Blog about News, Tips and tutorial about HDSLR cameras
M. Bloom is a funny guy and what I find even funnier is to see that some people fell for it.
I have to admit, for the first few lines of the article I was thinking ‘wow, cool!’, then my reality check said ‘wait a minute’ and as I went down the post, it was clearly a joke. My favorite part is the ‘beer goggles’ filter!
And if you think that I am wrong and M. Bloom is all serious, maybe you should have read until the end…
Good one Philip!
Things are moving fast here: I talked about the book two weeks ago, received my copy last week and just finished my first reading. Verdict: I am loving it! To put it simply: it covers almost everything! From shoot preparation, gear selection, editing, etc.. It gives a solid foundation to any photographers who wants to move to video.
First, the book assumes only one thing: you are a photographer shooting stills and you want to learn how to shoot video. That is it. It goes over all the lingo, gear and processes used in cinematography and give you a working knowledge of what is required and involved in a shoot. The content goes wider and deeper than any DVD training material I have seen so far. [Read more...]
While there are a lot of shoulder mounts and follow focus available on the market, the options regarding viewfinders are quite limited. Everyone I know love their Z-finder and those who dont have one wished they did and complain about the price.
Well, the Z-man listened and thanks to pressure from competitors (LCDVF anyone?), they just came out with new iterations of the product divided into two product line: the Jr and the Pro. The differences are explained in the chart below (taken from Zacuto web site).
First thing we can notice is the change in z-finder to camera attachment. The new system looks much stronger and will probably give more confidence to those who were afraid of the clip system used in the first system (which never gave me any issues). Zacuto also added a lens tube production boot and cap which is a great idea since I had to design one on my own.
I hope to put my hands on one of these soon to give you a side by side comparison with the existing model.
PeachPit has a new book targeted at photographers who want to move into the video business. It is called, From Still to Motion. You can get the free chapter “Playing with the Light” here.
Judging by the content of the sample chapter, it seems to be targeted more toward the pro / serious videographer but the lighting concepts hold true what ever the gear you use, from Kino Flo lights to DIY setups.
Take a moment to download the sample chapter and read it. If you like it, you can pre-order the book here
You can get it here.
List of changes (as we already talked about):
So no last minute surprises except for the 30fps which is now 29.97 fps. Small change but I know a few people who will be happy about it. On the other hand I guess they will quickly forget about the 29,97 and shoot at 23,976…
Installing the update right now! Expect a review of the new features very soon. You can also read M Bloom early review right now.
Ok, I know my track record with rumors is not that great, but…
Last week, I attended a talk about Color at the Montreal Final Cut usergroup and, at the end, a rep from a third party reseller told us that he had been ask by Apple to schedule meetings after the NAB with his clients who have attended the conference.
Anyone in the business knows what it means: new product!
The question is: what is this product going to be? It is probably not a piece of hardware since it wouldn’t make sense to meet clients to talk about a new Mac (book)Pro. So it has to be a new software or a major change to an existing one.
Some people talked about a new version of Final Cut Studio, I doubt it. The people behind Apple are brilliant and usually follow a well crafted roadmap. 2010 is the year of the iPad in Apple strategic plan. This is why I think the announcement will be related to the iPad. More precisely, it will be some authoring tool targeted at iPad content supplier.
I have no idea of the format of the tool: plugin to FCP, pro version of Pages, totally new app, etc… Yet, I am pretty sure that it is coming. I hope this tool will be accessible to business of every size, like what they did with the App Store instead of the Music Store which is only available to major players.
I know this is all speculations right now but, from a big picture point of view, it makes sense to have such a tool to standardize content development across suppliers.
After reading Dan post (a while ago) about wide angle lenses with wide aperture, it got me thinking. While I have been happy with my 17-40L4
Before going into the list of available options, I think it is worth looking at the effect of wide aperture on wide lenses. After all, the goal of this exercise is to find a wide angle lens that will give us some control over DoF. As we all know, a wide aperture allows more light into the camera which allow us to shoot in lower light which is always good. The other result of aperture is too control the depth of field (DoF), which is another familiar concept. The thing you might not be aware of is how hard it is to get a shallow DoF when shooting ultra wide.
For most of us, this is a good thing because it allows us to shoot in low light without having to worry about keeping the subject in focus. But what happen when you need to shoot wide and want a shallow DoF? Lets look at some numbers.
Dont be shy, I know this site has some Icelandic visitors! Here is the proof from Google Analytic:
I need your help. I am planing to visit Iceland (exclusively to shoot video/photo) at the end of April. I have a few questions regarding travel in your gorgeous homeland, the first being how I am supposed to pronounce ‘Reykjavik’!
For your troubles, I will bring you a (real Canadian) beer or can of maple syrup!
You can find my contact info in the about page of this site.
Thanks!
It is now official. The soon to be released firmware update will give us 24p/25p, live histogram, some better audio and that is about it. Sure it is great, but I guess I am not the only one who was hoping for more (as in 60p@720).
Still, I am an happy camper. On top of having a more film like look, 24p clips will take about 20% less space on my CF cards or be 20% longer.
Are we going to see another firmware update until the 5DMrkIII? I doubt it. The 5D has now evolved into a full cinephotographer tool and Canon answer to the Red Scarlet is probably going to come in some other form.
