Scouting w/ the Panascout app. Cool little app from Panavision which plots the location you shot the pics, aspect ratio configurations, etc… and they kinda make for cool stills.. it has this Polaroid kitsch to it

Caledon Badlands… Music video this weekend.. Stay tuned.

Spent some time sharing and exchanging ideas with fellow filmmakers, photographers and image makers - Ryan Hughes, Kar Wai Ng and Arash Moallemi. We did a little informal testing but mainly discussed workflow, shortcomings of DSLR cameras, as well as imaging technique and application in general. Hopefully, the first of more meetings to come.

Some pics from the day - all photos by Arash - thanks!

barrycheong.com 7D package next to a standard 5D.

Ryan testing out handheld with my 7D. He was very interested in exploring handheld shooting, as his last experience hadn’t been too favorable. The added hardware of my package definitely makes handheld easier to accomplish.

Kar Wai and I talking shop…

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I saw a quick test my friend Ryan Glover did with his GH1 and a Panasonic anamorphic adapter attachment designed originally for the DVX100 and it got me interested in researching the idea further. Some other people have been experimenting with similar adapters and DSLR video. These anamorphic adapters, originally designed to convert 4:3 video to 16:9, have since fallen off the radar, but used with 16:9 native chips will give you roughly 2.35:1 aspect ratio plus all the characteristics of using anamorphic lenses, most famously the blue vertical streaking. The adapter essentially squeezes the image vertically by a factor of 1.33x resulting in everything looking skinny but in post you stretch everything back out by that same factor which results in your wider aspect ratio.

The adapter I’m using is a Century Optics Digital Series lens with 58mm threads that I believe was originally used with a Sony PD-150 back in the day. The 58mm thread works well with Canon EF primes like their 85mm and 50mm 1.4 and with a simple stepping ring, to their wider lenses which have the smaller 52mm thread. I’ve been testing mainly with their 50mm 1.8 which is the only lens I have access to at the moment. It will unfortunately not work with their L series lenses.

(My 7D w/ Canon 50mm 1.8 and Century anamorphic lens attachment.)

Click on the screen grab at the top of the post to see a quick test I did. Shot in available light between 640 and 1250 ISO, between T/2.8 - 5.6, and anywhere between 7-15 feet roughly away from the subject. I flared the lens manually with an LED maglite for fun as well. Please excuse my silly friends, who thought it would be silly to dress up and be silly in front of the camera. I think they’re pretty silly (and awesome).

There definitely are some limitations with focus and exposure with this adapter, but as such force you to frame, block and generally work slightly differently. For example the lens starts performing a lot better once you stop down to T4 - 5.6 (as do real anamorphic lenses used with 35mm cameras). Also, with the 50mm at least, you have to maintain at least 4 or more feet away from your subject to get focus. I briefly tested the adapter on an 85mm 1.8 and found focus difficult to achieve even at deeper stops. Putting more distance between lens and subject will probably help but at that point defeats the purpose of using that long of a lens unless you really need the spacial representation of an 85.

In general this adapter is not for every project but for a certain look, for a certain project it could be really great. More thorough testing to come.

I was curious to know whether the 7D performs any better, noise-wise, in tungsten or daylight. I ran a quick test with a Kino Flo bulbed with both types of tubes and shot all the combinations. Camera white balance was set to either 3200k or 5500k manually.

Shooting stop was T/4.0 @ 320 ISO. I used my 24-70mm lens. I didn’t take note of the focal length. 24P @ 1/50th of a second shutter. I also shot tungsten light in daylight balance and daylight in tungsten balance and corrected in Photoshop quickly with the Color Balance option, to see how well you could recover your image.

Results below:

No apparent difference between tungsten or daylight in terms of noise. The images shot in their opposing color balance are definitely noisier but not much more so. They’re also a lot more saturated. I didn’t bother to compensate that factor.

Some new additions to my 7D camera package… please email for further inquiries on package rates and other details.

Enjoy!

My friend Stacey Kaniuk (www.staceykaniuk.com) just recently performed at the Cameron House in Toronto to a full and enthusiastic turn out. I was there capturing some of the performance with my new 7D plus a 2nd 7D package. The A-cam down by the front of the stage was mainly shot on a 50mm 1.8 and the B-cam in the back was on a 24mm 1.4. Camera’s were at 640 ISO (I think..can’t quite remember).

The footage is going to be cut together and will probably go up on her site. Here are some screen grabs:

Great Show!

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A little short impromptu video I shot of my cousins during this past Thanksgiving weekend. Canon 7D, 24P, Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 lens @ 640 ISO. Cut in FCP w/ a little basic color correct with FCP 3-way.

Being able to shoot this doc style, on the fly content wherever and whenever is really exciting to me.

Click picture above to view.

Finished shooting a music video for Director Jesse Ewles and collaborators Winston Hacking and Brett Long from Exploding Motor Car who art directed the project.

The video is entirely narrative, no performance coverage, about a messy and unorganized seamstress who is having a hard time finding any kind of inspiration in her work. The video is set in her messy apartment and as she continues through a string of denial about her mess, an armoire begins to suck the clutter into its cavity eventually resulting in the formation of a garbage monster with an appetite for more.

I shot with my new 7D package - my first project with it. Overall really happy with my first experience. The shoot was very run and gun because we had so much coverage to get through, no additional tech help and the space we were working in was a huge gong show in terms of maneuverability so it wasn’t the best conditions to test and fine tune exposure - but as such was a good real world test. I mainly set the camera to 400 ISO and occasionally bumped it to 500 or 640 when I had to buy 1/3 to 2/3 stops really quickly. I carried a Canon EF 16-35mm and EF 24-70 lenses which are both T/2.8. I typically shot wide open.

A couple of things I can report on:

- Battery life is quite good. Seems better than the 5D from what I can remember. As long as you can power a charger you shouldn’t need to alternate between more than 2 batteries all day. I have 4 batteries + 2 chargers with my package so I should be good for almost all scenarios.

- I found the 24-70 is still too short to carry as your longer lens even with the 1.6x crop factor on the 7D. I found I used the 16-35 quite a bit. At 24mm it wasn’t wide enough for me to frame what I had to. From here on out I will probably carry the 16-35, 24-70 and 70-200 T/2.8. A few higher speed primes across the board is probably a good idea also. I think I’m eying an 85mm prime as my next purchase lens.

- Handheld is still a little bit of an issue. I have Zacuto gak with my package which definitely improves things but I’m still finding a strange vibration that happens which becomes more apparent the longer you are on the lens. Both the 16-35 and 24-70 are non IS (image stabilizing) lenses. I’ve shot with Canon IS lenses with the 5D which might help the problem for shots where you’re trying to keep still but I’ve also found the IS introduces other issues when you’re telegraphing more of a move - you get this weird jump/jerk as it tries to compensate. Increasing the weight on the package might help also though part of me thinks there’s something going on with the electronic shutter.

- Definitely need to get some kind of on-board monitor. The lack of an articulating screen is a huge deal for operating.

A few screen caps. Taken from the native H264 file. No Color Corrrection. Resized 50%.

Lighting, grip (and camera!) by barrycheong.com.

The last test during my initial testing phase was testing a general over/under exposure on the scene. The scene was lit to T8 @ 500 ISO base. I didn’t want to start shifting the lights to achieve my exposure so the scene was lit to middle of the road on the lens to allow me enough stops on either end of the base to open/close my iris. The lens was the same Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L.

To give a sense of the overall contrast of the scene - the black BG read about 4-5 stops under, the banana’s were about 1 stop over and everything else fell between +/- 0.5-0.75 stops from key.

I’ve posted screen caps below. Same deal - Apple Prores transcode and then screen cap TIFFS made from that in Final Cut Pro. 100% size.

The very top image is the neutral image at proper exposure. The image on the left is the graded version. The image to the right is the exact same image but ungraded so you can see the image that’s coming straight off the camera. The grading was done in Final Cut with the basic 3 way color corrector. You might be able to achieve better results with Apple’s Color or something more sophisticated but this gives a general idea. All images were balanced to the grey card with a waveform and then tweaked to balance the rest of the items in the frame. Mainly midtones and highlights were affected with some compensation to chroma since that gets affected as you move your levels up and down.

Some initial thoughts and notes:

- The image falls completely apart at 2 & 3 stops over and under.

- Over/under 1 stop is definitely usable. In the case of +1 the image noise improves quite dramatically - you can see it in the grey card. The midtones and the highlights are starting to blend a little - you can see the orange and the face of the red box have less definition compared to the neutral image. The -1 image is definitely more contrasty and noise is more apparent. Knowing this you might be able to create a certain look depending how you expose.

- Generally speaking I’m thinking that rating the camera anywhere between 1/3 to 2/3 slower (like Neg Film) will probably improve noise performance while maintaining some definition between midtone and highlight.

I next tested Canon’s High ISO Noise Reduction option found in their Custom Function II menu option. The camera gives you 4 options - standard (STN), low (LOW), strong (STR) and disable (DIS). The results tested at 3200 ISO are posted below.

There seems to be no improvement or variation between all 4 modes. I also tested this at 800 and 1600 ISO with similar results. It looks like this function of the camera might be relegated to the stills mode. Bummer.