I used to shoot a lot of wakeboarding. It was a passionate love affair that eventually got left in the wake (no pun intended) of corporate production and an actual income.
I shot everything on the Panasonic HVX, loved it and had an absolute ball. . .but now the HVX has been gone for quite a while, I got to thinking about what might happen if I turned a Canon lens on the action.
Enter James Boggia, a mate of mine who is fresh from being crowned World Champion in Turkey and happens to be pretty good at the standing sideways on a water board thing.
Everybody loves a 50! It was a kit lens focal length for a long time, back when SLR’s first started appearing and ever since then it’s been the darling of every photographer out there. With the advent of video in the DSLR world, things aren’t much different. From the budget Canon 50mm 1.8 II right through to the deluxe Canon 50mm f1.2L & extraordinarily expensive Leica 50mm .95 Noctilux, there’s a 50mm to suit every budget and taste. But what about the inbetweeners? Couldn’t there be some right pearlers in there? Well yes there are, and the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM is one of them, a midde of the range lens that gives a surprising performance.
Shooting with the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM is like delving into another world. A world of tiny things made large, hair thin focal planes and immensely sensitive focus rings. It’s as close to ‘Honey I shrunk the kids!’ as I’ve ever been and funnily enough, every time I focused upon a leaf, blade of grass, flower or a grain of salt, that’s exactly what I thought of. . .but without Rick Moranis. . .he always scared me.
What better way to break in the new Canon 5DMKII than to take it on a plane/road trip to visit the family down in Tamworth. Two little sisters, one of which who loves watching the footage of herself almost as much as the rest of us do, a bunch of greenery and lots of fun.
What would a trip be without a bit of a video to go with it, eh? How will I hold onto the memories once my old and decrepit brain slows and the once vivid colours and easily recalled sounds start to dim and fade? Well, the plan is that I’ll take out my 128 Core Intel Blink6a Chipset driven Mac-3D Hologram interface running OS XVIII Aardvark from the comfort of my nursing home bed and hoping that it still knows what to do with the H.264 codec, watch all these videos, remembering a time when I could choose when to go to the loo and walk where I wanted unaided. . .ahhh, can’t wait!
All that aside, this video was really just a bit of fun to shoot and a walk on the wild side for me, since I never travel anywhere without a tripod. Even though I missed, it, it was an interesting excercise.