DJ Kast

Hey all,

I have a project coming up similar to "Carpool Karaoke". For safety/repeatability we'll be using a tow rig. I'm wondering if people have experience/advice on camera monitoring solutions? Right now I'm thinking we'll use Canon 5DMKIII's in cages with HDMI Teradek's mounted sending signal to the production vehicle and use a Decimator or a Black Magic quad viewer to a single monitor. Is there a more light weight or smarter solution? (I'm pretty opposed to go pros). Anything I might be missing?

Any experience/advice is much appreciated!

Thanks!

Road to Perdition is at the top of my list. I thought the Lord of the Rings series shot by Andrew Lesnie was right up there as well. Casablanca. It's tough to dispute anybody's picks. I completely agree with the Public Enemies comment.

Road to Perdition is at the top of my list. I thought the Lord of the Rings series shot by Andrew Lesnie was right up there as well. Casablanca. It's tough to dispute anybody's picks. I completely agree with the Public Enemies comment.

We have a lot of VERY gently used video gear with prices for each individual item listed below. At the bottom is a price for the entire kit. More pictures are available upon request. Happy Shopping!

Panasonic HVX 200 With all original cables, original manual battery charger, and 2 batteries- 2100

PS Technik Mini 35 adapter- 2300

PS Technik Pl mount for Cinema Lens' - 250

2 16gb P2 Cards - 250 each

All Lens' are Nikon Nikkor series EXCEPT the 180mm

24mm f2 - 300

28mm f2.8 - 150

50mm f1.2 – 300

85mm f1.8 – 250

180mm f2.5 Tamron 35th anniversary lens – 550

Gelatin Filter Holder – 40

2 Nikon Lens Doublers – 40 each

Entire Kit - 6100

We have a lot of VERY gently used video gear with prices for each individual item listed below. At the bottom is a price for the entire kit. More pictures are available upon request. Happy Shopping! :D

Panasonic HVX 200 With all original cables, original manual battery charger, and 2 batteries- 2600

PS Technik Mini 35 adapter- 2300

PS Technik Pl mount for Cinema Lens' - 250

2 16gb P2 Cards - 250 each

All Lens' are Nikon Nikkor series EXCEPT the 180mm

24mm f2 - 300

28mm f2.8 - 150

50mm f1.2 – 300

85mm f1.8 – 250

180mm f2.5 Tamron 35th anniversary lens – 550

Gelatin Filter Holder – 40

2 Nikon Lens Doublers – 40 each

Entire Kit - 6500

Read more: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=50161#ixzz1Kf3RQUjw

The shot on the top and bottom have fog working in the photographers favor, and the shot in the center is and HDR, so the multiple exposures were used to build the image. For what you want to do, the easiest thing would be to shoot early in the morning on a moist or humid day.

Hello everybody!

 

Some time ago I saw a picture of a big kind of ring light that you hang from the ceiling to get a nice, soft, green screen light and I've totally forgot what it was called...

 

Also I've been searching for it and I haven't seen any shoot with that kind of light in it, everybody shoots with different kinds of kinos and fluorescence light etc. What is the pros and the cons about this thing? I've heard it gives you a really smooth and even lighting, but if there are so few that's actually using it, it must be something bad about it...

 

Thank you.

This probably isn't what you're talking about, but we've been using a product called Reflecmedia which is an l.e.d. ring light that sits around the lens and lights a gray backdrop that has thousands of tiny glass beads on it. When the ring light is turned on the backdrop reflects a perfectly even green. You have to have the subject pretty close to the backdrop or you can get a tiny shadow around the subjects body, but we've used it hundreds of times and its the easiest greens creen work we do. definitely worth a look

I had a chance to get my hands on the F3 last Friday when a rental company in my area got one. Currently we shoot on the 5D and 7D, so that was our bar that we wanted it to beat.

When we walked in it was set up with an Angenieux 10:1 and it had a distinctive video look. Colors were a little too vibrant, but when DOF fell off it got somewhat muddy. (It was in the "Cine-like" mode and S-Log wasn't inabled because that firmware update isn't out yet) I was much more impressed when we put a Zeiss 35mm Super speed on. Color was much nicer and I was more able to appreciate the look of the video.

At one point we opened the window and shot the Milwaukee skyline at night, and the sky still had detail! We did some under cranking, and with a flashlight next to the camera we lit an overpass about 75yds away. I noticed it was actually pretty decent on the rolling shutter issues, and was incredible with low light. We pumped the gain all the way up, and it still was pretty noiseless.

Build wise it's basically a suped up ex-3 and the eye piece is annoying. (standard def, and in the way) If I had to make a conclusion, I'd say I'd love to have it on a shoot to put it through some practical riggers, but I was kinda thrilled to have my hands on an actual video camera again! :D

definitely a grad filter. you can see the way it darkens the tone of the white building as the camera tilts down.

First hands on and test footage:

 

Frank

That video was probably shot with a 5D!

Namaste,

 

How can one typically know the manufacturing date of the lens by its serial number?

 

For example: Canon 8-64 serial # 30304 ( mine )

 

Is there any more infos that can be obtained from the serial number.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

With best regards

Are there a set of letters before the numbers? Canon has never officially given away their date codes, but I found a link to some info on it.

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/DATECODE.HTM

Hope it helps!

Gotcha! thanks guys.

We're always strapped for time! :)

The one instance I'm trying to avoid running into again, was we were shooting in a warm barn on a 10 degree day, and it was a run and gun stills shoot (26 shots and 5 locations in just two 10 hr. days!) so we had to run from outside to inside pretty frequently, and the steam from the cows breath expecially was killing us! Luckily the farmer had a hair dryer, so I used that on the lens while we were shooting.

I was just trying to find another way to prevent the fogging in case I ever find myself in a situation where power isn't accessible, and time is a factor again.

Chris, what foam are you referring to? Thanks for all the advice guys!

12/3 SJO Cord.

 

Unless you buy 1000' yer not gonna get much of a Price break

 

So from the Box Store it is about 1.50 a foot- could be more, haven't priced it in along time.

 

25' of Cord x $1.50 = $37.50

 

Male connector $8.75

Female Connector $9.25

 

Total = $55.50

 

Built 25' Cord from Film Tools= $44.30

 

Buy the Cord from Film Tools

12/3 1.06 per foot

or

250' for .98 a foot.

dont forget the 40 dollars filmtools will charge for shipping. :)

Hey all,

I was looking around for some products that help prevent the lens from fogging up and I found this: http://www.filmtools.com/neclfogel.html

I'm curious as to whether anyone else has used this, and if it worked. Also, I'm kinda creeped out about rubbing a dry cloth made of who knows what on crazy expensive glass, so I'm hoping someone else has used this and can verify it for me or suggest something else.

Hopefully the suggestion doesn't involve an AC continuously blowing a hairdryer on the lens...been there done that!

Oh! As far as the starting and stopping of the camera, I think a Professor Farnsworth has invented something called the fing-longer for that.

Jag 35 has also made some remote control zoom and follow focus systems that are around 500 bucks. might be worth a look if you dont end up shooting with an actual video camera. :D

We have a lot of VERY gently used video gear with prices for each individual item listed below. At the bottom is a price for the entire kit. More pictures are available upon request. Happy Shopping! :D

Panasonic HVX 200 With all original cables, original manual battery charger, and 2 batteries- 2600

PS Technik Mini 35 adapter- 2300

PS Technik Pl mount for Cinema Lens' - 250

2 16gb P2 Cards - 250 each

All Lens' are Nikon Nikkor series EXCEPT the 180mm

24mm f2 - 300

28mm f2.8 - 150

50mm f1.2 – 300

85mm f1.8 – 250

180mm f2.5 Tamron 35th anniversary lens – 550

Gelatin Filter Holder – 40

2 Nikon Lens Doublers – 40 each

Entire Kit - 6500

Awesome! Can't wait for the next leg of the journey!

The LCD isn't that helpful anyway. Jag 35 made an HDMI splitter that allows you to send the signal to two separate monitors at once. If you're in a real pinch you can always go standard def out from camera (phono to rca composite) to a monitor, and then from that monitor to a secondary. Hopefully canons next hdslr that shoots uncompressed raw video, while making daquries can also maintain two signals of video!

Like others have said, the flatter the better. I would suggest a Neutral picture style. Make sure to turn down your sharpness to 0. Contrast to 0. Saturation down to -1, and color tone set to 0 as well. This should give you the most latitude in post. Happy shooting!

I love it! If I were a producer, I would sign a check and let him write in any amount he finds reasonable, then I would double it. You have to pay for that kind of talent.

I would say there are several other issues involved in deciding on using 7D's for a show...

 

From my experience the 5D/7D make beautiful pictures, but are painful to work with in a professional capacity for several reasons...

 

1) video village - if you want to be able to have directors be able to watch monitors in HD at video village you're going to need to have an HDMI enabled onboard monitor for each camera, and and HDMI splitter (which has to be powered) to send signal to the monitors in video village as well as the on board (you could use AJA boxes to convert the HDMI to HD-SDI instead). Alternatively you could monitor in SD but that's dangerous for focus.

 

The hpx-170, on the other hand, has a dedicated HD-SDI out.

 

2) sound - with no time code or lockit boxes and no professional input for sound editorial is probably going to have to rely purely on the slate for syncing - this could be an issue depending on turn around and so forth. Also no TC = unhappy scripty.

 

The hpx-170, on the other hand, has TC and XLR inputs

 

3) Focus - how are you handling focus on your show? There are multiple approaches, the ops can pull their own which works fairly well but tends to enforce a certain 'style.' Alternatively if you're going for a more controlled look things become a little trickier. Still lenses make beautiful pictures, but are horrible for AC's - you can consider options like manually geared lenses or converting your cams to PL mounts, but these are naturally pricey.

 

A mini 35 rig, on the other hand, has a PL mount and rods for follow focus.

 

4) exposure and focus controls in camera - When I shoot digital I rely heavily on certain standard video camera functions for exposure and focus - these being zebras and peaking. These wonderful tools allow you to be able to tell if your shot is in focus and properly exposed while you're rolling. The DSLR's have substitutes for these BUT they only work when you are not rolling.

 

The hpx-170, on the other hand, has zebras and peaking and more...

 

Now, I'm not saying that mini35/hpx combo is perfect by a long shot - it is noisy, bad in low light and unwieldy for handheld. It is, on the other hand, a real video camera. The DSLR's are still cameras that happen to record video.

 

Personally I'm glad I'm not in your position because I would find it very difficult to choose. The 7D will make somewhat prettier pictures, but also be somewhat harder to work with.

There is a program called "Plural Eyes" that will sync the sound captured on an external sound recording device to the video shot with HDSLR's. It matches the sound with the sound that is recorded by the camera, and is a fairly simple solution to the sync issue, but it is always best to have a slate for back up.

As far as which cam is best, the hvx isn't as pretty, but there are so many downfalls to the 5D and the 7D's. Its a shame to loose up to two stops of light with the mini 35 adapter, but you will probably get burned at somepoint or another with an HDSLR. The rolling shutter, recording limitations, moray-issues, or vertical banding are all pot holes you could easily fall into...It is a sexy image, though.

The firmware update is now out, and if budget is of any concern, go with the 5D. I would recomend getting a sound recording device like an H4N to get the cleanest, and most accurate audio. The 5d and the mk iv still are pretty much garbage for recording sound.

Also, if I remember correctly, the RedRock adapter is the cheapest adapter on the market, and requires significantly more light than many of the other systems (i.e. ps technic).

I work most extensively with the HVX 200 with the P+S Technic, and I've rated it at 160 ISO. It's about two stops faster without the adapter, so I think no matter where you go adapterwise, you'll need a significant amount of light. The HVX 200A is a faster camera, so maybe thats an option.