Blog about News, Tips and tutorial about HDSLR cameras
Our good friends at CrumplePop just released a new Final Cut Pro plugin file kit (?), Lumineux which emulates the light leaking effects of old lenses. Take a look:
While the usage in the demo clips may be a little over the top, this is something that is getting quite trendy (if not, why would they have made the product in the first place?) with the increasing popularity of mounting old lenses on HDSLRs.
Yesterday Apple presented FCP X at the FCP Supermeet. It was about time would say a few people (including me!) but I think it is worth it. From what I am gathering, they had to rebuilt the whole application from the ground up so they could (finally) use some of the best Apple technologies such as Grand Central and 64bit processing.
Want to see an almost complete list of all the new features? Check FilmMakerMagazine.
The key new features for me are the native editing of H.264 clips, background rendering and automatic image stabilization. These three things would help us to save a lot of time when editing. I am also very curious about the implementation of the face and scene detection. It is something I talked about in the past and it could be a great time saver too. There are also a lot of improvement on the timeline to remove some of its most frustrating behaviors.
The new app price is extremely aggressive. At 299$ it is within the budget of anyone who has a Mac. While I am very happy about the new pricing, I dont understand the change. I dont think the demand for such an app is very elastic so it can’t be to increase bottom lines. The interesting thing now is to guess what is going to happen to the other apps in the suite such as Motion. Are they going to sell them individually at 299$ each too? In such a case, its not such a great deal for most pros!
Now the bad news: it is not out yet. We have to wait until June, which means anything between 6 to 10 weeks. A little bit far from the early 2011 announced by Steve Jobs. Expect an announcement from Adobe very soon.
I just received this video from Lance, one of our reader.
Aren’t these cools? And you want to know the best part? They are actually quite affordable! At 115$ for a set for 4 wheels, they are within the budget of pretty much all videographers.
Here is a sample footage clip.
Slider based on wheels are better than those on rails for various reasons and I can’t wait to get my set to give these a proper review! You can order yours on the official website.
Edit: link to mode RW info about pricing
Edit: added the sample footage clip.
After a small delay, here comes my first release for 2011: RigsEnvy!
RigsEnvy is like Flickr but it replaces dogs and flowers pictures with HDSLR rigs. I wanted to create a microsite for HDSLR users to showcase and talk about their rigs.
The site is still in beta, but I invite you to check it out now and tell me what you think.
Dont be shy, whatever the rig you got, publish it! The goal is not to showcase the cream of the crop but to show the rest of the world what people are actually using to get the job done.
The site is voluntarily feature limited right now. Before committing more time to the project, I want to get some feedback from you, the users. I have some great ideas for the site but, in the end, it is your participation, that will turn this into a success.
Feel free to contact me if you have any ideas/suggestions/what ever.
RigsEnvy was just a small first step. I am currently working on two other web applications (!), much bigger in scope and impact. And guess what is the best way to be informed about these? Joining the mailing list! (look in the column at your right).
So dont be shy and visit us at www.rigsenvy.com
It seems like I have too many books in my library so I decided to start a small contest to give them away.
The first price I will be giving away is the very good DSLR Cinema book (review).
There are two ways to win:
Either join the HDSLR mailing list by entering your email in the popup window or (if you closed it and do not want to reset your cookies) in the input box on the right column.
OR you can go the Twitter way and follow us (http://twitter.com/canon5dtips) on Twitter. Then retweet this in your timeline:
Enter to win the DSLR Cinema book from Canon5dTips. Pls RT. Info at: http://www.canon5dtips.com/con_1
It is very important to copy/paste the tweet as it is since it is how I am going to find you back!
I will let this run until the end of the month then randomly pick a winner among the people who respected the entry conditions.
Tip: get on the mailing list, there are other good things to get from having your name there!
I really don’t like lawyers so lets just keep them away and say that you can’t enter the contest if you are not allowed to do so for what ever the reason based on your location.
I will pay the shipping cost up to 15$.
You may have noticed that I just added a mailing list to the blog. Sorry for the pop up but it is the best way to make sure everyone notice. If you missed the pop up (or are reading this from a RSS reader), just look at the subscription form in the right column.
That a lot of good stuff is coming up, and very soon!
Up until now, the site has been mostly targeted at producing reviews about either HDSLR gear or books. We are about to expand our offer very soon, I can’t say how/where yet but put your name on the list and you will be among the first to know, and benefit from it!
Note 1: this list will only be used for announcements and status reports. Expect 1-2 emails per month maximum.
Note 2: This is a double opt-in list which means you have to confirm your subscription by clicking the link you received in your email.
I am not the first to cover the news so lets go straight to the interesting parts. Forget the T3, it only record in 720p, lets look at the Canon T3i
The spec sheet is looks pretty standard/expected until we hit these two points:
The big word here is not the manual exposure control (and the 720p60!) but the new movie digital zoom. In the description it says:
magnify the center of the image by 3–10x while at the same time maintaining gorgeous Canon Full HD image quality
I just dont understand how they can do it! To zoom 10x while still reading 1080 pixel high means the sensor would have to have at least 10,800 pixels! I think this is a typo and the 10x zoom is only available when shooting in 640×480 mode. Anyone can confirm this?
Clearly Canon realized the demand for vari-angle LCD and is acting on it. If you think it is useless, it is simply because you have never tried it! The question is: are they going to add this feature to the other, more advanced, camera models? I hope they do (at least up to the next 5DMrkIII or 7DMrkII) but I doubt it.
For those who still enjoy taking pictures, Canon improved the automatic mode (they now call it A+) and the metering/autofocus. I have no idea how much of an improvement this A+ mode is since I have not used the Auto mode in the last 8 years… I am not a big fan of camera deciding how to exposure my shots but I am sure this camera will be very popular among soccer moms and amateurs.
Priced at about 800$, the Canon T3i
I am very happy to announce that I am ready to take pre-orders for the OSCT!
What is it? It is a L shapped bracket that you insert between the camera and the camera plate. You can then attach a cable trigger to the camera to press the SET button to start/stop video recording. This is mostly useful when working with shoulder rigs. Here is a video to explain the whole thing.
If you dont own a shoulder rig you dont really need this. On the other hand, if you do own a rig, this is the most useful piece of gear ever! As I say in the video above, it:
Seriously, this is the kind of thing you dont know you were missing until you see it! And I am not saying this because I am trying to sell them, it is true!
35$+shipping
This is the first batch of the product. As such, I am selling it a a minimum price. In exchange, I am not painting/coating the bracket. Next version will probably sell for around 50-60$ but will be black and better looking. Well, if I manage to sell the initial batch first!
Nope! I talked about the cost of creating new pieces of gear in a previous post. This thing is way more complicated to build than what you think. My initial prototypes used thin folded metal plate and lets just say that it was not a success. While the OSCT is not indestructible, it is solid. Very solid.
Also, 35$ if pretty cheap when you take into account the amount of time it takes to build these little thing. I know because I did 7 versions before my final prototype!
As soon as I get enough pre-orders, I will start production and should get the products within a week.
If you are interested, please contact me at: boss @ canon5dtips .com and I will give you instructions. I will have to work this way until I have an order form up.
Edit: there was a bug that screwed up the display of the video. Now it is fixed. Thanks Michel for the notice!
This post is a reaction to SBG comment about my budget rig article. SBG said :
$1500 pretty much only gets you a rig – definitely not a rig AND a quality lens. The pricing of shoulder rigs and accessories is laughable. $107 for a straight grip?? Over $1000 for a matte box? puh-leese!
I am sure a lot of people agree with him. I do too which is why I am working on the budget gear article series. The thing is, I am also working on putting on the market a very specialized piece of gear for HDSLR users. Old time readers probably remember me talking about this about a year ago.
My idea is original and solves a real problem for HDSLR shooters. Everyone who saw it loved it and wondered why no one ever thought about it. Seeing all these interested people, my question to them was: how much are you willing to pay for it? I was hoping to hear 30-50$ so I could make enough profit to make it worth the investment, especially since alternatives are twice more expensive. I have to admit that the part in question looks deceptively simple but people where suggesting me to sell it at a price point under my manufacturing cost! Outch!
Unless you worked in the field, it is hard to guess how much it cost to CNC a piece of metal. I know because I was surprised too! Trust me, it is more than what you think! As soon as you put the words precision and steel in the same sentence, you know it will cost a lot. It is like adding Italian after design. At least, in my case, it should not go out of style the next month.
And, to make things worst, you can’t have these puppies build on order (unless you are RRM and stack orders), most shops will ask for orders to be at least X big if you don’t want to be charged prototype pricing for each unit (which is the equivalent of adding unique to Italian design).
So, you end up investing a massive amount of money without knowing if the product will sell or not. Not a very comfortable situation.
On one hand, if you badly evaluated the market you will end up losing money because you can’t sell your products. On the other hand, if you were right and the market loves your product, some people (from China/Korea/India) will build replicas and sell them at half the price and destroy your market. And just to prove my point, here is a cheap knock off of the Z-finder!
Of course, if you can put yourself in a position where your product can’t be replicated for some technical/economical reasons, it is like hitting the jack pot like David did with the D-Focus.
I am currently at this crossroad. Having to make a decision if I am willing to risk nearly a month worth of earnings on a single deal or not.
What would you do?
Hi guys,
I finally managed to update the blog theme. It was about time! While I loved the red/dark style, it was hard to read for a lot of people so I decided to move to something with a better contrast. I also increased the font size and column width to make it easier on the eye.
I am still working on the design so expect more changes over the weekend but everything should be functional.
How do you feel about it?
