The location next day (July 7th) wasn’t as difficult as the one the day before. We were further down Neretva, where the river is wider and slower. The cliff was next to the road on the other bank. We first did the interviews. As we wanted to have a crane at the top of the cliff we did some preliminary tests on the ground.
Testing the improvised crane
The full lenght of the crane (Manfrotto tripod, Super Clamp, monopod, counterbalance and Canon 5D MkII)
We arrived in Sarajevo little after midnight yesterday (July 6th, it was actually the day before, but I didn’t have time to write this post) to record Red Bull Cliff Diving Expedition on river Neretva. This was our third cooperation with world known diver Orlando Duque. We met for the first time in Albania at Red Bull Cliff Search 2008 and then the year after at Red Bull Cliff Diving Exhibition Mostar 2009 (there is no translation for this two posts).
After two hours of sleep we went south to river Neretva, where we put all our equipment in waterproof bags, dressed neoprene suits and rubber boots and went with cars up stream where we boarded the rafts.
Three rafts and Red Bull bouy
We stopped at two locations in the canyon where Orlando jumped. We could climb with him to the top at the first location. The day was hot and this made climbing in neoprene suit and rubber boots very hard and uncomfortable. The water was ice cold and so we needed the suits.
Tomorrow (Jun 13th) will be Slovenian first match on the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. I don’t like to watch the game to much (I rather play) but I did hang out with some of the players in the national team this spring recording a few commercials for an agency Kompas. You can see some pictures and finished clips bellow.
Coach Matjaž Kek on a hallway in hotel Primus, Ptuj
Valter Birsa and Bojan Jokić training for a game playing Playstation
Last Thursday (May 27th) I finally started to get equipment for my big DSLR test. First I got D3s in D300s bodies with AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED, AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G, AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4D IF and AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lenses from Nikon Slovenia.
First batch of cameras (bottom right is Canon 550D with 50mm f/1.4, that I got from Foto Format) - iPhone (edited with Pro HDR, CrossProcess)
I knew that there will be to little time during the weekend so I went location scouting in the afternoon. I still had an idea about a poppy filed so I followed directions from my friend Nataša to the nearby field. There were a lot of poppies but the surroundings were horrid. Small village on one end and billboards on the other. This was clashing with my idea of a lost lonely girl in the nature.
Poppy field I (©2010 Peter Prevec)
Poppy field II (©2010 Peter Prevec)
I finally managed to get four Canon and two Nikon DSLR bodies for this weekend so I can compare their video capabilities as I mentioned here and I build a special video head adapter for this occasion that can carry six bodies at the same time.
I planned to get Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, 5D Mark II, 7D, 550D and Nikon D3s, D300s. I need also 50mm f/1.4 for every camera to test them all with the same lenses but I am still one short for Canon, so if you know someone that can lend me one please let me know, or else I will use f/1.8 for one body.
My friend Maja will be my model for the test and we went to do some preliminary photography tests searching for poppy fields in Slovenia. I heard there are poppy fileds at Mengeš fields, but the poppies were scarce. We finally find them hiding in a wheat field and we did the first shooting.
Lovely Maja in the poppy field (©2010 Peter Prevec)
I used Nikon SB-800 through umbrella for the lighting (©2010 Peter Prevec)
I spend last week from friday to thursday at Rogla Ski Resort where we were filming Red Bull Double Air project. Marko Grilc, the best snowboarder in Slovenia, will jump over Ross Mercer, world record holder for longest jump with snowmobile, on the biggest jump ever build at Rogla. The project was a secret, so there was quite a few photos I wasn’t allowed to publish during the week.
Day 1(Friday, April 2nd) - I was the only one from the recording crew that went up on friday as we only needed to shoot some time lapses of the big pile of snow that was growing for the jump construction. For that I also used one of the snowcats that had a 14 m crane on it. The weather was very unpredictable and as the fog fell I couldn’t record any more.
Everything started with a big pile of snow
The crane on the snowcat was 14 m high
Snowcat tracks on the snow detail
The wait is over. In the early hours of this day Canon released firmware update 2.0.3 for Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which enables recording at 25 fps, as it was until now the only Canon camera that didn’t have this option. Included in this update is also a function for manually adjusting the sound recording level, a histogram display for shooting movies in manual exposure and changes the audio sampling frequency from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz.
Shooting with less than 30 fps was the most wanted function since they introduced the camera and the wanting became even stronger as the introduced other models of camera bodies (1D Mark IV, 7D, 550D) that had this function. The loudest proponent for 24p and 25p was definitely Stu Maschwitz on its blog ProLost. There was a lot of blog posts this morning about the upgrade and there is an explosion of cats and dogs test videos on Vimeo recorded with the new firmware. Philip Blooms blog has some more serious movies as he had the firmware in his hands for quite some weeks.
What does this upgrade changes for me? Nothing directly or better, nothing at the moment. It is true that I am preparing for the large test of different DSLR cameras. I planned to record with Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon D550, Nikon D3s, Nikon D300s, Nikon D90 and Panasonic G1 at the same time and have made a special rig that has the option of holding five camera bodies at the same time.
First package
This is my third video in Streets at Night series. I got Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and lenses EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM from photographer Samo Vidic. I shoot the clips the same as before (Streets at Night I – Canon EOS-5D Mark II, Streets at Night II – Nikon D3s). I edited in h.264 sequence as is the native codec of the camera. I converted the files to ProRes with export to Color. I wanted to make orange snow white. Color orange came from the street lights even though I set the white balance to 2500 K. When I color corrected the shots to make the snow white I probably made the noise more visible as this is the noisiest of the movies. Nikon has also the advantage of better looking digital noise.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II has the least noise so far, but I also didn’t do much color correction then. I wanted to see the settings I used then because Canon writes on the card besides the video file small thumbnail which is actually a .jpeg file with EXIF info. But unfortunately there is no info about ISO setting or white balance, but at least I found out about which lenses and apertures I used. It would be nice to have the same information with Nikon video mode.
Unprocessed frames from the clips look like this (click on the image if you want to see it at full resolution).
Canon EOS-5D Mark II, ISO and exposure automatic, 50mm lens, which is strange as I only had EF85mm f/1.8 USM, EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM and EF15mm f/2.8 Fisheye
Nikon D3s, 24-70mm f/2.8, shutter 1/50s, WB 2500 K
Canon-EOS-1D-Mark-IV, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 46mm, f/2.8, ISO 6400, shutter 1/50s, WB 2500 K.
Last thursday (Jan 7th) I got a loaner Nikon D3s with 14-24mm f/2.8 and 24-70mm f/2.8 lenses from Nikon Slovenia. I wanted to check if it fits into our workflow at work (Baza Media 2.1) using Sony EX1 cameras for recording Red Bull events, so I took it with me to Beograd at Red Bull Street Style. But before the real test I wanted to repeat the story from a year ago when I got a loaner Canon EOS 5D mark II.
Nikon D3s, 14-24mm f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8, 80-200mm f/2.8
In few hours I am going to Linz (Austria) to see what is new ate Ars Electronica festival. This year should be something special as the opened new Ars Electronica Center.
Until I post this year’s clips, you can watch a short summary of last year’s festival.
Warning: Footage is very grainy, because I recorded everything with f/2.8 zoom and HV20 w/adapter is not very sensitive to light. I hope that this year will be better as I will be recording only with 50mm f/1.4 prime.
We came to Mostar at two o’clock at Hotel Kriva Čuprija 2. I went to sleep at three. Woke up early with intentions to see Mostar in morning light. Old bridge without tourists. Four hours of sleep, early waking and I did it. Yatta! I was lucky that the hotel was 500m away from the bridge.
Mostar in morning light (photo was taken and edited on iPhone)
Next week I am going again on a trip to ex Yugoslavia shooting for Red Bull. From Monday (July 6) to Wednesday (July 8) I will be in Mostar (BiH) and from Thursday (July 9) to Sunday (July 12) in Dubrovnik (CRO). Our equipement at Baza Media 2.1 incorporates two Sony PMW-EX1 and Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which means that I won’t be needing my HV20 w/ SGPro adapter. But I decided that I reduce my configuration so it would fit to instead of big Pelican brief into small photographic backpack so I can take it with me anyway and shoot something for the blog if I found some free time.
HV20 w/ SGPro minimal configuration (click on the photo and look at the flickr notes for more info))
There was a lot of posts about Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera video mode, crushing of the blacks, QuickTime’s inability of showing luminance values higher than 100 and lower than 0. You can read more info about it at ProLost – 5D crushing News and Full dynamic range video from Canon 5D MkII.
What I wanted to find out was, what can be done to eliminate as much defects and mistakes that Canon choose to build into this camera.
First I would like to say that this camera is amazing in low light situations which means I can shoot at night under the street lamps with no extra lights. You have to be careful though about the noise that appears at high ISO settings.
Few weeks back when we got at work (Baza Media 2.1) 5D on loan, I decided to take it on a test of my own. Before I even read the quick manuals (Cinema 5D – The 5D mkII Handbook of Facts), I went out to shoot some material. It was already dark outside, so I went to the nearest crossroads and shood some cars passing by.
Streets at Night – Canon EOS 5D Mark II
0730
I get up and slowly start to prepare myself and equipment. I know that we will not leave at 0800 as planned.
0932
With hour and a half delay we finally leave Ljubljana. We plan to go to Kranjska Gora to test Canon 5D Mark II shooting Marko Grilc and Bine Žalohar jumping at Funpark.
1059 I was the designated driver..
I swear, this will be the last post about music clip Raging El Niño, but as I promised… something about production of the clip.
After we decided about the script (written by Tadej – The Bananas), I started drawing storyboard. At first I wanted to draw everything by myself, but I noticed that my drawing skills aren’t that good, so I searched the internet for various photos to help me draw more professionally. That is how storyboard came to be.
Typograph is a standards compliant theme with a JQuery powered tabbed sidebar box and an ad under the first post on the index page. This theme has no images and is purely based on CSS elements and typography. Ideal for future customization. Typograph was styled "from the ground up" on a highly customized version of the Sandbox theme.
Designed by Morten Rand-Hendriksen - designer, information philosopher and author based out of Burnaby, BC.
You can change the contents of the tabbed box by editing the tabbedBox.php file located in the Typograph theme directory.
