A few weeks ago, I was looking for contributors to the blog and Jeremy was one of the selected few. Jeremy will publish periodic articles about the life of a rookie HDSLR worker. I am sure his experiences will connect to a bunch of readers. My goal is to cover the spectrum from both end: Jeremy is the “Rookie” and I have another contributor coming up who is a full time pro. I hope you enjoy these posts.
After my post requesting help, I received a lot of applications from all kind of people. I selected Jeremy because he is a perfect example of the new generation of HDSLR film maker: people with no formal film school training who decides to make an important career change. He is embracing the HDSLR revolution and will probably rise with it.
Film is fun. Let me clarify, making movies, weather it is for business or pleasure has it’s ups and downs, but if you are reading this there is a 90% chance that you agree that film is fun. I am at the belief that sometimes your career ends up finding you, the thing that you really want to do kinda springs out and place itself in your lap. Maybe it was a friend who called you up to be an extra in a movie they were making for laughs. Maybe it was creating a skate board video with friends that planted the film seed in your mind. But somewhere, along the path of life you have made the decision to move in the film direction and that you were not going to settle for being second best, you were going to do it and do it right.
That is me. I got a taste of film from college where I just pumped out the videos with my Sony Handycam with friends and found a passion. Of course life had taken me in a different direction, I got a job marketing for a real estate firm and one thing led to another, my Handycam was shuffled to the back of the closet and was forgotten about.
6 months ago I was laid off from my job. The high end real estate that I was marketing stopped selling because short sales were up, the company I worked for had to let me go and I was left with two options. Find a job doing what I was good at, or make a career for myself with what I wanted to do and that I truly believe I will thrive at. The film seed was still in my heart, it just needed to be watered.
This blog will be about my life creating a film career for myself. I have invested a lot of money into the required programs and computers. I am armed with my 7D
If there is one thing no one was expecting this week, it has to be the release of a new HDSLR camera. Yet, that is exactly what Canon did. The new Rebel T2i is, on paper, an incredible package priced ridiculously low.
For the photographer
18mp on a 1.6x crop factor, I will have to see some real life sample shots to judge image quality but it is interesting to see the ISO going to 6400 (extendable to 12k) for an entry level toy. That is quite good if image quality is at the rendez-vous.
It also benefits from a lot of features that used to be restricted to the double prosumer bodies like improved auto focus and light metering. From a photographer perspective, it should be considered a decent upgrade for any 50D or older camera owner (if you dont need the burst rate). At least, from a specs sheet perspective.
For the videographer
Remember how 5DMrkII owners felt when the 7D was released? Well, 7D owners are now feeling the same! The new rebel can shoot video full manual and has variable frame rate (24p, 25p, 30, 50p and 60p), something to make 5DMrkII owners jealous. I know because I am!
Of course, the camera will probably not have the same low light image quality as the 5DMrkII (and maybe the 7D) and it is not full frame so it does have its limitations. Yet, it is a fraction of the cost of its ‘better’ alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »
I am giving an HDSLR training class next Sunday. If you are in the Montreal area and would like to know everything there is to know about HDSLR, contact me! The course is for photographers who want to shoot video so we are starting from the very basics and end at the moment where the files are imported in FCP. You will learn everything in between!
The class will be in French and will last around 3 hours, more if needed. It is mostly targeted at 5DMrkII owners but 95% of the content is also valid for 7D and 1D owners. Users of other brands can attend but about 25% of the content wont be relevant to them (ex: I dont know how picture style works with the D300s).
For the amount of content I am packing in and the small size of the class (5 learners), this is ridiculously cheap @ 130$ for what you will gain.
So, if you are interested, contact me for more details.
This one has been one of my biggest pet peeve for a while and I think it is time to use my very limited influence to correct this:
We should say HDSLR, not HD DSLR!
You probably know what a SLR camera is: SLR standing for Single Lens Reflex. A few years ago, the D was added for “Digital”. Actually, it should have been NSLR for Numeric SLR (since the SLR at the time were already using digital technologies) but I think marketing departments thought it did not sound cool enough and went with DSLR.
Fast forward a few years and the term HDSLR starts popping around as an acronym for Hybrid Digital Single Lens Reflex. By hybrid we mean a camera that can take both stills and videos.
The fact that the first popular HDSLR (Nikon D90
- DSLR already produced high definition images
- It does not say anything about the video capability of the camera.
So a DSLR that can shoot video should be called HDSLR! Pass the word.
Now that 2009 is almost over, it is a good time to look back at all the products we have tried during the year and see which one stood above the rest.
My first idea was to name a product of the year but I quickly realize that it would not work and I should split the contenders in various categories.
Shoulder rig
While not a rig by it self, the Shape telescopic arm has to be the best stabilization device one can get. With some tinkering, it could be installed on pretty much any rig or even at the bottom of a bare camera. I can foresee similar version of this product to be in the catalog of every manufacturers in 2010.
Read the rest of this entry »
D-Focus came up yesterday with a new innovative product: it is a camera plate with an adjustable arm to install a follow focus. Dave calls it the DFocus DSLR mount.
This is a genius idea! This little gadget allows you to use a follow focus with small rigs like the Zacuto Gorilla series without upsetting too much the rig center of gravity.
I have yet to try it out but, from a requirement perspective, this is the product I have been wanting for a while without even thinking about it. No need to carry my indi rails and camera plate anymore!
On a side note, I guess it means I will have to revise my post about the 350$ follow focus rig now. The price got slashed almost in half!
My only complain so far: it should be called the DFocus HDSLR mount…
You can order it here
Things might have been quite on the blog but not for me! I have been invited to present HDSLR at the Montreal Final Cut Pro user group. This is a great honor for so many reasons, the first being that the MtlFCP group is huge and the tickets for the show sold out in less than two days! Of course, the attractive and unbeatable price of 5$ per tickets might have something to do with its popularity.
So, if you are from the Montreal area, don’t miss the conf. It is going to be good! Mathieu and me are going to cover pretty much everything there is to say/know about filming with HDSLR in less than 3 hours. We will have gear for you to try out from pretty much every manufacturer too so it will be a great opportunity to play with the rigs you have always been dreaming of buying.
If you cant make it, no worries. All the content will be put online via the Final Cut Mtl podcast.
