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It was a scorching hot day yesterday, but the bright sun helped bring in some light into this old unused factory. There was no electricity so the band rented a 5000 watt generator for the shoot. We had full run of the entire abandoned lot which was awesome. This place was huge with several buildings over 8 stories high and had so much texture of steel, brick, and concrete. Sitting right off the water, the place was just so large, we didn't get to see everything. The entire area is private, fenced off, with 24 hour security so we were able to just leave stuff everywhere. I'd love to get back there and shoot again if I could. Would be a perfect setting for a horror film, that's for sure.

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We started indoors with some really slow camera movements on the DIY track. It could have used another saw horse down the center for some additional stability, but worked fine for just slow movements. Going faster, it wanted to flex. We also did a bit of Crane shooting and later threw in some really close up hand held beauty shots of the band.

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We moved up to the roof in the late afternoon, and to really show off the height we were at, slung a Canon 60D on a crane over the side of the building. A bit scary, but it should be a really cool looking swing from over the side of the building back onto the roof. Hopefully that went pretty smooth, but from what we can see on the LCD it came out great.

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Next we went down to the outside grounds for a walking Steadicam Shot. The band followed the camera slowly while singing to the music. With the Canon 60D articulating LCD, I was able to walk forward and let the band frame themselves by looking into the LCD. They were able to monitor themselves and stay in frame, while I concentrated on not falling over or tripping on anything.

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I'll get the video footage once the editor hands them back, and show some of the shots we did. The Steadicam looked really great with the Canon 10-22mm Lens I rented and had all this space to run around in. Flying through a wide open room with large glass windows and concrete pillars everywhere had a very cool flying effect. I have to admit that with the changes in light, using the white balance on the 60D was much more effective than trying to set it on the T2i (which was being used for some BTS video). The 3 Canon 60D's worked really well and meshes closer to the workings of the 7D than a T2i. Definitely a great camera to work with. Now that i'm done with this project, I may sell one of them, but tempted to keep them both!

[Thanks to Matt for grabbing these BTS photos while we were running around in the heat]

Related Articles:
http://cheesycam.com/canon-60d-video-stabilizer-first-flight-glidecam-hd4000/
http://cheesycam.com/glidecam-hd4000-bts-with-canon-60d-steadicam-vest/

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redrock-micro-evf

Cinema5D's got the scoop on a new Redrock Micro 'Electronic View Finder' specifically designed for HD Video DSLR's. We all new this day was coming, but what I totally didn't expect was the expected price point. Wow, I really hope they can meet those goals, that's just ridiculous pricing for anything RedRock Micro. It looks very functional and I can see myself using that quite a bit. Today we had a crane shot on a roof of a building in broad daylight. It's was about 90 degrees out on a clear day, and we couldn't see crap on the monitor. Having a remote EVF like this running down a jib would have been a perfect solution. This design in remote View Finders via HDMI also means it would be cross brand compatible. Regardless of camera make and model, this should be fairly future proof. Zacuto has also admitted to be working on a new EVF, but so far nothing tangible has hit the web. Even if Zacuto does release an EVF, it would be interesting to see if pricing will be competitive with the new RedRock Micro Electronic Viewfinder. Check out the Cinema5D Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYW1VwFdHk

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official-lcd-view-finder-canon-550D
click image

Thanks to a few people for leaving some comments on this item. It's a new view finder loupe on the market that is said to fit the aspect ratio of the Canon 550D / T2i perfectly with no crop. Looks like a similar design we've seen before but now with a custom fit and no signs of 'infringement' here. There's currently only one other view finder that claims to be designed specifically for this Canon 550D, so this opens up another option for T2i owners. For those who are daring enough to attach the magnet frame onto the Canon 60D, it should be the exact same fit. Here's the link: View Finder 4 Canon 550D / T2i

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Running a bit late on the shoot today, but we wanted to have a rail longer than a 4ft. slider. Ran over to Home Depot and quickly assembled a raised dolly track fit for the SpiderTrax Video Dolly. Everything comes right off the shelf, clamps together securely, pretty portable (except for the long rails). The stock wheels fit perfectly inside the Strut channel (same one used in the Cheesycam DSLR Fig Rig Cage). I'm a bit late, but these longer dolly shots should add more worth to this project. Ok, i'm out, but will have some fun BTS video of this shoot soon.

Below: Click for SpiderTrax Rotating Video Dolly Pricing
spidertrax-for-sale

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Wait! Just gotta say sorry about the mess, I just bought the place and still moving crap in. Boxes everywhere, don't know where to put anything yet. Hey you're lucky i'm even sharing this test video, it's almost Midnight! Yeah and it might be a bit dark too, I wasn't going for quality here, just trying to get this darn thing balanced. So I have an early music video shoot tomorrow in which I thought I would do ALL Canon 60D's so I can break her in and get faster at the menu and settings. There will be three Canon 60D's on set. I didn't have the Glidecam HD1000 Stabilizer here, so I had to balance the Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer. (always balance your rig the night before, saves time).

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The 60D doesn't have the Canon Battery Grip BG-E9 just yet, and i'm shooting with the the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens. BTW, I'm loving that lens. Not much fisheye/barrel distortion as I thought it would have. The entire unit is just way too light for a beast like the Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer. So in order to correct this, I placed weights above the camera on the hot shoe.

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Yes, you can add weights under the camera, but the hot shoe was a simple way to add or remove weights, keep things almost centered with the camera weight, and also easy to shift it around for additional fine tuning balance. It's a pretty cool setup actually which would work great with some stabilizers that lack fine tuning adjustments. You can add a simple flat bar to the hot shoe and shift it around to center that camera weight. So i'm very close to having it balanced, the rest can be done by moving the lower sled up or down to make it either bottom heavy or top heavy. Check out the video above, and the photos of how I added the weights to the camera with a threaded hot shoe mount. You can find those mounts in this article: http://cheesycam.com/mounting-zoom-h1-on-camera/ or find some below.

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find-price-button variety of shoe mounts

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find-price-button Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer

Related Articles:
http://cheesycam.com/glidecam-hd4000-bts-with-canon-60d-steadicam-vest/
http://cheesycam.com/3-canon-60ds-music-video/

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cheesycam-mailbag

There it is, the 2nd Canon EOS 60D DSLR has arrived in time for the Sunday Music video shoot project. With my friend's, we'll have a total of three on set. Also another exciting item I get to use for a different project is of course the JuicedLink DT454 4-Channel DSLR Camera Microphone Preamplifier. You've heard me mention it quite a bit in the past few days, and I wasn't name dropping for nothing! I was just waiting for it...but I think you guys got the subtle clues. I'll hook it up and run a few tests, but in order to complete this audio setup, I'm still waiting on the Audio-Technica AT875 Short Condenser Shotgun Microphone to come in. ( Oh crap my wife reads this blog..doesn't know about this one yet...damn too late to hide it....).

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JuicedLink DT454

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Audio-Technica AT875 Shotgun Microphone

The AT875 is a Short Shotgun powered by 12v Phantom giving you a bit of extra run time on your batteries over a 24v Phantom powered mic. Suggested by JuicedLink.com as a decent cheap pair for the DT454. If you can't trust them, who can you trust? Reviews and samples coming soon....

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DIY-portable-sound-booth

Since we're on the topic of Audio capture, one of tips I remember came from an article about mobile Podcasting. This was when the iPod first came out years ago and there was a slew of audio podcasting stations (which I see now replaced with Video castings. So Podcasters who traveled the country often needed to setup a microphone and record themselves, sometimes in a hotel room which wasn't always the best place for clean audio. If you catch some of my random videos shot in the warehouse (even on Zoom H1) you'll hear a bit of reverb from the sound bouncing around on the walls.

So the tip that I was reading was that you don't necessarily need an extremely large sound booth to contain a whole person. That's mainly used to block out ambient noise. If you're in a fairly quiet spot and you want to minimize the reverb on the microphone you can just contain the microphone into it's own little sound booth. Anyways, I forget where that article was but Fred over at Tuperhero.com has a budget way of making a DIY portable sound booth to contain your microphone or portable audio recorder. With this positioned close to your subject and out of camera frame, it could help clean up the audio pickup from all that reverb and minimize some of the ambient noise from the sides and rear of the microphone pickup. [Thanks Fred]

DIY-portable-sound-booth-audio

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DSLR BTS Behind the Scenes

Yeah there I go, second member of the DSLR BTS (Behind the Scenes) group over at Vimeo immediately after the man of Zacuto himself, Steve Weiss. Another top DSLR gear maker as a member is Cinevate, which BTW I am patiently awaiting the release of their new and more affordable Atlas 10 Camera Slider (hurry up guys! or send me a Beta!). It's a new group started by the dudes at DSLRUniversity.com dedicated to behind the scenes work with DSLR's, and that's where you'll always find the latest gear, tips, tricks, and techniques. If you guys are interested in that kinda stuff (which if you're on this blog, i'm sure you are), check it out and join in. After my music video shoot with the 3 Canon 60D's, i'm hoping to add a BTS video there too.

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canon-60d-lcd-screen
Canon EOS 60D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and 18-135mm

I keep talking about the manual audio levels being a big plus for the Canon 60D right now, and I think some people are still wondering what the big deal is. Currently only the 5D Mark II has this option and hopefully there will be new firmware for the other cameras. The in camera audio for the Canon 7D and T2i use AGC - automatic gain control that can't be disabled. The camera boosts the microphone signal pretty high that it has a constant hissing noise. If you're in a loud busy environment, you won't really notice this due to all the distracting sounds, but put these cameras into a quiet environment and you'll notice the difference big time. If you think Magic Lantern will be your solution, check out the comment I left in this article: http://cheesycam.com/canon-7d-vs-60d-vs-550d-t2i/

juicedlink-dt454
JuicedLink DT454 4-Channel DSLR Camera Microphone Preamplifier

The workaround right now for cameras with AGC on all the time, is to use a separate audio recorder and record directly to that. Next you'll sync that audio in post. For shooting in 24p that gets a little tricky getting long audio to sync. For anyone shooting hundreds of short clips throughout the day, that also adds post processing hours trying to match everything up. If you want to shave some time on recording to a separate device, you can use devices like the JuicedLink DT454 or similar that will send a constant tone to one channel of the audio tricking the AGC. I have to say though that these Audiophile guys who build these preamp boxes weren't very happy with the Nikon DSLR's. Nikon have a different way of setting the audio and still didn't produce as nice results as the Canon's. Don't quote 'me' on that, but that's the scoop I got. We'll just have to wait and see if that's been improved on the newer Nikon DSLR's.

If you've got a few minutes to spare, great tutorials about AGC and the hissing noise can be found here: https://www.juicedlink.com/reducing-camera-hiss/chapter/0

Here's a very old example of a test I did when Magic Lantern was first released for the Canon 5D Mark II to allow manual audio levels. This should give you a better idea of what the new Manual Audio Levels in the Canon 60D are capable of. Not the best of the best, but much better quality can be captured if your camera allows you to manually set the amount of gain.