XDCAM EX1 on the road blog

[Vince Gaffney]

Originally Posted by Adam Ginsberg

Hey Phil, do you mind sharing your zoom and focus settings on the EX1 and Letus? Stuff looks great!

I'm sure Phil won't mind my butting in here as we have had this very conversation. The answer is, you have to zoom until you lose the fall off on the sides. The reality of my Letus is I'm losing quite a bit of my field of view to eliminate the fall off. A 20mm lens is behaving closer to 26mm.

On the other hand, edge to edge seemed quite good on my set-up.

vince

[Phil Bloom]

I have complete another little short called "South Bank"

You can read about what I used to shoot it on my website and of course see it!

[Steve Shovlar]

Phil, great stuff as always though the music isn't too my taste!;)

Question. The very first shot. How many frames a second, and you are also panning during the shot. How did you accomplish that without it being jerky? Just put extremely soft constant pressure on your fluid head as it moved right?
Thanks
Steve

[Steven Thomas]

OMG!
That was absolutely beautiful man!
That's it, I got to get out of this freaking desert!

You've got the magic bro when it comes to shooting this stuff. I see why Sony has looked you up ;) LOL

[Craig Seeman]

Reminds me of the film Koyaanisqatsi. I'll second the question about the pan during time lapse. How'd you do that without a motor?

[Phil Bloom]

Thanks

The sequence was edited in 720p as most of it was 720p due to overcrank. All the timelapse was 1080p which gave me the ability to zoom into the shot and then pan along in the motion tab in FCP giving the illusion of motion controlled tripod.

[Mark OConnell]

Phil

Are you receiving money or favors from Letus in exchange for the link on your blog?

[Phil Bloom]

Hi Mark

I have links to both Cinevate and Letus next to each piece of work so people can go to their respective websites.

The Letus one does register that I sent them for that I get a tiny percentage if someone buys something from them. The Cinevate one doesn't.

I don't believe that effects my integrity in the slightest. As I am sure anyone who has emailed me and asked my opinion will attest I have always been honest and recommended what I believe is best for them! The money I get is barely enough to pay for my coffee each day!!

One company did ask me to become a "sponsored shooter" for them, which meant basically just using their products and nothing else and produce nice stuff using them for people to see. I declined even though it meant free stuff for ever. Without impartiality my opinion is worthless here. They agreed and withdrew the offer.

Am desperate for Cinevate to help me out and get my EX1 working better with the flip but not heard a peep in ages, I feel like I do need to redress the balance but until I can produce images perfect enough with it I can't, so Dennis, PLEASE let me know how your fix is coming along?

I big up the EX1 because I love it not because Sony pay me. I wish they would though as apparently people are buying them because of my recommendation, something I find quite astonishing. Although they are paying me for three days to be on their stand at the broadcast exhibition at the end of the month. But, just my normal daily rate.

I will continue to use whatever I like the best at this moment in time. This will constantly change as new equipment comes out, when it does I am sure I will get whatever it is and try it out, if i love it, you will here!!

[Steve Cahill]

Phil- I called Cinevate, last week, Hubert said the flips were going out the following week. Let-us see if that happens. The ND really helped my EX footage in the bright sun. I was impressed with the footage. Nice to have a video camera with a DOF. Opens up a whole new world of footage from a video camera.

I got CA and I await the Leopard version of Magic Bullet to fix this.

The SDI out of the EX does not seem to be as sharp as the component out, have you seen this at all? or is is just me?

I will post the newer footage over the next few days @ my blog @
http://web.mac.com/stevecahill/Steve...Blog/Blog.html

[Craig Seeman]

I've always thought of that as an HD to SD technique. Just hadn't thought of its as something one could do going from 1080 to 720 (slaps head). Thanks.

It also amazes me you can get shots that would be impossible in New York City. They are very restrictive about where you can bring cameras and even more restrictive if there's a tripod involved.

For example, $10,000,000 liability insurance and over $10,000 to have MTA staff on hand if one shoots in the NYC Subway System according MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority).

Not only do you have a good eye, I am amazed you get the time to set up those shots without being harassed . . . or maybe there's a story behind some of those shots.

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

Thanks

The sequence was edited in 720p as most of it was 720p due to overcrank. All the timelapse was 1080p which gave me the ability to zoom into the shot and then pan along in the motion tab in FCP giving the illusion of motion controlled tripod.

[Christopher Witz]

I do agree that you have become the guy here that when you mention a piece of gear on your blog or here that I open a safari window and google it to see more about it..... you should feel good about you promoting through real life experience and not as a paid shil.... makes me feel better reading it anyways. Mike Curtis of hdforindies.com does a good job of balancing his blog time with earning some coin by linking products he cheers on his amazon page.

so how bout other things your sweet on?

Phil, what coffee do you drink? Right now I'm on the fence between Illy and Lavazza with my lapovoni..... think I'm leaning toward lavazza for my caps.

Shoes? I like the look of Puma suedes but they are a bit flat footed for me and at the end of a day of shooting my feet ache.... so I switched to black NB runners... nice and light and I feel like I'm walking on clouds.... great with the merlin/vest/armex1 combo.

shavers..... I gave up on blades and switched to just rotory but I'm still not happy. I think it might be one of those things that one is never completly satisfies with and just comprimises. kinda like film look plugins...hehe

[Steven Thomas]

Dang coffee .... repeat post!

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Steve Cahill

The SDI out of the EX does not seem to be as sharp as the component out, have you seen this at all? or is is just me?
[/url]

I'm seeing just the opposite going to my 1920x1080 Dell monitor. We also hooked the EX1 up via SDI to a $5,000 JVC pro monitor. It was nothing short of excellent.

[Ray Bell]

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

Thanks

The sequence was edited in 720p as most of it was 720p due to overcrank. All the timelapse was 1080p which gave me the ability to zoom into the shot and then pan along in the motion tab in FCP giving the illusion of motion controlled tripod.

This footage is the exact reason I can't wait till we have 4K camera's to shoot with... I'd love to be able to pan and zoom from 4K down to 720...

It'd be like shooting with a meriod of camera's all at the same time....

good job again Phil...

Edit: I haven't tried it out yet but Cineform has on their site a Cineform Prospect product in Beta that will allow the EX footage be encoded into unlimited spatial resolution.... its called
Prospect 4K... this could be an interesting experiment... take 1080 footage, encode to 4K and then pan and zoom on a 720 timeline..

looks like I won't have to wait on 4K camera after all.. :-)

[Stu Holmes]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Not only do you have a good eye, I am amazed you get the time to set up those shots without being harassed . . . or maybe there's a story behind some of those shots.

A lot of the "south Bank" stuff was shot at Waterloo station concourse.
- Its a complete zoo in rushhour, but it is a fairly big concourse and honestly 99% of people really couldnt care less what you're doing - as they only have (literally) 82seconds before their train home leaves.... all they want is to make it onto their regular train to get home in time for their favourite TV programme..

What you *can't* do though is leave a bag unattended anywhere. that sort of thing is a complete no-no in London and has been for many years and for good reason...

The one piece of South Bank I thought was (perhaps) a little scary for Phil is when the roller-blader did the jump coming straight towards him, and fell, and to me, judging by how OOF it was, it looked like those skates really came pretty close to the camera !! Phil can you comment on how close the guy got to you ?!?!