Notes On Video

Fringe Issue in Older Canon C300′s Solved? | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Since its release, the Canon C300 has received a lot of praise for its image quality and low-light sensitivity. But some users have reported problems with color fringing: incorrectly colored pixels that appear on in-focus vertical or horizontal borders adjacent to a blown out – or nearly blown out – background. This most commonly appears on man-made objects like railings and window edges, though it can also be seen in specular highlights on ocean waves. Review: Sony 10-18mm F4 OSS Wide Angle Lens (Sony NEX) | PETER WALKOWIAK | The Photoblographer With it's image stabilization and wide-angle of view, this lens is intriguing for NEX owners. It's not cheap though, at $848 : The lens itself has a metal body and feels very dense. It is a heavy lens due to its construction but did not feel uneven when paired with the NEX-6. The lens has a fairly wide base compared to the 50mm or kit lens and ma...

The Five C’s of Cinematography | Stew Redwine | Fresh DV Cameras don’t tell stories, people do. Since we can all agree this is the case, there is really only one thing you need to tell great stories… YOU. However, none of us are born knowing anything about the tools of the trade. In an effort to improve the one tool all storytellers have in common, their mind, a must-have addition to their library is Joseph V. Mascelli’s The Five C’s of Cinematography . Cine Meter for iPhone | Adam Wilt | Website Turn your iPhone into a lightmeter? Cool! Cine Meter is a professional film/video/photo application for your iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch®, using the built-in camera to provide a shutter-priority reflected light meter, an RGB waveform monitor, and a false-color picture mode. Cine Meter works on any iDevice with a camera running iOS 5.0 or higher. Shooting DNxHD with ALEXA in paradise | ARRI News One of the major challenges in the tropics is the humidity. From t...

Sony grows E-mount lens collection with 20mm pancake, 18-200mm power zoom | Zach Honig | Engadget Sony's doing its part to make its products more appealing by adding two new lenses (for a total of 13): a 20mm f/2.8 pancake and a 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS powered-zoom optic, which first made its debut with the VG30 camcorder, but will now be available as a standalone purchase. B & H:  Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 PZ OSS Alpha E-mount Lens ($1,198) Expected end of Feb B & H:  Sony 20mm f/2.8 Alpha E-mount Lens ($348) Expected middle of Apr. Hands-On Camera Review with the Panasonic GH3 — [Side By Side Comparos + Can it Beat a $250 eBay Bargain?] | Ben Pitt | Chase Jarvis Blog In many of my tests, the GH1 and GH3′s videos were hard to tell apart. The GH3 had a slight advantage for sharpness and its colours were a little punchier, but there wasn’t much in it. Here’s a frame from each camera’s 1080p output, split into three to show the GH3, GH1 and Sony’s NEX-5N – a...

Getting the Shot: Scenes from the Making of the Music Video, “Ready or Not” | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Filmmaker : How did you do the hood shot? Macomber : Originally I was going to lie down on the hood, but there was nowhere to grab on to the front of the vehicle. And there was no budget so I couldn’t afford the suction cups. Understanding Your New GoPro | ABE KISLEVITZ | Blog A friend just bought a HERO 3 and has been struggling with the many image options it offers, so here's some help: A few things need to be explained when talking about the technical aspects of video resolutions, framerates, and video quality.  In digital video there are a lot of different variables that go into what makes up the overall IQ (image quality). 1080P on a GoPro is FAR different than 1080P on an Alexa – and it’s not just the image sensor that makes it different. Processors in cameras are a huge determinant to how video gets from the sensor to the SD card. There are tricks and s...

Review of the Canon C100 | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Philip Johnston puts together a video-only review of the Canon C100. He seems pretty impressed with the image quality that closely matches his C300. Blackmagic Cinema Camera (Part 2) POST & Other considerations | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy Den : [The Cinema Camera workflow] made me sell my 17″ MacBook Pro and buy a 15″ Retina Display one. I took the decision early on to get the infrastructure to support this. I bought FCP X about 18 months ago and didn’t really start using it ’til early this year, but I’ve embraced it fully, don’t even have a copy of FCP 7 anymore, and so I’ve realised to go down the Thunderbolt route – I’ve got a Thunderbolt MacBook Pro and an iMac, with the full Resolve setup on both machines – it’s very, very important that you have to get the right hardware. DaVinci Resolve 9.1 – adds Retina Macbook Pro support | Cinema5D In the newest update to the famous color correction software DaVinci...

BOSCPUG: SETH WORLEY (TEMPO) & AHARON RABINOWITZ, SMOKE 2013 & FCP X JANUARY 22 TIMES: 7PM-9:30PM (doors open at 6:30PM)** **Meeting begins PROMPTLY at 7PM! VENUE: Bright Family 2K Screening Room The Paramount Center 559 Washington St Boston, MA 02111 Rule Boston Camera WEDNESDAY JAN 23 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. Learning Lab: 10am–12n Bagels + Coffee Pub Night: 6–8pm Pizza + Beer Rule Boston Camera Learning Lab WEDNESDAY JAN 30 A LENS FOR EVERY STORY Canon’s Technical Specialist, Ken Rowe, returns with an overview of Canon’s comprehensive selection of lenses including fast primes and wide-tele zooms (fully 4K ready) for a variety of cinematic applications. Massachusetts Prod...

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is hosting a Stanley Kubrick Film Series . Join us for a complete, chronological survey of one of the greatest directors in film history. All films screen on 35mm, except where noted. In This Series: Fear and Desire : February 1, 2013 Killer's Kiss : February 2, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 2, 2013 The Killing | February 2, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 3, 2013 Killer's Kiss | February 3, 2013 The Killing | February 3, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 6, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 7, 2013 Paths of Glory | February 7, 2013 Spartacus | February 8, 2013 Paths of Glory | February 9, 2013 Lolita | February 9, 2013 Lolita | February 10, 2013 Spartacus | February 10, 2013 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | February 14, 2013 2001: A Space Odyssey | February 15, 2013 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | February 16, 2013 A Clockwork Orange | February 16,...

Air Traffic Controller 'Ready or Not' Official Music Video | Rick Macomber | Vimeo I already wrote about observing the filming of some of the scenes for this video for Filmmaker : An Afternoon Music Video Shoot with the Canon C300 . Now Rick has posted the completed music video for the band Air Traffic Controller's latest song: 'Ready Or Not .' This video was shot on the Canon C300 over the course of several weeks, in multiple locations, and is a great example of short filmmaking. Once you've seen the video, Sean Meehan has done a very nice Behind-The-Scenes video too: Ready or Not - Behind the Scenes | Sean Meehan | Vimeo Video Tutorial: Multiple Range Selections in FCPX | Danny Greer | Premiumbeat.com Richard Taylor, creator of the great Final Cut Pro X resource site FCPX.tv, has created this short video tutorial to demonstrate how to create ‘persistent range selections in FCPX’, including a hiccup with the feature that you need to be aware of...

Review: The Marshall V-LCD56MD5.6 Inch Monitor is Perfect For HDSLR | Clint Milby | Pro Video Coalition How else would you describe a device that allows you to change how it functions by simply swapping out various modules to suit whatever your needs may be?  Specifically there are two modules on the back of the unit that can be mixed and matched.  First, the battery plate can be swapped out, easily allowing you to choose between ten different types of DV battery plates.  Hands-On Review: Sony NEX-VG900 Full-Frame Camcorder | Mia McCormick | B & H Mia McCormick demonstrates many of the camera’s features and discusses a few lens options that should help users take advantage of the large sensor. For the most part, this is a glowing review peppered with a few criticisms that might limit the VG900’s appeal to professional videographers, but you’ll also learn some tips and tricks for overcoming these limitations. Film-like video with shallow depth of field is...

Camera Shipping Update: 1/14 | Blackmagic Design Blackmagic posts an update on the state of their camera: Wanted to send out a quick update on camera shipments. The production lines have been up and running with sensors coming in. We have been sending out regular shipments of EF model cameras each week to all of our offices around the world, and each week we are getting cameras out at a faster rate. We are still not at full volume shipping though, because sensors are not quite getting to us at a pace that I could say was full volume. But each day I am seeing the volume get better from the sensor company. I am happy with the quality of the sensors. For the MFT model, we want to get through some more of the EF orders before I give a date on when we will start getting the MFT orders out. They are ready to go, but we need to get through most of the early EF pre-orders first. Dear GoPro Community | GoPro GoPro responds to complaints from their user community: All of us at GoPro a...

Behind The Scenes on BART: a Narrative Short Shot with the Canon C100 | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Canon has released a Behind The Scenes for a new short that was shot with the Canon C100 : Canon subsequently contacted us about a second short, BART, which was also shot on the C100. While Pulse is a documentary piece, BART is a four-minute short that is entirely an exercise in narrative story telling. Canon was specifically looking for a film that had little language and had a lot of visuals to it. 4K comes to CES and Canon announces new Cine Primes | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine A look at some new tech at this years show: Just a couple of years ago 3D was the rage, with manufacturers showing off their 3D displays and headsets. By all reports, 3D wasn’t so hot this year. Instead, we saw the first salvos in the 4K battle to convince consumers to part with their money for another high-end display. But when it comes to televisions, 2013 may be seen as the bridge t...

NEW Production shot on the F5 "The Contract" | Robb Kositchek & Rodney Allen Hooks | Sony Community We seriously pushed this camera to it’s limits and took advantage of it’s compactness. This is important to me that we be able to create wonderfully lit scenarios without being overwhelmed with hardware and technology.  Freedom to create and be flexible is a hallmark of the Sony F5 Camera family. Documentary Filmmaking with the Canon C300 | Bobby Marko | Blog Here is a wrap up video to show how I used the Canon C300 on my latest documentary feature film ‘Becoming Fools’ with director Scott Moore and the Athentikos team. [...] This video gives some details on what we used to shoot the film, how I used the C300 during the production and some example footage from the camera. The footage from the C300 has not been fully colored but for this video I did do some simple 1st passes to even out levels and to mainly give Adobe Speedgrade a try as I am testing options for col...

Recently, I was working on a project in Adobe  Premiere which required exporting the Sequence as multiple sub-clips to .f4v format. Of course, as often happens, there was a problem with one of the exported clips, so I had to set it up in Premiere and re-export to Adobe Media Encoder . I sent the clip out to Media Encoder, and went off to do something else. When I came back I noticed that Media Encoder was just sitting there with the spinning-ball-of-nothing going. Now sometimes it takes Media Encoder a while to get it’s act together when you send a complicated sequence to it, so I waited... After another few minutes I started to worry. I closed out the project in Premiere . That had no effect. I checked to see if I had too many apps running or was running low on disk space. No problem there. I was just considering doing a Force Quit on the application - and wondering if it would remember what had been sent to it - when I remembered something: I’d...

Sony’s PMW-150 and PMW-200 camcorders meet European Broadcast Union standard for HD Broadcast Production | Sony Sony today announced that its latest XDCAM HD422 50Mbps camcorders, the PMW-200 and PMW-150, have met the standards the European Broadcast Union (EBU) recommend for long form video production. Both cameras were independently tested by Alan Roberts in accordance with the EBU camera test guidelines. Testing Your Camera’s Latitude | Shane Hurlbut | Hurlblog Let’s begin with over exposing. This test shows you how it handles the highlights. Set up your grey card and color chart on the same focal plan as your model. Frame a shot that is a medium size frame so that the charts are just in the left and right sides of the frame. There are many ways to light this test. We used a very frontal light source that was very bright so we could start at a high f-stop and then work our way down in 1/3 stop increments. Apple slashes price on Thunderbolt cable, releases additional sh...

Canon Cinema Primes vs. Canon L Series | Jonathan Yi | Vimeo Jonathan did an amusing - and informative - video about the Canon C300 last year, and now he's back with a look at Canon's Cine lenses: This is a comparison and test shoot of Canon's new Cinema Primes versus Canon's revered L series still photography lenses. Shot on a Canon C300. Panasonic unveils new A100 wearable HD camcorder | Shane McGlaun | Slash Gear I always thought Sony's HXR-MC1 little recorder would be cool for shooting some things (or hanging from the ceiling) but at almost $2,000, I just couldn't afford it. This thing is supposed to be around $300! The camera can also be mounted to a helmet or to a backpack. The camera is designed to be waterproof with an IPX8 waterproof design allowing the camera to shoot in water up to 5 feet deep for 30 minutes. The camera is also dustproof to protect sensitive electronics from sand. The camera has integrated Wi-Fi connectivity making it e...

Sony's 4K Handycam and HXR-IFR5 4K Interface Unit prototypes eyes-on | Brian Heater | Engadget Looks interesting; but I don't think it has removable lenses, and I don't think it's a large sensor (if that's the camera they actually deliver): First off was the generically labelled 4K Consumer Camcorder, a prototype device that was hanging out in a glass case at the Sony booth after the event concluded -- though there was a Handycam logo on the side of the device. It's not a bad looking handheld -- about a standard size for a prosumer model, with a viewfinder, mic and handle at the top. Understanding 4K Production with the Cinema EOS System | Jem Schofield | Canon The Cinema EOS C500 is based around Canon’s 4K, Super 35mm CMOS sensor and has two forms of 4K origination. The choice of which to use is based on the specific needs of a production. A user can choose the Digital Cinema Initiatives/DCI SMPTE 2048-1:2011 standard, which is based on a 4096 x 2160...