In LA

A while back I posted a video of one of my more successful tests flying a Canon T2i DSLR on a Steadicam Merlin. In the Vimeo comment thread, people asked for my recipe¹, and I promised to post it. Time passed². I experimented with other, heavier lenses on my camera, and adjusted the Steadicam to each, erasing the previous settings.

The other day I ran second camera on a commercial shoot, needed to use the kit lens and Rode Videomic, and thus had to dig up my recipe. And there’s the recipe above, that image, taken with a cell phone camera. That’s pretty much all I recorded of my recipe, the rest is easy to derive from there. Here’s how I’ve got it set at the moment:

• Stage Mounting Hole: N
• The stage mark is lined up right about at -1.25.
• End Weights: 1 start, 2 full
• Middle Weights: 1 full, 1 finish
• Arc size: if “-” is -1 and “+” is 1, I’m set right around -0.15 –not sure if that’s the same setting as in the photo.
• Gezornenplatz screw is in place, and the arc joint is locked. The setup works best when it is as stiff as possible.

Balance is everything on the Merlin, so any change to the weight or center of gravity of the stabilizer’s payload will make this recipe a starting point at best, if it’s of any use. Using a different lens, or zooming the kit lens from 18mm to 55mm would change the balance. If I were to configure the camera with anything other than a Canon T2i with the kit lens³ and a Rode Videomic (don’t forget the pencils or pens), I’d probably recommend ignoring this recipe and starting from scratch.

I hope this information is of use to someone.

On a semi-related note: I just ran the NeatVideo noise-reduction filter on that steadicam clip. To my eye, it once again did a nice job removing noise from video shot on the T2i at the 6400ISO setting. Click the thumbnail at right to see a large example frame.

Edit (2010/08/03): After a day using this reconstructed recipe and reviewing the resulting footage, it’s obviously more bottom heavy than the recipe with which I recorded that clip I’d posted to vimeo. Though this recipe balances the camera, there is sway when changing direction as a result of the bottom’s greater inertia. I think I’m going to try reducing the spar angle and lowering the gimbal so as to better equalize top and bottom. I want to get back to a 3-5 second drop time.⁴

1. A combination of steadicam weights and settings for a particular camera configuration and style of shooting is called a “recipe”, in the parlance of our times. [↩]
2. Sorry about that y’all. [↩]
3. A slow, but very lightweight and sharp 18-55mm lens, with Image Stabilization [↩]
4. Yep, I see that Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam Merlin, recommends a 1-second drop time in that video. But I think I’ve gotten better results with a markedly less bottom-heavy setup, though it actually does make the device more difficult to balance at first. [↩]

Green Sea Turtle in Kona, Hawaii. 6/2010 from ZachFine on Vimeo. If you’d like to watch the video in HD, start playback of the video, make sure the “HD” toggle is set to “on”, and click the video’s full-screen button () during playback.

I was a first-time visitor to Hawaii recently, and shot a lot of photos and video. I’ll be dribbling it to my blog in bits and pieces as I go through the footage. Here’s a taste: a green sea turtle at Ho’okena Beach in Kona, Hawaii. This turtle popped up as I was snorkeling in deeper waters and swam alongside me all the way back in to shore. A beauty. Perhaps she was amazed to see a film/video editor out in direct sunlight?

Meandering tech notes:
Shot with a Creative Vado HD solid state 720p camcorder (1st generation)¹, in a Creative-branded Aquapac underwater housing.

The Vado HD is very similar to the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak zi8; I like it because it features a much wider-angle lens than its competitors. The Aquapac is basically a $30 very clear plastic bag with a watertight seal. Though this one’s branded for the Creative Vado HD, it’s probably large enough to fit two of them side-by-side². One one of my snorkeling adventures I brought along my Canon HV20 in a dive housing, and its remote control (to start and stop the camera’s recording) in the Aquapac alongside the Vado. I probably could have put my cell phone in there as well but didn’t trust the bag yet and honestly didn’t really want it along.

This turtle clip is from the 2nd day of my trip, before I’d figured out that if I squeezed out all the air in the Aquapac before sealing it, the plastic would remain taut over the lens, resulting in a sharper image. Less air in the bag also would have resulted in a tighter fit against the screen of the Vado HD, which would have given me a fighting chance of seeing the image on the Vado’s screen underwater –most of the footage I shot on the trip, including this turtle clip, was shot by blindly pointing the camera and hoping.

I snorkeled with the Vado in the Aquapac bag all week and had no problem with leaks. I was a little worried about this, but wasn’t risking much as the 1st and 2nd generation Vado HD go for $49 these days (B-stock of the 4Gb versions on Creative’s website as of 7/2010).

I think the iPhone 4G’s video quality may best that of the Vado HD and competitors, and the iPhone definitely has the edge in terms of viewfinder (screen) quality and recording capacity. I’ve placed one in the Vado’s Aquapac case, and the iPhone’s capacitive screen was usable even while it was in the case. I suppose salt water might interfere with that use due to its conductivity. It’d be interesting to try using an iPhone for underwater video recording on my next trip, and I may be fool enough to risk it.

1. I’ve written up the Creative Vado HD previously here and here. [↩]
2. 3D anyone? [↩]

When doing sound mixes, film/video editors often make use of hardware control surfaces like the Mackie Control Universal Pro. Such mixers connect to the editing system via MIDI. The editor slides the faders on these fancy control surfaces to adjust the volume for each of the edit’s audio tracks during playback. When the editor is not moving the faders, motors built into the control surface move them to match the edit’s pre-existing settings. The automatic movement of the faders can seem a little like something from Poltergeist.

Unfortunately, the motorized movement of these faders can also be noisy, especially the clacking sounds emitted as many faders pop into position at once. This can be distracting when trying to mix a quiet, emotional scene. These controllers are also pretty expensive, starting at about $1000.

Enter the iPad and Saitara Software’s “AC-7 Pro Control Surface”:

(problems with the embedded video above? try this direct link)

The control surface in the video looks very cool to me. It’s silent, can be seen in a dark editing room, appears to function as well as I’d need, and the cost of the app is only $9.99. I’ve played with a friend’s iPad, and know the touch-sensitivity of that screen is accurate and responsive enough that I’d have no problem adjusting several tracks at once with this interface. For those addicted to the feel of hardware faders this might not cut it¹, but for me it’d be a big improvement over moving the faders in Final Cut Pro’s “Audio Mixer” window with a mouse. I can’t justify spending $1200 on a set of faders I’d barely touch except a bit towards the end of a project, but $10² ? Hmm.

Yet another reason to consider an iPad. I wonder how long I’ll hold out? Sigh.

1. I don’t think this is just a matter of purely subjective preference –one can feel where a hardware fader’s control is in space, and there’s probably a bit of resistance built in so the user can feel when the level has been set at unity without having to look. [↩]
2. $510 if factoring in the cost of an iPad, which can also be used to access the iPoo social network. [↩]

Test of NeatVideo plugin; Noise removal from Canon T2i 6400 ISO clips from ZachFine on Vimeo.

if you’re on a fast machine, I’d recommend watching this full-screen with HD set to “on” –if you’d like to download the original QuickTime file rather than watch it embedded in a web page, there’s a download link low on the right side of the movie’s Vimeo page.

I shot some 1080p video in low-light with my Canon Digital Rebel T2i set to its 6400ISO setting, which resulted in very noisy video.

I tested the demo version of the NeatVideo for FCP filter to see if it could remove or minimize the noise. The results were encouraging, so I bought the “Pro” version of the plugin for $99.

This clip shows the results of the application of this filter to a couple of my more dramatically noisy clips. The filter renders very slowly, compounded by the fact that I’ve set the temporal filtration to use 3 frames.

You’ll see portions of the clips both with and without the noise removal, and split-screened sections for comparison. I think the result is pretty remarkable and usable, though the noise is peeking through the darker areas of the frame in the first clip. I wonder if I can smooth that out if I build a better noise profile or if I increase the temporal filtration?

Music:
“Do The Global Twist” by “The Neatbeats”, from the awesome album “japanese groupsound”.

I had to chop the song in half. Go buy the song or album to hear the very enthusiastic jam session in the middle of the track. Fun stuff.

Looong Steadicam Merlin + Canon T2i shot from ZachFine on Vimeo.

This is not the most exciting shot in the world to watch, but it was for me the most successful of my increasingly steady pairing of a Steadicam Merlin with Canon EOS Rebel T2i and Rode VideoMic .

In order to stop down the kit lens’s aperture enough to achieve anything approaching deep focus in the relatively dark location, I had to shoot at the camera’s 6400 ISO setting. My next big purchase will probably be a fast superwide zoom, maybe the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 . My Canon 20mm f2.8 is just not wide enough –it’s the equivalent of a 36mm field of view on these APS-C sized sensors.

The steadicam was balanced so that it was just barely bottom heavy. About a 4-5 second drop (when the contraption is swiveled so that the camera and the counterweight are both level in front of me, it takes the camera about 5 seconds to float back upright). I enjoyed working with it so balanced.

The terrain was a little tricky. I had to weave around furniture, adults, and running little kids. It’s not the smoothest path I could have carved through the space, but I’m pleased with the improvisation. Around 45 seconds the camera tilted a bit, probably after I ran into something. I tried to tip it back.

The Rode Videomic is just directional enough to isolate bits of conversation in front of the camera. I can clearly hear my cousin Bruce explaining the intricacies of the game “Risk” and my Uncle Bob talking about a play he’d seen called “The Whipping Man ” as the camera passes each of them.

I applied a very temporary color correction with Final Cut Pro’s 3-way color corrector filter, and applied very sophisticated titles and transitions, and exported to 1080p H264 using Compressor before uploading. Yay.

If it looks stuttery, try toggling “HD” to “off”.

I’m pleased with the look of the footage. The edit was just a quick bit of fun. Mostly this was about testing my DSLR video workflow, with a secondary goal of cracking my sister up.

If you set HD to ‘on’ and go fullscreen, or click through to the video’s vimeo.com page and find the download link low in the right column, you can see this one at 1080p resolution. If the embedded video doesn’t play smoothly, try pausing it and waiting for it to finish loading before hitting play, or toggle HD to off.

pizza and the dream of not being filmed from ZachFine on Vimeo.

A little video of an evening of pizza-making and camera-dodging.

Shot and uploaded at 1080p resolution, so feel free to toggle HD to on and play this one back fullscreen.

Video shot with Canon Digital REBEL T2i DSLR set to the “superflat” picture style. Canon 50mm f1.8 lens.
Converted to Apple Prores, edited in Final Cut Pro 7.0.2, graded in Apple Color.

Exported to the QuickTime H264 at 1080p24, restricted to 8000kbps, audio 44.1Khz 16-bit AAC 128kbps.

Music: the first third of “free space incesticide” by Eight Frozen Modules.

Coming soon, the results of my test shoot of several of the most popular “flat” color styles people have been using in their attempts to preserve the maximum amount of picture information in the H264 files recorded by Canon DSLRs.

I shot the same setup with 5 different color style settings, and will be looking at all of them in Apple Color in order to determine which setting I prefer.

I’m well aware that tradition holds that no camera test is complete without a photo of a beautiful lady holding a redundant umbrella and smiling at the photographer, but I decided plastic grapes would just as ably serve that function¹.

1. And the grapes had to stand-in, as no people were around when I shot these tests [↩]

I know a lot of editors who like to leave Final Cut Pro’s “Browser” in large icon mode so that they can see a visual representation of each clip. I happen to think that the Browser’s list view is more compact and displays more useful information for each clip. But that layout is a hard sell for visual thinkers.

Enter the Browser’s Thumbnail column:

To enable this column, just right-click any column header, and select “Show Thumbnail” from the contextual popup menu:

Just as in icon view, you can click on each thumbnail and drag left and right to scan through the clip’s contents. If you press the “control” key any time while scanning through the clip and keep it held down as you release the mouse button, you’ll change the “poster frame” displayed in the thumbnail for that clip to the last frame displayed.

It’s worth noting that the thumbnails, at least in the case of the 16:9 clips I used for these screen captures, are not displayed at the proper aspect ratio. It is also worth noting that the thumbnail doesn’t change size if the user widens the Browser’s Thumbnail column. I’m sure these small issues will be fixed in some future version of FCP (wink wink nudge nudge Apple ;) .

For those who’d like to buy a Canon Rebel T2i without the kit lens, it looks as though Amazon’s now taking preorders for the T2i body:

Canon EOS Rebel T2i (Body Only) – $799.99

I’d expect the fact that they’re taking preorders means they have a shipment coming to their distribution centers from Canon. Just a guess.

When I bought my T2i, it seemed only the kits with lens were available for purchase. I decided I didn’t mind having the extra lens, as then I could loan my Rebel XT to people with a decent lens that I didn’t care too much about. But maybe that was just rationalization and if the body-only version of the T2i were available I’d have gone for it.

My previous post, on how to get a discounted price on a Canon T2i, might still apply (if you want to buy the camera on eBay).

For those wondering why I’m so excited about this camera; It’s because the T2i is a way to shoot decent HD video with a relatively large sensor and great lenses for under $1000. Such tools for good-looking budget filmmaking are hitting the streets and will change the nature of online video, if not also segments of television and theatrical film.