05Jul Decoded LP-E8 batteries for your Canon T2i.
I’ve been using cheap generic LP-E8 batteries with my Canon T2i for awhile and they seem to work well enough, but the battery indicator on the camera doesn’t work quit right. When you plug a battery into the camera it gives you an indication of 3/4 full, then sometimes drops to blinking red or worse the camera just shuts off.
This problem came up a few times during filming last week so I thought I’d take a look around and see if the state of generic batteries has changed. The fully decoded LP-E6 batteries have been around for awhile, and I’ve had good luck using them in my Canon 7d, but at the time I bought my T2i there was no generic LP-E8 decoded batteries on the market.
When I started searching around I found a handful of on ebay. I have 6 decoded batteries and 2
on order and should have more information on them soon.
I’m not really sure how long these have been around, and I couldn’t find any real information about them on the web. Regardless, I don’t really want to spend $35 a peace for the official Canon branded batteries
I’ll let you know how they turn out.
04Jul Back from Vacation!
I got back from vacation only to have mother nature knock out the windows in my car and house. Then give me a little taste of flooding. After that I was asked to work on a short film shot in Indianapolis, which took up another week. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked to this month on the site.
Now that things have slowed down a little bit, I should be back to my regular schedule. I’ve have a lot of projects stacking up, so this month might end up being a content storm as I get caught up. I have over 480 e-mails from you guys, that I’ve started to respond to, so if you’ve sent me something in the last 3 or 4 weeks, I will try to get to you as soon as I have time.
Thanks for all of your support and interest!
-Deejay
24Jun Technicolor CineStyle For Canon Cameras
FXguide put together a very handy overview of the Technicolor CineStyle and the advantages it gives you when using green screen. They also have an interview with one of the developers that worked on the project. If you’re interested in color correction and getting the most out of green screen work with your Canon DSLR then you will probably enjoy watching the FXguide Technicolor CineStyle overview.
22Jun Noob Store is up!
I’ve added a new tab to the top of the site. Here you will be able to buy my shock mount and Juicedlink DS214 adapters, along with anything thing else I dream up. Right now the makerbot is back up and running. Shock mount adapters are back up and for sale, Juicedlink DS214 adapters should show up by the beginning of next week.
I also used the down time to update the shock mount’s design based on requests and comments from the first round. I’ve removed the small holes across the top and increased the thickness of the outside plastic to toughen up the design. I also recommend you pick up a $3 threaded cold shoe adapter If you plan on mounting it directly to your camera.
The shock mount does have a cold shoe adapter, but there is no real way to lock it down to your camera by itself. Ton put this video together demonstrating the problem.
So again if you plan to mount this directly to your camera, you’ll probably want to buy a $3 threaded cold shoe adapter.
If there is a demand for it, I can modify the design to exclude the cold shoe and reduce the the over all height to work better with the adapter.
Look for the DS214 adapters to be up soon.
22Jun The Future of Digital photography?
Many people have said that HDR (High Dynamic Range) is the next big thing in photography. Even though HDR is fun to mess around with and gives you very interesting results. The HDR look is very stylized and i’m not 100% convinced that it will move from a niche market to a main stream feature, at least not until an HDR photo can be captured in a single shot.
What I do think will take the camera world by storm is the Light Field Camera by Lytro. I’m not and Optical engineer, so I can’t claim to know everything about lenses and sensors, but from the way I understand it, the Lytro technology basically captures the light’s intensity and distance of travel. It then saves this information with the picture data. This allows you to choose focal points after the fact.
The coolest thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about waiting for the camera to focus. Just press the button and sort out the image later. No word on pricing yet, but I’ve signed up for the pre-order list. Check out Lytro’s gallery to really get an idea of what this could mean for photographers. I hope the camera body doesn’t end up being hideous like the first generation of digital cameras.
22Jun Horrible weather in the Midwest.
I was in the middle of getting caught up from my recent vacation, when the weather took a turn for the worse. Believe it or not there is a street under all that water. To add insult to injury, the flooding was followed up by baseball sized hail. That blue Saturn lost 2 windows, and my house lost 4.
The last few days have been spent patching windows, replacing gutters and hanging out with insurance adjusters. If you’ve sent me an e-mail over the last week, I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m just now finding the time to get back to my regular schedule.
To everyone else getting hammered by weather in the Midwest, best of luck.
15Jun Very affordable 3d printer.
In case you’ve been thinking about buying your own 3d printer, Makerbot is offering a close out deal on the Makerbot cupcake CNC machine. This is the generation before the unit I use, but it’s still a great deal at $455, especially considering the newest model (Thing-0-matic) is $1300.
Despite the set backs with my 3d printer, I still think it’s a great thing to have around the house and $455 is in a price range that makes it even more tempting. At that price I’m even considering buying it as a back up to my printer.
The assembly is a little tricky but Makerbot gives you plenty of pictures, so you shouldn’t have to much trouble figuring it out.
14Jun Where is the next round of shock mounts?
I’ve received quit a number of e-mails asking when the next round of Zoom H1 shock mounts and DS214 adapters will be available. In the picture above I’m holding the reason for my current delays. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an end stop switch. It tells the machine where the platform should start or stop depending on your logic.
I started the Makerbot up when I came back from vacation to print the next round of gear, walked up stairs to start unpacking and turned on some music. Unfortunately I didn’t drop in to check on it’s progress for more then an hour. What I didn’t realize was that the switch on the end stop had failed. My kept running at full speed trying to find the switch, which in turn caused it to chew through a belt and burned up the power supply.
Thanks to this failed switch I am now waiting on the repair parts before I can once again resume production. As soon as I have the parts and the time to fix the problem, I will let you know. Sorry for the delays, I find it as frustrating as you do.
13Jun New CPM FILM TOOLS Rigs.
CPM FILM TOOLS has a new line of rigs out with a military slant. The new carbon fiber rigs are molded in a special olive green plastic giving them a unique gorilla filmmaker look. The flat black on CPM’s other camera systems look great but it’s always nice to have a few color options. The rig pictured above is the “noisy cricket” and it looks like they have the cube cage in the same olive green color as well.
Adding to the military look, each of these new unit has a stamped ID tag somewhere on the rig. I can’t really justify buying a new rig based on the color alone, but if green was a color choice when I bought mine DSLR RIG, I probably would have gone half and half.
I’ve had great luck with my CPM FILM TOOLS gear, so if you’re looking to upgrade to nicer equipment the CPM website is a good place to start your search.
