12Feb Remote control focusing and recording on your Canon DSLR.
One very handy thing and a function that isn’t covered very well in the manual is the ability to start and stop recording using a simple IR remote control. You can also use this same remote to pull focus before you begin recording.
With either the Canon RC-1 or a generic IR remote you can set your canon 7d, 60d, or t2i up to focus and record video (sorry no 5d mark II support). By taking a photo with the remote the camera will auto focus on the target in the focusing square. Once the camera is focused on the object the 2 second button will start and stop video recording on your camera.
This handy feature allows you to focus remotely when recording yourself in a video blog like the one above. If you’re interested in the generic remote you can pick one up for around $5. They don’t have the reach of the more expensive Canon RC-1 and they aren’t as durable, but they’re completely usable and cheap to replace.
11Feb Atomos Ninja HDMI ProRes field recorder monitor Released.
To be honest I had almost forgotten about this interesting little product until this morning, when out of the blue I received an e-mail from Atomos letting me know that I still had my place in the pre-order line. Apparently pre orders will start shipping this month.
If you haven’t heard of this yet then let me start by saying this could be a dream come true for many. Basically the Atomos Ninja is a HDMI field recorder with a 2.5 notebook hard-drive caddy system that record directly to Apple ProRes. If that wasn’t enough it also allows 2 additional audio channels to be recoded into the ProRes stream. To top that off it also provides a headphone output and a built in monitor. The batteries are hot swappable so you don’t have to worry about power and the drive caddy has every connection under the sun.
So basically you get a nice clean and handy way to record hdmi video output to native ProRes and when your done you simply plug the hard drive directly into your computer. If you’re a Final Cut Pro user this is probably the coolest thing since Steve Jobs, but as a PC user I will find little joy in the Atomos Ninja. So if any of you Apple users out there would like my place in line, please let me know a.s.a.p. But in exchange I expect a full report.
Alright, so I know the video is a little on the cheese side but it does get the basic point across. If you want to find out more about this Little guy just swing over to the Atomos Ninja site and check it out. With ninja in the title it has to be good, right?
Also if you’re still looking for a field monitor then you might want to consider this package directly from Lilliput. It comes with a battery that has a built in 1/4 20 adapter, a cold shoe adapter, and a monitor for $249. Thats a pretty good deal
10Feb Decoded Generic batteries for your 7d, 60d, and 5d mark II. Are they any good?
I’m not sure what it is about film makers, but it always seems like they’re trying to save money. Often the things they want to cut corners on are items that could be really helpful. But every once in awhile something comes along that is actually over priced for no reason at all.
In case you haven’t guess, i’m referring to name brand batteries. In the past it has been very easy to find and use generic batteries in camera equipment, but in the last few years manufactures have been trying to add specialized chips that render generic batteries useless or, at the very least, less effective in daily use.
Canon is no exception. They have added special chips to their batteries that communicate battery level and identifying information to the camera. Without this chip, you get a warning from your camera each time you turn it on and no battery level meter to speak of. But the generic battery companies have struck back by decoding the chip and adding it to the newest line of replacement LP-E6 batteries.
In the past I have been reluctant to recommend generic batteries because of my own experience with a battery melting down. With that in mind I spent almost 6 months testing and using these batteries to make sure they work as well as the Canon originals. I can safely say that they do.
Two of the batteries pictured above are generic and 2 are original. After 6 months of use I can’t tell the difference, and if it weren’t for the mark I placed on the bottom I would have no idea which is which. I wont say that they are better then the name brand battery, but I will say that I haven’t experienced any noticeable difference in performance.
If you do plan to buy the generic batteries, I recommend sticking to batteries in the $20 price range as some of the $6.95 ebay specials are a bit shifty. The generic batteries above are made by Opteka and re-branded by a company in China. If you don’t want the fake canon branding you can have your batteries in under a week from amazon, but if you do want them re-branded it will take about 3 weeks from china and the best place to look is ebay.
If you still don’t trust them, then there are still plenty of canon brand batteries to go around.
09Feb Camera Body Cap with a built in lens
Sometimes your camera is packed away in a camera bag with a body cap on it, when out of the blue an airplane dives out of the sky in front of you. If only you had a lens on your camera instead of a body cap. You could have gotten the shot that would have put your name on the cover of time magazine.
Alright so it probably wont be that dramatic but it is nice to add a little bit of function to something that would otherwise just protect your camera. The Loreo lens is basically a nice body cap for your dslr that also happens to be a lens.
This lens wont be changing the face of photography or anything like that, but for $35 what other lens could you buy? For that price it protects your camera body, it’s a lens, and it’s a fun talking peace at your next camera party(whatever that means).
This is a 36mm f5.6 prime and I have no idea how they fit 3 elements in there. I’m sure you’ll get your money’s worth just spending a weekend messing around with it.
08Feb Okii USB follow focus review
My Okii USB follow focus showed up in the mail on Thursday of last week and I was able to spend the entire weekend messing around with it. The first notable thing about the Okii USB follow focus is the packaging. The unit arrived in a small tin with a nice little see-through cover and came adorned with a green Okii banner. It’s always nice to see a little style in a products packaging. It makes you feel like the manufacture went that extra mile to make a good product.
Once you open up the nice little case you’ll find the follow focus unit and a small bag containing 2 Allen wrenches and a handful of colored replacement buttons. One of these Allen wrenches will remove the focusing knob, the other allows you to remove the control board inside the unit so that you can change out white buttons with a color of your choice.
The build quality is very nice. The body, back cover plate, and control knob are machined from a solid peace of 6061 aluminum stock and anodized flat black. When you pick the follow focus up it has a weight and feels like it could easily stand up to abuse. Around the center of the focus control knob you have 9 buttons, a tri-color led, and an on/off switch. On the back of the follow focus is a 1/4 20 female threaded for mounting and 2 small screws that allow access to the battery compartment. The back cover is also engraved with the okii logo and a usb port indicator.
When you power the unit up, the LED flickers to life, amber indicates no connection and green indicates that the unit has synced with your camera. The buttons on the okii usb follow focus are small and compared to the rest of the unit feel a little bit flimsy. Each button has a long press and short press function. A complete description of what each button does can be found in the user manual and a brief description is included in the video above.
So how does it work? Well it’s a mixed bag. On the positive side this controller provides more camera control options then any controller on the market. You can start/stop recording, use the x5 and x10 zoom, select live view, pre-focus before recording, and set a number of rack focus positions for the camera to return to. There are a wide number of photography controls as well. These features alone might be worth at least a 3rd of the total price of this unit but since it has “follow focus” in the title that’s probably what you’d like to hear about.
The follow focus portion works well on some lens and not so good on others. After testing this for several hours I found that prime lenses seemed to preform the best. The real deciding factor is the focus step size. There are 3 built in settings for step size: small, medium, and large. The problem is that each lens seems to move a different amount with each of these step sizes. So on one lens large may be completely useless, but on another lens it could work great. Small might take 6 full turns to accomplish anything on one lens and work perfectly on another.
So what I’ve started to do is take notes on what setting seems to work the best (for my taste) on each of my most used lenses. That way I can set the controller up for each lens I need to use. Unfortunately there is no indication when the focus step size is changed, so if your not sure what step size you were at you’ll have to press the button a few times tell the focus system starts working the way you’d like. However when you press the focus step size button it makes any rack focus settings inaccurate.
Most of these problems aren’t a big deal and can be traced back to poor design on canon’s part (read more here). What all this really means is that you’ll probably still want to have a real follow focus unit around for some applications.
The okii usb follow focus is a very handy unit with a lot of great features and works well with lenses that have good focus motors. If your lens has a loud focus motor or the auto focus system is poorly implemented then the follow focus portion of this device probably isn’t what you are looking for (Zeiss owners are also out of luck). If, on the other hand, you have a nice collection of prime lenses and quiet well designed zooms, this could be exactly what you are looking for.
No matter what lens you choose to use with the Okii, you should probably keep your microphones at least 2 or 3 feet away from your camera. I found that even a lens that produces very little operating noise (like the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L
As of right now the Okii USB follow focus is back ordered, but they are taking pre orders for the next batch if your are still interested in ordering one.
07Feb Yet another Canon DSLR Release t3i/600d
Canon Just announced the Rebel t3i/600d and this camera doesn’t look like anything fresh from canon. The spec list is almost the same as 60d and t2i. Why would anyone feel the need to upgrade?
This new release has the same Digic 4 processor as every other current Canon DSLR on the market and the list of features has changed very little. With a single Digic 4 you can’t even expect HD output from the HDMI port in record mode. I’m not sure why canon is still dragging there feet on their current line of cameras.
If you already spent the money on a t2i or 60d there doesn’t really seem to be a compelling reason to upgrade. The flip out screen isn’t anything new and the sensor is the same as the 7d, t2i, and 60d.
The only real bright spot in the spec list is the new crop mode of x3 and x10. I will hold judgment on that until I see the test results but I can’t imagine these crop zoom settings blowing me out of the water. I think canon should really take a look at their lineup and consider giving these cameras magic lantern style functionality if they want to stay on top of the market.
The Panasonic Gh2 is already taking market share away from Canon. If Canon doesn’t release something with more then just minor upgrades soon, another manufacture might beat them to it.
Anyway if you haven’t pulled the trigger on a camera yet, then you might want to take a look at the Canon t3i/600d, it does have an extra zero so it has to be better. Right?
07Feb Canon 28mm f1.8 review.
People are always asking me what lenses they should get. I often recommend Canon 85mm f1.8
The canon 28mm f1.8 is soft wide open and doesn’t really clear up until f2.8. So you are spending $450 or so on a prime for low light shooting but the lens could be to soft to use in low light. Its build quality is better then the canon 28mm f2.8 and for twice the price it really should be.
I only end up recommending the canon 28mm f1.8 if you need this focal length for your full frame camera. If your shooting on a crop sensor camera like the t2i, 60d, or 7d then consider the sigma 30mm f1.4. It’s a stop faster then the canon 28mm f1.8 it has a better build quality, and it is sharper (imho). The price between these lenses isn’t fare apart, so money wont be much of a factor.
On the other side of the fence, some users feel uncomfortable using none canon lenses on a canon camera. If that is the case then I recommend saving up a bit longer and picking up the either the Canon 24mm f1.4
The canon 28mm f1.8 is an ok lens, but I wish it offered better performance for such a high price tag. If you don’t have the money to spend and own a full frame camera this may be your only option.
06Feb DSLR Steadyfocus rig
I was looking around at a few of the different rigs on the market and came across this little guy. It looks like a clever idea for the price. Often a Follow focus alone will run some where in the range of $150 to $300 and that doesn’t include a camera mount or rail system.
The price tag on the DSLR Steadyfocus rig is $159.59. For something that could work as a fallow focus and handheld camera support, that is a very reasonable price. Each of these units are hand made and the only way to order one right now is by contacting the builder by e-mail.
It looks like you send him the model of camera and he cuts the battery door opening to match. I haven’t had a chance to play with this rig but the design looks like it could be very handy for the low budget filmmaker. I don’t know of any other rigs out at the moment that are a follow focus camera mount combo. So this could be a very nice addition to your setup if you are looking to save some money. Having a few extra options for mounting gear on your camera can make life much easier and this might work nicely with that $28 monitor project I posted awhile back.
05Feb Konova Slider Update
After having a chance to spend a little more time with the , I thought I would take a little time to post a few more pictures and a quick update.
My good friend Amos has the DryLin® Linear Motion Camera Slider
The Drylin linear motion slider does work very well, but after spending a few hours with the Konova and Drylin slider side by side. It seems to me like the Konova Slider adds a lot more value then I previously considered. For starters the Konova Slider is almost silent in operation, while the Drylin slider has a very audible dragging sound when in operation. As you can see from the pictures above the 2 sliders have different bearing configurations. The bearings on the Konova provide a much smoother travel.
The fit and finish of the Konova Slider really makes it a Joy to use. Adjustable feet and plenty of mounting options really make the $100 price difference between the two sliders seem worth it. The Drylin slider had to have holes tapped for the end stops. It also doesn’t come with proper feet so this one ends up sitting on blocks of wood.
The holes along the Length of the Drylin slider aren’t tapped like the ones on the Konova Slider, so your tripod mounting options are a bit limited. The feet on the Konova Slider can also be mounted in a cross pattern at one end. This allows you to stand the slider up on its side for up and down sliding motion.
One thing I will note is that I miss spoke in my earlier review. You can actually adjust the friction applied to the bearings on the Konova slider. The only problem is you have to remove your fluid head, the adapter plate, and then get out a special tool to make the adjustment. This takes enough time that I don’t consider it to be useful in the middle of filming. However if you do have the time to field dress your rig then this could still be a useful feature. For the price of the Konova slider I don’t think this is really worth complaining about.
04Feb JuicedLink DS214 AGC Disabling pre-amp released this month.
Let me start by saying that I like Juicedlink products. I have the JL-DT454 which provides the ability to disable AGC on the canon 7d. The handy thing about Juicedlink preamps is that they provide gain. Beachtek
The JuicedLink DT454
What looks really great about the DS214 is that it has level meters, an AGC disabler, and headphone output all in one. Many times I don’t end up need XLR inputs, in fact I just want to plug in my Rode VideoMic
No word yet on the price tag, but if Juicedlink can keep the price under $200, I think this will be a hot item. As of right now there aren’t many low priced options for direct audio recording on the canon 7d or t2i unless you’re brave enough to install the Magic lantern firmware update (Sorry t2i only). If your using the 60d or 5d mark II this could still be very handy for headphone monitoring and live audio level meters.
I will keep you posted on pricing and release dates.
Update: The Juicedlink DS214 is now available for pre-order on b&h if you would like to get in line for this neat little box. The pre-order price is $144, which is very affordable if you consider some of the other AGC disabling devices on the market.
