Guerilla Stabilization with a Gorilla

Well just had one of those moments trying to pack for a trip.  Off to my brother-in-laws wedding.  My wife and I are doing the photos and video as their wedding present.  I have an older Gorilla Pod SLR-Zoom which I had to repair one of the legs.  Even with a gimp leg using the two good ones as handles out under the lens and a Z-finder pressed into my face I had much better stabilization.  It is no steady-cam alternative but compared to getting something dedicated to the task this is A.) Cheaper B.) Much easier to pack.  I may look at upgrading to the Focus model which is more heavy duty but that may be for later. 

Slowly getting back up to speed... NDs, tripods and more

With the first week back to work done and the second one about to start I am slowly coming back up to speed.  Certainly not getting the time with the 7D that I would have hoped but I do have a while to sort it all out.  Articles are going to be a slower trickle over the next couple of months but they will come.  I have ordered a Fader ND variable ND filter from The Lightcraft Workshop.  It has not arrived so I cannot comment on it though I can say that a short walk at sunset on Saturday showed that even in fading light, ISO 100, 1/50th of a second at f2.8 can be 1 to 4 stops overexposed.  SO... for those of you who want to shoot in bright sunlight, maintain a shallow depth of field ND filters or a variable ND filter is going to be an absolute must.

Tripod wise, I am finding my pan and tilt photo head though it can support the moves does not do so with the expected smoothness of a fluid head tripod.  There is an element of variable friction that gives now and again which causes jerky movements in pans and tilts.  So I am starting to think about a fluid head tripod to use with an old set of studio legs I keep for when I am not hiking.

Color style wise, I am finding interesting results with the neutral style tweaked over the super flat styles that can be downloaded.  They are a nice compromise on how they can be graded vs. looking reasonable in without grading.

That is all for now with more to come with time.

Coming soon...

With the holidays here I have been taking a break from some things technology related.  That being said I am planning a few posts soon.  Follow-ups to come will include, Picture Styles, Exposure, thoughts on the Zacuto Z-finder and other topics.

I hope whatever holiday you celebrate that it has been a wonderful one.  2010 will be a year of potential given the right effort.  I hope it brings whatever changes everyone wants and maybe a few surprises.

Update on Thursday, December 31, 2009 by [Your Name Here]

I am about 1/2 way through an article on Exposure.  It is a larger subject that deserves a decent write up.  For those of you just starting with the 7D.  If the light levels are decent for what you want to shoot.  Set the 7D to M.  Set the shutter to 1/50 and the f-stop/aperture to whatever you want to use for effect.  Set the ISO to Auto.  If you are shooting in 24FPS this works, for 60FPS set the shutter speed to 1/30.  Beware that if the lights are too dark the image could get noisy.

Also, if you are inside and pan past a window the exposure will change as you are not in full manual.

For an alternative, set the camera to M, Shutter to 1/50th and the Aperture to something like f 5.6.  Then looking that the subject change the ISO of the camera until the scene looks bright enough in the screen.  This is not a good habit to get into but it will get you started.  What this improves upon is that the camera will maintain a consistent exposure even if the light changes.  So you will have better luck with interiors when you pan past windows and lights.

Memory cards and the 7D

A lot of debate has taken place in various venues about what speed of memory card should be used in the Canon 7D.  I moved to a 533x card after trying my older 266x cards and having video pause when I shoot a RAW file in the middle of a clip.  This was my reaction after the first day, not reading the manual, etc.

It states quite clearly in the manual that shooting a still in the middle of capturing video will interuppt  the video capture for up to a second.  The smaller the resolution/quality of the still captured the smaller the impact on the gap in the video.  So shooting a full resolution RAW file should not be surprising when it causes the pause.

As for video alone the manual reccomends that the card be able to write 8MB/s.  The footage is rated at 330MB/min at 1920x1080.  That amounts to 5.5MB/s which is actually quite low for most common CF cards. Considering the basic math has a 1920x1080 frame source as 6.2MB/s the compression ratio is not at all too bad.  Most UDMA cards can handle about 30MB/s which should be plenty.  So before you go and drop a few hundred dollars on really expensive memory cards start with something a bit more reasonable.  A major brand UDMA card of 30MB/s should work great.

I am using the A-Data Speedy 533x card for now but I can't comment on how long that card will last.  I normally buy the Sandisk or Kingston brand cards.  As an experiment for the sake of card speed the price is right.

What I can reccomend is get the largest capacity card at a speed that will give you the leeway to shoot the video you want.  At 330MB/min a 4GB card only records 12 minutes of footage.  So moving to at least a 16GB card for the 48 minutes of footage capacity is advisable.

Quicktime and Mac OS X 10.6

If you are like me, a mac user.  You likely had a Quicktime Pro key for OS X 10.5.  Though I like the UI for the new Quicktime I really missed my QTpro features.  We use it all the time in the studio for quick and dirty generation of QTs from image sequences, etc.  So when I just want to splice together a few shots of my son to send to the folks I miss the copy and paste of the old QT.

Fear not, if you did not do a clean install of Mac OS 10.6 then the installer should have detected your Pro Key and moved the old QT application to the /Applications/Utilities folder.  You can still use it to do very rough edits and exports of clips shot on your DSLR.