06Aug Hard drive failure.
Hard drive failure is a pain and although I back up drives regularly, sometimes I get lazy. Case in point, the hard drive above (Seagate momentus XT) was backed up 3 months ago. I normally try to run backups on my laptop drives at least once a month, but I was on the road the last few months and kind of forgot about it. Thankfully I save all of my footage and photos to a portable raid 1 drive when i’m on the road. The bad thing is that I saved the last 8 or so project files I was working on to the drive above and now the work on those projects is reset to zero.
I still have all of my footage, but the time lines that were lost represent about 40 hours worth of work. Which means I’ll have to spend most of next week re editing. Basically the moral of the store is, if you don’t already, BACK YOUR DATA UP!
One thing that makes it easier for me to back up my laptop drive is to use an SATA drive docking station, they run about $25 and you can easily drop in either a 2.5 or 3.5 hard drive. I’ve had good luck using Norton Ghost but there are a number of free options on the market. Drop a spare drive in, press a button, and go to bed. In the morning you have a full back up of your drive that’s ready to be dropped in to your laptop should the event arise. After this little fiasco, I’ll probably stay on top of things for 6 or 8 months, but it’s easy to forget about it and slack off.
03Aug Lilliput 569GL 5 inch monitor in the wild.
LJ posted this unboxing video of the new Lilliput 569GL monitor. I’ve been interested to see how Lilliput’s 5 inch monitor stacks up. Coming in at $200, it’s well under any of the other 5 inch hdmi monitors in this category. It’s also one of the few monitors in this price range sporting proper BNC connectors. Lilliput’s larger monitors don’t have the blinking problem that many other field monitors have. I wonder if the DVI trick works on the 5 inch version as well as it works on the their 7 and 8 inch models.
Lilliput’s monitor selection keeps getting more and more advanced. If you’re interested in the 569GL monitor you can , as long as you don’t mind waiting for Hong Kong shipping. If you need it here faster you can pay an extra $30 and pick it up on amazon. Either way it seems like a pretty good deal.
02Aug Keeping things organized with zipper bags.
Here we have 3 generic battery chargers each for a different type of battery, and basically they all look about the same. Sure if you look closely there is a small label in the center telling you what battery type is supported, but it still gets kind of confusing. When you have multiple cameras and several battery types it’s nice to use something to keep things separated and organized.
It’s back to school season and zipper bags are easy to find. I picked these single colored pencil bags up at walmart for $2.50 a peace, but i’m sure any local department store will carry something like this. These bags are simple and easy to write on and a good way to keep your batteries and camera parts from getting mixed up. If I ask someone to grab me a 7d battery out of the tan pouch, they shouldn’t have any problem finding what I need. I can also keep all of the generic chargers separated. That way there is no wasted time checking to see which charger goes with which type of battery.
This also seems to prevent that rats nest that forms at the bottom of a gear bag after a long day of filming. It wasn’t so much of a problem when I only had 2 or 3 batteries for each camera but as it stands I have 10 t2i batteries, 10 Sony batteries, and 16 LP-E6 batteries. I know separating your equipment and sorting out your gear isn’t quit as glamorous or interesting as lenses and camera rigs but if you can’t find a battery or the proper cable to connect (insert random equipment here), you might as well not even have a camera. To quote back to the future II ” those boards don’t work on water! Unless you got power”. I love that movie.
01Aug Do you really need an EVF for critical focus on your DSLR?
I’m often asked to recommend a good EVF (electronic view finder) adapter for critical focus. I will start out by saying I don’t use and don’t care for EVF adapters. If you’re trying to achieve critical focus, its a cheaper and easier option to use the 5x and 10x zoom on your camera.
Using an EVF adapter on your camera is basically like attaching a magnifying glass to an LCD screen. Most screens are scaling the HD footage out of your camera to some other equivalent aspect ratio. Which means the magnifying glass is giving you a close up of something that isn’t the true image. The only thing I really see as a good thing about EVF adapters is the fact that it completely covers the monitor when shooting in direct sun light. This could be a plus for some applications, but I prefer to use a sun hood.
I’m sure there are others who feel EVF adpaters are great. I tend to disagree, but if you’re in the market for an EVF, there is a flood of them on the market to choose from
31Jul SmallHD DP4 first impressions.
Above are the SmallHD DP4 and the Sony CLM V55 monitors. The size and resolution is about the same but the smallHD’s pixels are closer together. Both monitors blink but, from early testing, it seems like the Sony CLM v55 recovers faster. The upside to the DP4 is that in record mode you can choose to have your image scale to full screen. If you’re using a Canon 7d it wont be a major difference although the scaling function does give the DP4 a little bit of an advantage.
The first thing you see as you open up the SmallHD DP4 is the user manual. The box itself is shiny black with a medium size SmallHD logo. The user manual is only 32 pages but covers the features of the DP4 well enough.
Under the user manual is the DP4 monitor and a small box containing a swivel mount cold shoe adapter. The screen comes with a thin sheet plastic protector for shipping but Smallhd has also included a sheet of acrylic that can be attached to the front of the monitor with adhesive to protect the monitor.
Under the monitor is a small pile of wires and connectors along with all the extras included with the DP4 monitor. One thing I did find interesting when thumbing through the manual is PIP (picture in picture) mode. This allows you to display footage from both the composite and HDMI inputs at the same time. I didn’t actually know this was a feature, but it could come in handy if you were trying to work with multiple sources.
The monitor does include a right angle HDMI adapter which is nice, but the swivel mount cold shoe adapter seems a little cheap. Mine has come loose twice while testing.
Even though there are dual battery mounts, the monitor will run just fine with a single battery. Having the option to run with 2 batteries should give you a lot longer between battery change outs. I’m interested to see how long the DP4 will run with 2 generic LP-E6 batteries.
The LP-E6 batteries fit very snug, but I would have liked to see some kind of push release button. The monitor supports up to 18V so if you have an existing battery system, there should be plenty of options to adapt the DP4 barrel plug. I’ll post some more comparison shots as soon as I get a little more time to test.
30Jul The mail man left me some gear.
Just made it home from Denver about an hour ago and there is a large stack of packages waiting to be opened. A lot of the time I order random parts and peaces from Hong Kong but some of this shipped a little closer to home. The problem with stuff from China is that it has a 30 day window of delivery. Sometimes you get what you ordered in a few weeks but more often then not you already forgot you ordered it when it shows up.
I opened everything up and started sorting through it all. In no real order we have:
- 15 foot usb cable to test with the Okii usb follow focus
- A few packs of linear bearings for the makerbot
- Light Craft 72mm Fader ND filter to test against the cheaper polaroid Fader ND
- LP-E6 and Sony NP-FM500H batteries + chargers for monitors
- It’s hard to see, but there is a smallhd DP4 monitor underneath the pile that will soon be up against the Sony CLM v55
- A large spool of black plastic from a new supplier, much cheaper then Makerbot’s store.
- A bright and shiny Sandisk Extreme 30 MB/s card. I’ll be using this to test higher bit rates in magic lantern. The price has dropped down to $36.
I’ll have some more posts on all of this stuff once I get a chance to start playing around. This is going to be a busy month so stay tuned.
SanDisk 16gb Extreme 30MB/s Edition SDHC High Performance Card
29Jul Writing music with a sampler.
Your film footage might be great, but it’s nothing without a good sound track. I can’t afford to pay for top 40 music, so most of the time I write my own. Normally the first thing I reach for is a field recorder and the . In about 15 minutes you can turn a 25 cent keyboard into a usable track that could be the foundation to your next sound track. I know I make it look kind of easy in this video, but don’t be fooled, it takes some practice to get used to this type of music creation.
There are a lot of people who have given up on writing music on samplers because they can’t get the hang of it. Which means the used market is full of . If you don’t have the musical chops maybe you can find a talented friend to write the music for you. Or you could always just play 3 notes on the piano then repeat. That seems to work more often then you would think.
I used this sampler to write the music for this music video as well.
29Jul 11 inch friction arm with Rod clamp.
I’ve been using these adjustable friction arms for quit awhile and they work great, plus they’re cheaper then most of the other adjustable arms on the market. It seems like every few months they come out with an updated model that has some other minor feature. This time they’ve included with the arm a nice little .
The price has gone up to about $55 a peace if you want these units with the rail clamp, so the deal isn’t quit as sweet as it has been in the past, but it’s probably worth it if rails are your only mounting option. For some reason 15mm rail clamps have always been a little over priced. Even the cheapest clamps on the market are $15 to $30 a peace, that seems high for a peace of metal the size of my thumb.
If you don’t need the 15mm rail adapter you can pick up the for about $30 on ebay. Or you can pay $20 extra for faster shipping
28Jul Native support for previewing Canon RAW files in Windows 7 and Vista.
This originated from Canon Rumers.
Microsoft has quietly released a native codec for Vista and Windows 7 that supports preview of most Canon RAW files. In the past I’ve relied on Canon’s Digital Photo Professional application if I needed to quickly rummage through photos and Adobe Lightroom if I really want to dig in and mess around with curves. This has worked for me in the past, but I will admit that Canon’s DPP program is a little slow and clunky to use. Native windows support might knock it out of the running for quick photo selection.
You can download the Codec here. Select MicrosoftCodecPack_amd64 if you have a 64 bit OS and MicrosoftCodecPack_x86 if you have a 32 bit OS. Once you have the Codec downloaded you’ll have to except a few terms and conditions then go through a few random clicks and you’re done.
The file next to the window “IMG_3764” now shows up properly in thumb nail view. If you click properties and look you’ll notice under Type of file, it says CR2 file. That’s the RAW format picture file right from the camera.
If you double click on the picture it now shows up in “Windows Live Photo Gallery” which quickly brings up thumb nails of pictures on the camera by month and date. Whenever you scroll your mouse over an image it gives you a larger thumbnail view. Overall it seems to have very snappy performance, but remember it’s still just a quick picture viewer.
If you try to select a RAW photo to edit you’ll notice that all editing features are grayed out and a little message pops up next to the photo that says “windows Live Photo Gallery can’t fix this photo because of its file format”. So basically you can look but you can’t touch.
I’ve talked to quit a few people that like to shoot RAW+JPG because it’s easier and quicker to use the JPG files as a reference, select your photo’s, then work with the RAW files. It seems like this might be a good way to move away from that workflow and just shoot raw. That should save you a little bit of buffer time if you’re out shooting in burst mode.
27Jul My rig mounting secrets. 1/4 20 threads anywhere.
I get this question all the time.
How do you attach your monitor, microphones, etc. to your DSLR RIG?
The answer is very simple but very tricky to find. There are 2 items I use all the time to attach my gear to holes or 1/4 20 threads in my DSLR rigs. Pictured above is a 1/4 20 thumb nut and a peace of 1/4 20 all thread. The all thread comes in lengths of 1 1/4 inch. These two items make things very simple. If you have a 1/4 20 thread on your DSLR rig you can simply attach the all thread stud and tighten down the thumb screw to secure it. Then attach a . If you have a hole in your rig you can thread the thumb screw on and leave a little bit of thread sticking out the other side.
This example is on the low price 3 legged rig I’ve been testing. Each handle has a 1/4 20 female thread on top of it. You can very easily attach this small peace of all thread and secure it with the thumb nut. Then you can put on whatever you need for something like a monitor or microphone mount.
Here I have a attached to the end. This allows me to use the included cold shoe on the Sony CLM v55 to mount the monitor on the handle. It took me almost a week of searching years ago to find a supplier that sold this nut and peace of all thread. The good news is that I found it. The bad news is that they often have a minimum order. You can buy the all thread stud here and the 1/4 20 thumb nut here. The minimum order for the all thread stud is around 100 and I don’t remember what the minimum order was for the thumb nuts. Regardless, I have about 200 of each in my collection and I use them all the time.
If you don’t mind an all metal thumb nut you can pick up , but other then cutting your own, I haven’t found an easier way to get a hold of the all thread studs. If you’re confused or having trouble finding a way to attach equipment to your rig, these are a must have item. If there is enough of an interest, maybe I’ll add them to the NOOB store for a few bucks. That way you don’t end up with way more then you need.
