Random family history from the Prelinger Archives
This is footage of the General Motors Technical Center, designed by my grandfather Eero Saarinen, in its heyday: It’s an amazing window into a bygone age. Weirdly, I bumped into it searching for tap dance...
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Deadmau5 – Alive and Well
Got together with Deadmau5 recently in the penthouse of the Hollywood Tower. Turns out, he’s not just an electronic music genius, he’s a camera geek, too. He’s an Epic owner and he’s looking for Hawk anamorphic lenses if you have any to sell… Check it:
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Battery Park to Screen at ITVFest
The International Television Festival will be screening the first 3 episodes of Battery Park in Los Angeles on July 6, 10pm at the LA Convention Center. In its seventh year, the ITVFest is one of the most prominent web television fests going and we’re psyched to premiere with them.
read moreEpic HDR as a method to pull stills from video with minimal motion blur
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the Epic camera rendering still photography useless and it’s amazing and mind bending ability to shoot video and stills at the same time. Unfortunately, when you unpack this a little, you realize that the eye prefers motion pictures to be blurred and still photography to be sharp (with many exceptions, of course). I wondered if the HDR capability of the Epic might be a solution since it grabs the image with a significantly reduced exposure time – but grain might be a problem. Some people think the Epic can shoot well enough at 2000 ISO – I’m not one of them. So, I did a little test today. I used a stock Canon EFS 18-200 (not the sharpest tool in the shed) but I don’t think it will obscure the results. Firstly, in case you’re wondering if your Epic is as good at stills as your 5DMkIII, Auto Focus on the Epic is essentially unusable as a professional tool. Slow and stupid. So let’s put that aside and focus on the really interesting part – HDR as a way to reduce blur and get usable stills while shooting video. The first thing you will notice in the gallery below is that it totally works. The first 2 images are 2 stops different 320 ISO and then 1280 from A and X Tracks. The next 2 images 3 stops different 250 ISO and then 2000 with the shutter set at 1/96th. The 3 stops definitely do a great job of reducing motion blur from a pretty fast moving object. But with the reduced shutter speed, the video does have that Saving Private Ryan sharp feeling. The flower images are significantly less demanding on the motion blur (and this shot is really where a better lens would have helped), but it made for a very nice shot. Easy. But. Aye, look at the close up frames and you’ll see the rub. There is virtually no grain in the primary A Track images and there is significant grain in the X Track images. Even in the first running shot with the X Track at 1280 ISO it is significant and probably renders it unusable in many situations. Or at least a questionable solution for something like Wedding photography. We can retest this when the 6k Dragon sensor comes out, but for now it seems not quite...
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Still from new spotwork
Here’s a still from our shoot last week. Double full blue on a maxi on the bg, double diffused maxi for the key, 240 fps....
read moreBattery Park Still
Here’s a quick taste of our new web pilot “Battery Park” that’s going to premiering at NATPE in Miami… Keep an eye out. (Red Epic, Lomo...
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