Food shot from a recent job for Sobey’s.
Iphone pix from around Southern Ontario. Shot with 645 & Iphone cam.
iPhone cam and cross process for this shot of the first snowfall of the year.
One of our pumpkins this year- shot with the iPhone camera, tweaked in Toonpaint, then Shakeitphoto, text in LineCamera.
Cheers!
Another day of movie-magic: spent the day on JV’s Steadicam rig which created a nice flow and energy for every shot -had The Camwave as well- a great wireless transmitter that made viewing the image really pleasant.
Being on location today in the wake of Hurricane Sandy posed interesting challenges- the shots called for a sunny-look, and we were hoping to see into the backyard of our location. Even at a T1.8, at 800 ISO, I couldn’t get the BG to expose brightly enough- it was grey, blustery and drizzly, so the grips went to work and built a “corner-cove” made up of a 12 x 20’ and 12 x 12’ white gryfflon with silks over top. The Sparks then lit them with 3 x 4K pars and the rig allowed for a 6K par with a spot lens to create a sun-source and provided the perfect backlight we were looking for. Another 6K through an 8x 8’ diffusion emulated a sky-light source and some Vistabeams with trace paper provided some wrap and a nice eye-light for our talent indoors.
Altogether it was a sunny day inside with smooth, steadicam moves, while the real, dreary day passed by.
A great interview on CNN with Emmanuel Jal, musician, activist and “peace soldier”. There is a short clip of the video “Cush” we shot in this bit- check it out here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/10/18/exp-sudans-war-child-sings-for-peace.cnn
Fall colors in Southern Ontario.
My new favourite portrait light, the Profoto Striplight M was the right tool for the job. We hooked it up to a 2400 watt-second pack for maximum output and it delivered generously with output and shape. It created a beautiful, even light with a gorgeous drop-shadow and had a nice sense of punch and falloff.
Definitely going to be using this fixture again and again.
What a pleasure last week working with the IQ 180, Phaseone 80 Megapixel back on a Hasselblad H4X, supplied by CM&P. The clients needs were large files for printing up to 4 x 6’ and up and this combo produced outstanding results.
We shot on an 80mm prime at F16- a very sweet spot for the lens and got great results. The skin tones were perfect for color and smoothness. You can check out more details at CM&P website: http://www.cmandp.com
On a recent job, I had the pleasure of using a Dalsa 4k 180mm prime lens. I had never heard of these lenses before, but understand that they are re-housed Leica lenses. Lovely bokeh, very sharp and great contrast and color.
I believe the aperture was T2.
It’s on the list to use these lenses on a job in the future.
Not sure where to go to find more info on them, but know that Sim Digital has a set.
This job called for a color gradient on a white background; sounds easy enough, but getting that right degree of gradation requires a bit of tweaking between lens choice, shooting stop, camera to subject to background distance, and then the light and color.
So in this setup I used an 85mm lens, lit to an T8, and fired 3 x 2k fresnels with Hampshire frost at a white cyc. After that the grips rolled out a 20’ colored gel across a goal-posted pipe to allow easy adjustability of where the gradient was on the wall as well as how hard or soft an edge we liked.
The right smoothness came from shooting a T5.6, so we ND’d the lens and had the perfect result.
To darken the blue, top double and single scrims were employed- ND gels could also be stretched across the goalpost as another option.
A travelling beauty-light for this shot- an HMI, 4k Aurasoft, equipped with a 300HZ Powergems flicker-free ballast. All other HMI’s for this shoot were powered up by Powergems amazing flicker-free ballasts.
At last, a solution to using HMI’s for hi-speed cinematography. WFW in Toronto has equipped a truck with these ballasts.
The Grips secured the Aurasoft to a Hybrid Dolly, and the shot called for tracking back while effects were taking place, at 240 fps.
A stroll at our favourite spot.
Shot with DMD camera.
More image making fun, this time a stills gig for a Christmas catalog. An annual affair, we bring the studio to the location, creating a large black tent over the shooting area for shots that require longer time exposures, and a large, white tent for larger, shiny items, kind of like shooting in a diffusion-cube. Pro cameras, lenses and capture systems were provided by CM&P-and assistants Zach, Frankie, Aidas and J-Rock worked like a well oiled machine.
Another bit of rigging fun- the G-jib with a Oconnor head and a tilt plate standing by provided the right distance and angle for this overhead shot. With digital cine-cameras having native daylight balanced sensors I am finding more and more that I prefer to light with daylight- gives a cleaner looking image overall and doesn’t make a meta-data version of a raw or log file look radically different. Only hurdle is flicker- Power Gems has come out with a line of hi-speed, flicker free ballasts which are apparently wonderful and flicker-free to 1000 frames per second! I have yet to test these but I have heard great things. This will make a huge difference for hi-speed work given that the light output from an HMI is around 5x that of a tungsten fixture, and there never seems to be enough light when shooting hi frame rates!
Forgot to post about this cool innovation by Gaffer RM- I needed a perfect ellipsis behind my subjects, so we hid an ETC 750W source four right behind them and RM had masterfully cut an oval pattern in a piece of galvanized metal- we added a couple of layers of light opal to the head, a bit of Soft FX diffusion to the lens, and shot a T2-2.8 split, providing just the right spread / falloff from white to grey. Patterns can be custom designed and printed by Rosco, but there was no time from the survey to the shoot- a little bit of cutting and testing produced great results again.
Fun with impromptu rigs on a gig from last week- needed to spin a product while jibbing down on a macro lens- not having a turntable nearby, we used a magliner dolly, turned on it’s side and placed the product on a tray on top. While not perfect, a great looking shot resulted nonetheless. Shown in this pic is a camera which is sitting on a hybrid dolly on track, with a 4’ slider on the head, a new oconnor (120) fluid head, with a cartoni dutch head on top of that. Lens was an Arri 32mm macro. Quite a contraption with the dolly and all but lots of fun.
Getting set up for a green screen shoot- 20x40 green screen was lit with two 20ks very far back. Key light was a 20 x 40’ light grid cloth with four T12’s. Back lights were two 10k’s with 250 frames and some fill ready to go was a bunch of 5ks bounced into a 20x 40 silver lame’, white side. The 28-76 zoom was the perfect lens for the job.
I am excited about giving this lens a whirl on an upcoming job- a 28-76mm
Angenieux Optimo. Wide open is t2.6 and it’s puny as far as zoom lenses go.
Covers 5k nicely and smooth.
From today’s job- a RED1 system with a 25-250mm zoom.
Remote focus via Barrtech system as anything connected to the camera might have compromised the smoothness of the move- made use of an Arri geared head for precision framing and operating on the buttery Original Slider.Also had a Microforce zoom control attached.
Power was provided AC while remote focus was v-dock batteries.