Rather than getting bogged down over which DSLR has the best microphone socket and lug straps, and then discussing it for 7 days on a 500 page thread, some take the approach that I too prefer. Get your arse outside. Shoot something. Preferably not your arse!
After all – that is what the cameras are there for! And we are extremely lucky to have ones this good.
This is my shoot for the second of Philip Bloom’s Challenge series. It is a nice challenge, it encourages people to go out and make stuff, and learn more about camera gear. I always find that when given a blank sheet of paper, nothing happens – but give us a cue, a carrot and a big push, we’ll go and shoot something. Philip’s cue was to set the task of a short character study.
I decided to go out onto the streets of Manchester during the night. Never an entirely risk free thing to do. But armed with a diminutive Lumix we did not look like an expensive target for drunk criminals, and nor did we look like a professional camera crew. People seemed to like us for that!
A big thank you to TJ ([url]http://tjuk.net) for helping with this shoot. Watch her entry to Philip Bloom’s first Challenge here – [url]http://www.vimeo.com/13442588 – TJ also has a shoot done for the character study challenge I believe, some musicians camped themselves outside her flat! See – Manchester is truly the capital of music.
On the tech side, I have some interesting aspects to talk about for this kind of project…
Audio is an often overlooked area of the DSLR revolution, cameras being all about the visuals. Well, since I also will need to embrace decent live audio for Photokina and future narrative filmmaking projects, I decided to invest in a Zoom H2. It’s much cheaper than the H4N but lacks the professional phantom power XLR jacks, and some other things. It is however, pretty much identical in terms of audio quality. I’ll do a comparison with my Sennheiser MKE300 shotgun mic soon too – this is a very good directional mic, which sits atop a DSLR hot-shoe.
The H2 has the all important manual gain control, allowing you to block out background noise whilst keeping volume up and maintaining detailed audio.
Shotgun mic or dual-system audio recorder? I will answer that in detail for my Zoom / Sennheiser review, but for now I feel the dual system audio recorder is a brilliant accomplice in crime to the hacked Panasonic GH1 because unfortunately we are still at the mercy of automatic-gain-control on most DSLRs with no manual gain control to speak of. All of which counts against shotgun mics from Rode and Sennheiser, great though they are. That will change soon.
In terms of lenses, only one was used, and it’s another mirrorless-only gem. This is what you cannot get with a mirror box DSLR or full frame…This is glass designed for security cameras or small-chip TV cameras. Because they’re so small, they have some unique properties. They’re also now the worst kept secret in DSLR video and because of that they’re getting harder and harder to get hold of! When the mirrorless Canon and Nikons come out, and if Sony ever get their act together with the NEX system, their prices will sky-rocket – not to mention the fact they are perfect for use on the RED 2/3 Scarlet – and good ones almost as mythical!
The Computar 25mm F1.3 I used for this shoot is an example of a lens with an unusual yet aesthetically pleasing aura about it.
Not all c-mount lenses check the right boxes. Some have ugly attributes. Some are very soft. Some are pure junk. Some vignette wildly. But this one is A Special Child. It is sharp wide open at F1.3! I don’t know it’s history, or when it was made, or what it cost when it came out – of even what industry it was intended for. All I know is that it’s one damned special lens.
The only other lens which I have ever tried which is this sharp and bright is the ÂŁ600 Leica 25MM F1.4. Yet the Japanese Computar set me back just ÂŁ40. This is a phenomenally lucky discovery and I don’t fully understand why some of these cheap industrial / CCTV / TV lenses are so sharp at bright apertures compared to much larger and more expensive DSLR lenses. Can anyone explain why? I expect the size is key to it.
The lens also has the most amazing lens flare I have ever seen. I’m going to do a film just to show-case this. I have cut a lot of the show-offey shots from the character study because this lenses flare – let’s call him Mr Cool Flare – is character all in itself and Bloom only allowed one character in the movie!!
Mr Cool has many colours – dazzling! A round mirrorball sparkle effect, some incredibly cinematic shapes and lots of elements reveal a distinct light path. Whilst some modern lens flares looks muted by design (which they are), this is no-holds-bars special FX territory without the digital fakery and associated render time!
If sharpness at F1.3 and special FX lens flare aren’t enough of a steal at ÂŁ40, wait until you see the bokeh. Since c-mounts first mated with Micro 4/3rds cameras, I have been fascinated by the rare c-mount bokeh effects like half-moon points of light and radial bokeh, and yet I have never been able to find a great example. Some of the ultra fast F0.95 lenses have it but they’re expensive. Half-moon is where the bokeh is oval, not perfectly round (out of focus points of light are rendered like rugby balls). Radial bokeh is a tunneling effect which produces a globe like distortion to the bokeh (background blur) over the whole frame, whilst – importantly – keeping the focus plane relatively distortion free. The Computar has both half moons and radial! Holy moly!
The lens also has an attractive vignette – both in terms of light fall off and blur, giving footage a retro feel to it. That’s 4 amazing attributes in a lens the size of two thumbs. I am putting two up at it as we speak.
It does have a down-side though, which some may roll their eyes at. I don’t, because it isn’t meant as a landscape lens – it’s a fast low light portrait lens with an amazing aura, amazing flare and great bokeh. The downside if you’ve not guessed it yet is that it doesn’t focus to infinity (shock horror!) with current c-mount adapters, even with a relativly thin one. I am sure this can be fixed on future adapters, but right now the lens focuses close to infinity but not quite far enough. Wide open, due to the shallower depth of field you cannot get a sharp shot of infinity but closing up the lens to F8 helps you get the shot. On thicker c-mount adapters, you can barely reach a few centimetres in front of the camera. However on my thinner c-mount adapter I can focus at least 30 metres away.
The Panasonic GH1, hacked as usual with fantastic 44Mbit AVCHD was mostly operating at ISO 1600. It looks a lot cleaner in Prores than it does when encoded to the H.264 finishing format and uploaded to Vimeo. This introduces more noise and banding than is in the original footage. The sensor is actually holding up very well.
At ISO 1600, 1/30 with the lens wide open at F1.3, the camera exposes a scene slightly brighter than the human eye does. This is most noticeable when pointed up at the city’s sky at night time which has a pale glow where your eyes just see blackness. It makes the Manchester rain clouds much more attractive at night than they’d otherwise be!
The film was shot in 1080/25p, no sync or flicker issues with the British 50HZ electric lighting thanks to the hack which enables PAL / NTSC frame rates in the menus like on Canon DSLRs. Those Americans really should introduce a proper electricity system soon!
So here is my small character study of Zacc Rogers.
We set out to find someone we’d never met before and it was a completely spontaneous shoot.
Zacc mostly performs on the Manchester streets where he has been a regular fixture for over 3 years, he is brilliantly talented and great live. Many times I passed him by, not knowing his name. I always remember the sound and the atmosphere – the enthusiasm he gets from passers by. A dark and cold corner of the street is all the more brighter for his presence when walking from bar to bar.
Manchester is a very musical city, and powered almost entirely by alcohol – this makes for a lot of spontaneous ‘surprises’ and I wanted to capture the natural atmosphere of Manchester at night in my video.
Please check out Zacc Rogers’ music!
Zacc has recorded material and it’s available to buy – I urge you to drop by his website at [url]www.myspace.com/zaccrogers to show your support and enjoy his music.
He is a really nice guy and long may his presense be felt on olde Oxford Road!
