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Please, don’t be a bad photographers!

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There are too many bad pro photographers. How do I know? Simple: their clients come to me for a reshoot. This is a bit annoying because I wished the client came to me the first time instead.

And you know what the most annoying part of this is? Most of the time, these photographers are technically better than me, have better lights and don’t have to borrow their backdrop from their neighbor (thank you Simon!). The reason they failed to satisfy their client is that they can’t listen to their client’s needs.

I am serious! Here is a recap of my last shoot: the clients just got their second baby and hired a photographer to shoot her and have some family portraits. The client wanted the focus to be on their new girl but the photographer decided to focus on their first daughter because she was older, ridiculously cute and loves to play the model.

The result? The clients did not get what they wanted. They are happy with the pictures they got, but their expectations were not completely filled, which is why they came to me.

While I had a lot of fun doing the shoot, photographer #1 could easily have prevented this by asking about the client expectations and listening for the answer.

I have many similar stories: photographers who over-process images (heavy skin airbrushing should be discussed with the client first!), don’t shoot pictures of guests or are too “artistic” for the clients tastes.

Asking about expectations takes a few minutes and ensures you will be working toward your client satisfaction.

Don’t be a bad photographer, ask the client!

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Music video shooting tips

June 21, 2010 By

I have been working real hard for the past few weeks on a music video we shot for one of my friend. I shot a few clips for him in the past (the single camera on tripod kind of thing) but this time, he wanted something more. Since I am always up for a new challenge and I was totally naive about the amount of time it would take to shoot the clip, I accepted.

While the whole thing could have been done in a weekend under perfect circumstances (and a bit more experience and preparations), we did a few mistakes that really made it harder to do the edit.

Since I am the kind of guy who loves to show my errors in front of thousands of people, I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of all the things I learned so it could help anyone who would be crazy enough to start the same endeavor!

Note: a lot of these tips are targeted at people crazy enough to do clips which require lip sync. If you can keep the images and the music separated, things will be much easier.

Planning

Having a plan in your head is good, but not enough. Music video are all about timing and if you dont want to end up with blanks in your sequence that you wont know how to fill, make sure you have a storyboard covering the whole clip! In my case, I totally forgot to get something to cover the bridge section of the song, 32 seconds of nothingness… I guess it is good to stir creativity.

Syncing

If you can find a clip concept where you can get away with lip syncing, do it! It is a huge time sink. That being said, in the case you have to show the singer actually singing, here are a few pointers:

  • Shoot with as many camera as you can (see below)
  • Prepare a MP3 version of the song with a very loud and short BEEP at the start and end.
  • Use an electronic slate to sync the various camera together (in case because the audio is not never perfect)
  • dont start editing until you have trimmed and synced all your clips

Shooting

Bring as many camera as you can! In our case, we only had 2 5DMrkII and I wish we had at least one more. The more coverage you have of each sequence, the easier it will be once you are in the edit room. For Traumatic Head Injury, I decided to focus mostly on the head so we shot a few versions with a close up cam on Jon face (using a 100mm Macro and 24-70L2.8) and the other camera right on top of him. Here is a picture of the ghetto setup we had.

The shooting settings were f4 to 5.6, 1/50 sec at between ISO 800 and 1600. Shooting with a wider aperture would have been asking for trouble since it was already hard to manage the depth of field. I would strongly advice you to use zooms when working in tight spaces since they make framing so much easier.

Framing

Don’t capture the singer lips unless you have too. This way, you can reuse sequences in other part of the clip and no one will ever notice. Also, in a multicam setup, make sure there is a significant change in the point of view from one cam to the other, else it just feels weird when jumping points of view.

Lighting

We shot the clip with minimal gear. We only had two cameras, two tripods, a slider and three lenses (50mm, 24-70L & 100macro) but no lights. Fortunately, the surgery lights were quite good but I wish we had a few more to put at the back of the ‘surgeon’ to have a nice outline. Actually, if there was one piece of gear that I would have rented for this shoot, it would have been a few small spot lights, preferably LED to not eat the place too much.

Location / preparation

Location is important. We had access to a surgery room and I think it really contributes to the feel of the clip. I wish we could have used more of it. For example, I wish we had a shot of the stretcher coming in the surgery room for the intro sequence, or as a dreamy sequence in the bridge section.

Unfortunately, all these good ideas are worthless if you can’t execute them! So make sure you visit the location a few days before and give yourself enough time to come up with concepts and shots.

Consistency

If you are going to shoot multiple take of a scene, make sure everyone does the same thing every time. And if you see the singing head at the same time, make sure the actions always happen at the same time. This may sound obvious but it is so hard to execute perfectly. We had a lot of issues with this for our clip, so much that maybe 40% of the footage was unusable because of a lack of consistency.

The solution (that I figured afterward) is to have someone narrating the actions as they are coming while watching the initial shot on a laptop.

Editing

My first idea was to assemble all my clips as a single multi-clip in FCP and cut from there. Unfortunately, it did not work, my machine was not able to manage the 16 simultaneous HD sequences, even with a RAID-0 of 2 VelociRaptor. My next approach was to create small resolution proxies but, there again, 16 feeds were too much so I gave up and stacked all the sequences in the timeline and cut from there. If anyone has advices regarding this, I would love to hear from you!

What I would have done differently?

Lots of things, but the one thing that hurt me the most which I could not fix once in the edit room was the lack of coverage of some parts of the song. At the beginning of the clip, I am forced to cut on the beat while I know (as most of my friend told me) that it would have been better to be off beat for a few cuts to increase intensity and expectations.

Unfortunately, I couldnt because I would not have had enough footage to make each shot look different. This is why getting coverage is important and you can never have enough cameras filming at once! Never!

Conclusion

I have shot films, wedding video, travel and corporate video and let me tell you: music video are the hardest! If you are getting paid to to it, make sure you allocate 2-3x more time for edits and don’t sell yourself short. I am sure there is a lot of money to be made shooting music video with HDSLR, but that is something I will leave for others!

The result

Here is the first minute of the clip. The current grading is a place holder, made under a minute in Magic Bullet Mojo, until the final style is applied.

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Picture Style explained

December 2, 2009 By

I have talked about using picture style in the past but I think this video explains the whole thing much better than I ever could. If you visit the Vimeo page, you will see a list of presets to download for both 5D and 7D.

The title of the clip is a bit misleading: the camera still has the same dynamic range, it just moves the extremes values toward the mid tones so nothing get clipped. Still, the end result is the appearance of a wider dynamic range once you are in post since you can push the color much further. This is what people mean when they say that you should shoot ‘flat’.

There is a big debate at cinema5D about if you should shoot flat and grade in post or shoot with the desired effect. I am more of a shoot flat and fix color in post kind of guy because it allows me to change my mind as many times as I want regarding the style I want to use. But by shoot directly with the intended look, you (1) save time in post and (2) possibly end up with a better end result since all the information stored in the file is actually the information you want.

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Meggie + Corneliu: how we did it

September 19, 2009 By

A few people asked me to give more details about how we shot the love story clip (posted here). Instead of writing a structured post, I am just going to go with the flow and write everything that comes to my mind.

The clip was shot on two days. Originally, it was all planed to be done in a single afternoon (and end with a sunset shot) but a series of incidents (read: traffic) slowed us down and delayed everything so we had to split the shoot.

Pro Tip: Plan your itinerary ahead of time, map it in Google Map and make sure everyone has a copy. Park the car as close as you can to the location. Walking from one location to the next is a big time sink. Even more so when you have to carry tripods, sliders, bags, props, etc… Try to travel with as few cars as possible to reduce time spent finding a parking spot.

The crew was: Robert as the main shooter/director, me getting the wide shots and details, Christina to carry stuff and use the reflector and Florin as a photographer.

Pro tip: have the smallest crew you can manage and make sure everyone know his role. The less you are, the easier it is to manage and the faster you can move and make decisions.

[Read more...]

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A quick tip if you are using a LCD view finder (like the Z-Finder)

September 9, 2009 By

Reviewing the clips I did last Monday, I realized the exposure was not what I remember seeing on the LCD while shooting. After some thinking, I figured it out: I used to set the LCD brightness level to auto.  Since I was shooting outside, the ambient light sensor was calibrating the LCD brightness as if it was used in bright conditions while in fact I was looking at the LCD in a dark environment (the Z-finder).

The solution was, of course, to set the LCD brightness manually (first option in the second yellow menu) to a lower level. Pretty obvious tip but I guess (and hope) that I am not the only person who forgot about this!

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What is the best shutter speed for movie mode?

August 24, 2009 By

I have seen this question a few times in various forums so I thought it would be another good fit for the “The Basics” section.

Since people rarely explain what they would consider “best”, I assume they are talking about the best shutter speed to achieve a filmic look.

This brings us to the question “what makes a film look like film compared to tv or Canon 5d standard clips” ? Contrary to the general belief, it is not the number of frames per second but the duration of each exposure that creates the look. [Read more...]

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Tips: buy camera gear with your credit card

August 19, 2009 By

This one might be obvious to many but it just saved me about 100$ so I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience.

Two weeks ago, my 50mm f1.4 broke, the camera LCD displayed the dreaded ERR 1 message. I bought the lens about 15 months ago so it was out of Canon warranty (12 months). A bit frustrated, I went to the camera shop where I got it and paid the 20$ to assess how much the actual repair would cost me. I got the bill back today and the total was around 80$.

Lucky for me, I remembered that I bought the lens with my credit card (VISA) and it had an extended warranty feature which doubles any warranty up to another year. I quickly called the insurance company to confirm and it  seems like everything is fine! Only have a #$%#$ form to fill.

Of course it is going to take forever to repair but at least it will be free. I suggest  you check if your cards provide the same coverage, it was free and worth it!

The sad part of the story is that I will have to use the 50mmf1.8 for filming for the next few weeks which I already foresee as a real pain.

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Urban Exploration guide for Photographers

August 13, 2009 By

This post is not specifically related the the Canon 5dMRkII. I wrote it as a complement to a blog post on the DPS about urban exploration. This is a collection of all the tips/tricks I have learned during my various explorations. I tried to regroup the ideas by subject as much as I could. Hope you enjoy this. And yes, next time I visit a plant, I will shoot some clips!

IMG_2494_3_2

What to bring

When going out for an urban exploration run, I try to be as light as possible. You never know when you will have to squeeze in a small hole in a wall or climb over an obstacle. So, the less gear you have, the easier these task will be.

With the exception of the tripod, all of my gear fits in my Lowepro Slingshot 200.

[Read more...]

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Focal length and perspective

July 2, 2009 By

This is a repost from my old blog. It was one of the most visited page and since I keep seeing people asking the same question over and over again, I think it would be a good idea to forward them here. I have a few more of these posts that I will file under ‘learning the basics’.

Using tools in new ways is an essential skill for the photographer who wants to develop his creativity. In this post, I am going to do a quick exploration of the link between focal length and perspective.

To better appreciate the differences between wide and long lenses, it is important to understand two key principles:

  • The focal length of a lens determines the field of view. This number, expressed as an angle, determines the amount of information that is available in the viewfinder / sensor.
  • Sensor/negative size is constant. This means that if you get more information in the frame (using a wider lens), all of these elements will take less space on the sensor to make them fit.

Knowing that, if you take two shots of a subject at different lens range (let say 24mm and 70mm) and you want the subject to be the same size in both picture, you will have to be closer to the subject when using the short lens.

Now lets put this into practice! The shot bellow is done using a 24-70f2.8L at its shortest focal length (efl 24mm). Notice how much of the background is visible and the distance between the two pots.

24mm

[Read more...]

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Features you should look for when buying a lens (for photography)

May 22, 2009 By

This article was first posted on my older photography blog. Since I am going to reuse the domain for something else, I will slowly move the most useful articles over here.

So you are at the store, you have the money in hand, you know what you want and even the spouse agreed that you need a new lens. Yet, you cannot make up your choice between the three lenses the guy has put on the counter. They all have the same aperture, same zoom range and about the same price. Which one should you pick?

Some times, the devil is in the details. In this article, we are going to look at all the small features that might swing your vote from one lens to the other.

Circular Aperture

Circular aperture means that when you are shooting at very small aperture (ex: f/22), the aperture remains circular instead of going hex/octa/decagonal. This is mostly visible on bright circular subjects like the sun or street lights when shooting at night. It is a very important feature for night and landscape photographers because it gives the light sources an unnatural shape.

Non rotating front element

This feature is only available on zoom lenses and it allows the front element to keep its orientation while zooming. This means that if you put a filter on your lens, it will stay in the same position no matter how much you zoom in or out. This is mandatory when using gradient filters so the dark part remains in the upper part of the frame.

Constant length / internal focusing

When zooming or focusing, the front element of some lenses moves back and forth. This might seem like a small thing but it can get down right annoying when you want to take macro shots and the bug fly away each time the front element gets too close. Also, as time passes by, the lens gets looser and the front element might start to slide in or out without you doing anything. Some people also see this as a way for dust to get inside the lens. Constant length lenses keep their size what ever is happening.

Weather sealing

You camera might not be weather sealed but it is still reassuring to know that your lens has some protection when it is accidentally splashed or when you really want to take a shot and there is a small rain. There are two levels of weather sealing for Canon lenses. Click here for a full list of all Canon weather sealed lenses.

Big fat zoom / focus ring

No mater the size of your fingers, having big rings means that you can make small adjustments without your eye having to leave the view finder or fearing that your finger will hit the front lens element.

Focus distance switch

The goal of these switches is to constrain the minimal focusing distance to a certain range. This can be useful to prevent the lens from focusing on objects close by, but it is mostly useful to speed up focusing when shooting at objects in the longer range.

Tripod collar ring

I always thought that all lenses that could be mounted on a tripod came with a tripod so I was quite surprised when I saw that my macro lens (100mm f/2.8 Macro) could have a tripod ring but did not come with one. Of course Canon sees this as a way to sell me another over priced accessory, but thanks to Chinese copy cats, there are now cheap alternatives on eBay.

Now that my rant is over, I find it very convenient that my lens could be mounted directly on the tripod instead of having to mount the camera. First it allows a better weight balance then it makes it easier to move from landscape to portrait mode.

Conclusion

None of the features above should be seen as a deal breaker, but if you are torn between two equivalent lenses from two manufacturers, it is a good idea to look at these features and see which lens has the ones you might need.

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