After the last footage release from Red EPIC #M8, I was hoping for some more interesting content from the camera. Behold, models, compliments of Ketch Rossi. Note that the video contains a few tasteful lingerie shots and some sheer tops, so perhaps slightly NSFW for a few folks. It’s certainly not raunchy though. Watch below.

It’s clean at 6400 ISO, rates at 800 ISO native, and AbelCine’s Andy Shipsides has the details. Looks awesome!

Great blog post over at kamrat.tv that discusses the choice of PL lenses or still glass for Sony F3 documentary and ENG shooting situations. Here’s an excerpt from the Image Quality section of his post, where he shows still glass holding it’s own against PL lenses:

“When I started to research what lenses I should get for my F3 I was under the delusion that PL-lenses were superior in all senses, particularly when it came to image quality. This is not the case. In fact modern still lenses can outperform older PL-lenses many times more expensive.”

(via @kiwi_scott)

We’ve seen a number of unique and interesting monitoring solutions birthed in recent months to address some of the issues of working with DSLRs for video. Peaking modes as an aid for focus, false-color options (so-called “Predator Vision”) for exposure, 1:1 zoom toggles to check critical focus, etc. It’s worth noting that in most cases these features existed prior to DSLRs coming into vogue; however, manufacturers are now quickly pushing these tools into smaller, affordable monitors that tend to pair well with DSLRs. These features all address deficiencies in the DSLR workflow…after all, these are not professional video cameras designed for pro use. We’ve simply co-opted them for use in our industry, and now are forced to work around the issues they present.

One of the latest monitor offerings comes from SmallHD. Their DP6 monitor system has been getting a lot of attention lately, users seem to appreciate the build quality, it’s featureset, and the price point. The DP6 comes in HD-SDI and HDMI-equipped versions, the HDMI-only version of course pairing well with DSLRs. Beyond that, SmallHD has built-in a few refinements that make a world of the difference for DSLR users…in particular, they were the first to create a fullscreen zoom feature that properly handles and addresses the wonky and inconsistent HDMI output from Canon DSLRs, the 5D Mark II, the 7D, the T2i, and now the 60D. SmallHD’s DSLR monitor preset automatically switches to various scaling modes to fill the entire monitor screen when these DSLRs change output as you hit record. Many other monitors don’t handle this as gracefully, and as a result you are often left looking at a pillarboxed and/or letterboxed image on the monitor’s screen. Which means you aren’t getting the full use of your monitor.

There’s a fantastic SmallHD blog post that thoroughly discusses the various issues of Canon DSLR output, and how their system addresses them. After reading that blog post and hearing the user reports from professionals I respect, I contacted SmallHD about getting a unit for my own testing in production. SmallHD has been very friendly and they were happy to provide a review unit. When I contacted SmallHD, I had a concert shoot scheduled in New York City in the next few weeks with Anthem Pictures. The budget and director called for DSLRs on this shoot, so I figured this would be a prime chance to test the DP6 in the field. SmallHD kindly arranged to ship in a DP6 review unit for me to use for a few days.

I had a number of concerns in advance of the shoot, not the least of which was my worry about introducing a new piece of gear into the mix on a shoot with a tight schedule. This concert was a Taylor Swift show for Jet Blue’s “Live From T5″ series at the JFK terminal. Taylor would be performing a short set of five songs from her latest album in the JFK T5 terminal for fans, and we were covering the show for the record label and later web video release. We would be shooting the concert on Canon 5D and 7D DSLRs, with five different operators; two operating with handheld shoulder-mount, two on monopods, one tripod wide master. I elected to use the DP6 monitor on the wide master tripod camera location, manned by shooter Jim Geduldick. Handheld rigs for the DSLRs included my personal Zacuto custom shoulder rig (which is similar to the Double Barrel configuration) and a Redrock Micro Field Cinema Standard rig.

Due to budget and space restrictions, we would be using the DSLR LCDs for most of the camera operators. I had an LCDVF viewfinder loupe on my handheld rig, which was my personal unit. I spoke with the Director prior to the shoot about bringing in the SmallHD monitor, and we agreed that if we had ANY issues with setup, configuration, or operation of the SmallHD monitor, we’d simply pull the plug and put it back in the case. We didn’t have a lot of time for monkeying around with new gear, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize our tight schedule if the monitor gave us issues. Which is why I was delighted when we saw how quickly and easily it was to get the DP6 up and running on our rig. Simply a pleasure to use. The only hangup was learning the slightly non-standard button and menu controls, but SmallHD includes a quick reference card in the box, and once you use it for a few minutes, you start to get the hang of how the buttons and menus work.

The monitor was mounted to the wide-master tripod camera using an arm attached to the ever-handy Zaffer clamp, and of course a monitor Zicromount that screwed into the 1/4-20 thread on the bottom of the DP6. We spent a few minutes working through the monitor’s false color exposure feature, and the peaking mode for focus assist, assigning these modes to the two user-assignable buttons…and that was about it for setup. Super easy. We had the SmallHD battery pack connected to the unit, but chose to work with AC power and use the battery as a fallback option. It also wasn’t critical to calibrate this monitor for color, as we’d already setup the color matrix we needed on this Canon 7D. That said, the DP6 does have a blue-only feature for calibration (see full feature list here).

The concert shoot went off without a hitch; Taylor delivered a fabulous performance and we got some amazing footage. It was a pleasure to work with the SmallHD monitor, and I was really impressed by the build quality. I absolutely love it’s clean, machined design. The case feels rock solid, like it could really take a licking and keep ticking. The SmallHD was a great help on this shoot, and it’s now on my “want to buy” list for my own personal gear.

I’ve embedded some pictures that we took of the DP6 mounted to the camera. You can also watch a few song excerpts from Taylor’s set in the 4-minute clip below. My angle on Taylor was from the front row, you can see my prematurely-greying head make an appearance on the bottom right of your screen in the wide master shots. Footage is courtesy of Anthem Pictures and Big Machine Records. Watch below.

FreshDVTaylorT5.mov

I was at the WPPI tradeshow this past week, and dropped by to chat with the Cinevate crew. Dennis Wood kindly took some time out of his afternoon to let me play with their new Simplis handheld rig, and I really liked it. As the name hints, Simplis is a line of simple handheld rigs for DSLRs and other small cameras.

Simplis is available in a number of configurations, but the one that I personally preferred was a very simple config (seeing a trend here?) with two short articulated handles, a baseplate, and a lightweight gunstock on a short rod extension. Simple.

After some monkeying around, I came up with three variations on this rig configuration that are useful to me. This rig could be config’d to be held comfortably in front of my body with the gunstock in my chest in sort of a gunner mode; it could also work as a makeshift shoulder rig with the gunstock on my shoulder and elbows bent and pressed into my sides…not really my ideal shoulder config, I prefer a proper shoulderpad and such, but usable in a pinch and handy as hell; and finally, it could also be shot in low-mode with the handles in a U-shape around the DSLR camera. The latter config was actually surprisingly stable when doing pseudo-Steadicam shots at ankle height.

But the most attractive feature to me? This Simplis rig folded up into a tiny package. I could see this sliding right into my luggage without taking up a ton of space. Here’s a picture I snapped of it wadded up in the palm of my hand. That’s just a standard Manfrotto tripod plate on the bottom of the rig. Very handy indeed. Simple and effective.

Philip Hodgetts points to two reputable sources confirming that Apple is set to release a new version of Final Cut Pro this year. One of the sources is Larry Jordan, an FCP guru and industry icon who claims he was shown the new version of FCP at Cupertino. There are no details being shared at this time, except that it is reportedly an exciting release. We’ll see what comes at NAB.

The Frugal Filmmaker has a video tip on how to better use inexpensive halogen worklights (which are available at essentially any hardware store, and are a favorite of indie filmmakers). Watch below.

Here’s an interesting proof of concept short that was shot on the Sony NEX-5 camera. This was written and directed by Daniel Boswell of Imagique Cinema and shot entirely on the Sony NEX-5 camera system with Sony and Zeiss lenses. I assisted on this shoot as DP/OP for a portion of the principal photography, which took place in mid-2010.

Some notes on the purpose of this project…the NEX5 is not intended as a professional filmmaking tool, Sony has never promoted it as such. However, this project was a test case to see how it would fare when placed in that role, and professionally shot and edited on a real filmmaking project. Despite the challenges of working with the camera system (very few manual controls), we think that the finished result turned out pretty well. And I was very impressed with the quality of the Sony Alpha lenses that attached via an E-mount-to-Alpha adapter for the NEX camera.

One of the advantages of the NEX-5 camera can be seen clearly in the video below…it’s a tiny camera, and you can put it basically anywhere. For the moving car shots, the camera was attached with a single Film Tools suction cup mount to the window. For the skateboard POV shot, the camera was mounted directly to the surface of the board. The NEX-5 a very compact camera, and that enables some interesting shot applications. The slider used on this shoot was Daniel’s DP Slider rig, there was a PortaJib used on a few shots, and also a GlideCam 4000.

I’ve embedded the finished “Soccer Girl” short below. A few behind the scenes photos follow, courtesy of Danielle Biel of Skye Blu Photography. Enjoy.

Over at the C47, Jem Schofield has posted a video update discussing his first look at the Sony PMW-F3 camcorder. One of the things he noted was that the camera appears to offer a very clean image, even at 18dB of gain. As Jem notes in the video, the camera is reportedly rated natively at 800 ISO…in that case, 18dB of gain would represent about 6400 ISO. (And if the camera rates instead at 400 ISO, you’d still be looking at 3200 ISO when you bump it to 18dB). Clean at 6400 ISO? You have my attention. (UPDATE: See comments from AbelCine rep below, apparently it’s closer to around 2500 ISO)

Another thing Jem notes is that the F3 currently cannot push an output signal via HDMI and HD-SDI simultaneously. He says that dual-link HD-SDI would be enabled later with a firmware update, and alluded to a cost being involved. Watch below.

From Inspiration Studios, the guys that brought you the hilarious Subtleties of the Slate spoof, here is an introduction to Arri Alexa’s Direct to Edit feature. Perfectly played…

We mentioned the Atomos Ninja a while back, it’s $1000-ish HDMI ProRes recorder with a small built-in LCD that can also be used for playback and/or monitoring. It’s shipping apparently, though you don’t have clean output from Canon DSLRs (the Nikon D7000 has no such issue). Perhaps a future firmware update from Canon will remedy that (don’t hold your breath), or a future camera system. The Ninja would pair nicely with the Panasonic AF100 or Sony PMW-F3, however…

Good to see this one hitting the shelves, now looking forward to user reviews! If you want more info on Ninja, peep that Atomos link above for a video overview on their website.

This research is downright fascinating. Tons of info here to inform filmmakers…Directors, Editors, Cinematographers. And don’t miss the link at the bottom of the post to Tim J. Smith’s PhD thesis An Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing, which is a 300+ page treasure trove of editing theory. Must. Read.

Matt Gottshalk has posted a quick comparison between the Panasonic AG-AF100 and a Red One camera (original, non-MX sensor), showing how they handle the same material shot on both a white background and greenscreen. It’s a simple comparison that draws no conclusions, and I appreciate that Matt took the time to shoot and post it!

As expected, the Red has more resolution in both situations. It is significantly sharper to my eye on the chromakey shot, and also appears to hold more edge detail in the key. In my opinion the AF100 looks rather good though. Certainly does well for it’s price range, and I see no major issues in the key.

One other thing I’ve noticed on the Red shot, the talent’s sweater exhibits some minor moire on the white cyc shot. I saw this best when I downloaded the 1920×1080 MOV from Vimeo. This is something that I’ve seen on a number of Red footage posts that are available in 1080p…like the official Red M-X Reel, it shows occasional moire artifacts reportedly introduced in the downsample. What’s interesting about the MX reel is that you don’t see much of that moire in the wide, high-detail city shots (like you would on a DSLR). If you are interested in seeing for yourself what the full-resolution MX reel shots look like, they have R3Ds available here.

I know that Red is really big on avoiding aliasing, they’ve always been hawks for that sort of thing. So I guess that there’s something about the way that people are outputting the high-resolution footage that’s introducing some aliasing in the downrez. Obviously this is a post-production concern, but it’s an important gotcha that we need to be aware of, since so many of us output the final product at 1080p. Does anyone know what the proper steps would be to avoid introducing unnecessary aliasing in a downconvert for Red footage? How can we avoid introducing moire?

Gotta love clever marketing…the creative folks over at Cinevate have put together a fab little short film that shows off a simple new DSLR Proteus handheld rig configuration dubbed Simplis. It practically builds itself! Watch below.

Pretty stuff, just simple studio shots of a model. Not really much here technically to stress the camera, but it looks fantastic. Watch below.