Book Review: “The DSLR Filmmaker’s Handbook: Real-World Production Techniques”

There’s little more popular these days than being a budding Indie filmmaker slinging a 5D MkII over your shoulder and firing off hours of footage that you can then spend months editing to make your masterpiece come alive! The biggest problem is that MOST folks entering this endeavor are totally clueless about the process or where to even start - thus making every mistake in the book in the process. The DSLR Filmmaker’s Handbook: Real World Production Techniques (Sybex ISBN 978-0-470-87660-2) aims to help you get started with not only the basics of using the gear, but also the film-making production process in a visual overview - PLUS some very cool tips & tricks.

BOOK REVIEW: “How to Shoot Movies Without Shooting Yourself in the Foot”

This book is not for everyone. If you don’t eat, breathe and live cinematography… maybe you should read something else. Seriously. This book may not be for you. (But if it is… you’d better not miss it.)

Working Pros Discuss the Canon C300

What happens when you get three working professionals together late at night with the Canon C300 camera and liquor? They shoot camera tests. And that’s exactly what happened when Rodney Charters, Drew Gardner and Lan Bui got together on New Years Eve. To test the C300’s 20,000 ISO capability, they shot a quick low-light test using an iPad for the key light. They also spent quite a bit of time discussing the camera in general; one theme they spent some time on is the effect low-light performance is having on film lighting…

Lytro is the new RAW?

If you aren’t familiar with Lytro, they are an innovative company that is very close to releasing a Light-Field Camera. This affordable consumer stills camera has the unique ability to calculate the angle of light hitting the sensor, and store that data along with the image data. Later, in post, you can refocus the image however you wish. It’s amazing technology, and there’s literally nothing like it in the consumer market. After watching an interview with Lytro’s CEO, it really got me thinking about the future possibilities of this technology as a creative tool for professionals…

Affordable PL-mount Primes Compared

If you’re in the market to rent or buy “affordable” PL-mount primes (e.g., under $10,000/lens), you won’t want to pass up this test.

So You Want to Buy a RED Scarlet?

I got a question on Twitter recently regarding the pros and cons of purchasing a Red Scarlet camera. After responding, I decided to expand my replies into this blog post in hopes that someone else may find it useful. Some of this stuff seems elementary, and I apologize if that’s the case for you. But I do think that there are many out there who will benefit from this discussion about new camera purchasing in general.

Slo-Mo with the GoPro HD Hero2

By now we’ve seen hundreds of really amazing videos with a GoPro strapped to someone’s helmet, snowboard, jumpsuit, surfboard or bike - but I wanted to explore the capabilities of the GoPro HD Hero2 shooting at 120fps in a stationary and tabletop setting and let the action happen around it… in Slo Mo!

Sony’s FS100 camera to become “WorldCam” via free firmware update

Sony USA has just officially announced that the (so-far) segregated 59.94Hz FS100 camera (officially known as the NEX-FS100, often followed by a regional suffix, and then sometimes by the letter “K” to indicate that it is a kit, packaged with a lens) is about to go “WorldCam” via a free firmware update sometime at the beginning of 2012. “WorldCam” is a term used to indicate that a camera has the necessary framerates to be used worldwide, similar to an unlocked quad-band GSM phone that I have used for more than a decade to travel internationally without roaming charges. Beyond using a camera worldwide, having a WorldCam camera is also helpful when a producer needs to acquire content to be broadcast primarily in another country which uses a different framerate. This article will cover the novelistic history of the FS100’s uncertain potential capacity to become WorldCam, as well as some other improvements included in the upcoming firmware update… and some other improvements that are still missing.

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