LED Light Tests: PRG Sponsors an LED Light Shootout

“LED Light Shootout” sounds so dramatic, as if a collection of motley illuminants met in a dusty western town to settle their differences with bullets instead of marketing. It’s actually tedious, mind numbing work… and a real eyeopener.

CANON C300: Trimming White Balance, Plus a Look at Daylight vs. Tungsten Color

I’ve shot a lot of web and broadcast spots on the Canon 5D and while it makes pretty pictures the controls are very limited. It’s also not a camera that can be used quickly. At the moment the Canon C300 is a bit of a mystery to me: before my recent tests I didn’t know whether it’s a 5D with more controls and a cinematographer-friendly form factor or if it’s something more. My initial conclusion: it’s more. A lot more. In my next few articles I’m going to take a peek inside the machinery and see what I can find. With the help of charts from DSC Labs I hope to shed some light on the inner workings of the C300 and try to figure out what its niche is.

CAMERAS: Now It’s Rocket Science

Not so long ago the toughest choice we had to make was which film stock to use. It was possible to learn one or two stocks really, really well and use them predictably over the course of many years. Now a game-changing camera comes out every year, introducing us to new strengths and weakness. Not so long ago cinematography wasn’t rocket science. Now… it is.

The Masters of Compositing Series - Part 2: Paul Vlahos

This is the second in a series of interviews with the pioneers and masters in the compositing/VFX film & television industry. I originally recorded these interviews for my published book “The Green Screen Handbook” (Sybex/Wiley, pub) and had intended to produce one full-length documentary from the materials. But after a couple of years past now, I thought they would be better served as individual parts of a series to help educate and inform people about these historic times from the early days of VFX compositing through modern-day techniques.

Lights, Camera, Kids: Shooting a Childish Spot for T-Mobile on the Canon 5D

A web spot may be seen by more people than a broadcast spot, so making it pretty is more important than ever. In this case, simple but elegant lighting and custom gamma curves made this spot shine. (And when shooting kids, “simple” becomes very important.)

Quick Look: Sony PVM-740 OLED Display

OLED—Organic LED—is said to be the display technology of the future… and it’s here today. The PVM-740 is the smallest of Sony’s trio of professional-series OLED displays, and Sony lent me one for a while when I was testing the NEX-FS100.

It’s nice. I mean, it’s really nice. Perfect? Well, not quite, but darned close; let’s just say I’ve reset my expectations when it comes to reference displays.

REVIEW:  Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E Video Switcher

I’ve been working in TV stations for over 30 years now.  I can trace one of the primary reasons I made this career choice back to a basic fact of my DNA:

I love buttons.

Why an iPad is like a 4x5 view camera, and why you’ll need a black “focusing cloth”

In case you hadn’t heard yet: Apple has just established the iPad (2012) as a viable HD video camera (among many other things). Back in the days when still photography was done with 4x5 view cameras, photographers used something called a “focusing cloth”… defined by Merriam-Webster as: “an opaque dark cloth used to cover the rear of the camera and the head and shoulders of the photographer in order to exclude most of the light except that coming through the lens”. In the case of still photography with a 4x5 view camera, it was primarily to help the photographer focus. In the case of the ultra-glossy iPad screen when used outdoors to shoot HD video, you’ll need it even to see the screen properly, in order to compose and assign the subject for autofocus and exposure… and even to start and stop the recording. In this article, I’ll cover what an iPad has in common with a 4x5 view camera, show a iPad tripod mount, a “focusing cloth”… and make a request to FiLMIC PRO, Hoodman USA and Zacuto.

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