It was painful in real life, it’s only fitting that it be painful to watch and the second half of this video really is. You wish it was finished, over done, complete. . .welcome to my world!

Planes, airports, people, swollen feet, sore knees, bad food. . .man, it all sucks! This part of the journey was a bit of a melodrama in that we couldn’t manage to get the HVX out of customs in time for our flight. We didn’t check the tripods, since we had taken them as carry on everywhere and then were stopped at security 5 minutes before boarding and told to go back and check them in. While waiting for the guys to try and check the tripods and get them to the plane on time, our man Leandro, typing furiously on his terminal, eyes pinpoints of concentration had almost wrapped it up when. . .Darkness! The entire airport plunges into inky blackness. . .a few sparse screams of shock and fear pierce the immediate silence that follows, as well as my laugh, loud and deep, ringing out across the terminal. . .almost flirting with that fine line between true belly laughter and maniacal cackling. I was close to losing it and it felt gooooood!

Leandro’s voice, quiet and seeming to originate from a point in space hanging somewhere in front of us, says “I haven’t seen this ever in the 10 years I have worked here!”. Of course you haven’t Leandro, because Luis and I, the two cursed amigos’ haven’t come floating through this airport before with no time to spare, camera’s stuck in customs, cancelled flights and tripods that weren’t checked! No doubt Leandro won’t see it again until we are next in town!

But I digress, I doubt you’re here to hear my incessant moaning about how bad the travel was. “You’re doing an international shoot through Brazil and Mexico, so you had a bit of trouble, quit ya whining! Do you realise how lucky you are?!” Trouble is, once I get on a roll, it’s hard to stop the literary diarrhoea!

So what else is there to do when faced with all of this, but to plug in the headphones, crack out the camera and disconnect.

Shooting handheld with the 7D is cool, it’s fun and really spontaneous. I’ve missed that kind of shooting, as because of the rolling shutter I’m locked off on the tripod most of the time. And the rolling shutter sure is apparent, it’s all through this clip, I hate it. Yes, I can remove it, but to be honest. . .for this application, it’s hardly worth it. I’ve used a 5D MKII with some redrock rods attached to it and it takes out that tiny little judder that you get from a rig that’s too light. That little bit of extra weight really helps. I think I will look at getting some of these soon as it will dramatically increase the amount of ‘keepers’ when shooting handheld.

Again the IS on the 70-200 kicks butt in video mode, I love it to death. When you’re shooting handheld it really is phenomenal how much difference it makes. If you jump the camera around a bit, the IS can exacerbate the movements and you can end up with something that could make a person sick, it’s all in how you nurse it through the movement, learning the IS and how to caress it into doing what you want. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no sicko (well I am, but not when it comes to camera’s) but you really do need to be gentle with it, show it some r-e-s-p-e-c-t and it will love you! I should do a post showing the comparison in Video mode. . .I will. . .one day!

A bit of this stuff was shot at around 400 ISO, it’s still pretty clean at that point, I don’t start seeing much noise until around 800-1000 ISO. I know people carry on about how you can shoot at up to 1600, sure you can shoot at up to 1600, but man it looks pretty ugly. The noise seems to be big and chunky in the shadows, not the kind of stuff that Noise Removal software really likes. So I try to keep it below 1000 and with faster glass, that’s usually pretty achievable.

The music in this video is something I randomly found on my computer, listened to, latched onto and absolutely caned. It’s the first track off a mix CD a good friend of mine, who is an excellent DJ, put together. I found it perfect for this journey since it starts all mellow and lovely and takes you on a journey into the darker sides of minimal tech house. A soundtrack to  infuse the soul with metallic invulnerability. I don’t know the artist or the name of the track, maybe if Daniel stops by he can assist me here.

This is not a great example of videography, in fact I almost hesitated in uploading it and posting it, thinking, “No, maybe I should only be putting my best work on the site. . .” emulating the other blogging heroes that you see around the traps. . .In the end I figured, bugger it, this is what went down, sure the shots aren’t the best in the world, but they aren’t meant to be. . .this is my journey, not my masterpiece. . .If you find it as uncomfortable as I did, my work is done!

Click here to watch it on SmugMug in 1080P.

More soon. . .

It’s the first video I’ve uploaded to SmugMug. Think of this as a trial. If it gets the views, I’ll look at getting a full account over there so I can put everything up in HD all the time.

Hope you enjoy it!

Our friend Rob Galbraith has gone to the trouble of including a couple of test video clips on his site in full res.

Needless to say I am pumped, have already arranged to pre-order and am going to buy this one sight unseen. Fingers crossed it’s the right decision.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10042-10239-10240

Couple of things I am super excited about. Max flash sync speed is up 1/50 of a second from what the 500D is capable of to 1/250. Obviously all the frame rate and resolution options. 1080P! NICE! 24P, meh! Yeah, it’s the speed of real film, blah blah blah. . .It’s old. . .I can see why some people who might need a film out would have use for it, but I’m not looking to do a film out. 25P is great plays nice with TV and the footage from my HVX and pretty much every other camera around Australia, so happy days there. In fact I hazard a guess most everybody would actually have trouble telling the difference between 24P and 25P anyway, they are so close it’s not funny.

What I really can’t wait for though is manual colour temperature selection. I loved that capability on the D90, so fantastic for shooting video. Being able to dial in a Kelvin temp to achieve a certain effect is something I’ve really missed, so can’t wait to get that back.

One of the main reasons I keep the HVX around these days is because it shoots slow motion, and records audio well. To be honest, I also prefer the feel of shooting video on the HVX, even though the look of a DSLR is much nicer, you can’t beat a dedicated video camera for handheld shooting. They were designed with that in mind, of course they are going to suit the job better. But now the 7D is going to be able to shoot 50 and 60 frames a second in the 720P mode and have a external stereo in audio jack, there looks to be less and less reasons to keep the old P2 around. I’m not sure what will happen there yet, but if our friend Hudson (the guy who successfully hacked the 5D MKII Firmware to provide audio gain control, Zebra stripe like function and audio level meters) works some magic on the 7D’s auto audio gain control, then I’ll have a serious dilemna on my hands. Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. . .*shudders*

Well, that’s about it for now. Off to Fiji tomorrow for a 8 day shoot. More on that in the coming days, it should be good!