05May Low priced wide Rokinon 8mm lens.
Josh writes in, “Is there a wide angle lens you could recommend on a low budget?”
Wide angle and low price normally don’t go well together, but there is one option that comes to mind. The Rokinon FE8M-C 8mm F3.5 Fisheye Lens is very wide and very affordable. Generally you can find this lens for between $250 and $300. The Rokinon 8mm f3.5 lens comes in Canon, Nikon, Sony Alpha, Pentax, and Olympus 4/3 mounts, so you can put this on almost any camera.
All the controls on this lens are manual, but with a lens this wide most everything in front of the camera will be in focus. The Rokinon 8mm is about as good as it gets for under $300 and if you’re making skate videos and don’t want to risk braking more expensive lenses like the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, this should do the trick. Plus 8mm is very wide, even on a crop sensor camera.
03May Universal DSLR Support Rig
I’ve been seeing this pop up on ebay quit a bit lately. $40 gets you a the U shape camera mount. This seems like a good deal, but there is a down side. The handy looking monitor and microphone mount shown in the picture are sold separately. The price for the “sold separately” mount and adapter is $49.
It seems a little odd that the accessory adapter is more then the rig, so really this is a $90 DSLR cage. That still seems like a good price if you’re looking for your first affordable camera rig. If you don’t have a monitor, you could always turn your camera sideways and place the camera grip in one hand and the round part of the rig in the other.
I think originally this rig was called the Cam Caddie Scorpion. This demo video gives you a good idea of what this setup is all about even if it’s a little bit goofy.
Of course you could always use a couple of flash bracket for $15 or $20 to accomplish about the same thing.
02May My makerbot has shipped
I just received an e-mail from makerbot industries. My 3d printer has shipped. I’m out of town for the next 2 weeks, but I hope to be back home to assemble this by the end of the month. I have a lot of great ideas I plan to test out. I’ll post some more pictures once everything shows up. This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
01May Canon G12 first impression.
I’ve been in the market for a point and shoot camera for while. I wanted something that shoots RAW and has a tough build. I was torn between the Canon G12 and the Nikon P7000, both of which had a lot of the same features. I finally had a chance to hit up a camera store and get my hands on both cameras. After fondling both the P7000 and the G12 I felt the flip out screen put the Canon G12 slightly ahead.
This is also a camera that both my fiancée and I will be using. She pretty much fell in love with the camera as soon as she saw it. So of course the Canon G12 wins.
The Build is very nice and the buttons and controls all feel very solid. The Canon G12 is almost the same size as the body of my Canon t2i so it’s not extremely compact, but not having to carry lenses should save some space. 10 mega pixel is plenty for a point and shoot camera and I’m also interested in trying out the built in HDR mode. The G12 also has some interesting low light features I plan to test out.
The controls look very similar to many of Canon’s other cameras, so there shouldn’t be much of a learning curve. I have to admit the style is very classic, it reminds me of an old 35mm camera and the metal makes it feel like you’re holding something significant. In fact the build on the Canon G12 feels much better then the build of the Canon t2i. I still need to spend a little time playing around with it before I put together a full review, but it is a cool little camera.
30Apr Film look: Technicolor CineStyle v.s. Marvels Cine picture style
One of the most popular methods for color correction with DSLR footage is to shoot with a flat picture style. This usually gives you more latitude when trying to grade footage in post. Canon has worked jointly with Technicolor to develop a new “flat” picture style for Canon DSLRs. One of the most popular Flat pictures styles, and one that I often recommend is Marvels Cine Picture style.
I thought It might be interesting to put these “flat” picture styles head to head and see how they compare. I also threw in Marvels Cine Picture style version 1.2 to get an idea of how the “flat” picture style has evolved over the last couple of years.
After spending some time playing with the footage in Colorista, I found that the new Canon Technicolor CineStyle gave me a little bit more wiggle room when grading the test shots. I would like to point out that I didn’t find the difference between the Technicolor and Marvels Cine 3.4 picture styles to be very dramatic. The difference was so slight that It really could come down to personal taste. The original Marvels Cine 1.2 held up quit well, although it’s very easy to see that the flat picture style has advanced quit a bit since it’s release.
You can download Technicolor CineStyle picture style here, and Marvels Cine Picture style here. You will need to install the EOS Utility program that comes on a disk with your camera before you upload a picture style to your DSLR. Marvel has a great post with pictures covering the picture style installation process.
One other cool thing is that Red Giant now offers the original version of Colorista for free. So if you’re new to color correction, that’s a great place to start. Once you’re hooked on that, you can always spend some money and upgrade to Colorista II down the road.
My tests were shot on the Canon 7d with the Canon 35mm f1.4 at 1/60 ISO 200 and f1.4. If you’d like to see some results of this flat style on the Canon T2i Check out Zech’s blog post.
29Apr Stop motion workflow guide?
Last year I ended up working on a few 30 second stop motion projects. It was tedious and took a lot of research and time. I put together this production logo as a proof of concept. I’ve received a few requests to cover my stop motion workflow and go over helpful tips and tricks when editing.
Honestly, it’s a lot of work and a hard subject to tackle. Before I dive in and burn up 2 or 3 of my weekends putting a demo project together and working on tutorials, I thought I would put the question out. Are there a lot of you interested in stop motion work and a solid workflow for Premiere Pro?
If enough people are interested I’ll add it to my list of things to cover.
29Apr Running out of Hard drive space.
I was backing up projects to my server today, when I realized that I’m now down to 200GB of space. I think it might be time for an upgrade. Currently, there are 6 hard drives installed in this mess of a case. Two 500GB drives, and Four 1TB drives in RAID 1, grand total, 5TB with 3TB of usable space. When I upgraded my server a few years ago, 1TB drives where the way to go, now however, 2TB drives are down around $70 and 3TB drives are around $140. Basically this means I can get the same protection and space in 2 drives instead of 6. Add 2 more drives and I’ll have another 2 or 3TB of drive space to spare.
Hard drives are one of those things that everyone needs, but no one really feels like buying. I can spend $500 to keep my footage safe and I know it’s something I need to do, but then I start thinking, “I could just burn 20 or 30 DVDs and use the money leftover to buy a lens or lighting gear“. Sure it’s easy to think that way and you might even get away with it for awhile, but there will come a day when you’re trying to find a clip from that project you did last year. You dig through a whole spool of burned DVDs until you finally find the disk you need, but when you lift it out of the spool there’s a big gash across it, or worse, the reflective top has flaked off. This is actually how I ended up loosing a few of the special feature clips on one of the last big projects I worked on.
Thankfully, hard drive space keeps getting cheaper. Those 1TB Western Digital drives I bought a few years ago where around $180 a peace, now they’re down to around $50. Big hard drives also mean fewer hard drives (hopefully), so I probably don’t need all that noise cooling and temperature monitoring installed any more.
After the hard drive upgrade, it might be time to test out the Cat-6 in my house to make sure it can handle 10GBASE-T. Network drives work a lot better if you have a big pipe.
If any of you have setup any of these 3TB drives in RAID 1, let me know how it worked out. I had a few problems with a number of 1.5TB Seagate drives in RAID 1 when I was upgrading my desktop awhile back. For some reason one of the drives would go into sleep mode while files were being copied and cause the RAID controller to start a rebuild on what it considered a “failed drive”. The RAID rebuild took almost 12 hours every time it happened and I finally had to get 2 drives replaced before the problem was solved. I would like to try and avoid that kind of hassle this go around.
28Apr Simple little electronics project.
Had a little free time today and thought it might be interesting to run a few tests. So I spent some time pulling apart one of those cheap generic Canon RC-1 remotes. It took a little bit to figure out what pins on the IC where being used for the Canon portion of the remote since the remote works with several camera brands. But after a little bit of probing around with a meter I found the pins and soldered on a cable and a few spare buttons I had laying around the house.
The result is 2 large buttons and a 3 foot wire attached to an IR remote that can start and stop recording and focus the camera by taking a picture. Are there any practical applications? Probably, but for the most part I was just freshening up my soldering skills before my Makerbot shows up next week.
The remote I took apart wasn’t working before I cracked it open, so I actually had to fix it before I broke it. I was hoping to find some information on the IC, with the idea of making a remote with really big buttons and AAA batteries. Unfortunately nothing is written on the IC so I guess my dreams of an over sized camera remote are crushed for now.
27Apr 35mod wireless DSLR video trigger review
The DSLR video trigger is a flexible fiber optic attachment for your Canon RC-5 and RC-6 remote. Basically it allows you to position your remote control in a convenient location and aim the signal from the remote back at your camera’s IR sensor. The intent is to use this as a handle mount start/stop control for your DSLR rig.
For $35 you get the fiber optic adapter and all the Velcro you need to attach either an RC-5 or RC-6 remote. For an extra $15 35mod will include an RC-5 remote control with the kit, or you could always buy one on amazon or ebay if you don’t mind waiting a little longer.
The flexible fiber optic cable was a little shorter then I had expected, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. All you really need to do is point the end of the flex cable in the general direction of the IR sensor on the front of your camera and you’re good to go.
After spending some time playing around with the DSLR video trigger, I found that it was easy to accidentally bump the flex cable when picking up and setting down the rig. It seems like this was taken into consideration since the package contains plenty of extra Velcro. Simply take one of the extra peaces and secure the end of the flexible cable to a solid edge on your camera support. This keeps the probe from being bent in the wrong direction when reaching for your DSLR cage.
The DSLR video trigger worked quit well on my shoulder rig. Having a button on the hand grip saves the hassle of trying to reach over and press record on the camera, which can be even more difficult if you have your DSLR in a cage configuration.
I can safely say that it’s a handy little device. You could probably DIY something together that gives you the same results, but by the time you heat shrink wires and solider on leads, you’ll probably have spent more time and effort then it’s worth. Plus there is something to be said for a clean little package that includes everything you need in one purchase. $35 seems like a reasonable price for what you get.
If you’re interested in buying one of these for your rig, or want to see a few more videos of this little guy in action, swing by the 35mod website and check it out.
26Apr Ball Head cold shoe adapter rant
I was searching for some 1/4 20 hardware and this Marshall monitor adapter kept showing up in the search results. The listed price is $16.04, that to me is priced a little high when you have cheaper options, but it looks nice and easy, so sure, I guess I can pay a little extra. But when I go to checkout I find that shipping is $7. This brings the price up to $23.04. Does it really cost $7 to ship something the size of my thumb? I doubt it.
In reality you can get the VariZoom Adjustable Swivel Shoe Mount (free shipping) that looks exactly the same as the Marshall adapter for $19.99, but when you see $16.04 and $19.99 in the lineup it’s easy to go for the one with a lower price. Then, when you’re not paying attention, in comes the inflated shipping charges to save the day.
It would be nice if everything had “price + shipping” listed next to it. Don’t include it in the price of the item and tell me it’s “free shipping” and don’t show me a much lower price, then mark up shipping costs by double or triple. I just want to know the exact price up front.
Alright I should go have some coffee and settle down.
