I had the pleasure of meeting Naomi Goggin to review her stills portfolio at the Canon Pro Solutions show in London earlier this year. Later that same day she was awarded the Times Canon Young Photographer of the Year at the show and given a six month contract to work at the paper. Not content to shoot just stills she has decided to venture into learning video on the DSLR, which as she says “requires some solid investments in kit.”

The Sennheiser MKE400 mini shotgun mic

She has had some video training and found the “sound is more important than the picture itself – a slightly alien concept for photographers. A video with bad picture, can be saved by good sound, but the reverse, a video with bad sound quality, cannot be saved with good picture.”

To prove her point Naomi has posted a couple of short test videos demonstrating how a simple Sennheiser MKE400 on camera mic can make a difference in a noisy environment. She shot it in a busy restaurant using a 50mm f1.2 prime lens and says her “focusing practice is under way!”

How to look like a Pirate – without Sennheiser from Naomi Goggin on Vimeo.

How to Look Like a Pirate – with Sennheiser MKE 400 from Naomi Goggin on Vimeo.

We wish Naomi the best as she embarks on her career (I’m guessing that video will play a large part in it). You can follow Naomi’s progress at the Times of London on her blog.

Nathan Mauger is a Beijing-based freelance cameraman who has shot for the likes of National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, Rolex, CNN, CNBC, ESPN, CBS, Bloomberg, Louis Vuitton and Nike.

In January 2010 I bought a Canon 7D kit solely for the purpose of shooting video. I’ve always loved doing time lapses with cameras like the Panasonic Varicam and Sony PDW-700, and was anxious to try DSLR time lapses with longer exposures and higher resolution.

“Too Fast, Too Much” from Nathan Mauger on Vimeo.

Here in Beijing we have no sky, only heavy pollution, so there are few opportunities for time lapses of clouds, sunrises or sunsets. (The pollution is so bad that most attempts at a sunset time lapse would turn out looking like a simple fade-to-black.) The traffic is horrible, but great for time lapses.

So in July I started doing traffic time lapses at night for fun. I didn’t know what the project would look like when finished, but I knew it had to be fast, loud and violent. After a week of shooting I had to stop for over a month because of pollution. I finished in late September; a total of fifteen nights shooting.

I have a pretty big video-DSLR kit, but for this project the equipment was very simple: a Canon 7D, Sachtler FSB-8 tripod and a Canon intervalometer. As for lenses, 95% of the video was done with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L USM IS II, Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, and a Canon 2x extender. A couple of shots were done with the Canon 50mm f/1.2L. Fast lenses were NOT needed; apertures were usually between f16 and f22. And I always leave the image stabilizer off.

Another important piece of equipment was an iPod. When alone and filming on the street with a tripod-mounted DSLR I’ve found there’s always at least one stupid motherf*****r who comes up and puts his eye up to the viewfinder and jiggle the camera and ruining the time lapse. Normally you need to make a physical intervention. But with earphones on, for some reason these guys magically stay away. Don’t ask me why.

Next up I had to determine which shutter speeds to use. A few of the early time lapses were at four seconds, then I settled on 3.2 seconds with a four-second interval after the first couple days. On Beijing’s Sanlitun intersection time lapses it would have been better to use a four-second shutter with a longer interval (the traffic there moves damn slowly). I sped those shots up in Final Cut Pro, but longer exposures would have been better.

Exposure for traffic time lapses is important and I wish I had good advice here, but the truth is with each clip the color grading is so extreme that even shots I completely screwed up exposure-wise turned out basically ok. One key point however is to expose off of the taillights. Overexpose and they blow out towards the center and the tracers become white, yellow and red; just right exposure they’ll retain the redness without blowing out. When time lapsing cars come head-on at an angle in a medium shot you have to compromise between having the headlights massively blow out or having everything else be way too underexposed. Unwisely, I usually went the way too underexposed route and it shows, but now I know better.

In post I had a pretty good archiving system. First I would separate all the photo sequences into folders, then use Quicktime Pro to output a ProRes HQ version. (There are tutorials everywhere on the net on how to do this, so no need to rehash it here.) This makes a monstrous 5148×3456 clip. It’s so big it can’t really be played on a normal computer. From this, I created 1920×1080 clips exported from Final Cut Pro, but I always kept the original 5k clip too (maybe it will be useful in several years when we all have 4k TV’s). In FCP you can zoom in a little and move the picture vertically to fit it into a 1080p timeline. Keeping the original 5k file also gives you options for the future if you want to reframe a clip. Then after everything was processed and downconverted I would throw out the original photos. Knowing next to nothing about photography, I just shot JPEG’s, not RAW. (What does “knowing next to nothing” mean? It means I had to look up “ISO” on Wikipedia!)

Early on, I tried putting the big 5K clips into a 1080P timeline and adding some color filters and then rendering. Bad idea — this crashes FCP 7.0 every time. I found the best way is to import the 5k clip; put it into a 1080P timeline, rescale to 37.5%, and reframe. I then export with current settings, without sound but with compression markers, and with the recompress all frames box clicked.

Everything at night in Beijing except bus stops is lit with unflattering sodium vapor lights, so all or almost all clips have the FCP Color Corrector 3-Way on them to combat this. Color grading was radical. Most of the clips have the Magic Bullet Look Suite Max Contrast filter on, with post-contrast and saturation both at about +30 to +60 and pre-gamma at around +15. If you’re familiar with Looks Suite then you know how screwed up this is!

Titles were done in Apple Motion with a simple image mask and a basic motion zoom in/out.

Compressing this video for the web didn’t turn out too well. With the picture changing so fast, the compressions I did turned out very blocky, and with reduced dynamic range and detail.

The work of the lens doctor

Eddie Houston used to be a guitarist playing alongside the likes of Thin Lizzy and Status Quo. Before that he was a technical manager for Canon back in the days of the old FD cameras and lenses. He has now returned to his photographic roots and is running a small family business selling and servicing old stills lenses. Based in Scotland he has gained quite a reputation recently. Manual lenses are often better suited to video than their AF counterparts because they have a smoother, more damped manual focus action along with manual aperture control. The excellent Carl Zeiss ZF range of lenses are probably the most popular and best known examples of manual lenses that are well suited to video. There are however a great range of other older lenses that can be easily adapted to your EOS, Nikon or Micro 4/3 HDDSLR – these are what Eddie specialises in.

I had the opportunity to meet up with Eddie when I was talking at a Canon event in Glasgow. We talked old lenses and got to discussing lens de-clicking of stills lenses for video use. I left a few vintage lenses for Eddie to experiment with and he recently returned them to me after a full service and his own version of de-clicking called the ’fluid variable aperture system’ installed.

Eddie at work measuring a lens iris blade

For those who don’t know about de-clicking, most manual focus stills lenses have an aperture iris that is controlled in click stops as opposed to a continuously variable aperture like those found on Cine lenses. The problem is that these click stops don’t allow you to set a precise aperture in between the marked stops. When you vary it while shooting video the iris will not close smoothly but rather in steps with a clicking noise. This is clearly not ideal for video. A stills lens can de-clicked but care has to be taken and lubrication added to make sure the aperture runs smoothly – a job for a skilled technician.

Below is a little test video I made using an old Tamron 90mm f2.5 SP macro lens that I had lying around. It’s super sharp and now with the ‘fluid variable aperture’ fitted it makes a useful video lens. It’s easy to fit to an EOS camera using a cheap adapter from Ebay.

Tamron 90mm de-clicked by the Lens Doctor from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Eddie was dissatisfied with how slack the aperture control was on my lenses when he de-clicked them, claiming that they were disturbed by even the slightest movement. He wanted to make the aperture fully variable but still easy to set in a specific position, to do this he made the resistance on the aperture ring more positive and fluid. I am really impressed with the results and plan to have more lenses de-clicked by Eddie asap. He has since opened up this service to everybody, cost varies from lens to lens as not all lenses are the same. You can contact him directly at enquiries@thelensdoctor.co.uk to discuss your specific requirements. You can also buy pre-modified lenses from time to time on Eddie’s Ebay store.

Measuring click stops

One question I am asked a lot is whether older Canon FD lenses can be converted to work on an EOS. Generally the answer till now has been no because of the 42mm flange focal depth of FD bodies being shorter than the 44mm of an EOS body. There are some adapters with an optical element in them to compensate for this difference, but the third party examples of these are generally not high quality and I do not recommend them. Canon used to make such an adapter for their FD Super telephoto lenses but these are super rare and usually expensive secondhand. A few FD lenses have been successfully modified to EOS in the past, I remember Vincent Laforet used to have a FD 35mm Tilt and Shift lens converted for EOS use.

In early 2011 Eddie will be offering a service to permanently convert Canon FD lenses to EOS/EF fitting without the need for corrective glass, this is under development at the moment and he already has a small selection on offer but plans to increase the range over the coming months to include all FD lenses. I predict he is going to be very busy when this service starts.

Vivitar 24mm f2 converted from FD to EOS and variable aperture fitted

Another thing Eddie has on offer is his own special build FD 50mm F1.4 with a ‘chrome nose’. These are specially built, Eddie adds Super Spectra Coatings to the glass and add another iris blade to the system. The regular Canon FD 50mm F1.4 has only seven blades, this special build has eight, creating a much smoother bokeh. I have yet to see one and am very curious indeed.

50mm f1.4 FD lens with improved bokeh

For more information on Eddie and his other services you can check out his website here.

(Note – If you are based in the US then the best place to send your stills lenses to be modified is Duclos lenses. The run an excellent service where a lens can be declicked, a follow focus gear added and a 80mm standard size lens front added. I highly recommend them also.)

To celebrate the end of the year I wanted to highlight a couple of special offers for readers of this blog.

First off, Hosa technology are offering a special price on the miniature Que audio ENG shotgun mic kit which we featured on the blog earlier in the year. It’s the perfect size for a DSLR and for a limited time it’s available for a very reasonable $349 with free delivery in the US. To get this price simply enter the code dslrnewsshooter when you go to check out from the Hosatech webstore here http://www.hosatech.com/product/380886/QENG-KIT/_/ELECTRONIC_NEWS_GATHERING_MICROPHONE_KIT.

Hosa Technology Que audio mini shotgun mic kit from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Next up, the F-Stop academy are offering 50% off their entire line of training downloads, which include Philip Bloom’s excellent 5DmkII and 7D videos as well as my own ‘DSLR video on Assignment’ where I demonstrate how I work in the field. The promotion runs till tomorrow, December 24th. Simply go to http://www.learndslrvideostore.com/ and enter the code snow50

D-SLR Video On Assignment with Dan Chung Trailer from Den Lennie on Vimeo.

A 550D/T2i Documentary shot at the mixed martial arts American Top Team headquarters.

Thiago: When the Pitbull Bites- A Docu Highlight film from Kahleem on Vimeo.

I’ve been to Florida plenty of times, but this was one time where I was able to move around a bit more and take in the environment. The day was gorgeous out there, especially coming from the New York/New Jersey region in the same week, and many of the establishing shots were taken during the trip to the gym and at other pit stops along the way.

I was on my way to film one of the world’s top mixed martial arts teams. For the shoot, my main supplies were the H4N Zoom to capture richer sound for interviews between Institute of Human Performance operator Seth Jordan and Thiago Alves. Most of the general sound was captured with a basic Rode Video Mic, plugged directly into the camera and mounted on the hot shoe of the Canon 550D/T2i. Surprisingly, during an interview with fellow mixed martial artist Din Thomas’, the sound came out very clear, even dealing with the AGC troubles within the default body setup.

My lenses were a mix of old and new. One was the Olympus OM Zuiko 28mm prime from the 70’s (I believe), which was used to capture wide shots. Not enough can be said about its color clarity and sharpness, easily on par with my counterpart L lens, the Canon 24-105mm. Special thanks to my bro Robert Billings of Fractured Minds for this equipment. He’s an excellent photographic artist, so it would serve well to check out his portfolio, also done mostly with Canon equipment.

For any and all action-based shots, I tend to love using zooms. They provide more dramatic input and give me the freedom to catch wide shots for action-based pacing and close-range shots for more intricate, technical and emotional moments.

My original kit lens served me well to start with, but as I evolved in shooting, I started to see the flaws. Drastically. The images weren’t sharp and most of all, there was no constant aperture when zooming. That can be compensated for with photos, but it is a serious godsend to have a constant aperture when filming. The differences between my L series lens and the original 18-55mm were like night and day; the L was a blessing to grade in post with its rich colors, contrast information and much more detail than I’ve dealt with in the past.

Thiago “Pitbull” Alves has been described as a “Muay Thai wrecking machine”. He was also an awesome sport. For one, he checked out my original edited layout from all the collected footage of his career. He stood in front of the laptop, looking at the work I had produced of him kicking ass. No moment like that can be equaled. Beyond that, we just basically hung out as I filmed and chatted. I also became acquainted with more members of the team, such as Gleison Alves.

Half of the action with the American Top Team (ATT) facility was organized by boxing trainer, Howard Davis Jr. He had the guys go through some round robin sparring sessions, which included Gleison, Din and this unnamed badass kid in red headgear, who was probably, at most, 17 years old. I haven’t seen boxing technique like THAT in a mixed martial arts gym in well—ever, really.

Thiago’s part within the main gym in Coconut Creek was in a long warm up stretching session, which I shot to establish the brotherly relationship of the entire ATT family. After that I focused on catching the moments of these guys joking around, rolling (a jujitsu term, meaning “sparring”) and tidbits of a Capoeira demonstration. I almost immediately felt like I belonged there. Needless to say, it was VERY difficult to leave.

Later on at 6pm, we headed over to the Institute of Human Performance in Boca Raton. This place is essentially the ATT members’ second home. Famed Light Heavyweight/Heavyweight fighter, Jeff “Snowman” Monson was just finishing up his training and leaving the facility when I arrived.

Thiago arrived shortly thereafter with members of his crew, including his Muay Thai trainer and strength and conditioning coach. This entire session would consist of three 5 minute rounds of cardio, pad work, resistance training and other exercises. I won’t reveal the exact details of his session, but it WAS gruelling. One of the workouts included a neck strengthening machine, which looked like something out of Star Wars. Lesson learned on that one – I need to get myself a neck/weight harness for home.

The entire shoot ended sometime around 8pm. We then got some dialogue from Thiago, mostly about his mindset during the training, what changes he’s done in his life to improve his performance and his goals. In these types of “confessional” segments, I always try to capture the audio in a richer format, namely with the H4N, then sync it up in post with the video and make any other appropriate edits later. The entire project came out well and I’m happy Thiago was kind enough to invite us to his entire training day.

Unfortunately we didn’t get Friday’s sparring session with him, which I really wanted to capture. However, we caught more than enough for a 10 minute documentary highlight short film, based around Alves himself and marquee members of the ATT family.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do it all over again, but with more time on my table. These guys are truly welcoming and I would like to do a more detailed short film on ATT in the near future.

I would also like to thank my best buddy Jason Nurse for his support in chauffeuring me around Florida. He drove nearly two hours to pick me up from Ft Lauderdale and then made another trip over to Coconut Creek for this small production. Needless to say, along with being the impromptu boom operator, he was a major player in this project.

Kahleem Poole-Tejada (Director, Editor, Cinematographer)
www.kahl-one.com
Kahleem@gmail.com

Whilst at the Canon Pro Solutions show in London a few weeks back I got a chance to look at a few new products. Apologies for not posting these until now but I’ve been rather busy lately.

Kata were showing off some new bags aimed at HDDSLR shooters who need to travel light. First up is the Source-261PL bag which is designed to take a camera on a rig fitted in it’s main compartment with several lenses in cleverly designed side pockets. Next they have two new bags in the FlyBy range which are super lightweight gear trunks that can fit a laptop and be used on rollers.

Kata unveils new lightweight DSLR bags for video shooters from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Manfrotto also had an interesting new tripod head on show aimed at convergence shooter doing stills and video together. It functions like a regular pan and tilt video fluid head until at the flick of a switch it goes into photo mode where you can put the camera upright. I can see this appealing to a lot of photographers who are starting to shoot video.

Manfrotto Photo/Video tripod head on show from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Both of these quick videos were shot by dslrnewsshooter.com contributor Sam Morgan Moore. Many thanks to him.

Kesslercrane Philip Bloom signature Pocketdolly from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Philip Bloom needs little introduction so when Kesslercrane came out with his signature edition Pocketdolly I was naturally curious. Like quite a few other news shooters on this site I use a Pocket Dolly V2 for a lot of my videos and I love it. I wanted to see just how Phil had improved it further. We managed to catch up with the man himself a while back at the Canon Pro Solutions show in London and get the low down. Many thanks to Sam Morgan Moore for shooting the video for dslrnewsshooter.com while I was busy accidentally spilling coffee on Phil’s Pocket Dolly.

2 nights in Mallory Square from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Below is my most recent example of my own work with a Pocket Dolly V2 from North Korea.

North Korea’s Military parade in Slow Motion from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

And somewhere in this video by Sam is me spilling coffee on Phil’s Dolly.

The Smoke from Sam Morgan Moore on Vimeo.