I also came in at 10 and 12. Have to do better next year... 9. Canon 5D Mark III: Does More, Costs More. New on the site this year is Michael Murie’s column, “The Week in Cameras.” The Alexa aside, this post d...

WEDNESDAY JAN 16 LearningLab: 10am–12n Bagels + Coffee Digital Asset Management Solutions Learn how to manage, access and protect all of your digital assets with an overview of the CatDV 10 media asset management system along with shared storage options from SNS and archive appliances from Cache-A presented by JB&A’s Jeremy Strootman. WEDNESDAY JAN 23 Pubnight: 6–8pm Pizza + Beer Sony F5 And F55 Overview Join Sony’s Senior Product Manager, Juan Martinez for an in-depth look at the new F5 and F55 large sensor cameras with 4K Super35mm CMOS sensors delivering images with higher contrast, rich color reproduction and greater clarity for every production application. RSVP to events@rule.com as space is limited.

Canon C100 Hands On Review | Erik Naso | Blog Nice, detailed blog about working with the C100 . Makes me wish I could afford one: Ergonomics and ease of use. This is a big one, so I I’m going to start here. Shooting all day handheld is hard enough. With the way the C100 is laid out it’s the most ergonomic camera I have used so far, straight out of the box with no add-ons. Here is why: And for some more footage shot with the C100 :  Short Film Scene with the Canon C100 | Ryan Emanuel | Vimeo How To Prepare Yourself For RAW | Ryan Walters | Blog Shooting with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera : The last thing that needs to happen before you head out to set, or leave for remote field work, is to make sure that your media is formatted properly. This is especially true if you will not have access to a DIT, or a computer system, as you cannot erase cards in the camera. As of this writing, that formatting needs to be HSF+, so you will need a Mac to format the drives correctly. ...

I just bought a Roku LT Streaming Player   player. I bought the “cheap” RT model, which is limited to 720P, partly because Amazon was having a sale on it, and partly because I didn’t really think I’d see much difference between 720P and 1080P. The 720P looks pretty good to me, but then I watch DVDs quite happily as well. I also have a first generation Apple TV , which I don’t use as much as I had originally thought I would. I use it to occasionally rent a movie, but I do that so infrequently you could probably count the number of movies I’ve rented this past year on the fingers of one hand. The reason I bought the Roku was not because I was looking to replace the Apply TV , or I was unhappy with it in any way. Rather, I got it because I have an Amazon Prime membership, and the Roku, unlike the Apple TV , will stream Amazon movies. And with Amazon Prime you get access to quite a few movies and TV shows for free. It’s not endless, but as a free add-on (free after the $50 fo...

Cameras: 2012 Year In Review | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine 1. The end of film Film’s been having a tough time of it, but did anyone in 2011 think that 2012 would be the year that film would roll over and die?This was the year that Kodak went bankrupt, Fuji announced they would cease production of motion picture film, and the major film companies announced the timetable for moving toward 100% digital distribution. It was also the year that a James Bond movie was shot digitally. “ITS A KINDA MAGIC” – VIDEO REVIEW OF THE SLR MAGIC 50MM T0.95 HYPERPRIME LENS | Matt Allard | DSLR News Shooter I have been very impressed with the performance and look of this lens.  Its ultra sharp wide open which in itself is amazing.  There is also very little if any noticeable chromatic aberration.  Now this is normally a problem with very fast lenses.  It seems very hard for lens manufacturers to get sharpness combined with lack of chromatic aberration.  SLR MAGIC se...

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SNL’s Digital Evolution | Dan Brockett | HD Video Pro Interview with SNL Cinematographer Alex Buono : The limited availability of talent has been a notable factor in Buono's mind-set about gear. "My overriding goal has been an evolution toward flexibility," he says. "Working with so many great writers, performers and guest hosts, we have to be able to react to improvisation quickly. The last thing I want to tell the director or writers is, 'I need another 20 minutes to re-light if we want to shoot it that way.' Editing raw video on a $900 Hackintosh (with $5000 Mac Pro levels of performance) | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Let down by both Apple and Microsoft, I researched a third solution. A Mac Pro without the unattainable price tag. As a Macbook Pro user, the install files for the latest OSX – Mountain Lion were downloadable from the App Store since I’d already purchased it. I used UniBeast to install these on my PC. The disclaimer is that this is against ...

5 Things I Learned While Shooting My Low Budget Short Film | Justin Minich | No Film School 1. Do the Budget Yourself On small indie projects, everyone in the crew usually ends up wearing a variety of hats. Of the various roles I took on, the one that I found to be particularly instructive was that of the Unit Production Manager; that crew member who – among other things – writes up the budget. How To Light An Interview For $26 | StillMotionBlog Seriously, you should have seen Patrick when we gave him $26 and sent him to Home Depot – he was like a kid on Christmas morning! ;)We wanted to show you that great interview lighting can be achieved on almost nothing (you can judge for yourself in our example). Uncoated Samyang Lens Test | Cinescopophilia The uncoated Samyang lenses are a great solution for achieving lens flare and a more vintage look using low-cost DSLR lenses according to Shoot Blue. All lenses are fully manual ‘cine-style’ and fitted with focus & iris g...

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Masterclass in Why HFR fails, and a reaffirmation of what makes cinema magical | Vincent Laforet | Blog Vincent goes into the issues he has with the image of The Hobbit: My final answer:  if HFR does become more of a standard, then we’ll all stop paying attention to the new technique, and perhaps be able to refocus on story. The points I make above about being able to choose where I look, and what I choose to focus on and getting lost in any part of the frame, and becoming more immersed by seeing "less" do ultimately make me doubt this will happen until the 3D process as whole gets much much better. Let’s Cook | Stu Maschwitz | prolost A good write-up on using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera for the first time: As perfectly expressed by Vincent Laforet (the generous loaner of this particular BMC), the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a perplexing mix of unmatched bang-for-the-buck, along with some maddening shortcomings and inscrutable design deci...

DenLennie | Camera+ #BMCC next firmware release will have interval recording (timelapse) from 1 sec to 10 sec then 1 min to 8min #date TBC OneRiver Media | Facebook So I received permission from Blackmagic Design to talk about the latest Cinema Camera 1.2 beta firmware update I've been testing the last couple of weeks. It includes aperture readout on display, 2.5K rez time-lapse recording, exFAT format support, improved CinemaDNG file naming, better overlay options on SDI output, fix on RP188 output over SDI, and my Canon 35mm f/1.4L lens is working again! Firmware Updates Are Flying, Cinema Camera Will Get Aperture Display, exFAT, Timelapse, and More | Joe Marine | No Film School This is a great sign, and it means that we are going to see regular and consistent updates for the camera. The other big update, exFAT support, means the drives will now work natively with Windows machines, so you won’t have to use any software to read the drives if you’re not already on a M...

The Hobbit Arrives with a High Frame Rate, and New Sony Camera Prices | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine As the first movie in wide release to be shot and shown in 48p, the acceptance – or success – of the movie is being closely tied to the future adoption of 48p. This is, of course, ridiculous. The success or failure of a single film is unlikely to define the future of a format. But we’re still left with the question: Is 48p (or High Frame Rates) a good thing, a bad thing, or just different? And why does this discussion feel suspiciously like the one about 3D? Everything you ever wanted to know about HFR and The Hobbit | Tim Dashwood | Dashwood 3D Tim is the developer of Stereo3D Toolbox , and here he offers his thoughts on 3D in The Hobbit : Well, the stereoscopic 3D execution is not perfect, with numerous stereo window violations and some depth map/inversion errors on dimensionalized VFX shots. These are issues that left me with strained eye muscles (specifically in my ...

File this under 'News that's not news': Adobe has released updates to some Creative Suite applications that are available only to people who are subscribing to the Creative Suite. If you purchased the suite outright, you won't be getting this update (at least, not immediately.) Lots of people are complaining ( Adobe announces updates for cloud members only! | HD Warrior ) but if you read Adobe's press releases, or attended any of their presentations when they announced CS6, you couldn't have missed that Adobe explicitly signaled their intention to do this. Of course, they didn't phrase it as "we are going to release new features only to subscribers." Instead, they explained that having people subscribe would enable them to offer new features much faster.....[ it's an accounting thing, or something.. .-Ed] For Adobe it's a win-win situation: Subscribers get frequent updates, which encourages customers to switch to the subscription ...

Street Price Drop for the Sony PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 Cameras | Cinescopophilia As expected, the street price of the PMW-F5 and the PMW-F55 is a few thousand less than the list price. Good news, if you have the budget: Abelcine have listed the street price for the Sony PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 CineAlta cameras and it is pretty darn good. Forget the official suggested list price from Sony which saw the PMW-F5 CineAlta 4K Camera at $19,400, and the PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Camera at $34,900. Sony shows off new Sony 4K cameras & more 4K content is on the way | Tom Di Nome | Sony Mainly a marketing piece, but there is some interesting comments about Sony's new cameras in this post: Doug Wellman, assistant dean at the USC School, said it best: “these pieces that we shot really highlight the full gamut of the cameras’ capabilities, and the flexibility and performance they can offer on location.” BLOGGING FROM THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON AND DOCUMENTING EXTREME WEATHER WITH HEATED C...

Can Independent Film Be an Addiction? | Scott Macaulay | Filmmaker Magazine When confronted with this thought, my immediate answer to myself is, independent film is an addiction! The problem is, we’re addicted to making it, not that other people are addicted to watching it. But what if we stole a page from video game designers or the cliffhangers of cable drama? What would we have to do to make independent film an ingrained activity? An addiction? What is the Big Deal About H.265 or HEVC Anyway? | Cinescopophilia Poor old Fugly H.264, that brown paper bag wearing misfit is getting pushed out the door as the ugly lights are turned on. You’re going home with a new partner that H.265 in the corner you have had your eye on all night. High Efficiency Video Coding HEVC or MPEG-H Part 2 is the follow up to H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC Advanced Video Coding standard for video compression. FCP X 10.0.6: Sharing Made Simpler | IAIN ANDERSON | MacProVideo Prior to Final Cut Pro...