A friend of my oldest daughter came to town so we showed him around some of the sights.

Used a Bogen 562b monopod and the XHA1 with LEX. Nikon lenses used: 24mm f2.8, 50mm f1.8 and 100mm f2.8

http://www.pinelakefilms.com/newyearseve.html

Enjoy

Very nice as usual. I'm impressed with the steady shots on the monopod! Mine never seem to be that steady. Beautiful ligh this time of year too.

Steven, Happy New Year!
Good luck in making money with your cinematography, I've read your blog, you can make it for sure!
I prefer Canon A1 look with Letus Extreme to Sony EX1, the colors look nicer,
debating whether to buy EX1 not sure, are you happy with your A1, do you want to upgrade? Vivid RGB is the only CP you shoot with these days?
Oleg.

If you like the XH A1, go for it! It's a great camera. Also, to get into the EX1 with SxS cards, reader, etc... It's going to cost you twice as much as your A1 investment.

Steven,

Nice docuscenery (as my wife likes to call it). She loves the Seattle shots. I’m interested in the 3 person rack focus. Did you use the flip out LCD, or are you using an additional monitor to hit you focus points. I like others whish the A1 LCD was better, but life is full of compromises.

Sean

I like others whish the A1 LCD was better, but life is full of compromises.

I think "better" regarding the A1's LCD would mean "bigger". It's actually very sharp... it's just that it's a bit puny. BIGGER IS BETTER! :D

Bill

You’re correct, I’m corrected. What little time I’ve had with the camera, I find myself magnifying the screen quite-a-bit for manual focus.

How do people rate its ability to accuracy reproduce the WYSIWYG of the camera acquisition (color wise)? I don’t have the luxury of a professional monitor to compare.

Sean

Question: Why the hell haven't you been apart of a major motion picture yet?! lol.

It looks really good, as usual. lol I love the dude with the opossum on his shoulder.

I have a question. Did you do more color correction on this than some of your others before, or was all of that straight from the AI and the Letus Extreme? Because color-wise it looks a lot more like film than some of your previous works (which is saying a lot).

I used my VIVIDRGB preset. At least I think I did. I should check to see if it got bumped to something else. The only adjustment I made to the original footage was to crush the blacks just slightly.

Anyway, thanks for the comments :)

Steven, Happy New Year!
Good luck in making money with your cinematography, I've read your blog, you can make it for sure!
I prefer Canon A1 look with Letus Extreme to Sony EX1, the colors look nicer,
debating whether to buy EX1 not sure, are you happy with your A1, do you want to upgrade? Vivid RGB is the only CP you shoot with these days?
Oleg.

Oleg, I would love to upgrade to the EX1 because of the added perceived resolution and particularly the variable frame rates. I actually quite like the colors Philip Bloom has been getting in his shots although I think he is using Magic Bullet quite liberally.

Unfortunately, more equipment is simply not in the budget right now. I feel like the EX1 is the beginning of another level of prosumer cameras so I am going to hold off to see if Panasonic or Canon counter with new models. I'm also interested to see what RED comes up with. Word has it they are working on a more affordable version of the RED ONE. Who knows for sure, right now I'm happy with what I have and trying to make it work for me.

My favorite two shots were the ones of the black guys clapping and the market with the rack focus to the fruit... They both looked stellar...

What lenses were you using?

EDIT: Sorry didn't read the post... : /

nice shots Steven.

how was it walking around all day with that rig? seems like it would get to be slightly cumbersome....

what settings were you using for your darker shots? at the end in the market it looked like it was close to night fall.

Morgan,

I've been lugging around heavy gear since I started shooting seriously so this setup was quite easy and basic. It was just the camera slung around my shoulder and the monopod in my hand. The weight of the camera with the adapter and rods makes it easier to get steadier shots while going handheld and I can mount the camera to my monopod in about 5 seconds. That's about as easy as it gets for me.

Hey Steven,

Very pretty stuff. I've been considering a LEX, but was concerned about being able to do any handheld-style work with it, so this post is really valuable.

Can I ask what rails you use? And how did you find focusing & judging exposure relying on only the LCD with this setup?

Stu,

Handheld with the Letus and rods system is totally viable. You need a strong arm, that's for sure but other than that, you are good to go. I like doing a combo of handheld and monopod-based stuff, that way, I don't get too fatigued and the monopod stuff usually looks somewhere between tripod mounted and handheld.

Judging the exposure using the Letus is no different than judging exposure using the native lens so if you are comfortable with that, you will be comfortable with the Extreme. Focusing is another matter, that takes a lot of practice and you need to have a keen eye to recognize when you are sharply focused on a particular person or thing. It is not impossible by any means but it's like learning how to use a Steadicam. It's not going to look close to what the professionals can do when you first start, but if you make a serious commitment to learning and feeling it, you will get there.

Hi Steven,

Great Work! I have a few questions regarding the process (workflow) that you are using to creating your Web site sample videos:

How are you getting the wider than 16:9 aspect ratio for your Quicktime sample clips? Is this wider ratio also possible for the Windows Media format?

Are you using any special settings when rendering your videos? The download (streaming) time is very good and the quality is excellent. I have found it difficult to creating web videos that have both a fast streaming speed and good picture quality.

I am using Sony Vegas for my NLE and would like to improve the quality of my Web clips. Any advice or suggestions that you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Best Regards,

Jerry Neal

Wow.

That was nice. Almost made me cry. Seriously.

Also makes me want to move to Seattle.

yeah Steven, you got it now.

Hi Steven,

Great Work! I have a few questions regarding the process (workflow) that you are using to creating your Web site sample videos:

How are you getting the wider than 16:9 aspect ratio for your Quicktime sample clips? Is this wider ratio also possible for the Windows Media format?

Are you using any special settings when rendering your videos? The download (streaming) time is very good and the quality is excellent. I have found it difficult to creating web videos that have both a fast streaming speed and good picture quality.

I am using Sony Vegas for my NLE and would like to improve the quality of my Web clips. Any advice or suggestions that you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Best Regards,

Jerry Neal

Hi, I didn't realize this thread was being revived....let me try to answer your questions here...

My final output is done in Sorenson Squeeze although I just got Vegas 8 and I will now bypass Sorenson and just render mp4 files...Vegas does a great job.

The aspect ratio is set to a 2.35:1 size, also known as Cinemascope. Basically you just crop top and bottom 12.5% each. In Sorenson, you can add crop marks and then just define the final absolute size of the frame and it does the rest for you. Not sure about WMV, haven't tried it.

My ISP uses superfast servers so I have had good luck with data download speed. Other than that, I would urge you to look at the settings I used by opening up Quicktime and from the top menu go to WINDOW->SHOW MOVIE INSPECTOR

If you are just using the regular 16x9 aspect, the settings that I find to be best in Vegas 8 using the mp4 setting is to make the size 640x360 and the bitrate at 2mbps

Steven,

Great stuff!! I'm on the fence of buying the LEX (+ rods) but am wondering if I can use it without an external monitor. What is your experience?

Best regards,

Robert

Robert, it takes some getting used to but I would say I shoot about 80% of my stuff without an external monitor.

Everything in this piece was just using the LCD

Hi Steven

Thanks alot for your quick answer, that is really promising! I just started with the A1 so I want to learn a little bit more about the basics of the camera, but I miss the lower DoF in the A1!

Best regards, Robert