The Filmtools Gripper 3025 Car Mount with Triangulation Kit - All setup and ready to go with the Canon 7D & Tokina 11-16 f2.8

This thing is seriously f’ing cool! There’s something to be said for some crazy fast drivelapse, or a nice cruise through a tree-lined mountain pass. Trouble is not all car mounts are created equal and for those of you looking, it might be well worth spending a few minutes reading this little post!

My first experience with a car mount was somewhat lack lustre. It was a two cup mount with no stabilisation and the camera wobbled all over the place as soon as you hit a bump. Shooting with the 5DMKII, this meant the footage turned to jello and it was totally unusable. It was a less than awesome experience and somewhat disillusioning.

I was most interested in getting some drive lapse footage and also some cool lifestyle shots from around the place – coastal drives, buildings and a bunch of other stuff – so I put my head down and eventually came across the Filmtools Gripper 3025 Car Mount with Triangulation Kit.

As soon as I saw it, it made sense. . .stick the camera to the car, then stick a stabilizing rod in the hot shoe of the camera and connect it to another 2 seperate suction cups with some rods. It holds the camera steady while you’re driving along, preventing all the shake, rattle and rolling shutter shittiness that I’d previously experienced. As a sidenote, I cannot say just how infuriating it is scrolling through minutes of (what should be great) footage captured using an unstabilised mount looking for the rare couple of seconds that it isn’t unusable mush.

So I decided to drop the cash on the mount. . .It didn’t arrive straight away. . .in fact due to heaps of other probably really smart people who had the same idea I did, the kit was on backorder for quite a while. But when it did arrive I was suitable impressed.

For one thing, Filmtools don’t shaft you! Imagine that!? There are no optional extra’s that should be included. . .everything you need is right there, the suction cups, the clamps and most importantly 3 different sized rods to do the stabilising bit for you. It really impressed me that they didn’t just include one length of rod and then make you find out after you’ve got the thing that you actually need to buy the others. +1 on the props scale there.

The build quality is really solid. The clamps feel really well made and the whole kit gives you the impression that it will last a long while. I would think that it’s most likely the rubber will perish before any of the metal components will. I have been using the mount for close on 6 months now and it’s still in very good condition, the rubber is still very soft and i haven’t experienced a decompression yet (touch wood!).

Secondly, the mount is really easy to fit and it doesn’t take a long time. Probably around 5-7 minutes (if you are really taking your time because it isn’t your Mercedes ) and it is all ready to go. One thing though, the actual camera mount doesn’t really allow for a huge range of movement and getting your head around how it moves and how to get it in the position you want can be a little mind bending at first. Even on a fairly curvaceous vehicle, it is possible to get it in some tight positions, with a little creative suction cup placement. In my experience there was a bit of trial and error involved in getting a good stable setup when you have the mount in a less than ordinary position, but it does get easier and knowing what’s going to work the first time around won’t take you too long.

So what’s the footage like? Well, it’s good and it’s stable. It’s not perfectly stable all the time, but it stands up really well under normal road use. Off road, I can’t comment on. With a DSLR, it’s pretty easy to turn your footage to Jello by getting on a rough bit of road and I didn’t test with any other type of camera. The 3025 seems to suit the size of a DSLR very nicely and the camera can be mounted nicely over the top of the suction cup, maintaining a nice, tight centre of gravity. You can tell for yourself by watching the footage, but as I said, the stability of the rig really depends on your ability to work out the best length rods to use, where to place the support suction cups and also the rigidity of your mounting surface. You can gurantee the windscreen is going to wobble a lot less than the middle of the bonnet.

But it’s really a night and day comparison when you compare the unit to the non-stabilized rig that I’d first used. You can actually feel confident that you will get the shot you need using the Filmtools Gripper 3025 Car Mount with Triangulation Kit.

So would I recommend it? Hell yes I would, I spent my money on it and it’s been really great for what I need. 100% perfectly solid? No, you’re not going to get that at this price bracket, if you need 100% perfect, not going to wobble one little bit, you need to be spending a little more than $400. . .but I’d have to say that if you mount it nice and solid, it’ll do a really great job 98% of the time which should be more than enough for most of us.

Check out the embedded video clip, it’s a really rough cut of some different shots I managed to hustle together just now. I didn’t grade it or do any post processing on it at all. All the clips are shot with Canon DSLR’s – a 5DMKII and a 7D – There’s some Canon 15mm Fisheye stuff, Tokina 11-16 f2.8, Sigma 30mm f1.4 and that’s about it I think.

If you’re looking for a car mount for your DSLR, this is definitely worth a look at. . . Filmtools Gripper 3025 Car Mount with Triangulation Kit.

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Want to see it in 1080P over on SmugMug? Get amongst it!

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.

We decided we would start getting some footage, and this is just a quick and dirty camera test cut of what we have after two very short sets. It’s a major work in progress, but instead of collating footage for an eternity and releasing one 5 minute clip, I thought we’d leak stuff along the way so you can watch things come together. This is here strictly as a point of reference to look back on and probably for Boggia to sling around facebook.

The edit is rough as guts, continuity was tossed roughly aside, it’s ungraded footage straight out of the camera, has no filters applied – this folks, is as dirty as it gets. . .The angles are limited, but it’s a start. . .from here the only way is up and that’s where we intend to take it. . .

All real time footage was shot on the Canon 5DMKII and the slow motion was shot on the Canon 7D.

Stay tuned for more info as things develop and a full run down on the shooting techniques when we’re done and dusted!

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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.

Now given that I am a self-confessed gear whore and quite partial to an L series lens, I’m sure you’re wondering why I opted for the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM over the Canon 50mm f1.2L, especially considering the wider aperture of the Canon? The answer is quite simple. . .The Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM is a really great lens and at 1/4 of the cost, it’s very hard to justify that extra expenditure for a red ring around the barrel and a little more street cred.

Don’t get me wrong, the Canon 50mm f1.2L is a beautiful lens – fantastical build quality, amazing optics and super fast, there is no doubting that it’s a better lens than the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM. But for me, it’s not THAT much better. It’s not a whole 300% better as the price would have you believe and for the most part, I think a lot of people would have trouble telling them apart if they were looking at video shot at the same aperture on the same camera in a blind test.

Photography however, that’s another story entirely, of course when shooting wide open at the 21MP, pixel peeping at 100%, the 1.2L is going to eat the Sigma for breakfast (A nice hearty, solid breakfast though, given the build quality of the Sigma). Ok, maybe eating it for breakfast is a bit extreme since the Sigma is quite sharp in the centre at f1.4 but the Canon 50mm f1.2L will still outperform it, it’s got to be said. For me it does the job, it falls off a bit towards the edge of the frame, but not so much that a client is going to spit chips. On a full frame camera, there is also a slight vignette when shooting wide open, which I absolutely love. Why people find this an undesirable characteristic I don’t know, I think it looks great. If you don’t like it though, stopping down to around f2 will make it disappear.

Despite still being quite sharp when wide open the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM does exhibit some chromatic aberration at f1.4. When fine-tuning focus in live view mode, it is clearly visible. Stopping the lens down to f1.8 does show a marked improvement, increasing sharpness and dramatically reducing CA.

In my experience, I get the sharpest photo’s out of the Sigma at around f8-f10, but that’s when being an overly picky pixel peeper. I have no real hesitation shooting this lens at any aperture when shooting video, the differences are really so small you would be splitting hairs to quibble over it.

But wide open is where I find myself most, lounging around in the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM‘s creamy bokeh, which is really quite lovely. Thanks to it’s 9 aperture blades, the Sigma’s out of focus highlights are nice, round and considerable in size when focused on a close subject. With this lens, you will not have any trouble getting your background to dissolve into a dreamy haze of focusless (I just made that word up! Patent pending.) vapor. I just re-read that and man, I’ve got problems. Yeah, I’ll admit it, my name is Christian and I’m a bokeh addict – The Sigma does give me a good fix though. Don’t take my word for it though, check out the video!

Now the AF in this lens, I don’t know, I seem to get inconsistent results when shooting portraits and I’ve read of focus issues with this lens on the net, but if you search any lens at all, you’ll undoubtedly find somebody who has focus issues. So that doesn’t necessarily mean they all do. I use the lens in manual focus mode 99.9% of the time anyway, so it’s not really an issue for me. It’s got a HyperSonicMotor (Which is where the HSM comes into the inordinately long model name) so it does focus quite quickly and quietly which is cool. But the focus ring on this lens, like it’s little brother the Sigma 30mm f.4, is a dream to use. Well damped and very nice for manual focusing. You won’t find it hard to hit a mark or execute a nice focus pull with this lens.

Overall, The Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM is a nicely constructed, well performing lens than will suit most peoples purposes. I am a stickler for quality and at the time could have purchased either the Canon 50mm f1.2L or the Sigma. I couldn’t justify the extra expenditure for a fraction of a stop, the “L series” badge and a less than impressive increase in image quality. It’s really as simple as this. Sigma made a great lens, they made it affordable, and what it comes down to is the pictures – in this case they look fantastic.

Please do your own tests and share your thoughts with us here in the comments section.

The new camera shine has rubbed off the Canon 5DMKII and I’m now quite partial to shooting with both it and the Canon 7D on the same shoot. It’s not always practical, but there has been instances where using the tilt shift and the macro on the 7D, as well as the overcranking capability have really added to a production. Having the two bodies effectively gives each lens another look and use due to the crop factor of the Canon 7D. So very happy on the front, now if they’d just bring out a full frame 7D with all the Canon 5DMKII audio perks, I’d be pumped!

Anyway, enough about that for now, here’s a quick rundown on what’s coming to Highdefedition.com over the next few weeks. . .

The LumoPro LP160 Review
A new all manual speedlight from Midwest Photo Exchange in the good ‘ol US of A.

The good folks at Midwest Photo Exchange (lovingly known as MPEX) were kind enough to supply us with one of these beasty flashes for review. I’ve been using it exclusively as a slave, which fires by way of it’s amazingly sensitive optical trigger every time it see’s another flash, but there are three other methods of triggering it, hotshoe, PC and a mini jack. So far I’ve been really impressed with it’s simplistic operation and considerable power. It produces a flash almost as bright as the Canon 580EX II, it’s just about a fraction of a stop less. It’s a huge improvement over it’s predecessor and once I’ve had a little more time with it, I’ll be putting a story about it here. If you just can’t wait, check out the MPEX web store for yourself, I’d have to say at this stage, for the price, you can’t go wrong.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM Lens Review
A great inexpensive prime lens for your full frame or crop camera.

I just got my grubby little mits on one of these this week, by way of a not-so-great experience with Australian retailer, Dirt Cheap Camera’s. Negative experience aside, the lens is very nice and a great upgrade from the tried, tested and much loved Canon 50mm f1.8 II that I had. For the price it’s very hard to justify the extra expenditure to go up to the Canon 50mm f1.2L, I should have some nice footage to illustrate that.

Filmtools Car Mount for the 5D & 7D
A 3 suction cup car mount rig – One sucker for the body, 2 suckers for the triangulation kit to stop the shake.

This is not set in stone yet, I am looking seriously at getting hold of one of these, but cannot source one at the moment, due to their being no stock. It’s unfortunate as otherwise I would have had it weeks ago and would have been able to elaborate on it in this very post. I’ll keep you posted as things develop on this front. Make sure you keep an eye on the twitter feed and the Facebook page for the good news.

That’s about it for now guys, I did say it would be a quick one. . .if there’s anything out there you’ve had some fun shooting, throw us a link on Facebook or Twitter and show us what you’ve been up to. . .If you haven’t got anything to show, get out and bloody shoot something!

Until then. . .

Go on! Go full screen and watch it in HD. You won’t!

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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.

Ok, first up, let it be known that macro shooting is seriously awesome! I’d seen shots from the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM before, wanted that look and knew what I was getting. What I didn’t know, was how much joyous, childlike fun I would have shooting with this lens, peering at things very close up through the live view and then gazing transfixed at them on the iMac. Initially I thought this lens may be very limited in application, but now having seen the results I’m inclined to think otherwise.

But obviously you’ve seen how close in you can get with this thing, as no doubt you’ve watched the video before reading this literary masterpiece. So enough, let’s get to the bigger picture.

What I love about the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM, aside from it’s amazing image quality and ability to focus so close, is it’s focus ring. Being a lover of manual focusing, the nicely damped focus ring is a dream. It feels really great in the hand and the stops, although they are not hard, are sufficient for my style of shooting. I can see how purist “my lens will have hard stops or die” types may frown at it’s easy going ways, but for me, it’s not a huge problem. As well as feeling good, it’s nice and wide since we’re not sharing the barrel with a zoom ring, which means you can get a comfortable grip on it any which way when you’re shooting handheld. Speaking of shooting handheld, as you may or may not know, I’m a pretty big fan of shooting handheld with the IS on. This lens is no exception, I did have quite decent results shooting handheld video and photo’s with the IS on, but it does not feel like as good an implementation as it does on the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM. The IS on that lens seems to perform a lot better, especially when shooting video. It just seems to have more room for movement.

The AF is super fast and super quiet and despite having switches to limit the focal range (and hunting) I didn’t make use of them this weekend. I’ll let you know how they go a little way down the track.

I like that it comes with a soft case to keep the outer plastic shell from scratching too badly and that it also comes with a lens hood. Speaking of the plastic shell though, that’s one thing I don’t like. Although it probably is, The Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM, does not feel like a tough and sturdy lens. Sure it’s nice and weighty in the hand, but the plastic construction of the outer shell does not inspire a lot of confidence. I’m not rough with my gear, but I do like it to have a solid feel to it’s construction, and given the L Series classification, I was surprised to find this. It doesn’t feel like it’s about to fall apart or anything, but it is missing that tank like build quality of the other L series lenses. We’ll see how it holds up over time.

On the camera (I have used it on the Canon 5DMKII and Canon 7D) it feels nice, not too heavy and if I’m to be a complete wanker, looks quite cool with the lens hood on. Of course how it looks doesn’t affect the images, but hey, some people like cars. . .I like camera’s. . .don’t we all? That’s why you’re here! But I digress. What’s it like to shoot with I hear you clamouring, get to the bloody point!

It’s good! Real good! And when shooting video or photo’s, very closely, wide open at f2.8, insanely difficult to manual focus. Now I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but this is seriously a whole new ball game. I pride myself on being able to rack a pretty decent focus when I need to, but this is unbelievable. The focal plane is literally hair thin. At the minimum focus distance, wide open, a grain of salt is deeper than the focal plane. That’s some pretty shallow depth of field. Moving the focus ring a little actually does quite a lot at this stage and even the usually imperceptible swaying of your body can mean the difference between a keeper and a dud. The bokeh it produces is just gorgeous and the out of focus highlights are beautiful perfect circles at f2.8 thanks to the 9 blade aperture diaphragm. For the best result when shooting super close you’re going to have to use a tripod. I found my Glidetrack to be a great help, moving the camera instead of the focus ring. You’ll see examples of that in the video with the shot of the eyes. That’s not a racked shot, that’s a Glidetrack push.

The difference the 1.6x multiplier of the Canon 7D‘s cropped sensor makes to the perceived focal length is quite astounding. Effectively turning the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM into a 160mm Macro Lens. I didn’t do a full test of this, just putting it on there briefly to see what it looked like in the live view. But at minimum focus distance the difference I saw was significant. The shot of the eye at the beginning of the video. On the Canon 7D, that shot would have been mostly iris, in other words, really bloody close! I’ll do a full test of this in the coming weeks and share the results. I’m looking to seeing what it can do that’s for sure.

The Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM is super sharp wide open, and obviously it gets a bit better as you stop it down, but I didn’t notice too much of a difference. Even wide open it’s still really impressive to me and I used it like this mostly.

All up, this is a lovely lens. Not only is it a cracking 100mm lens, it’s also got that macro ability which is really something else. Having not shot Macro stuff before, it’s been really interesting, and really refreshing being able to get that up close and personal with any subject and see it like you’ve never seen it before. To be able to pick a subject, no matter how close and not worry about your minimum focus distance, is really refreshing. What I love about shooting is freedom, and despite the limitation of it being a fixed focal length lens, the macro ability more than makes up for it. So get out and give it a go if you have the chance, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Anyway, I reckon that’s about enough out of me for now I’ve only used the lens for about 3 hours or so and will get a bit more up here once I’ve had a couple of weeks of time behind it. Some things you only notice after extended use and I’m interested to see how I can incorporate this lens into my daily shooting and just how many applications I’ll have for that extreme close up. Only time will tell.

Now if you haven’t already, get you butt back up the top of the post and go and watch the test footage as it’s supposed to be watched. . .in 1080P. Nothing else does it justice.

Until then. . .

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Just so you know! You can watch the above video in 720P HD without leaving the site by making the video full screen and selecting the HD option from the control bar.

Man, this was fun! Fun to shoot and fun to edit! After a month or so of chopping away at commercial gigs, this was just some good ‘ol fashion candy coloured, idealistic fun!

It’s nice to take a step back from everything sometimes and just shoot some stuff that feels good. It’s a good time of year for it too. Around the end of April the temperatures are starting to drop a little, the skies are starting to clear up and with the diminishing rainfall, there is little silt washing down the rivers into the ocean, leaving it crystal clear. It’s this fortuitous combination of meteorological phenomena that makes this time of year such a lovely time to shoot.

All of this footage has been shot over the last 2 or so weeks. A mixture of the Canon 5DMKII and the Canon 7D. Canon 5DMKII for the lower light sunset stuff so I can keep shooting a little later and Canon 7D for the blue sky daytime stuff, basically because I have polarising options on the Canon 7D that I don’t have on the Canon 5DMKII. . .yet.

Did I mention it was fun shooting this?. . .Yes. . .Where were we?

I shot this with a mixture of the usual suspects. . .that being, the increasingly insufficient bag of lenses that I lug around, detailed greatly elsewhere on this blog. Man, I’m hanging to get some new glass for the Canon 5DMKII.

The new Canon TS-E 17mm F/4L didn’t get too much of a run here, with this kind of footage, I really missed the ability to be able to whack a polariser on the front. Likewise being without ND grads really limit this lens as a landscape type of lens for me. If I could filter it, I would be absolutely stoked! I had been using the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 ATX on the Canon 5DMKII. By itself, it works passably from 15-16mm, but with the polariser on you get a bit of hard, unflattering vignetting at the edges. So whenever I needed a wide polarised shot, I turned to the Canon 7D. I could have fixed this with a dedicated Wide Angle lens for the Canon 5DMKII, but this solution will work well for now. I don’t mind running two camera’s and would rather keep doing this so I can invest into other glass first, instead of buying another wide angle.

There are a couple of Canon 5DMKII shots in there with the Sigma 30mm f1.4. I just scaled them up a little to remove the darkest of the vignette, I’m sure you’ll spot it/them in there, it’s quite noticeable. Funny that in that OOF background, there is a ring of slightly more in focus detail inherent in the fringe of the vignette. It’s weird and kind of takes away from the perception of depth. I’m not sure if you can see it here, but it’s there. . .trust me (I mean that in a totally un-facebook, not creepy way, honest!)

The Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6L was great for the yachts on the water at Mooloolaba, but I have since taken to leaving it at home more recently. The camera bag was growing in weight and considering I wasn’t using it every time I shot, decided to see how I would go without it, relying only on the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM. I can say, my back really appreciated not having it in there, but I did miss it a couple of times for sure. Especially when shooting from up high on the cliff in Coolum, it would have come in great handy there. The Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM’s bokeh at f2.8 was pleasant though, and it was nice to be limited on focal length for a while. It makes me walk more and in the process, see shots I might not have come across.

The music in this clip, Revtone – Love Movement (Ulrich Schnauss Remix) is off a compilation, Global Underground 030 – Paris – Mixed by Nick Warren, one of my favourite DJ’s. Ulrich Schnauss has a very typical sound, very atmospheric and it was playing in the car while I was cruising around shooting some of this footage up at Coolum. When I heard it, I immediately knew that this would be the soundtrack to this footage. Cruisy, beautiful and not in a hurry to get anywhere. It would allow the shots to just hang there for a couple of seconds extra, allowing the eye to really roam around the image.

Usually I burn shots, 1-2 seconds and out, and I did start doing that at the end because it was too monotonous, but this time I wanted to more reflect the feeling I had when I was shooting it. Which was a whimsical kind of relaxed concentration. . .Very Sunshine Coast!

My own criticisms. . .This clip is about two minutes too long. At 2:30 it would have been a corker. In, out and left me wanting to see more. Trouble is, this one is a bit of a dual purpose clip. I intend to utilise this for other applications and wanted it to be a bit longer than what I usually cut. There are some shots in there that hang a little too long and it loses momentum somewhere in the middle. A little editing of the song might not have gone astray here, but there is only so long I can spend on these things. At the end of the day, this is not a show reel (Which I am working on at the moment) or anything, just a collection of footage shot over the past two or so weeks.

Things to look out for. . .

• Some very nasty aliasing on the sunset shot across the bay from the Canon 5DMKII. One was so bad I couldn’t include it. perhaps I need to wind the sharpness down as detailed in various places around the net.
• Sigma 30mm f1.4 EX DC HSM Vignetting. What’s your thoughts on that? Fan or hater?
• Glidetrack love. . .and love it is. . .I really do love it. (In an entirely not creepy way. . .)
• The video’s stupid title. . .watch that. . .it was late and I was strapped for ideas. . .I think in German it means “Flying burger sausage”. Perhaps not.
• The second last shot, a little noisy (ok, alot!). . .That was Canon 5DMKII with the Tilt Shift on at 6400 ISO. With some noise removal it might have come good. For me, it’s better having a noisy shot than no shot at all. I’m not going to a 35mm print for theatrical distribution so it’s not going to cause me much trouble.
• The last shot. This was my first attempt at a proper night timelapse of the stars. It’s not an amazingly interesting shot, it was after all my first crack, taken from my front yard and a test more than anything. I just really wanted to use it here, since it was something different. I’ve become quite inspired, as I’m sure many other have, by Tom’s work, over at Timescapes. That guy is seriously one of the most talented out there, more so than any of the other DSLR ‘pioneers’ out there. Check him out, you’ll be glad you did.

Anyway, that’s enough crap from me, it’s late and I’ve proven myself unworthy of continuing to type at this keyboard.

I hope you enjoy the flick, if there’s anything I missed, just flick me a comment!

More soon. . .

[Show as slideshow]

Hey Christian,

I have a question to ask if you don’t mind!!!
I’m an aspiring filmmaker and am about to purchase a Canon 7d (the regular kit with whatever lens comes with the kit)
I don’t have much money at this point, but what do I have to do to achieve the results you are getting? Can I come close with what comes in the kit or do I realistically need to spend a zillion dollars more on additional lenses/accessories to catch up to your beautiful footage?
Any info would be of tremendous value to me!!!! Thank you very much!!!

sincerely,

Mark B

I’m no expert, but I am happy to share what I decided to do when buying the 7D after using a bunch of different camera’s and doing quite a bit of reading and research.

I ended up buying just a 7D body by itself. I didn’t have a swag of L series glass, in fact, far from it. I had the super cheap Canon 18-55 IS kit lens that came with my 500D, an old Canon 75-300 f4-5.6, a Canon 50mm 1.8 II and my only somewhat decent lens was the Tokina 11-16 f2.8.

The main thing that drove me to avoid the 18-135 kit lens was it’s rather slow speed of f3.5-5.6. This was the same as the 18-55 that I already had and I’d found that it just wasn’t good enough in low light conditions for the kind of shooting I wanted to be doing. If I was in a dim setting, with the polariser on at f5.6 then I had to push my ISO to a point where the I was seeing a little too much noise for comfort.

I think what makes the footage out of a DSLR look so nice is it’s shallow depth of field and how you can use it to selectively focus on a particular subject. The lower the f-stop, the more light the lens can admit to the sensor, the shallower the depth of field and the better lens will perform in low light situations. Now if you want to be shooting some nice filmic looking images, there’s more to it than the glass you’re using, but having said that, nice fast prime lenses with low f-stops are probably a safe bet.

You don’t need to spend a fortune glass to get that creamy out of focus background on your 7D though. The Canon 50mm 1.8 II is a great little lens, all plastic in construction and I love it! Seriously for around a $100 you just can’t go wrong! As you will no doubt have read on here numerous times, I am also a big fan of the Sigma 30mm F1.4. It’s a fantastic lens for the 7D and usually my go to lens for walking around taking shots due to it’s pleasing focal length. I find it really nice for landscapes and portraits alike. If price is an issue, I would also consider the Canon 35mm f2.0. There’s just a couple of really decent options and they’re all under $500.

But your kit lens, mate, there’s absolutely no reason you can’t go out and shoot great pictures with it at all. From what I have read it’s a perfectly acceptable lens for day to day stuff, but if you’re anything like me, once you get your first fast lens, and start pushing 1.8 and lower, you may find that your kit lens spends quite a bit of time in your camera bag.

I suggest trying some different options. Get a hold of a 7D in store and test it with a couple of lenses, make sure you do your research and know what you’re buying, as a kit lens might be cheap when you buy it with the 7D, but it may as well be money thrown in the bin if 2 months from now you’re shooting everything with some fast primes you got super cheap off eBay and the old 18-135 doesn’t even get a look in anymore.

Get a decent tripod with a fluid pan head. It doesn’t need to be amazing, spend more money on the head and get cheaper sticks if price is an issue. Handheld footage can look nice, but a tripod will give you time to really analyse your compositions and get them looking the way you want them before you press record. A good starting point is the Manfrotto 701HDV. I use it on my Glidetrack Shooter and it does the job pretty well for a light, inexpensive head.

But the single most important thing to get the images you want. . .practise! Get out there and shoot your a$$ off! Shoot everything that moves, experiment, don’t heed the rules, play with your settings (but not so much you go blind! ) do things you shouldn’t, view your work with a critical eye, pay attention to your shots, post them everywhere you can, ask for feedback and don’t be afraid to get beaten up over them, you’re not going to win every time, every viewer will have a different opinion. It’s all part of the process, shoot, watch, learn, shoot, watch, learn. . .I swear it’s the best teacher!

And Mark, one last thing, don’t take it too seriously, at the end of the day, it’s about having fun. . .if you’re enjoying yourself and your pictures put a smile on your face, good times. . .you’ve already won!

If there’s anybody else with a question out there they would like me to answer, fire it through and I’ll do my best to sound like I know what I’m talking about while I answer it!

More soon. . .

Need an iPhone friendly link? Here ya go!

Want to see it in 1080P? Here ya go!

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.

There are some really pretty area’s where the lovely Katie’s parents live. The Dandenong Ranges are about an hour east of Melbourne in Victoria and make for some very nice scenery, I could seriously have spent days and days just walking around shooting, it seems everywhere you turn there’s something to lock the lens on. But, since it was a family trip, I had to make some concessions on allocating one on one time with the 7D. . .

I’ve got to say the decision to not take the tripod was interesting. . .and stupid. . .I hated it. . .So many times I wished I had it with me, my shaky hands and wobbling footage driving me up the wall. See if I had steady hands, I don’t think I’d have cared so much, trouble is, I tremble like an 8 day high crack fiend as soon as I pick up the camera. This is where a heavier camera has always been my friend. If you too have trouble getting that steady shot when running around shooting hand held, the best bet I found is to try and keep it moving, that way the shake is disguised a bit more. Or lean on something that doesn’t shake! I think for the home movie stuff it works ok, the landscape stuff. . .eeewww! Man, some of that stuff looks rough! Lesson learnt. . .

Both the Sigma 30mm and the 50mm 1.8 II got a really good run in this video, the tight quarters shooting meant for the kind of shots I wanted these focal lengths worked well. I love shooting portaits with the 50mm on the 7D, I guess it equates to about 86mm on a full frame. Now that I have a 5DMKII to play with, I will have to get the Canon 85mm f1.2 lens as I have really fallen in love with that focal length.

After watching a colleague work with split screens I got inspired to play with some of my own. I did specifically shoot a sequence of shots for the effect, instead of just seeing what would work afterwards, I think that helped. I don’t mind it, but I’m not sold on it. What do you think, win or fail? The implementation could do with some tweaking, the hard borders a a bit harsh, I definitely think that having three handheld shots all wiggling different ways at the same time is a bit much too, a locked off shot would improve things greatly.

Now, one thing I do know it that there is absolutely no consistency to the grade, some black and white, some super saturated, some really warm, some really cold. . .That’s exactly how I was feeling at the time, all colours were created in camera. I didn’t do any post colour correction on this at all. In hindsight, I would have liked to see more Black and White, but hey, I made my bed, and even though I don’t have to lie in it, I will. I’ll know better next time. It’s my goal to be able to grade in camera with as little post as possible, give your settings a bash around and see what you come up with, it can be rather rewarding!

The music is by a very lovely group by the name of ‘The Album Leaf’ and the song is called ‘We Need Help!’. It’s not symbolic in anyway, we didn’t need help, (Well I did, after a bit of celebratory overextension syndrome after my birthday on Good Friday, but that’s a story for a completely different blog! ) it’s just a nice cruisy song, that I thought fitted the feel of the trip.

This was a fun little video to shoot and to cut and would recommend everybody to give something similar a shot. Use your lovely Canon glass and DSLR depth of field to really do a number on the old home video! I’d love to see your results!

Well, that’s it for now, I’m off to Tamworth for the weekend to see my family. It’s another road trip video and no doubt my gorgeous little sister Kendra will break in the new Canon 5DMKII that arrived today very nicely. I can’t wait!

Until then. . .enjoy the vid!

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Need an iPhone friendly link? Here ya go!

Want to see it in 1080P? Here ya go!

So at last I got around to chopping up the footage from last weekend’s semi-large storm swell and here it is! I must say it turned out better than I thought, mostly due to the surfing and acting talents of my good friend, Greg Weatherall.

Turns out he is a bit of gun surfer! In his brothers’ words “He’s a big unit! I’ve seen him smack the lip and just destroy waves! I mean look at him, he’s huge!” I’d have to agree, he is a big unit and yes he does tend to leave quite a wake in his passage. Despite not finding the 12 foot waves he was hoping for he still had a lovely time and turned it on for the camera!

Going into this shoot, I kind of had an idea what I wanted to capture. The usual spectator love that goes with these kinds of swells (Since every man and his dog wants a slice of the action), some good surfing and hopefully some nice footage for an intro, with Greg getting ready and all that kind of stuff.

I must admit the intro stuff wasn’t just off the cuff, I did wear my Directors hat for that, but hey, you got to set the scene right? Lucky for me, Greg is a good sport and was willing to indulge my shot-wankery, instead of just charging off into the surf with a devil may care attitude like every other pro surfer!

I started with the getting ready footage. The Sigma 30mm f1.4 and Canon 50mm f1.8 II really worked well here. I love these lenses, the bokeh is nice to play with and the quick glimpses gives you just enough to see what’s going on. We started off out at the furthest point break using Greg’s Canon 400mm f2.8. I must say, I was so excited to use this lens and my lord it is a lovely piece of kit, but man it is just so unwieldy it really didn’t lend itself to the way I like to shoot. Encumbered by my camera bag, my tripod, the glidetrack and the 400mm (in it’s own backpack, it’s that bloody big!) it was just such a pain in the butt moving around that I probably missed a tonne of great shots because I couldn’t spare the time to be moving around the rocks with all the gear. An assistant would have been invaluable, but as if that’s going to happen for this kind of shoot. So whilst the image is outstanding, and the extra stops really helped as the light fell, I don’t think I’ll be saving my pennies for this one.

I finished off the evening by pulling out the trusty Tokina 11-16 f2.8 and my Hyongnuo Intervalometer (Which has a dinky screen! Beware!) and grabbed 150 shots to whack together into a time lapse. 150 seems good to me and works out to be a 6 second shot. I’m not usually one for hanging on shots, but the music in this track really lent itself well to that.

At 6am the next morning. . .well you know the story from the previous post. . .very disappointing. . .nowhere near the predicted swell. . .sad faces all round.

I had learnt my lesson the day before though and left the Canon 400mm 2.8 in the car, waved goodbye to the Glidetrack and travelled light and swift with my camera bag with all my lenses in it and the tripod. Ahhhh! Much better! I did however borrow Greg’s 1.4X extender and found it worked quite well on my Canon 100-400 f4-5.6L. The 1.4X coupled with the 1.6X Crop factor was really quite nice. Sadly shooting wide open (at f8) was not really an option, as it was just too soft. I found to get anywhere near a sharp image I had to be shooting at around f11-f13, f13 seemed to be the sharpest.

You’ll notice that the footage looks radically different in places, there was bright sunshine, overcast skies, dim dusk shooting, sunset shooting, man I got it all. I was really hoping it was just going to be grey and overcast and look a little menacing, sadly that wasn’t the case. The colours in this clip are pretty much straight out of the camera. Just a couple of shots had to be corrected for contrast as the 400mm and the extender had left them a little washy at times. I think one day I might do a graded version of this clip just as a test, but today is definitely not that day!

What do I think makes this clip? Seriously, it’s got to be the song! It’s just great! I’ve been listening to it all week and funnily enough, it’s another track of that Gui Boratto Mix Collection on Renaissance. That compilation has been getting a hiding on lately! It’s just too good! The song itself is by Bomb the Bass and it’s called ‘The Infinites (Featuring Paul Conboy and Gui Boratto)”. Great album, you should definitely check it out!

So that was the weekend that was. . .Not what we’d hoped for, but now having cut it all up, not a total disaster either. Could it be better, of course! Will it be better next time? You bet! Let’s just hope we don’t have to wish too big of a tropical cyclone upon the Pacific islands to get the shots we want!

That’s it for now! It’s way past clock off time! Managed to get down to the Mooloolaba stop of the Triathlon World Cup today, hopefully will get some time to cut that this week.

Until then. . .stay classy!

This kind of stuff is great for Queensland Tourism!

All signs pointed to Noosa coming alive this weekend! “Cyclone Ului is generating monster swells that will punish the Southeast Queensland Coastline this weekend!” “A Century Swell!” “8-12 Foot Waves on Saturday!” “Dangerous conditions this weekend! Storm Surges, Localised Flooding and Beach Erosion forecast!”

Friday Afternoon was exciting, the swell was sizeable and the atmosphere was electric. Everybody had heard what was heading our way, there was talk of things to come everywhere I turned. Everything was coming together nicely. I got some setup shots, popped around and shot some stuff with the Glidetrack and finished off with some time lapse when it got too dark for video. This was all just a reconnaissance mission, the next day was what counted. . .Saturday was game day! Sadly it didn’t quite turn out the way everybody thought.

Despite the media doing their usual stuff, I thought the Coastalwatch Swell Forecast would be at least somewhat accurate. After a week of excitement that built to feverish pitch at 5:30am this morning while I was driving to Noosa, arriving at the car park out at first point was a little bit of an anti-climax. It looked smaller than the evening before and despite picking up a little bit, it soon got pretty messy. It became apparent that the fabled “8-12 foot waves” were just that, and unlikely to be seen. I’ve got to say it was a little depressing having been looking forward to it all week.

Now don’t get me wrong, there were some good waves to be had, but they just weren’t the kind of bone-crunching waves that I had been hoping for. Something really crazy with more serious consequences for a misplaced foot or an overly ambitious turn. Something that would make for good vision!

By lunchtime I’d called it quits and headed home via. Mooloolaba, just to see if any madmen were chasing closeouts on the beach. There wasn’t a lot going on and so it was wrapped.

Sadly I didn’t really capture anything that is, what I would call, outstanding. If anything, the footage from the Cyclone Hamish Swell in November of ’08 was much crazier and made for better watching. Anyway, better not neg on it too much, we’ll see how it comes up when it’s all done and dusted. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get it up.

On another note, I finally heard from Canon with regard to the Autofocus issues I had been having. After this tweet “May have to give up the hope of @CanonAustralia helping with my Canon 7D #autofocus issue. No progress in three weeks. Blog post Friday.” I received an e-mail from the Service Department, there was no mention of there being a known (read: admitted) issue with 7D’s, but it did seem like they were taking the issue seriously and that they gave a damn. Which I might say is very nice, as I was beginning to think that they didn’t and wasn’t looking forward to having a sour taste in my mouth. I’m yet to make contact back to them as it came through on Friday afternoon but I’ll let you all know how it progresses.

More soon!

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