Photo Blog #69

Giger Bar. Gruyères, Switzerland.
the filming location for my documentary H.R. Giger's Sanctuary. Available on Amazon.

Canon 550d Movie Crop Mode

The Canon 550d is an excellent photo camera with its 18MP(5176x3456 pixels) sensor, but the main reason that I purchased one was for its HD video modes. It is capable of shooting 1920x1080p at 24, 25 & 30fps as well as 1280x720p at 60 & 50 fps. In order to produce these frame sizes/rates while still using the full sensor area the camera "cheats" by skipping lines. When shooting 1080p for example, i believe that the camera is skipping every third line. The 550d has another video mode which doesn't use this cheat. It is called Movie Crop Mode which is interesting but in most cases not very useful. Check out this diagram:
The part of the image outline in red represents the entire usable pixel area of the 550d. Outlined in green is the 16x9 part of the sensor used in the HD modes with gray lines in half the frame to illustrate showing the line skipping occurs. The little blue box in the middle is the part of the sensor used in Movie Crop mode. The camera is cropping out the standard definition-sized center of the sensor to make videos of 640x480 resolution. This is essentially the same as taking a photo from the camera and cropping it to 640x480, except that it is 30fps video. What does this mean? The most apparent thing you notice when using this mode is whatever lens you have on is effectively 7 times longer. A 50mm lens becomes a 350mm lens. A 200mm becomes a 1400mm. It also means you have some incredible macro capabilities because the minimum focus distance of the lens doesn't change. Finally, it actually has less aliasing artifacts than the HD modes in the camera. As interesting as all of this is, it is not HD so it's actual applications are very limited. Here are some real examples:

iPhone/iPad compatible Youtube Link

A few notes about this video: The camera has a normal 640x480 mode which is not included in the diagram at the top of the article. It works essentially the same as the HD modes by line-skipping. I included two HD clips at 100% to show that the Movie Crop really does resolve more information than the HD mode. The footage of the green bug was taken with an 80mm lens, which really shows off the macro abilities of Movie Crop. The baby foxes were shot at 3200 ISO, it is amazing that one can film in such lighting conditions even if it is grainy.

Movie Crop is a fun feature to have, but the lack of HD makes it mostly useless. It would have been nice for Canon to include a 1080p Movie Crop function which would give non-line-skipped footage with a crop factor. Maybe this is something that will be included in professional Canon HDSLRs in the future.

Questions? Comments? Contact me.

Photo Blog #68

Red leaves. Blue sky.

Plastic Bullet Review

Plastic Bullet is a new photo-manipulation app for iPhone developed by Red Giant Software (the app's name is a reference to their popular video color correction software Magic Bullet). Plastic bullet is intended to simulate the effects of cheap, plastic-lensed film cameras like the Holga, Diana, etc. intro screenWhen you open the app it prompts you to either select a photo from your camera roll, or take a photo in the app. After the photo is chosen or taken, you are presented with four randomly generated variations of the image. variationsThe variations are based on a combination of color toning, contrast, saturation, simulated film burn, vignetting, blur, etc. If you tap on a variation you are giving the option to save it or go back. If you do not like any of the four choices you can simply press the refresh button to make 4 entirely new variations of your image. I really like this app. The quality of the results are great. I also like the fact the it is selectionrandom, but you still have the choice of which random variation you choose. It's all the fun of shooting with a crappy plastic camera with none of the commitment. The one big downside to the app is it will only save images at 800x600 resolution. However Red Giant has said they will allow full resolution saves soon. I look forward to this update. Plastic Bullet costs 1.99 in the app store. Here are a few more images.

Questions? Comments? Contact me.

Photo Blog #67

Anthem of Silence.

Three New Lenses

I recently picked up three new lenses for my Canon 550d. They are all actually old lenses, but they're new to me. All of them are manual focus lenses from the 70's and 80's and they are all from different manufacturers. This means they require lens-mount adapters so they will fit on my Canon.

The first lens is the only one that I truly sought out. I wanted a nice normal prime lens for the 1.6 crop factor chip on the 550d. I settled on a Nikon 28mm f2.8 Series E lens. It was quite inexpensive and is very sharp. Its 35mm equivalent focal length is ~45mm. This is my new standard lens.
Franz Liszt 28mm The second lens I picked up when I was in LA earlier this month. My sister has possesion of my grandfather's Olympus OM-1 and attached to it was an F.Zuiko 50mm f1.8 OM lens. I already own the Canon 50mm f1.8, but since the Olympus is manual focus it is going to be much nicer for video work. I will post comparisons of the two lenses eventually. I am curious to see how they compare.
The third I picked up on a whim at a camera shop here in Zürich. It was in a bargain bin for CHF 30 and I thought I'd take a chance. It is a Minolta MD TELE ROKKOR 135mm f3.5. I was taking a chance on this lens because I was not sure if it was adaptable to Canon or not. Luckily it was. Unluckily I picked the wrong adapter. There are two different adapters for Minolta to Canon -- one has an optical element and the other doesn't. I went for the one without hoping it would be ok. Unfortunately the lens won't focus to infinity. It still makes a great macro lens though. May someday I will get the optical adapter. Does anyone know which minolta lenses focus properly with out an optical adapter?

Expect to see these lenses used in my video work in the near future.
Thank you to my model Franz Liszt.

Photo Blog #66

A medieval tradition.
A pilgrimage that has occurred for over 600 years in honor of the Battle of Näfels.

Reflections on Romania

A while ago I made a list of things I have done in the service of filmmaking. Add being stranded in Romania by a Icelandic volcano to that list. Last week I traveled to Bucharest to attend the NexT International Film Festival to represent AUS.LAUF.

I have been to Romania before, and it became one of my favorite places to which I have traveled. This trip only further cemented my opinion. Rather than wax poetic about why like like Romania so much, here are a random list of words that I associate with the country and more specifically, Bucharest:

Soup, books, cubical, chaotic, humor, antique, dogs, deserted, vibrant, cheap booze, 35mm, cables, serpentine, hopeful, history, meat, enigmatic, individual, philosophy, inviting, good coffee...
The NexT festival was great. Everyone involved was very kind and everything was well organized. It was very interesting to see AUS.LAUF with a big audience for the first time. The response was quite good. I really enjoyed meeting the all of the people involved. Romania has an excellent growing film community.

After a few days in Romania I heard that I would be prevented from flying home by a volcano. Also, on the same day, someone dyed all of the fountains blood-red. If a plague of frogs had come by, I would have thought it was the apocalypse. I traveled home by train instead.

Photo Blog #65

Züri paar.

Lina Button @ Cafe Henrici

Here is video I shot of Lina Button performing Clouds at Cafe Henrici a couple of weeks ago. Pretty catchy song.

Photo Blog #64

How they felt about the wall.

Pocket Cam: Scenes from Berlin

I am stretching the definition of "pocket" a bit with this video since it was shot with my 550d. However, the camera is still relatively small and portable. Also, if I have my 550d with me I won't be carrying my Mino or make the choice to film with the iPhone. Pocket Cam is more about capturing the unique scenes as they happen and not the size of the camera.

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Photo Blog #63

Not her shadow.

Very Unscientific Canon 550d Tests

I haven't bought a video camera in a very long time. The main reason for this is that I believe that every camera on the market is either too expensive or has too many drawbacks. However, two weeks ago I bought a Canon 550d which is the first camera that meets my price-perfomance requirements. I was close to buying a Canon 7D a few months ago but decided not to. The camera's shortcomings (line-skipping sensor, h.264 codec) didn't justify the price to me. Shortly after I decided not to get the 7D, Canon announced the 550d (known as the Rebel T2i in the US) which made me incredibly glad I didn't make that purchase. The video functionality on the 550d is virtually identical to that of the 7D. The only notable differences are the lack of 1/3rd stop ISO settings, white balance fine-tuning in Kelvin, and HD external video output while recoding. The other differences between the cameras are purely build quality and photo shooting speed -- neither which I care about too much. The other big difference: the 550d costs half as much as the 7D.

I haven't had the chance to use the camera on any legitimate projects yet, however I have made some very unscientific tests:

Download High-Bitrate 1080p h.264(307MB)

The main purpose of these tests was to investigate overall image quality and to see how the camera looked with varying depth of field. The lighting is clearly not constant at all (I had no real cinema lights handy in my apartment at 1am), but Spock's face should be consistently exposed throughout. All of the tests were shot using a Canon 50mm f1.8, some of the other random footage was shot using a Manual Nikon 24mm f2 or the Canon 17-55 f2.8 IS. I recorded at 1080p 25.

I think the camera performs quite well. The noise (even at ISO 1600). though noticeable, isn't really distracting. One problem I noticed and was expecting is in the last test clip where I rack focus. There is some shimmery aliasing on the card in the background. This must be an artifact of the line-skipping sensor.

Any questions?

Photo Blog #62

Gargoyle in Leeds

Ad Hoc = Andre Hochuli + Linda Suter

iPhone-Friendly Youtube Version

Ad Hoc is a duo from Winterthur comprised of Andre Hochuli (Guitar, Vocals) and Linda Suter (Violin, Vocals). On Tuesday February 23 they performed the song Futile Crush which has become the third in the Niederdorf Music Video series I am creating for Cafe Henrici. The location was on Spiegelgasse right up the alley from the famous Cabaret Voltaire.

Download:
For iPod/iPhone or Mp3

Photo Blog #61

Landesmuseum.

From the Archive: Libra Armor by Jane Lui

iPhone-Friendly Youtube Version

Jane Lui is a musician and good friend of mine. We met many years ago in the San Diego cafe music scene. Back in 2007 we happend to be in London at the same time. Unfortunately our schedules only intersected for two hours. What would be a better use of those two hours other than making a music video? Nothing.

Currently Jane is working on her third studio album and is raising money for it through Pledge Music. Check out some of her music on Youtube. If you are in to it, think about dropping her a donation.

My favorite Youtube videos from Jane:
Duck Tales
Edelweiss
Long Ago

Photo Blog #60

Looking at the River.

Lia Sells Fish

iPhone-Friendly Youtube Link

Lia Sells Fish is the stage name of singer/songwriter Christine Hasler. She played a show at Cafe Henrici on February 2 with her guitarist Steve Schnider. Before the show, we found a nice secluded spot in the Niederdorf and filmed the video above. The song is called Eve.

Download: for iPod/iPhone Download: Mp3

is

Steve Ellington

an independent filmmaker based in Washington D.C.