Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Canon 5D MK II set up for video

 

About a year ago I did a short post on how my 5D MK II was set up for video. As you would expect it has evolved considerably over the year so here is my set up now. As I point out on a PhotoSociety post the camera is set up intentionally so that it really won’t work well as a still camera when I am shooting video. I don’t want to be temped to try and switch back and forth between the two.
Here is the list of what is attached along with links to the stuff.

Jag35 straight rig. I like the Jag35 stuff, it is well made and reasonably priced.

D Focus kit also from JAG35. An affordable follow focus kit. If I was using cine lenses instead of Canon EOS lenses I might consider one of the more expensive kits from Red Rock Micro or Cinevate .

SmallHD DP4 electronic viewfinder. I’ve got a thing for small companies and theses folks in North Carolina make a viewfinder that does way more than I need it to. The HDMI pass through also lets me hook up an additional monitor so that clients can see what they are paying for when I am doing commercial jobs.

Tascam DR-100. I used a Zoom H4N for a long time, but the Tascam also has a line out so I can hook it to my camera and use headphones at the same time. The Tascam has a large dial to adjust the sound input so it is easier for me to adjust on the fly than the Zoom. Last year I was using a juicedlink and running sound straight to the camera only but I find the external recorder give me better sound.

Sescom -25 DB downpad cord. This attaches the Tascam to the 5D. I set the audio levels in the 5D to manual and then one click above off. This cord adjusts line level to mike level and I get ok sound in the camera. I still usually replace the camera sound in post but this makes the replacement easier.

Sennheiser EW100 wireless set. You can’t do interviews without a wireless microphone. There are many out there. I use the Sennheiser.

Rode NTG 1 shotgun. Again there are a world of shotgun mikes out there. This Rode is just good, forgiving and reliable.

Rode Dead Cat. Can’t use a shotgun outside without wind protection.

Set up this way the camera gives me good sound and beautiful video but it is somewhat complicated. There are 5 power switches to turn on. That is a lot to keep track of and it is sort of reminding me of 26 inch mountain bikes. They got increasingly complicated suspensions until someone decided to make the wheels 3 inches bigger. There has to be an easier way to do this and I think it is a dedicated video camera. Canon releases the C300 in January...

Stephen Alvarez

Lighting with new equipment good bad an ugly

 

above assistant Bennet Farkas standing in as I set my lights

Last month a friend asked me to start a big portrait project. 140 people in 3 cities. My first thought was "I need new lights!" I've been using Elinchrom Ranger Quadras and an Elinchrom 600 monolight happily for a couple years. But I knew I'd have to light entire office spaces so I wanted to add a couple extra monolights. While I like the 600 I'd always been bothered that it is 110volts only. Lots of my work does happen over seas so a multivoltage light seems better. The Elinchrom BX500Ri seemed to be the perfect light for me. Almost as bright as the 600, 90-220 volts, plus it takes the same flash tube as my Ranger Quadras. Sounds perfect so I ordered 2 along with a 27.5-Inch Rotalux Deep Octabox.

So are they perfect? Well maybe half perfect.

Earning a living, time and the Gitzo computer tray

photo by Bennet Farkas

When I first switched from film to digital I was shocked at the amount of time that digital photogrphy took out of my shooting day. Every day there was an extra 2-3 hours that I had to suddenly be renaming, downloading, backing up and captioning files. 2-3 hours out of what were already 14 hour days. That was time that I used to eat and sleep. At one NG meeting an editor said "listen I can not get that time back for you, it is gone..."

3 new cameras, what to buy?

In the last month or so 3 new pro video cameras have been announced. The Canon EOS 1D-x, the Canon EOS C300 and the long awaited Red Scarlet. 3 years ago we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but the lines between stills and film is so blurred now that I check the specs on new video cameras as often as I check the specs on new still cameras.

To start with lets set aside that we've only seen footage out of one of them, and that no mear mortals have had access to the cameras yet. If you are a still photographer who also shoots some films what camera makes sense?

I’m not throwing in the new(ish) sony and Panasonic cameras because I only want to talk about cameras that would apply to my situation (ie preloaded with canon EF glass).

Theses three cameras are set apart by price. Both the Red (actually tricked out to work as a still camera) and the C300 are in the 20 grand range. The 1D-x tricked out to work as a video camera is in the 10 grand range.

So lets go through them high to low:

How good can a $300 video camera be?

Pretty good it seems! The pace that video cameras are evolving is stunning. 

Stephen Alvarez

 

New Canon EOS rumor

Been a while since I've talked about cameras but then again it has been a while since there was a new camera worth talking about. Mostly what I have seen in the past 6 months has been more of the same. Refinements perhaps maybe even some steps backward but not much new.

It looks like that by the time I get off the plane in Dallas tomorrow we might have a new EOS camera (here). Specs -operating on rumor here- are Full Frame, 18 Mega-pixels, 61 point AF, 12 frames per second.

Clearly this is a news gathering machine, no one but a sports or breaking news photographer needs 12 fps. A reduction of pixels from the current top of the line probably means greater high ISO performance. It is also an acknowledgement of what I've been saying for a while, we are at the limit of what our lenses will do. We are certainly past the limit of what a magazine or newspaper needs for reproduction.

Speaking of which, my real question is where is the market for this camera? Can a freelance news photographer who is making $350 a day for the NYT or less for another publication (how many days a year are you possibly going to work? 100? you do the math) really afford another $5000+ camera or two?  Probably not. That leaves institutional purchases for their staffs. Wait, are there staff photographers anymore?

Stephen Alvarez

Paris

Editing

Last week from Florence I said that editing was the 2nd most important skill a photographer has. I’m actually not certain that is correct. It might be the most important. Editing is the difference between a bad photographer and a good photographer / a good photographer and a great photographer. Just look at Flickr. It is full of people who seem to upload their entire cf card. The ability to go through your images and pick out the one that says what you want to say is as important as making that image in the first place.

I prefer to edit straight from the raw files. At NG we render all the raws to medium sized jpg files and use those for editing, but that is an extra step that I don’t need in my business. My process with a shoot is to go through everything, picking any image that is interesting. That usually drops out 80% of the pictures. I then go through the 20% and pick anything that I think is good. We are now down to about 5%. From those pictures I pick out the ones that say what I want them to.

My generalized rules for editing are

1 Trust your instincts

2 Don’t go back, once you have culled a photo don’t second guess yourself

3 Be ruthless. Remember the viewer doesn’t have any information about the picture in their head. It doesn't matter how much you enjoyed making a picture. If you have the slightest doubt about a photo it is gone.

In the old days at NG we’d load a slide projector with a stack of pictures and physically pull out the good images. The process has changed quite a bit now. Software takes the place of the slide projector and the right software can make editing easy.

Here are 3 programs I've tried using lately.

Crazed

Crazed is how I am this week. It seems like I just got back from Barcelona and I have to leave Tuesday for Budapest. So still unpacking, repacking and trying to get things up to speed in the office. 

The good this week, the new DroboPro is installed to the Mac Mini Server and my time machine backups are running like a charm. I simply took the 4 drives out of the old Drobo and put them into the Drobo Pro. Dashboard and Time Machine recongnized the drives as the same device. The whole process took 15 minutes.

The bad, the OWC 240gb ssd drive in my macbook pro died after 45 days. 15 days beyond the refund period and $500 down the drain... I am rethinking Other World Computing as a supplier.

Jem Schofield's Canon dslr film making tutorials

I caught up with my friend Jem Schofield over the weekend. He's been busy since NAB with a series of Canon DSLR video tutorials (here). In typical Jem fashion they are thorough and easy to understand. Boy do I wish these had been around when the 5D MK II was first introduced!

Stephen Alvarez

Sewanee, TN

The more I use the GF2 the more impressed I am

 I am finding the Panasonic GF2 a joy to use for one major reason. Every time I push the shutter button the camera goes off. The other small digital cameras I've had -the G10 and the X1- had issues. The X1 in particular would take its own sweet time about firing. Sometimes the camera fired when I wanted, sometimes when IT was good and ready.

I push the button on the GF2 and it goes off. I've been using it up to iso 1000 and while it certianly isn't a 5D MK II replacement it is pretty good.