Canon 5D Mark II

I have added a new opening title to this short, which was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II and stars Assistant Kiersa in a dual role. Many of the shots were done twice in order to have a background plate that did not have talent in the shot; then the two were composited together in post...

Here’s something fun to report! I recently worked with a talented first-time Director by the name of Rebecca Wilson. I met Rebecca during the San Diego stop of the Canon Live Learning Tour and we quickly laid plans to work together at the earliest opportunity. Rebecca is a fine stills shooter and has a deep history in the music industry as a traveling engineer for a variety of Rock & Roll acts. When the chance came up to shoot a music video for a San Diego band named Hyena, Rebecca asked me to pop over to act as DOP on a song entitled "Anyone’s Guess."

The Really Big News is that the finished piece has been selected by the Curator of San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art for inclusion in a special exhibition that will showcase current trends in motion picture capture. The event, Alt. PictureShow, will run on Thursday, September 8th, 2010. Please attend the screenings if you’re in the area. There will be many great pieces to enjoy. Work continues to refine the final cut so the video is likey evolve further from the version shown here...

The last time I blogged properly was weeks ago when we were preparing for NAB and a quick trip to Oahu for several different projects.

The National Association of Broadcasters show was great and filled with many planned and serendipitous meetings, We saw many of our long-time gear users and friends and met many, many more new ones. We spoke with lovely folks from all over the world and broke bread with as many as we could. It was a really great show with way, way too much to see, especially when working in one booth and speaking in another twice a day.

Here’s a new item we’ll be adding to our store. I think it might be of interest to users who work in rugged environments and challenging weather. I originally developed this outfit for the 55th Combat Camera Platoon out of Ft. Mead, Maryland. The photographers of Combat Camera Platoon are charged with the daily creation of both stills and video, day or night, rain or shine. With that in mind, let’s look at the thinking behind this particular product.

Here’s another recent HDSLR video effort with my pal and favorite local model, Kiersa.

Kiersa is a bit of a contemporary hippy and reminds of many of my gal-pals from the late sixties. Kiersa wears peace symbols and yin-yang symbols and all that familiar hippy-dippy stuff that I remember from way Back In The Day. When I learned that Kiersa was a willing subject and happened to have two identical dresses, one in black and one in white, an idea emerged. We revisited the same location under several different weather conditions and used a locked-off camera and old-school post-process matting techniques....

At last!  Uncle Canon has just announced a new firmware update for the Canon 5D MK II.  This update, announced on March 2nd, 2010, will be available for download very soon.  My best guess is around March 16th. 2010...

Earlier in the summer a beautiful B-17G war-bird rumbled over the house en route to our local one-horse airstrip.  The crew was in town to give joy-rides for gas money but by the time I wrapped up what I was doing and scurried over  to the airport the fun was nearly over.  I did manage to get a quick walk-around but no airtime, dang it...

I had my trusty U-Boat, a couple of cards, and a pocket full of ND filters so I shot some bright light clips. I hope you find this piece both entertaining and instructive. 

I'll also take this opportunity to welcome some new blog readers from the Canon Live Learning event in San Francisco.  Nice to meet you folks and welcome aboard...

Well, it's taken a bit longer than I anticipated to get this posting online but here we are at last.

Anyway, here are all three segments of our exploration of shutter-speed options for the 5D Mark II in bright lighting conditions. I managed to finish these before taking some time off to recover from an automobile accident that has slowed me down a bit.  More to come after I'm feeling my oats again....

I recently met Dirk Fletcher, a very nice fellow who is a Big Cheese on the Design Faculty at Harrington College.  He's obviously a fellow tinkerer and willing to approach things with an open mind.  Dirk lent me a sample of an external viewfinder he adapted for the 5D MKII.  Dirk used components from a traditional video camera and sorted out the electronics to make something rather interesting.  Watch the attached video clip to learn more...

Whenever the topic of shooting HD video with the 5D MK2 comes up, someone always whines about manual focusing.  Most protesters argue that it requires a focus puller to do anything at all.

Get a grip folks, motion picture cameras have always been manual focus and for darn good reason; it's the only way to assure that the camera will be focused on the correct plane at the right time. While having a good focus puller is a real benefit, it isn't impossible to fly solo...