In a fortnight that saw activity from all the major manufacturers Canon have launched their new 60D. It sits in the range above the 550D but below the 7D and 5DmkII in price, it has an 18 megapixel sensor and uses SDHC/SDXC cards. The camera was leaked as featuring an articulated screen ahead of its launch – this is a really nice addition for news video shooters. In addition it features manual video and audio controls much like the 5DmkII. Another great feature is the mode dial lock that will stop you inadvertently coming out of manual control – something I’ve been asking Canon about for a while. On paper at least this camera looks like a great option for those looking for a mid level DSLR with video, hopefully I can get one soon for testing.

Canon PR photo of the 60D

To quote from Canon’s press release:

EOS Movies: Full HD video with complete control
Offering photographers the freedom to go beyond stills, the EOS 60D captures 1920x1080p HD video with a variety of user-selectable frame rates, including 30, 25 and 24fps, as well as 720p video at 60 and 50fps. Movie Crop mode is also available, recording with the central 640×480 pixel area of the sensor to create an effective magnification of approximately seven times the focal length of the lens.

Full manual control in Movie mode allows photographers to employ their own exposure and focus settings and take advantage of the effects achieved from Canon’s wide range of EF lenses. An external stereo microphone terminal and the ability to adjust sound recording level ensures the audio track recorded matches the visual quality of the video, capturing broadcast-quality sound.

For those who want to share images with friends and family, an integrated HDMI port is compatible with Consumer Electronics Control (HDMI-CEC), allowing video and images to be viewed on any compatible HD-ready TV and controlled via the TV remote.

The company also launched a new fisheye zoom lens, a L series 70-300mm f4-5.6 zoom and a updated range of telephoto L lenses including the 300mm f2.8L IS II, 400mm f2.8L IS II, 500mm f4L IS II and 600mm f4L IS II.

You can download the full Canon press release here

The changing world of Japan’s Geisha from Matthew Allard on Vimeo.

The changing face of geishas was one of the stories I covered on a recent assignment to Japan. For centuries their mysterious world was reserved for the elite, with wealthy men paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of a geisha’s company.
Times in Japan have changed and the modern geisha has had to adapt to survive. With the financial crisis that has swept across the world, the number of clients has greatly declined. Geishas or Maiko (the trainees) have now had to look for other sources of income. In Kyoto, beer gardens are now using them to mingle with customers and dance on a small stage. This is a far cry from the exclusivity the culture thrived on for generations. It has brought them out of teahouses and into the world of the common person.

Correspondent Steve Chao and I pre-planned to shoot this story on a DSLR. I usually shoot on Sony XDCAM HD cameras, but they are not great in low light and are big and heavy and don’t allow you to get that intimate with your subject. Our shoot involved filming at night in a rooftop beer garden and also in a small teahouse. It is very difficult and usually horribly expensive to film a geisha; we were very lucky and managed to find a young Maiko to shoot, but were given limited access and time. I wanted an intimate feel to the story, to take you into the geishas’ world but also show you how they have been forced to adapt to modern times.

Armed with a Canon 7D, 5Dmk2 and 7 lenses we got to work. The beer garden was crowded and dark, but the 7D allowed me to shoot in an intimate environment where the light wasn’t ideal. I don’t like using artificial light unless It is absolutely necessary and most of the shots in the beer garden were made using ambient light. On a few, I had Steve hold a Litepanels 1×1 light on a boom pole above the table. These are fantastic and produce a beautiful soft light that imitates ambient light. All the sound was recorded separately on a Zoom H4N using either Seinnheiser radio or shotgun mics.

The next part of the story involved shooting the Maiko doing her make-up in a small traditional Japanese house. This is extremely rare to get and I wanted to make it look as good as I could in the limited time we had with her. She would put her make-up on in front of a large mirror with traditional Japanese sliding doors in the background so I turned off all the lights in the room and placed two 1×1 Litepanel LED lights dimmed down on either side of the mirror. Given the small room and the size of the mirror I wanted to get 3 different angles of her transforming herself into a geisha. I placed the 5D with a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 lens at a low angle right underneath the mirror. This camera was going to record the wide shot for the whole sequence. The 7D was placed very close up to the edge of the mirror but it had to be far back enough that it couldn’t be seen in the wide shot by the other camera. This made the 7D very hard to operate as it was in an awkward position, but the compromise had to be made.

The 7D was running a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro (the non-stabilized version). I wanted to shoot very close details of the make-up being applied. I also wanted very shallow depth of field. I was unable to use my Zacuto Z-finder or a monitor due to the position of the camera.  I was also forced to continually rack focus as the shot was so tight and the talent was constantly moving. After 45 minutes my eyes were watering from having to concentrate so hard. To add to the difficulty, she couldn’t stop or repeat anything. I had one shot at it and if I got it wrong or out of focus I couldn’t do it again.

This shoot proved to be very difficult but I was happy with the end result. The 7D was set in 720p/50fps as I wanted to slow down the make-up sequence in Apple’s Cinema tools. It was cut on FCP and there was no use of Magic Bullet or fancy color correction programs. I’m shooting for international broadcast and I don’t want soft, overly colour-corrected images. The joy for me is getting it right when you shoot it and not having  to say….”I’ll fix it in post” I’m not sure if I just happened to get a great 7D, but I shoot on the standard camera profile and I’m more than happy with the image it produces. The DSLR still provides me with a lot of problems; bad moire, rolling shutter and – in almost all situations without a very good shoulder support – terrible hand-held results. The cameras provide spectacular bang for your buck but if you use them you have to know their limitations and plan accordingly. I travel almost every week to shoot stories across Asia-Pacific. This is only the third story I have shot completely on DSLRs because in most cases I don’t have the time or the limitations of the cameras make it too hard to use on many assignments. While they do have their place in my kit, I’m excited about the new breed of hybrid video/DSLR cameras that are on the horizon. I don’t ever see DSLRs getting proper audio, full HDMI out or all the features we crave. Technology is moving so quickly that a new breed of cameras will ultimately outdate the video DSLR.

Lenses used on this shoot were a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II, 50mm f1.2, 135mm f2, 24-70mm f2.8, 100mm Macro f2.8, 16-35mm f2.8 and a Tokina 11-16mm   f2.8. All interviews were shot on the 70-200mm.

About Matthew Allard, Aljazeera Senior Field Cameraman, Kuala Lumpur:
Matt has been a Camera/Editor in TV news for 20 years, previously working for both Channel 9 and Channel 10 in Australia. Twice Network Ten Australia’s cameraman of the year as well as being a Walkley Finalist for outstanding camerawork in 2006 (for coverage of the Cronulla Race Riots) and a Logie Finalist for outstanding news coverage 2006 (Bali 9). He has covered news events in more than 30 countries, from major sporting events to terrorist bombings. Based out of the Kuala Lumpur broadcast centre in Malaysia he is an avid user and follower of new technology, shooting stories on HD broadcast cameras as well as new Canon DSLR’s.

There’s rarely any planning when I shoot video – the fleeting nature of the news and feature stories I cover doesn’t tend to allow for it. That was certainly the case when I wound up on the set of a 3D porn movie recently.

I had initially rejected the idea of shooting video of the project in anticipation of the (copyright) complications which might be associated with gathering footage. But it became clear that the makers of the film were laid back enough to allow me to publicise their latest creation in whatever medium I wished.

And so myself and a reporter spent the afternoon observing the rehearsal and subsequent takes of a fairly tame love-making scene in a faux cave-turned-love-nest adorned with erotic artwork and constructed around a giant phallic fountain.

World’s First 3D Porn? from Ed Jones on Vimeo.

My video equipment is efficiently basic – a Canon 5d Mk II, a tripod and a Sony URX-P1 wireless lapel microphone for interviews. I don’t carry an LCD viewfinder, follow focus rig or external microphone for ambient sound, essentially because I haven’t found the need for these things yet (though I’m sure I may in the future). And for the moment I’m keen to keep my setup minimal, which makes things easier when rapidly switching between stills and video.

I went back and forth between the two formats constantly, trying to build a rough mental storyline for the video while simultaneously censoring what I shot in anticipation of the cultural sensitivities of AFP‘s global clientèle. I didn’t intend to document two and a half minutes of pixellated bodies writhing around the love-cave in its entirety, but hopefully to capture something more subtle and tongue-in-cheek.

As usual I successfully managed to ruin a couple of great shots by being indecisive and pressing the shutter in the middle of a video sequence for fear of missing an endearing photo – but once I got myself in check I was able to methodically gather the material, helped by the repetitive nature of the rehearsals and takes.

Once the safe shots were out of the way and I knew I had enough video to construct something watchable, I turned my attention to capturing more candid moments and began planning the positions for the interviews.

In the past I have conducted the interviews myself, but this time I coordinated with the reporter and we agreed an interview method. We would pause in between questions, allowing me to change camera angles, and the interviewee would start the answers with the question, providing more complete soundbites.

I have tried this approach before and found that too many interruptions can impede a natural-sounding interview. But for my Japanese adult video subjects, accustomed to fornicating on film, the sight of my less-than-intimidating lens was no cause for a sudden bout of self-consciousness.

Sony Radio mics were all that was used for sound

Despite the noisy surroundings, the URX-P1 wireless lapel mic I had brought along was more than sufficient to isolate excellent sound quality from the interviews; I had adjusted the levels in the camera manually first. Ambient sound quality using the camera’s built-in microphone was not really a concern, as I knew that the eventual voiceover would be the more prominent sound.

In any case, the relatively narrow dynamic range of the built-in mic was actually helpful in cutting out some of the less welcome low and high frequencies found on a busy film set in a reverberating warehouse.

Upon return to the office I immediately turned around a ‘webclip’ of the day’s footage, as the text and photos were slated to move to clients with the following morning’s features. A ‘webclip’ is a short, simple, 30-60 second series of unvoiced shots featuring descriptive captions that clients can embed within a website or cut with other footage to supplement a story.

The final video would be sent to broadcast and internet-based clients two days later on Monday, which left me the weekend to write a script and prepare three versions of the video: one voiced (complete with voiceover), one for natural sound (for foreign language translations), and one for web clients – the version which affords the most creativity because it is not likely to be altered or re-edited (like the previous two), but rather embedded within websites.

After ruthlessly culling all unnecessary information and sound bites from the script, it was sent to the news desk for subbing. Then I recruited two colleagues to provide the English language voices of the actors in my interviews and added my own voice to the rest of the sequence.

Ed Jones with his Canon 5DmkII kit

From the camera, the video files were downsized into a more manageable and editable 720 x 1280 format using the pro-res codec. The footage was edited in Final Cut Pro, using almost no colour correction, grading or ‘looks’. Minor levels adjustments were made to some shots, and compression was added to the voiceovers. Finally the sequence was exported using Final Cut Pro’s Compressor, keeping the dimensions but changing the codec to H.264.

Once this was done, a dopesheet detailing dates, names, a shotlist, and a transcription of the script and interviews was embedded in the IPTC information of the video file, before being handed over to the AFP TV department who checked everything over before beaming the package to the agency’s subscribers.

As the video hit the wires, I was able to watch the climax of a frantic weekend, as my own low-budget production popped up on websites, and hopefully TVs around the world. Other AFP bureaus in Europe, South America, and the Middle East were able to translate the feature for clients in their regions, giving added momentum to my two-minute insight into what is probably the world’s first 3D porn film.

Ed Jones is a staff photographer with AFP.

The Lightweight Panasonic GH1 outfit

I work with a small news team of mostly writers at Florida International University in Miami. The institution is fairly young and we created a news website just a year ago; the department only recently began incorporating videography in its coverage. We’re still working out what videos we do and how we do them, but the introduction of video has definitely opened up all sorts of possibilities for storytelling.

I try to create videos that take a deeper look into the news, life and personalities of a college campus. Instead of just making a news report about a recent law school graduation, I want to know what it really means to have a law degree. I have been shooting on my Panasonic GH1 for the past seven months and my most recent piece was a pre-season weight training video for the Florida International University football team.

It was the team’s last day of weight training before they moved on to training camp, so this was the heaviest lifting that they would do all season. I wanted to capture the raw power of these athletes. At 5:45 a.m. I arrived at the quiet and empty weight room before the team arrived. Fifteen minutes later the air was filled with shouting, grunting and weights slamming onto racks. The noise was deafening.

For another football video I created the previous week, we wanted to feature the voices of the players with more journalistic storytelling. 

This time, I wanted to try something different and create a piece that was less journalistic and more stylized, capturing the intensity of the atmosphere. I believe some stories are told better with images than words. For this particular video I used a Panasonic GH1 mounted on a Barska Accu Grip, a Dynex Video Accesory Bracket, and a Tascam DR-07 portable recorder. This is a very simple and affordable set up that really works well. I have nicer rigs than this, but it seems to be my favorite run-and-gun setup right now. 

The Panasonic GH1 all ready for Run-and-gun shooting

I keep changing my rig and eliminating more and more gear because I get frustrated with how limiting shoulder rigs are to my mobility and I usually end up going hand-held. The dolly shots were done using the Motion Slider 36, mounted on a Velbon DV-7000 tripod. My camera has the Tester13 firmware hack installed and the difference in image quality is quite astonishing. The Tascam DR-07 is much more affordable than the commonly used Zoom H4N and it has wonderful sound quality, especially with the Redhead Windscreen. I use various prime lenses such as the Canon 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.8 or Panasonic’s 20mm f1.7 and Leica’s 25mm f1.4, I even use some CCTV lenses. Whenever I go out to an event, I go along with a reporter who organizes everything and gets the interviews but I never actually show the reporter in the video. This is as much a stylistic choice as it is because we don’t have anyone trained to do on-camera work. I edit all of my videos in Adobe Premiere CS5 and do my coloring in Magic Bullet looks. 

Please take a look at some of my other pieces on our YouTube page, such as our recent video on the White Coat Ceremony.  

Doug with his Panasonic GH-1 rig

This is an annual event where incoming medical students are given their medical coats for the first time. We used a wireless Sennheiser G3 microphone and plugged it directly into the GH1 for the interviews. For event filming with large crowds, I find that the wireless hand-held mic gives the most isolated audio possible.

I post my personal work on Vimeo.com/DougGarland

Anamorphic Miami from Doug Garland on Vimeo.

Sony NEX-5 with Carl Zeiss 24-70 f2.8 and LA-EA1 adapter

Sony NEX-5 Test from Matthew Allard on Vimeo.

The Sony NEX-5 is an intriguing little digital camera that gives you a lot of bang for your buck: its currently the world’s smallest and lightest with an interchangeable lens. This camera has amazing quality for something so small. It gives you compact camera design with the sensor size and internals of a DSLR – its sensor is roughly the same size as that of a Canon 550D. As I already own a Canon 7D and am very familiar with the 5D Mark 2 and the 550D I was interested to see how it stacks up. I could talk about its still images, but let’s be honest; I know we are all mainly interested in its video potential.

The Sony NEX-5 with Sony Alpha zoom lens fitted using adapter

There are only two lenses currently available for the NEX series cameras. I chose the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens, which isn’t great, but is hardly terrible either. My main reason for purchasing the NEX-5 was that I already own a Sony A900 full frame DSLR and several Alpha lenses (Carl Zeiss 24-70mm f2.8 and the Sony G series 70-400 f4 to 5.6), so with an LA-EA1 adaptor I could use the same lenses. The only downside is that when you put an Alpha series lens on the camera you can only use manual focus and aperture is fixed wide open in video mode.

The NEX-5 uses Sony’s AVCHD codec. I know a lot of people have complained about this codec in the past, but it has improved. It is a lot easier to deal with than the H.264 codec used on the Canon DSLRs; it is a simple process of attaching the camera with the supplied USB cable and turning it on. Once you launch Final Cut Pro you just launch log and transfer and in come the clips. Working in international news I find it far quicker and far easier to import than H.264.

So how does it stack up as far as video quality goes? I was sceptical at first as most of the small compact cameras that can shoot video are terrible and I knew before I purchased this camera that it had a lot of limitations. With the standard NEX lenses it has auto focus and can also auto track. The auto tracking isn’t spot on but it is still fairly good. Once you attach an Alpha series lens it’s back to manual focus only. The Carl Zeiss lenses that are made for the Sony Alpha series are very, very good optically and I was intrigued to see how these lenses would go hooked on to the NEX-5. The lens clicks straight on to the adaptor and away you go. It does look very strange to have such a heavy, big lens on a tiny compact camera, but I was surprised to find it wasn’t too awkward to use (and it is, of course, much easier to use when put it on a tripod). The NEX-5 comes with a very impressive LED display that is super sharp and it also adjusts up to a 45-degree angle – perfect for low angle shots. Unfortunately it doesn’t rotate down so it’s no good if you hold the camera up high in the air.

The NEX-5 LCD display is clear and tilts upwards

Even in manual focus mode it is easy to use. The focus assist button is very handy and remarkably easy to use to get crisp focus. Unfortunately you can only use this feature before you start recording video. You can’t adjust aperture once recording either but you can adjust aperture compensation by + or – 2 stops if you’re not happy with the auto aperture.

I found that even with all these limitations the NEX-5 is easy to use and the picture quality is very good, much better than I expected. The images are very sharp, with fantastic vivid colour reproduction and nice shallow DOF with a fast lens. It has a maximum record time of 30 minutes instead of the Canon’s 12 minute limitation. While it still has a very slight Jello effect when panning very fast it’s nothing like what I’ve experienced with the Canons. It’s true it doesn’t do progressive, only interlace – which may put some people off – but in the news business very few of us shoot progressive anyway. The auto iris function during video record is pretty impressive and does a great job in even high contrast situations. There are no audio inputs either but the on-board microphone is fairly good. There is also a hot shoe attachment to mount an optional Sony microphone.

The NEX-5 basically uses the same sensor that is in the new Sony NEX-VG10 camcorder that Dan has already written about. We’ll see how that camera compares in due course. Would I recommend this camera? Yes, but only if you already own a Sony camera and have a few good Alpha series lenses. The NEX-5 is a brilliant little camera given its size and abilities. Yes, it has limitations and yes, we would love full manual control and an audio input, but you have to remember this is a $600 compact.
It is good to see that Sony has finally entered the game even if it is from a different direction. With the upcoming release of Sony’s new prosumer camcorder and other releases from different companies, the DSLR video features we all love are quickly moving into proper video cameras that we all want.

About Matthew Allard, Aljazeera Senior Field Cameraman, Kuala Lumpur:
Matt has been a Camera/Editor in TV news for 20 years, previously working for both Channel 9 and Channel 10 in Australia. Twice Network Ten Australia’s cameraman of the year as well as being a Walkley Finalist for outstanding camerawork in 2006 (for coverage of the Cronulla Race Riots) and a Logie Finalist for outstanding news coverage 2006 (Bali 9). He has covered news events in more than 30 countries, from major sporting events to terrorist bombings. Based out of the Kuala Lumpur broadcast centre in Malaysia he is an avid user and follower of new technology, shooting stories on HD broadcast cameras as well as new Canon DSLR’s.

Snail Bonanza – World Snail Racing Championships from Rii Schroer on Vimeo.

Ready, Steady, Slow was the motto for this quirky little story. But as ever with newspaper work, I was on a tight schedule: shooting on a Saturday afternoon, driving back, and editing to meet a deadline of early Sunday afternoon. I prepared a list of important shots and a rough storyboard the night before, after having spoken to one of the organizers. Being a one-person camera, sound, reporter, and producer team means as much pre-planning as possible, while still leaving enough room for the events to unfold in front of you. Luckily for me, my friend Tansy Sibley was up to join me for this roadtrip to Norfolk and was invaluable for helping out with extra audio.

In the boot of the car were two Canon 5DmkII bodies with one Rode VideoMic and Zacuto Z-finder, Manfrotto tripod with fluid head, Monopod, Zacuto rig with follow focus, Glidetrack slider, Canon Timer remote controller, and my arsenal of Canon lenses plus the Carl Zeiss 100mm macro lens to try out. I’d also brought my stepladder and, still one of the most important assets, the Marantz audio recorder with Sennheiser ME66 shotgun microphone.

We drove two and a half hours through the pouring rain (I’d packed a roll of plastic bags, sellotape, other tape, rain trousers and jacket, and wished I worked in California!) but the downpour miraculously stopped the moment we arrived and, luckily for us, it stayed dry throughout the afternoon.
One pre-planned intro-idea was to do a timelapse sequence of the event being set up with the timer remote controller, but this got scrapped right away; there was not enough setting up going on, with the round table already standing in the middle of the village cricket ground. I switched to plan B, concentrating on the World Championship Snail Racing sign. Shot on the 70-200mm lens locked down on the tripod, pulling focus was done by hand on this one.

As I was there to shoot pictures as well, one 5DmkII dangled around my shoulder for stills while the other was rigged for video. In retrospect that was rather impractical, and I should have rigged up both cameras for filming. Changing plates repeatedly – with one for the Zacuto rig and another one for the Manfrotto tripod head – cost valuable time, and it would have been so easy to have used the camera rigged for the tripod for shooting stills as well. Another alternative would have been to rig up the Zacuto rig on the tripod in the first place. This would have allowed for use of the focus puller on the tripod too.

Rii with the Manfrotto tripodhead plate (L) and the 394 plate used on the Zacuto rig. Photo credit: Graham Fox

Nevertheless, one of the best little gadgets is a Miller key-chain mini screwdriver for changing plates, that I once got given at a trade fair. Invaluable, sturdy, and always with you (unless you lose your keys)!

The Miller keyring screwdriver. Photo credit: Graham Fox

The snail “racing” scenes were mostly filmed with the Zeiss 100mm f2 macro lens , which I tested on the day and got hooked on. Some nice focus pulling shots, alternating between the racing snails, did not make it into the edit as the material on the “humping” seemed to give a funny little twist to the story. Still, it was great to try it out. The longer arc of travel from minimum focus to infinity allows focus pulling to be more precise and smoother due to more resistance in the lens barrel.
Audio was tricky even with Tansy’s assistance as the sound around the racing ring went from quiet murmurs to enthusiastic shrieks. The speakers in the background – which were broadcasting line dancing, alternating with a brass band – did not help matters. It was the kind of situation when easy-to-reach audio controls are desperately needed, as are proper headphones. I managed to do the interviews with the snail racing enthusiasts pointing away from the line dancing/brass band action, and that worked rather well with the Marantz audio recorder and shotgun microphone. The hotshoe-attached Rode microphone without a controlling device can be handy for background sound and quiet interview situations, but could not have done this job on its own. Back home, the files were converted with MPEG Streamclip into Apple ProRes files and edited in Final Cut Pro 7.

I’m always looking out for a front page picture, but my hopes of exposing the Queen as a snail racing enthusiast (her summer residence, Sandringham, is only 3 miles away) were disappointed. The lack of doping controls should occupy the International Olympic Committee until 2012, but I didn’t spot any scandals. However, the Norfolk regional accent and warm welcome of the crowd certainly compensated for those let-downs.

There is always room for improvement on shoots. A smooth and fast workflow for rigging and changing the tools you want to work with is extremely important, especially when time is precious, as is quick focusing, and an always (!) steady hand with the rig support. I was a bit disappointed at not using the Glidetrack as originally planned for some crowd shots alongside the ring, but rigging it up on two stands (the long one-metre version) and hence carrying around even more equipment was just not practical in this case, particularly as there were space restrictions in the ring.

I hope you enjoyed the piece anyway. Comments, suggestions, criticism, and advice are appreciated and welcome.

You can contact Rii at:
RII VISUALS
www.riischroer.de
www.vimeo.com/user1008646

Ever since I bought a Canon 5D Mark II last year, I have been tinkering with the video – much to my delight. I still cannot get over the sharpness and clarity of the HD footage. Moreover, for me at least, moving from the still to the moving image proved quite intuitive and in many ways almost liberating. I frame the videos in much the same manner I frame my stills, but now have an extra dimension in which to play.

After over a year of misconnections I finally had the opportunity to contribute to the New York Times. I met with reporter Andrew Jacobs to discuss story ideas and found we had a mutual concern surrounding the imminent destruction of the Gulou neighborhood, one of the last holdouts for historic hutongs in Beijing. Both Andrew and I live in the area and hit the streets for three days interviewing locals and walking through Beijing’s narrow alleys. Although priority went to stills, I also decided to shoot video to present to the multimedia editors at the New York Times.

Click on picture to play

It was my first time shooting a complete video and I was using rather rudimentary equipment. My kit included TheEvent rig from Redrock Micro with a Redrock Microfollow focus thrown on the side. For sound I used a Sennheiser MKE400 shotgun mic – not a bad mic but it still picked up a lot of wind noise as you can hear on the exit shot when I pan across the trolley leading to the KFC storefront. Having said that a lot of my shots were off the cusp with no rig or mic attached to the camera. Even though the sound quality of the internal mic is certainly not up to par working with the camera without any extra hardware really allows you to blend into the environment without drawing attention to the fact you are shooting video – something quite important in certain situations in China.

In Beijing with the 5DmkII

Right now we still live in a world where people don’t assume that you are taking video with a DSLR camera. This is bound to change eventually, so take advantage while you can. I kept everything very simple with the video – I wasn’t trying to impress with a bunch of quick changes or fast paced action. It is mainly just slow pans and still shots. In the future I hope to change it up more, but I feel there is a certain grace to such simplicity and it allows the viewer to engage more with the subject. All the same, I still have a lot to learn.

The 5DmkII with Redrockmicro The Event rig, follow focus and Zoom H4n

Since I made this video I’ve added a Zoom H4N to my kit which I mount on the hotshoe and plug straight into the camera with a Pinknoise systems -25db PAD cable. I really like using the Zoom H4N as I can easily detach it to record ambient noise or place separately from the camera and remix later (especially for concerts). Also, call me crazy, but I never use an LCD loupe like the Z-finder. I find it distracting and it disengages me from my environment. I need to be able to respond to changes in the world around me and feel comfortable enough with my camera and lenses that i don’t need my eye crammed up against the screen to get what I want. An external monitor might be nice in the future, but for my run and gun tactics it still remains a distraction. Otherwise, the only thing I see my self buying in the future are a fluid head with video tripod and some prime lenses. I still absolutely love my Canon EF 17-35MM f2.8 and I used it heavily in the video, but I want to add a set of primes, especially the 14MM f/2.8 for ultra wides and 50MM f/1.2 for that shallow depth of field everyone continues to flip out about. In the end I am always trying to keep it simple and mobile. I like to work by myself and try to equip accordingly. Anyway, there will be much more to come.

Click here to see stills from the assignment

You can see more of Matthew’s stills work and contact him on his website

It’s six am and as the sun begins to rise over the Mongolian steppes I’m standing – 5DMkII poised – wondering if this time I’ve bitten off a little more than I can chew.  We’ve pitched a short film of the horse racing at the annual country wide Naadam festival to my bosses at The Guardian.  As ever with the newspaper I’m on a limited budget, with the crew consisting of reporter Tania Branigan and myself; there is no second camera, sound man, assistant or producer.   I usually prefer shooting solo as it allows for more intimate footage, but for this assignment I wish I had more help – I can only be in one place at one time and for a live race event like this there will be no second chances.

Getting to this point was hard enough. We arrived in Mongolia less than a day earlier so had little time to prepare.  I had briefed a local fixer ahead of our arrival that I wanted to follow a young jockey through his day.  But while he found a suitable child in the capital he could not find a local race where we could get sufficient access to the subjects.  Luckily I’d researched online and found a possible alternative, so taking a bit of a gamble we drove half a day out of Ulan Bator to the town of Kharkhorin (a bumpy ride despite the 4×4).
Luckily the local race organisers agreed to all our requests. Our next task was to find our subject. It didn’t seem that hard given the tens of competitors, but I should have known better. With weeks to befriend one it might have been different, but every child we spoke to was incredibly shy.  Tania decided it would be far to follow one of the horse trainers instead and managed to find Tsedendamba – an amazingly eloquent 61-year-old who has been in the saddle since he was four. He had a young jockey called Purevsuren who was racing the next day and we agreed to meet them just before sunrise.

I had anticipated just how hard it would be to get all the shots I wanted so I packed accordingly, bringing five HD cameras – a Canon 1DmkIV, 5DmkII, 550D and two GoPro HD cams.  As I was travelling light I also chose three slower, ligher weight, f4 aperture Canon L lenses – a 17-40mm, 24-105mm and a 70-200mm.   I also had a 50mm f1.2L and a Sigma 12-24mm lens which I intended to use on the 550D in cases where it ran the risk of getting damaged.  Even though I only had a 20kg checked baggage allowance I also managed to bring with me a Manfrotto 561BHDV monopod, Redrockmicro shoulder rig, Zacuto Z-finder, Steadicam Merlin, Juicedlink DT454, Sanken CS-1 shotgun mic, Sennheiser G2 radio mics and a Gitzo 2941LVL tripod with Manfrotto 701HDV head…with a bit of help from Tania.

After a few hours sleep in our ger – the traditional Mongolian round, felted tents that herders live in – we headed out to the location in the dark.  Tsedendamba had been up the whole night, preparing for the race, but greeted us enthusiastically.  We started to interview him as the sun began to rise, as this is when herders look to the skies to predict what kind of horse will win that day.

For the extreme close up of his eyes I used a Canon EF12 extension tube on the 50mm f1.2L. Normally I would use a 100mm macro lens but I had no room for it this time.  For audio I used radio mics into the Juicedlink DT454 on one channel and then a camera-mounted Sanken CS-1 shotgun mic into the other as a fallback.  Thanks to the Juicedlink’s headphone monitor I was able to hear what was being fed to the camera.  
For the long shots of the sunrise I fitted a Canon 2x convertor to the 70-200 f4L.   The resulting f8 maximum aperture wasn’t an issue because most of these shots were quite bright and shot as a silhoutte.  

Sunrise shot with Canon 70-200f4L IS and 2x convertor

Next I fitted a 550D with the Sigma 12-24 to a Steadicam Merlin and filmed some walking shots of the boy and trainer.  Even though I’ve had a little hands-on instruction with the Merlin from its inventor Garrett Brown, I still find it hard to set up and use in a hurry; hopefully my Steadicam skills will improve in time.  Setting the lens aperture at f8 allowed me to set the focus at around 2 metres and get pretty much everything in focus so I wasn’t constantly trying to adjust it.

One shot I was keen to get was of the boy and trainer walking off, from a high angle.  Sadly I didn’t have a Kessler Crane to hand so I had to make do.  I held up in the air my 5DmkII with the 12-24mm on top of a Manfrotto video monopod, wedging the monopod’s little feet against my body.  I started with it at head height next to the trainer and, as they walked off, slowly raised the camera to fake a jib effect.  It’s far from perfect but I think it was worth a try.  When I came to edit it I applied Final Cut Pro’s Smoothcam filter to iron out any minor bumps.

Next I had to quickly shoot a montage of shots to illustrate the festival itself.  The bulk of shots were on the 70-200 f4L IS, with the new Genus Fader ND and Zacuto Z-finder fitted, using the monopod and with the lens image stabilizer to help steady the image.  The focus pulls I did were all done by hand with no follow focus (again I had no room in my luggage); most were bad, but a couple came off okay.  For the slow motion shots of the wrestlers I switched the camera to 720p/50 and conformed the footage to 25p afterwards in Apple’s Cinematools.  I was allowed to go into the wrestling ring for only a few minutes to get the wide shots, so I had to go handheld using the 17-40mm lens on my Redrockmicro custom rig. Steadicam would have been better but was too hard to get right in the time I had.  Most of the time I was just trying to avoid the wrestlers so I couldn’t really get as close as I wanted either.

For the horse race I wanted to make sure I had enough shots to allow me to cut a fast-paced sequence that showed just how intense it was.  I also needed to make sure there was no additional danger to the jockeys from what I was doing – especially as there are ethical questions about whether such young children should be racing like this.  I had brought a pair of GoPro HD cameras with me for this very purpose.  The boy jockeys were very happy to wear them so we attached one on Purevsuren’s chest, and another on the helmet of another rider.  The GoPro’s record in 1080p but have no viewfinder so setting up can be a little tricky.  I guestimated the framing by looking at the reflection of the image in the lens head-on.  GoPros have an amazing battery life and can record uninterrupted for long periods.  This was important as I had to set the cameras running a long time before the race actually started.  Unfortunately it was very dusty and one of the cameras somehow got a smudge in the lens between setting up and the race – in the end I had to use the footage as I couldn’t shoot it again.

One other downside to the GoPros is that there is no easy way to fit Neutral Density filters (apart from a small custom one, which I didn’t have, which goes inside the case).   This meant that the GoPro was going to be using fast shutter speeds in the bright light of the race.  Luckily this wasn’t a complete disaster as I had made the creative decision to shoot all the race footage at high shutter speed anyway for an action movie feel.  I set the DSLRs at shutter speed around 1/2000th/sec when shooting the race.

Ready to shoot from the sunroof using Redrockmicro rig and Z-finder

We had arranged with officials for our 4×4 to follow the race along with the other escort vehicles.  For the race start I had Tania shoot a wide shot on my second camera.  This worked out well as I needed both wide and long shots.  I stood out of the car sunroof ready to roll.  We had to maintain a safe distance so as not to frighten the horses; as a result most of the shooting was on the Canon 70-200mm with the Redrockmicro shoulder rig for support.  The terrain was very rough and it was going to be impossible to get smooth shots for more than a few seconds at a time.  Focussing was going to be tough too, as much as I love faster apertures I decided to shoot at around f5.6 or f8 instead so that focus was not so critical.  I had also tested the Steadicam Merlin but there was no way to make it work in the high wind and with a long enough lens – I reckon the best way to do this properly would be a r/c helicopter mounted camera. I also equipped the 550D with a tripod for wide angle shots; the aim was to get ahead of the riders during parts of the race and put the camera down on its own near the track so the horses would come past it.  Occasions like this are perfect for the 550D as if it were to get destroyed by a stray rider or car it would not be as bad as a dead 5DMkII.

Our 4x4 needing a clean

When it came down to it, the whole race took less than half an hour.  I got almost enough usable footage to string together in the edit.  There were a couple of shots missing however and though we were only able to follow one race all the way though I was able to pick up some b-roll from static positions on a second race later in the day.

If I were to do it again I would certainly bring a bigger crew and more equipment. That said, I hope the end result is watchable and more cinematic that one of our regular news reports.  Let me know what you think.

A quick update just to say that DSLRnewsshooter.com contributor Seppe Van Grieken has posted another great timelapse video from the Shanghai World Expo – this time from the German pavillion. Seppe says this is the last in his series which he previously shared with us here.

The German Pavilion from Shanghai Expo Timelapse Machine on Vimeo.

We are always looking for interesting contributions to post here on the site. If you have news or feature video shot on DSLR that you think is worthy please feel free to email me at pressphotographer@gmail.com or message me on twitter @dslrinformer.

Much of the tech buzz on the web today is about Sony’s NEX-VG10 APS-C sensor camcorder which I previously blogged about when it was first announced as a prototype. Now Sony have given it a name, a price ($2000 US), issued this sample footage and provided us with more details about it. It should be in stores by September.

Beautiful Bali captured with the Sony NEX-VG10 Handycam camcorder from SonyElectronics on Vimeo.

This camcorder should be the first to market to combine regular high end consumer/semi-pro video cam ergonomics with a large sensor. Panasonic’s large sensor camcorder the previously announced AG-AF100 is not supposed to ship until later in the year. Whilst a few months back many commentators were expecting Canon to be the first to do this we have yet to see a large sensor camcorder offering from them. How the new Sony camera stack up in terms of image quality against the established Canon 5DmkII, 7D, 550D and 1DMkIV remains to be seen. One major drawback the Sony seems to have is the lack of a 1080/24 or 25p mode, instead it offers interlaced output only. This will be good for some TV shooters but pretty annoying for the rest of us trying to get the ‘Film look’. It also has a relatively low bitrate around 24Mbps, which even given the AVCHD codec may not rival the likes of the 5DMkII. Indeed the year old Panasonic GH-1 has recently been hacked to provide far higher AVCHD bitrates.

On the plus side Japanese lens mount adapter manufacturer Rayqual has already announced a range of NEX fitting adapters that allow you to put Leica lenses onto the NEX-VG10, with Nikon, Contax or Canon FD sure to follow. Sony also have their own mount adapter to allow the use of Sony/Minolta Alpha lenses in manual focus mode. Another interesting point is that at least one website is claiming the Sony will have a HDMI output which can be recorded offering potentially higher bitrates for recording when used with devices like the AJA KiPro or Convergent design Nanoflash.

One thing is for certain, these cameras make shallow depth of field video far more accessible to video shooters who are used to cameras like the Sony Z1, V1 or A1. Sony also previewed a bigger large sensor camcorder at NAB earlier this year so one assumes that before too long the diminutive NEX-VG10 will soon be joined by a professional EX or NXCAM variant with better audio and control layout. I envisage a lot of news shooters leaning towards buying one of these rather than a DSLR purely on the grounds of familiarity and ease of use.

There are several other hands on examples online – this one is in German.

Sony Handycam NEX-VG10 EXCLUSIVE: the first testvideo from Charles Michel on Vimeo.