Redrockmicro have beaten Birger Engineering and MTF services to be the first to actually offer for sale an adapter which offers active aperture control for Canon EOS lenses on Micro 4/3 cameras like the Panasonic AF100 and GH2. Passive mechanical adapters which are commonly available have no way to control the aperture of Canon glass so the lens aperture is stuck wide open.

Based on the company’s original Livelens adapter for their Encore 35mm adapters it offers simple push button aperture adjustments in 1/3 stops- but none of the extra features like AF and Image stabilization that Birger engineering are promising (although their adapter still has no release date). The adapter requires 9V power in order to work but the company claim 20 hours operation with a single cell. There are a few limitations and compatibility issues so please read the tech specs properly.

For a limited time it is available at US $442.50, normally US $487.50 from the Redrockmicro webstore. There is no word from Redrockmicro about possible future versions for cameras like the Sony F3 or Nex range.

Here’s is a rip from the Redrockmicro site:

How does LiveLens mft work?
The LiveLens mft is a lens adapter that fits onto any micro four-thirds camera body, and provides a Canon EF lens mount on the other side for attaching any EF-compatible lens. an on board computer and electronics power a small control panel that allow you to adjust the aperture of the lens, open or closed, in 1/3 stop increments.

How does this differ from the LiveLens for the M3?
The underlying control technology of the LiveLens MFT and LiveLens for M3 is identical. Where the LiveLens MFT differs is it’s custom-built flange that attaches the unit to the Micro Four Thirds lens mount. LiveLens for the M3 has been proven to work for over three years in production environments and gives LiveLens mft this proven reliability.

My short documentary Dream World is about Jason Paul, a free runner who tries to find new ways in his daily life to fulfil his inner needs. On his journey to London he discovers that friendship and
companionship are essential values in life.

Jason Paul is an outstanding free running athlete and a good friend of mine. When he asked me to join him at the Red Bull Art of Motion event in London I was more than willing to break out of my daily routine as an animator and director. Free running is still a very young sport. An event like the Red Bull Art of Motion gives athletes from all over the world the possibility to meet, train and communicate in real life, instead of checking each other’s videos on Facebook.

On this particular trip my personal dream was to have a great time with all the athletes, while having the possibility to shoot my short documentary. From the beginning on I wanted to make a film about free running that is not based on difficult tricks or risky jumps, but on interesting characters and the philosophy that comes with it. We started our journey in Frankfurt, Germany, where we went to isolated run-down houses as well as crowded pedestrian areas. I myself had to climb quite a few times to get the shots I wanted or just to follow the guys on their run. I tend to let things happen or just let people do their thing, hoping to discover something within the moment.

All the equipment – including the light weight Panasonic GH2, GoPro HD, Panasonic 20mm, Panasonic 14-140mm, Panasonic 7-14mm, Zoom H4n, Rode VideoMic Pro, Joby Gorillapod and a small rig – fitted in one backpack and made it possible to follow the guys.

The Panasonic GH2 rig ready to shoot

The Panasonic GH2 kit all fitted neatly into a backpack

I use a lot of other HDSLRs, but for this particular project I chose the GH2. One reason is the amazing auto-focus system that is sadly only compatible with the Panasonic lenses. The film was completely shot without external monitor or viewfinder. During the two days of shooting, there was not a lot of time to set up a shot and pull focus. When I found a moment that I wanted to capture I needed it to be in focus in an instant.

Back home in Germany it took me two week of editing to finish the film. Jens Fischer did a great job doing the sound design. I am grateful to live in times where almost everybody has the opportunity to become a videographer, filmmaker, whatever, without going bankrupt. Everybody has got a story to tell.

Frank Sauer is a director, designer and animator located in Darmstadt, Germany:
With four years commercial experience, his clients include SAT1, BBC, Discovery Channel and a lot more. You can see more of his work at http://frank-sauer.com/

Korean accessory manufacturer Varavon have released some pictures of their new line of DSLR loupes and rigs. Not much detail at the moment but the solution for the Panasonic GH1 and GH2 certainly looks interesting. You can check them out on the manufacturer’s website here.

***Update – Varavon have posted this video of their armor in action***

VARAVON ARMOR from varavon on Vimeo.

Arizona shooting: Memorial to Tucson victims from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

How do you cover the aftermath of an event as terrible as the Arizona shootings? In my time I’ve covered a lot of disasters and tragedies, but it really doesn’t make it any easier when the next one comes along.

I had been covering the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for the Guardian’s tech site when the shootings happened, but as their scale became clear my editors decided to divert me. With no flights available it was an eight hour drive to Tucson. Running through my mind all the way there was the question: how could I add anything to the wall-to-wall, saturation news coverage that I knew the networks were providing?

I determined to make a video report that was not simply repeating TV news. Instead of using the regular TV format of a reporter questioning local people and then giving their ‘view from the spot’ I opted to try to create something more intimate. I wanted to give the people of Tucson more space to say what they wanted about the events.

The following morning I joined the gathered Tucsonians and assembled media for the moment of silence, led by President Obama in Washington. Outside the hospital, where a makeshift memorial to the victims had formed, people were standing, reflecting.

Immediately after the silence there was a rush of reporters and camera crews trying to speak to people about it. I decided to bide my time and wait for it to quieten down so that people could expand more on what was going through their heads as they tried to make sense of events. I then approached people and asked if they could hold my Zoom H1 audio recorder while they talked to each other and myself. Because the Zoom H1 is so small and light no-one seemed to mind holding it, or got distracted by it in the way that fitting a wireless lav on them would have – they just seemed to carry on being themselves and not acting for the camera. This technique also gave me good sound and allowed me to be discreet, filming using a 24-105mm IS lens. The camera was a 5DmkII fitted with a Zacuto Z-finder and a Redrockmicro Running man rig. I love this setup because it is lightweight and mobile but still allows me to keep the camera very stable. Audio from the recorder and the camera was later synced using the marvelous Pluraleyes software.

I also wanted to give a more cinematic feel to my shots so I turned to the Kessler Cineslider and Oracle controller, which I had just received from Eric Kessler to use at the CES show. I had been planning a short video of all the gadgets and the flashing lights to show off the Kessler slider’s amazing movements – instead I put it to an altogether more sombre use. I combined it with slow motion to form my intro sequence of the gathered crowd and the tributes. Shooting on my Tokina 11-16mm lens and a Panasonic GH2 I tried to convey the sadness. I’m still testing the GH2 but the one thing that has struck me so far is just how good slow motion looks when you use the cameras 720p/50 mode slowed to 24 or 25p (mine is a PAL model). It appears to be much sharper than the image I am used to getting with my Canon DSLRs – the downside is that the smaller Micro 4/3rds sensor really doesn’t have the beautiful shallow depth of field look of my 5DmkII footage.

Setting up the Kessler Cineslider and Oracle controller in Tucson

I hope the resulting piece manages to capture the people I filmed in an honest way and at the same time combine it with a cinematic style. I will let you be the judge.

There has been a lot of hype online recently over the impending release of Panasonic’s new AG-AF100 micro 4/3 camcorder. From my perspective as a broadcast cameraman Panasonic calling it a professional camera is a bit of a stretch. It is hardly in the same class as proper professional cameras like the RED One and the Arri Alexa. I have used just about every camera you can think of through out my career (BVU, Betacam, Betacam SP, SX, Digibeta, P2, XDCAM, EX, Z1 and so on) and i’m always interested to try out anything that is new. Almost every camera no matter how cheap or expensive it is has good and bad points. In the end its the user who frames the picture, chooses the settings and hits record, not the camera. Knowing the limitations and how to use your camera is the key to capturing great footage.

So what about the Panasonic AG-AF100. The image quality is recorded at 24Mb/s, it has two XLR inputs featuring 48-kHz/16-bit two-channel digital audio recording and supports LPCM/Dolby-AC3, it also has USB 2.0, HD-SDI and HDMI outputs, a built-in stereo mic and time code recording. To someone who has been shooting with the new generation of DSLR’s these all sound like the features everybody has been calling for. What you have to remember is this is a video camera, it’s not a stills camera that can shoot video, nor is it a video camera that can take photos…..it is a VIDEO camera. For those expecting an image quality that is on par with a 7D or 5D think again. A 4/3″ sensor is a lot smaller than that of a 7D or 5DmkII. The reason a 7D looks better than a 550D and the reason a 5DmkII looks better than 7D is due to the size of the sensor.  What this boils down to is the bigger the sensor the more information the camera is looking at regardless of the compression. As we all know the larger the sensor the shallow the depth of field. To get lovely shallow DOF you will need incredibly fast glass on the AG-AF100. It will certainly have its own unique look.  Having said that the AG-AF100 seems to have lower noise levels at higher ISO’s (better than a 7D but probably not as good as a 5DmkII or 1DmkIV). Even with this all said it is an exciting time in the industry with a lot of new cameras and different companies joining the mix which can only be good for the end user.

While the AG-AF100 seems capable of capturing very nice pictures, the 24Mb/s AVCHD codec is still about the same as Sony’s recently launched NEX-VG10 consumer camcorder which actually has a larger sensor than the Panasonic (about the same as the 7D). What you also have to remember is the 4/3 system has a 2x crop factor. There are a few 4/3 inch wide lenses but if you throw on a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 it will quickly become 32-70mm, just something to keep in mind.

I have had a chance to play with the Sony and to be honest it didn’t impress me that much. The lack of progressive recording (although it is actually recording 1080p wrapped it into a 1080i container), poor audio imputs and rather cheap build quality were a let down. On the positive side it was rather easy to use and the image quality wasn’t too bad.

Of course the Sony camera is only $2000US while the Panasonic AG-AF100 is $5000US. Why the big difference in price? Well the Panasonic is fully Progressive, has variable frame rates, proper XLR inputs and full HDMI out and HDSDI out. For those who may not know what HDSDI is; SDI stands for Serial Digital Interface. It is basically the professional TV industry standard for transfer of HD material. It is normally only found in professional equipment. So why is this a good thing on a $5000 camcorder? Well it enables you to take the very best image available from your camera by sending an uncompressed output to be recorded by a HDSDI recorder like the Convergent Design Nanoflash or Aja KiPro at much higher bitrates. Instead of recording internally on the camera at 24Mb/s you can record it as high as 280Mb/s on the Nano Flash. In plain English this means you can record the vision at more than 10 times the bit rate that the internal codec does in the camera. This makes a huge difference to the image quality but it comes at a cost. Your $5000 camera just became a $8000 camera with the addition of a Nano flash. This is an interesting camera and is capable of producing very nice images at a high bit rate (with addition on a 3rd party recorder). With proper audio, viewfinder, no record time limits and far less rolling shutter and moire there are a lot of things to like. There is a reasonable selection of pretty good lenses and lots of adaptors to enable you to run Leica, Nikon and Zeiss lenses. There are also adapters for Canon EF mount but they don’t have an electronic connection to the Panasonic mount so you would be stuck with a fixed aperture (eg. a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 lens when used on this camera would be locked at f2.8). There are to my knowledge a couple of manufacturers working on an electronic adaptor mount that will fix this problem.

Who can I see buying this camera? This is an interesting question. I have no doubt they will sell like hotcakes. For people who are not getting paid to shoot, $5000US is a lot of money to spend on a camera and if you want to record at the higher bit rates you will be forking out more like $8000US. This camera I imagine will become very popular with indie film makers who maybe once used a EX-1 or Sony Z1 with 35mm adapters like the Letus Ultimate. There will also be a lot of people who will run out and buy this camera just because they can and because its the first camera to come out with all the features that HDDSLR owners are craving. This camera is certainly not the death of the HDDSLR and I’m sure there will be plenty of similar products coming out in the next 12 months. The question as to whether you buy this camera comes down to what you need your camera to do and what your budget is. It is very important to remember this is a video camera not a DSLR and you should look at it in this way.

Be very careful watching videos that have been put up on the web from this camera as you don’t know in some cases whether the vision was reordered at 24Mb/s a second or 280Mb/s. Some videos will tell you what bit rate they used but others won’t. Doing your research online is a good start when buying anything but the only way to judge a camera is to physically go and look at it, play with it and make your own conclusions. Would I buy one? The jury is still out. I’m holding out at the moment for something more high end.

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.

Panasonic AG-AF100 at DVExpo from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

On my last day in the USA I dropped by the DVExpo show in Pasadena and was able to grab this quick interview with Jan Crittenden Livingston of Panasonic USA about the upcoming AG-AF100 Micro 4/3 camcorder. I wasn’t expecting to see the camera at the show so I’m indebted to Kevin Garcia for volunteering to shoot the interview for me with no notice at all.

Jan claimed the camera was about 70 percent done and still had some improvements in the works. I have to say that the image it was showing on an external SDI monitor it was hooked up to was certainly very nice and moire free. They even added in a brick wall pattern on their set to prove a point.

After hearing top Hollywood Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut the previous week at PhotoCine Expo extolling the virtues of the Canon sensors and what he believes to be their superior rendering of the image, it will be interesting to see how the AG-AF100 production models perform compared to the venerable 5DmkII and newer HDDSLRs. I was impressed with the camera’s full set of audio features, gamma settings and the in-built ND filters, but am not too sure I want to give up the larger sensor of my beloved 5DmkII just yet in favour of a Micro 4/3 one. Time will tell.

You can see a PDF from Jan’s presentation to DVExpo here.

*Edit, I’ve added sample footage from the camera posted by Yves Simard of CREWS.TV below

Panasonic AG AF-100 01/02 evaluation footage by CREWS.TV from Yves Simard on Vimeo.

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.

Haiti Earthquake Aftermath Montage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

When two international TV networks asked me to go to Haiti to shoot ENG footage I was very uncertain about what to expect. Like many others I was getting my information on what was happening on the ground from the news and occasionally by word of mouth. Almost everyone who knew of my trip tried to talk me out of it, which in itself was very frustrating. The networks wanted us there as soon as possible and there was no time for preproduction or coordination.

Almost all the images and videos coming out of Haiti had become all too familiar and I knew that was not how I wanted to capture a story of this significance. The idea that life goes on even in the most horrific state of despair was fascinating to me and getting that concept across was my main goal in shooting this montage. I wanted to focus on the Haitian people and the lives that had been affected by this devastating earthquake as well as showcase how modern technology can revolutionize journalism and the way news coverage is shot.

Our team of four, which also included two correspondents and a second shooter, traveled from New York City to Santa Domingo and with great uncertainty, took a bus across the border to Haiti. Our 15-hour trip ended when we were dropped off at the heavily guarded US embassy in the Haitian capital. From there we found our way to the United Nations base, where we pitched a tent and settled in along with the many other journalists based there. For the next week that tent would be our home.

Posing with aid workers - the team all ready to shoot the news with the Panasonic HPX-500

The 5DmkII rig ready to roll with Kessler Pocket Dolly

Production
All the ENG footage was shot with a Panasonic HPX-500. The second shooter was my good friend Raymond Bishir, who is a photographer and wanted to shoot his personal work as well. Every day we not only had to shoot, edit, and transmit two three-minute reports but to make enough time to shoot our personal stuff. We established a workflow in which we would alternate between news shooting and personal shooting. We were fortunate enough that the two journalists we were working with (Susan Modaress and Hassan Abu Zaytoon) were very supportive and patient with us.

Working in an earthquake zone is physically and emotionally overwhelming. Aside from the documentary I shot in Egypt and Lebanon this was my first time shooting with a journalistic mindset. Having to document a natural disaster of this magnitude was very difficult to grasp. One of the main factors that we were all concerned about the logistical challenges such as housing, food, water, transportation, and safety; however I tried not think about the obstacles as they tend to be distracting. That being said, we packed very lightly. Each of us only brought a limited amount of personal belongings and the bare essential tools to get the job done.

Tools I used for the montage.
-Tenba shootout rolling backpack
-Canon 5D mark2
-Kessler Pocket Dolly
-Miller solo ENG legs w/ the Arrow 25 head, a few lenses
-Canon 16-35, 24-70, 70-200 2.8 L series),
-Marshall 7inch HDMI monitor
-5 Canon BPE-6 camera batteries.
-Apple Macbook pro

Shooting personal work at the airfield with 5DmkII on Pocket Dolly and Miller tripod

It’s crucial to keep a low profile when shooting in disaster zones so I chose not to bring a mattebox, follow focus, filters, and barely ever shot with the monitor. The pocket dolly was almost always part of the setup as it takes seconds to build and works flawlessly. I strongly believe that a dolly shot is far more powerful than a static shot so I tried using it any chance I could. I chose to shoot everything between a 100-320 ISO and nothing faster than a 5.6 f-stop. I tried to keep my shutter speed around 1/60 of a second to get it closest to a film shutter degree. I cranked up the shutter speed for all the water distribution shots to crystallize the water.

Shooting in the strong sun was challenging

One of my biggest challenges when it came to shooting was the contrast between the darker skin complexions and direct sunlight. I worked around it by finding a midpoint between the two and exposing for it. Turning down the on-camera contrast also helped significantly with the latitude. I knew I wouldn’t achieve the look I wanted in camera so I shot everything with a standard pictures style and tweaked the look in post.

Post Production

I’ve been listening to Eric Wollo ’s music for quite some time now and I knew that “Sounds of the Seen Part 1” was the track I wanted to use. I edited everything in the native H.264 codec and exported as Apple ProRes 422 after I was done editing. The montage was edited in a couple of days using Final Cut Pro and most of the time was spent grading.

A still from a clip graded in Photoshop for reference

My first step in grading is almost always retouching a screenshot from the clip in Photoshop. I then use the Photoshopped still as a reference for my color grading. I started the grade in FCP using the three-way color corrector to shift the mids and shadows to a warmer color tone. From here on out I live in Magic Bullet Looks to fine-tune the exposure and colors. I rarely ever use the looks presets as they are overused and can get more precise results by building my own.

Using Magic Bullet Looks to fine tune exposure and colors

Some of the most useful tools in Magic Bullet are the spot exposure, grad exposure, vignette, contrast and curves. I faced major latitude issues due to the dark skin completions and the skin tones were almost always too bright or too dark. The spot exposure really helped in solving this issue.

The grad exposure is an essential tool to draw attention to your subjects. I used it to bring the exposure of the foreground or background up or down a few stops.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time recently trying to learn Apple Color, as its tweaking tools are far more precise than Final Cut Pro or Magic Bullet.

The before and after results of grading

Khalid was born in Doha Qatar in December 1985. He spent his childhood traveling from one country to another, until his father was relocated to Wayne New Jersey in 1993. Inspired by music, math, and independent film khalid discovered his passion for filmmaking at an early age. In 2004 he attended the New York Film Academy and later won best screen play at the 2005 New York International Film Festival for his short feature “Optimistic”. After graduating he started working on commercials, music videos, and corporate events in hope to finance his personal projects.
His website is here

Testing out the Canon Eos1DmkIV video mode with Zacuto Z-Finder - Pic by Felix Clay

The main attraction at the Canon show was of course the 1DmkIV; I managed to have a pretty good look at the camera’s video functions and in the next day or two should have more for you.

F-Stop Academy's Den Lennie tests the 1DmkIV with Zacuto rig

The Panasonic Lumix GF-1 (left) and GH-1

The Thinktankphoto Airport takeoff roller/backpack

5DmkII all dressed up in a Camera Armor rubber suit

The Litepanels MicroPro mounted atop the Canon 7D

The Manfrotto 561BHDV video monopod

Anyway, enough new toys. Hopefully back to some serious shooting this week.