A sense of lurking malice hid in the atmosphere, unseen forces swept through the air and the ocean, elements whipping each other into a frenzy. The usually idyllic Sunshine Coast had turned feral and it surely was a sight to behold!

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With the weather putting all my shoots on an indefinite hiatus until it clears, I had the perfect opportunity to get out with the camera and shoot a little bit of what’s going on at the moment. We are getting pummeled by heavy rainfall, strong winds and king tides – It’s not the best, but it sure is interesting! The surf is big and supposed to be increasing right up until Wednesday and it should make for some great footage if this onshore wind will let up.

This was a bit of an experiment today, with different settings, white balances, filters, time lapse, slow motion. . .and of course some playing with the Glidetrack Shooter for the first time in a shoot of this kind. Got to admit, I had a ball! It’s been ages since I got to go out and just shoot for fun and I really enjoyed it, even though it felt like shooting in a Coriolis storm!

As usual, I shot it all on the 7D with the usual crop of glass. Nothing too different there – Sigma 30mm f1.4, Tokina 11-16 f2.8, Canon 100-400 IS 4.5-5.6 and 70-200 f2.8 IS USM.

I didn’t have too long to shoot, knew that I wanted to attempt a very harsh color profile in camera and had some ideas of what I wanted to capture. The wild sea, some time lapses of the clouds as the wind was howling and they were moving super fast, and hopefully some people watching. I got lucky on all counts, with the bonus being some Kiteboarders who were the only ones to brave the conditions. Funnily enough, the kiteboarder in the red is the same Kiteboarder from the 7D test video I uploaded ages ago! I found out his name is Mick and he is the Stickerman here on the Sunshine Coast. So good on ya Mick! Thanks again for the footage!

There were quite a few people watching and despite a few curious glances at the strange looking guy with the Glidetrack, on the ground behind the spectators, everything went pretty smoothly.

Got to say I do love this Glidetrack Shooter so far, but I am still a bit of a novice with it and still yet to learn how and when to employ it to the greatest benefit. It is a lot of fun though and quite smooth along the slide. I ended up getting a little Manfrotto 701HDV head for it. That was a good move, it uses the same base plate as my 503HDV and means I can quickly pull the Glidetrack on and off my main tripod legs without any hassle and also switch the camera in between both of them without having to change base plates. It’s very useful and I’d say almost essential for shooting on the move. It has taken a bit of getting used to in terms of setting up and balancing and what not since it’s a tripod mounted on a tripod, and as you can see in the wide shot with the people watching I noticed it develops a gradual lean when moving from one side to the other. It’s not very noticeable when viewed in real time and you can really only see it because of the speed ramp applied to the shot, but it’s something I need to investigate so I can stop it from happening. Something about the drawing board and a trip back to it. . .who knows?!

There is some funny business going on with some frame blending artifacts on the sped up clip of the tree and the clouds. I have found a slight hiccup with MPEG Streamclip and the fact that the transcoding process actually creates interlaced footage. Yes I’m aware it’s Progressive interlaced footage, where both fields contain information from the exact same moment in time and hence when displayed together create one entire progressive frame. But I don’t want that, I’ve found that speed changes with frame blending enabled and also Smoothcam can make this footage show it’s true ugly interlaced colours in the form interlaced banding. Something I was glad to see the back of when I got my HVX! And now it’s BACK!!! Ugghhh. . .So MPEG Streamclip only allows you to select the options “Upper field first” or “Lower field first”. It doesn’t let you choose ‘none’, or ‘progressive’, like After Effects or Final Cut. If anybody knows a way, please share, this is annoying me and so far I’ve only been able to achieve true progressive output in ProRes LT with Compressor. But as you may or may not know, Compressor takes much longer than MPEG Streamclip to do the same thing, so it’s not really a path I want to embrace at this stage. I’m putting it out there! Any ideas?

So for the last time lapse I used my little chinese intervalometer, which, by the way, has a bung screen but is still usable. It was just a 1.6 second exposure fired off every 2 seconds. Finally I got some decent wave motion. I decided to play it back at a slower frame rate just so the motion wasn’t so fast you couldn’t appreciate what was going on. I think that works well with waves, so you can actually see whats happening.

The music in this video is by The Last Atlant and the song is called ‘Everything is Illuminated’. A great track off an even greater album, ‘Cloudburst of Colours’. Get on it, no doubt you’ll enjoy the whole album if you liked this track!

Anyway, it’s definitely not a masterpiece, but I had heaps of fun shooting it which is all that matters at the end of the day. . .and I didn’t get rained on too much, which is a huge bonus.

Hopefully the swell picks up even more over the next few days and we get some real carnage going on! Fingers crossed!

More soon!

And for you Vimeo Lovers!

I am probably the fastest person I know when it comes to leveling a tripod by changing the height of each individual leg, one at a time. “That sucks!” I hear you scream and you’d be right too. I hate it, always have, and I never knew what I was missing until I discovered the joys of a ball mounted tripod head about a year ago when using a friends’ kit. That’s right, just one year ago. . .I was completely oblivious until then and green with envy thereafter every time I manually bubbled my tripod by adjusting each individual leg.

Please note: Trademark Strobist technique called "Can't be buggered, it's too late for this" used.

So today in a nice matte brown cardboard box, all the way from trusty B&H in NY, came a new tripod. The Manfrotto 525MVB. Now I know any die hard tripod nuts would get all snobby on me and start expostulating on how Manfrotto are really not that good and I should have gone for something like a Miller, Sachtler or one of those other deliciously out-of-my budget brands. Please don’t say that. . .I know that. . .Don’t you think I crave one of those? Fact is, what I have been making do with up until now, has been fantastic. Yes, the lowly Manfrotto 055X Pro B sticks. They don’t have a ball mount, are meant for still photography but did a great job for the 2 years I used them and were infinitely better than the previous $70 Velbon tripod that I used for the 3 years before that. My 503HDV head is by no means the best head in the world either, but hey, it works really well for me and I love it. I’m just stoked I’ve got a ball mount now! No more dicking around with each leg to get a level shot! That’s a revolution right there. . .

Initial impression of these things are that they are nowhere near as sturdy as the Miller Legs that look really similar (This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it kind of did! ) The ball mount is nice, but I don’t like the skinny handle. I wish that was a bit meatier and felt better in the hand. It does seem very sturdy with the camera on it and it doesn’t weigh a tonne which is great. Sad thing is the tripod bag that I bought with it doesn’t really fit the tripod with the head on it. Pretty silly of me. I think I got the wrong bag. I assumed, stupidly, that the bag designed to carry that specific tripod would also allow for a head to be mounted on it. Unfortunately the only way I can get said tripod with head attached into that bag and close it is to jam the fragile head down the unprotected end of the bag and nestle the sturdy feet into the hard cover plate that protects the head of a tripod that I obviously don’t have that does fit in that bag in the right position. Got it? Well, I’m confused now too. . .

Anyway, I think it’s going to take some getting used to. This spreader thing is a bit different. I have two shoots tomorrow that I’ll be giving it a whirl on so I’ll update this post on how it goes. . .

Ball mounts. . .who’d have thunk it, eh? What’ll they think of next!?

*UPDATE*

After 2 days using it on multiple shoots, I’ve come to the conclusion that this thing is awesome! I am absolutely loving it. It’s sturdy as hell, easy to balance quickly and nice to use. My first impression was off, the skinny handle is actually pretty good and it’s got a nice grip on it. What’s really cool is you can carry the whole tripod, camera and all around by holding that same handle. It’s centered, balanced and makes it very easy to lug around with one hand.

I do wish the legs slid a bit more easily up and down because it would be nice if you could pop the locks on the legs and lift the tripod and the bottom stayed on the ground. It’s minor issue though and could change as it wears in.

Being able to quickly adapt to the lie of the land, and also unlock the spreader to get really low is fantastic. I simply would not have been able to achieve a shot I got today with my old tripod, so I guess it’s already paying dividends.

Overall, it’s a good rig. Let’s see how it stands up to some punishment next week!

More soon. . .

**UPDATE** 17/5/09

After using the tripod for well over 6 months, I can say I’ve been really happy with it. It’s performed really well and paid for itself a hundred times over. Today, the spreader broke. I am pretty sure I’m at fault here though, I am not very gentle with the spreader. In fact I have often thought it was so tough that it could never break, which now seems very naive. Usually I unclick the leg locks and stand on the spreader to drop the legs. This has obviously led to it weakening and today, breaking through the plastic in the centre where one of the struts joins the central pivot point. It’s definitely one of the weakest points in what is an otherwise sturdy design. A new spreader just set me back A$100. It’s a shame they don’t make these things bulletproof. Of all the parts on a tripod that are going to take a beating, the ground spreader is it.

Considering this tripod has had close to 8 months of heavy use, I’d say a $100 spreader is not too bad a maintenance fee. Everything else on the tripod is still in great working order, even after being submerged in saltwater, clogged with sand or covered in mud at some point. I’ve put it through it’s paces and after giving it a good clean it still works like new.

I’ll be keeping these legs and looking to move up to a better Manfrotto head soon. The 3 year old 503HDV has seen alot of action and despite still working well could do with a refresh.

More soon. . .