I bought a Flip MinoHD camcorder a couple of days ago. I haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces, but I put together a few of the clips I have shot while going about my day. I also tested some basic color correction and a few effects to see how the footage would hold up.
Overall, I am fairly happy with the video quality, given the fact that it is smaller than a lot of cell phones and only costs 300chf. There are some obvious issues with the video quality though. In the footage I shot out of the train window, you can see some serious image skew, but I guess you can't expect a really quick sensor reset time on such a small camera. The camera performs impressively in low light situations, but there is a noticeable increase in noise, which also exaggerates the compression artifacting. In bright light conditions, when the camera is still, compression is very minimal which is nice.
I will shoot some more rigorous test footage and make a more detailed review in the next week or so.
Way back during my first year in film school, we were tasked to create a short self portrait film for a documentary class. I am still quite happy with what I made -- though I probably would have recorded the voice over better. The piece is entitled I Know It.
George attached to an Arri Film CameraAbout a month ago, Maximilian De Vree and I shot a short film which we are still in the process of editing. During the shoot we experimented with two new pieces of equipment. One was the Sony EX1, which I reviewed in a previous post, and the other was the George Ring Light by Gekko.
George is an LED ring light with with 32 LEDs and a diameter of 360mm, big enough for any camera you can think of. The light will attach to the camera by most rail systems. We used a quick release system by cavision. George can be powered either by battery or direct wall current and the light is full dimmable. It is also divided into 4 sections (top, bottom, left and right) which can be switched on and off indiviually. One of the most unique things about this light is its magnetic mount system. George comes with two sets of lenses (Wide and Spot) which snap into place with magnets. There is also a magnetic diffuser ring and a magnetic clear ring for using gels.
George provides a nice soft fill light. From the first moment, I was incredibly impressed with this light. It was very bright, especially for a battery operated LED light. I didn't do any objective measurement, but I would say it was about the equivalent brightness of a 400w tungsten lamp. The spread of the wide lenses with the diffuser on was also quite impressive. Shooting in a couple of indoor locations, it added just enough ambient light to the scene to bring my exposure into a usable area. I also liked the spot lenses, though we did not use them as much for our purposes. The ability to turn off sections of the light also camer in handy. There was one shot where a shiny table was in the bottom of the frame. We simply switched off the bottom section and the problem was solved.
Another really great thing about this light is being able to work hand held. The rig is incredibly light. All you need to do is strap the controller box on you belt and have somewhere to put a battery (we happend to have a vest with a nifty front pouch). Moving around freely with a nice, soft, front light source was very enjoyable.
The one downside of the light is the price. It is prohibitively expensive for most people to buy. The full Kit is about 9000 dollars. Not too many people want to pay as much for a light as they did their camera. It is definitely great for rentals though.
Overall, I was very happy with this light and intend to use it again soon.
On Tuesday night, I watched the election results in a friend's apartment here in Zürich, Switzerland. The party started late at night because of the time difference. Exit poll data didn't start coming out until around 11pm. It was a small party: two Americans, two Germans, an Irish, my Mexican wife Karla, and myself.
Being an American living abroad, I think this election had more impact on me than usual. Everyday I poured over the news. It became somewhat of an obsession. The race between John McCain and Barack Obama seemed to me like an archetypal battle between the old way of doing things and the new. I worried constantly that we would make the same mistake for a third time.
At 1:00 am, the first results came in. Kentucky was called for McCain. Indiana didn't seem very promising either. My heart sank. The party got a little bit less jovial. "Just wait, it's not over yet" I thought.
Back in 2004, I worked on the Academy Award winning documentary "Mighy Times: The Children's March," a film about the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Sitting in the editing suite and listening to the voices of Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy over and over, I gained a profound new respect for a struggle that African Americans have been fighting since the very beginning of this country. This election night had the potential to take a giant step forward in that struggle -- not only for African-Americans, but for the whole nation, just as MLK's "I have a dream" or Kennedy's Civil Rights Address did.
The hours went by. More results came in. States were called. Holograms were spoken to. Superfluous touch screens were used. Some of the few people left then decided to go home. When Ohio was called, we became happy again. Things were looking good.
Finally, at 5:00 am, the election was called for Barack Obama. Even though it was morning, we cracked a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Then we waited for his acceptance speech.
By the time he appeared, it was around 6:30 am. Only three of us remained. Seeing Barack Obama address the nation for the first time as President Elect was one of the most moving moments of my life. Karla and I held each other tight. When Obama thanked his children and his best friend, his wife Michelle, we held each other tighter. I was momentarily transported to an undisclosed time in the future. A future where Karla and I could tell our mixed-race children, without a shred of naivety or falsehood, that they could grow up to be President of the United States.
Back in the present, the three of us remaining had tears in our eyes. Things can be different. The status quo is not set in stone. "Change has come to America."
As a general rule, I try to keep this blog focused on film, video and other media related items. However, with a week left before the election, I am making an exception because I have some things on my mind.
First on the list of things on my mind are electronic voting machines. Let me declare in annoying capital letters: THERE IS NO REASON TO USE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES. The simple fact is that electronic voting machines only have one benefit over standard paper ballots; That is instant vote tabulation. However, as your mother probably told you, the fastest way is most likely not the best way of doing things.
This single benefit comes with A LOT of downsides (sorry for the caps again.) The first and most obvious downside is complexity. No one can argue that computers are not more complex that pieces of paper. When things are more complex, they are more prone to errors, malfunctions and are more difficult to use. We accept the complexity of computers in this modern world because the positive aspects outweigh the downside of complexity. Computers provide instant communication, access to all of the world's knowledge, unlimited entertainment, etc. An electronic voting machine's only benefit to counteract it's complexity is faster results. Totally not worth it.
The second problem with electronic voting machines is a direct result of the complexity of the system and that is transparency. When you vote on paper, you can physically see who you voted for. A computer is completely different however. Even if you push the correct buttons on a touch screen, you have no way of knowing for sure if that vote was recorded the same inside the machine. A paper vote is clearly readable by a human being and a computer. An electronic vote is just a bunch of magnetic disturbances on a shiny disk inside a machine. That sure instills voter confidence.
The last problem with electronic voter machines comes from E-voting manufacturers trying the overcome the problem of transparency. This is where it gets ridiculous. Some e-voting machines, like the ones being used in West Virginia, have a paper roll under glass next to the voting machine. This roll prints a confirmation of the vote that is made. The voter is supposed to double check that the vote on the paper matches what they entered on the screen to verify their vote. This is ridiculous on so many levels. First, you still have no idea what the machine actually recorded. It is perfectly possible to record one vote and print another. Unless the differences between the machine and the paper are way off, no one is going to go through each vote by hand. The second and most ridculous part of this is how it completely turns the logic of voting on its head. Follow me here: With standard paper ballots, the voter marks their vote on a piece of paper, which is then read by a machine and counted. If there are any problems, humans recount the paper by hand. With e-voing, you enter your vote on a touch screen, which is then printed out as confirmation on paper. If there are problems, humans recount the paper by hand. See how stupid that is? You are basically having a machine generate a piece of paper instead of making one your self. It seems like a completely harebrained workaround that is easily solved by sticking with the old system -- paper ballots. Just because something is new and high-tech doesn't mean you have to use it.
So, with all these problems, why would any government decide to go with these stupid machines? I can think of two reasons. The first reason is money. Basically, some company makes voting machines and they convince the government to use tax dollars to by them. The manufacturers makes tons of cash and the government can feel like they are cutting edge. The second reason is far more nefarious, and that is voter fraud. The fact is, it is far easier to commit voter fraud with electronic voting machines, because they are complex and opaque systems. Anyone pushing electronic voting machines needs to have their motives looked at very closely.
So for all you people stuck using electronic voting machines, I am sorry. Your vote may have gone into a black hole, never to return.
Here is a very scary video showing how easy it is to hack a voting machine like the ones used in Ohio in 2000:
And here is a video of a voting machine in West Virginia malfunctioning even after it has been "Calibrated":
There will probably be a few more political rants here before the week is over.
The Sony EX1 solid state video cameraLast weekend Maximilian De Vree and I shot a short film. I will post details of the film a little later, but one of the main purposes of this shoot was to test the Sony PMW-EX1, an HD video camera that shoots to propreitary flash memory called SxS. Until last friday, my practical experience with video was tape only. I have always been wary of tapless shooting for back up reasons. I have realized, however that this is where the future is heading and it was time to jump in.
In the back of my mind, I always knew I would fall in love with tapeless recording once I tried it -- and I did. The benefits far out weigh the negatives. Shooting straight to sA still from the EX1 showing nice, shallow depth of field.olidstate memory allows instant replay of shots, the ability to delete bad takes, variable framerates, higher data rates, reusable media, easy and quick transfer to the computer, and so on. With all of these benefits, the main downside is you really need a computer on set to back up to (and an extra harddrive to be safe.) This makes shooting in the field a little more cumbersome. Also the media more expensive. I can carry 4-6 hours of Professional HDV tape for about $80. If I wanted to have 4-6 hours of SxS cards with out downloading first it would run about $2500. You can get away with one one set of cards that shoot for an hour or two, but downloading and backing up really slows down your shooting process. I can see this as a big problem for Documentary shooting. For short narrative work however, this was not a problem.
The camera we rented came with two 8 gigabyte SxS cards, each able to record about 20 minutes. I didn't even bother using both cards in the camera. When one would fill up, it could be downloaded while we shot the other. In this way, the workflow was similar to shooting rolls of film. Besides the solid state recording medium, which was the biggest new thing for me, I would like to point out a few other things about this camera:
The Lens The lens on the EX-1 is a Fujinon 5.8mm to 81.2mm zoom (this the 35mm equivalent of 31.4mm to 439mm.) What impressed me the most about this lens is that it has a constant maximum aperture of f1.9 all the way through the zoom range. This allows for very nice shallow depth of field and excellent performance in low light conditions. On the downside, I often found myself wishing the lens was a little wider.
Focusing The EX-1 has two modes for focusing: AF/MF and Full MF. AF/MF mode is what most prosumer video shooters are used to. In this mode you can use autofocus and manual focus, but the focus ring will spin infinitely -- there are no fixed focus distances associated with the ring. In this mode you can turn on macro focus which allows for very close focus. However, the minimum focus distance changes as you zoom. Sliding the focus ring back puts you into Full MF mode. In this mode the ring physically engages the lens and gives you absolute focus readings from a scale on the lens. This is the kind of lens film shooters are used to. In this mode minimum focus shifts to about 1 meter, but does not shift when you zoom.
Cool onscreen readings There are quite a few nice onscreen readings on the EX1. There is a histogram, which is great for exposure. A spot meter that gives you the percentage of grey that is read in a box at the center of the screen. And lastly a depth of field scale, so you can know exactly where you image will be sharp. This is also great for getting hyperfocus.
Slow and Quick Motion The EX1 allows you to to Overcrank and Undercrank your image which they call slow and quick motion. If you shoot at 720p you can overcrank up to 60 frames per second which gives very nice slow motion. The really cool thing about overcranking on the EX1 is that you don't lose any light. I assume the camera is always sampling at 60fps and is just taking less when you are shooting 25 or 24.
Those are a few of the cool things I noticed with the camera. We start editing the footage this week, so I will have a better idea of what the camera can really do then. Feel free to ask any questions about the camera. I will post more still images and some video as the post-production progresses.
I have decided to start a recurring segment on my blog that will feature some older projects of mine. First up is "Tuesdays at Paddy's," my first music video. During my first year in film school, I was visited by my friend Ryan Blue. We decided to shoot a music video and since there was a place in town called Paddy's, his song Tuesday's at Paddy's was a natural choice. Shot on my old mini-dv Canon ZR-10, the video quality definitely doesn't hold up to the test of time. I am, however, still proud of my first attempt at music video.
One cool thing to note about this video is that it will loop seemlessly :)
I have wanted to play around with the Infrared sensitivity of my Canon G9 for a while. Since I now have timelapse capabilities, I thought I might as well experiment with both:
Shortly after I bought my Canon G9, I learned about the CHDK firmware hack for Canon point and shoots. I was instantly Look Out!excited by the possibilities, especially the timelapse capabilities. Unfortunately, the CHDK hack did not work on the G9 -- until a couple of days ago. The hackers over on the CHDK forums finally made a working version of the hack for the G9 and I am loving it. I have been playing with the ultra high shutter speed along with motion detection to take pictures of my cats middair. Timelapse, however, is the best part. The G9 is a 12 megapixel camera. That means I can make timelapses that are well over HD quality. Even the medium JPEG setting (2592 x 1944) is larger than HD video (1920x1080). I did a quick test yesterday at sunset. Here is the result:
On Sunday I saw Tom Brosseau play at the Helsinki Klub in Zürich. It was quite a surprise to see the name of someone who played in the same San Diego coffee shops as I did appear in the Zürich 20 Minutes(the local free paper). It was a great show and discovering the Helsinki Klub was quite a revelation to me.
Someone once told me that the most punk rock thing that you can do in these modern days is to be not punk rock at all. If that is true, then Tom Brosseau is the most punk rock guy I have ever met. If you check him out you will understand. Here is a video of him performing the song "Pretty Corey" whilst standing on a stool at the Helsinki Klub:
This weekend Karla and I went up to the Jungfraujoch with the people I work with at Viewfinder Center for Photography. Here are some pictures i took: The Sphinx station atop the Jungfraujoch.A lone hiker in the snow.Konkordiaplatz and the Great Aletsch Glacier.
This is a helicopter.The crowd from the Sphinx station.There was a Bolllywood commercial shoot going on at the Jungfraujoch. This is surprisingly common.Close of of the Bollywood model.
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