Fx Amps Bad Train review video

Nearly 2 years since we did the first review video (over 2,000 views woohoo)

We decided to do a 3rd one for Pascal's new amp, the Bad Train. I had a lot of other shoots to edit so it's only now that I get to finish its edit.

Let's clock out of blogger for the festive season

I'm going somewhere with no internet access, that's right, OFFLINE for 1 week (can't wait !)

Planning to simplify my gear while there too : just my 5DmkII and a 50mm which I keep forgetting about and it creeps back into my eyesight every so often. Im not a prime lens girl, I just love being overwhelmed by the speed and all the possibilities of a brilliant zoom lens like the 24-70. But it's also lovely to slow down when you can afford, and step back or forward until you got the frame right. These portraits of my cats were taken by the 50mm 1.8. It does make the mess in the kitchen neater, doesn't it  :-D

Anyway, I ll have hours of fun with this lens, hope you get to shoot lots  too and have fun with photography.

www.sylviephotography.com

Oh ! for the love of Craft !!! an interesting video project with potter Colm De Ris

This video is the perfect example of something born out of a proper team work and exchange of ideas between myself and Colm De Ris, who was very much involved in the making of it, not only by lending his voice and his image for the footage.
We shot it over 3 3-hour sessions along with a quick interview that ended up putting the whole story telling aspect of the video together. There's something really lovely in Colm's pace that matches the pace of the video, because that's the same rhythm as clay turning and all over movements going on in his workshop.
I had previously shot lifestyle short videos for Nicholas Mosse website. I thought it's a lovely idea to put the product in context and its best use. Im delighted I now got to shoot the craftmanship behind these beautiful items.

My initial idea was really based on the craftmaking process, there was going to be a lot of close ups and a lot of angles allowing to show the know-how and the evolution of the clay into a piece of art. While I haven't shown all different stages, because they were just too mechanical or not visually interesting, the whole transformation is there within 3 minutes, which I think is fascinating.

The video was shot with a Canon 5d MkII and several lenses : 16-35mm L 2.8, 70-200mm L 4, 24-70mm L 2.8. I used Final cut Pro 7 for the editing, and Audition for the audio enhancement, which is a phenomenal tool I got to learn for the purpose of this project.

www.sylviephotography.com

Lovecats part II : the short !!

Last weekend was quite a sunny one for once and watching the kitties enjoy the heat in their own special way urged me to do a little short about them. There's a certain amount of things I managed to get them to do but they are really like kids, they have a short interest span and then they go off do their thing.

I shot this with canon 5D MkII and a 24-70mm L lens, edited with final cut pro only, and a lot of love, a bit of magic bullet look and garageband bits and pieces. The audio was recorded separately with a zoom recorder since the audio from the camera was way too low and not clear enough.

Enjoy !

Lovecat

Do you see the heart shape too ? :-D

Behind the scenes videos - Brennans bread and Fleadh Ceoil

I recently put together 2 behind the scenes videos for Trevor Hart : two very different and fun shoots for Brennan's bread and the Fleadh Ceoil. Lately I've used Fujifilm X10, it's a 35mm looking camera, very compact and handy. I need to have something quick and easy to use because there's too much going on during the shoot to have the luxury to use the 5d MkII. The X10 delivers full HD videos of very decent quality that doesn't degrade that much in low light, however its focusing is weak in tricky times, say against the light (even slightly against it), low light and for close ups. Depending on what I wanted to get, it was actually more than just annoying. But overall it's a very fast and well designed camera.


Have a look at Trevor's blog for the final pictures and the full story.
To see the videos in a bigger format, just click on them, it will bring you to my YouTube channel.

Penneys pale pink sneakers

It's great to photograph a quality leather product like the Brooks saddle I shot a few weeks ago, but there's the bargainer pride in finding a dirty cheap item that also looks good, as long as you can embrace its ephemeral beauty !

Brooks England saddle

I've been fascinated by Brooks saddles for a while now, I love their look, versatility and I appreciate the fact that this is a rare example of a current product using a century old design, and yet they are very popular. So many technologies are almost obsolete the minute they hit the market because the mark 3000 is coming in 2 months. I was offered the B67 which was originally designed in 1927, very small revisions were made since, how amazing is that ? 
Anyway, before my bottom puts its imprint on it, I wanted to honour my Elinchrom lights with this piece of art !

Hamlet by Plastic Theatre

I'm always up for a challenge and a bit of stress sweat, so when I heard my friend and actor Sharon Sutton was playing in Hamlet, I asked if I could come and video the play, only half aware of what was going to happen that night ! 

They were playing at Pearse Centre on Pearse St, near the Trinity Hotel. It's running until the 9th actually, from 7.30pm.

It was all at 200%, all the excitement and energy from the cast like palpable euphoric bubbles in the air, simply a magic moment !

Shooting a long, rather continuous and moving scene(s) with the 5DmkII is a tough one, and I think I handled the challenge well but there were so many factors to think about, it certainly takes a good bit of experience until I absolutely nail it. 

I still had vivid memories of a crazy 2 hour long talk where the speaker (an IT super duper expert in his field AND the most focused and continuous talker I've seen in a long time !) which made me hang on to every words  and intonations, waiting for the right time to cut the video before it would be too late (from my experience, the max clip length on the 5D is anywhere between 12 and 13minutes...). Since then, I bought a 32GB card it ahah in your face long scenes! well, that resolves the problem of having to change cards when really you dont want to but not the length of clips.

I had my usual camera...I could have taken a second 5D mkII but realised it wouldn't be manageable with the amount of memory it consumes. So instead I had a Q3 HD next to it and a H1 on the edge of the stage to get a nearer sound as I was set up at the back of the room. I have to say running through the different light set up with the light designer was so helpful especially when I didn't see most of the material before so there was already a lot of factors to adjust from on the spot, it was good to know what kind of range of exposures I'd have to go through and what were the best combinations. 

Now I have 3 hours of footage from 2 cameras and one recorder to go through :-D I ll let you know how I get on !

Portrait photographer, Dublin,   videography, event video, boudoir photography, portraiture, studio photographer,   baby photoshoot, corporate headshots,    Ireland, advanced photoshop retouching, baby pictures,  female photographer, family portraits, HD DSLR video, play recording, creative photography, romantic photoshoot, irish portrait photographer,

Friday I'm in LOVE !

...again with the cheapest of my lenses, the most demanding one that keeps me making concessions again and again...but always delivers something surprising and never bores me ...my Nifty fiftinou :-D
These look like stills from a movie, or a storyboard :-D
Feel free to click on them to view them larger...

A new edit for my first short video

At last... I thought I'd never get to post this !

About a year ago I shot my first video, a documentary on a Mayo born guy called John Monahan, who I had met while doing a photo project with the Rehabilitation Centre at the National Council for the Blinds. 

John was a legend in there, and filled faces with smiles with his jokes and stories. I shot this piece in one day, with little equipment, just my Canon 5d MkII on a camera tripod, and a Zoom as well. It's only now that I can tell how I could have benefited from having more gear with me (starting with a video tripod and a  viewfinder !).

I'm still happy with what I've shot and since my first edit was very poor, and I've learnt a lot since, I think John deserves a more appropriate work to compliment his words and his story. It's tricky, though, to do a reedit on your own video... I loved re looking at the clips I shot and rethinking about the framework of the video but as well as trying to pretend I never storyboarded the shoot and take it from scratch, the footage has to allow a new structure to appear. And it seems like mine allowed me a bit of tweaking but not that much.

It reminded me of what Walter Murch said about the major drawback of digital (non linear ) editing. Because the access to the media isn't random, you don't have to go through footage you're not looking for, which you had to in the moviola days and made you constantly look at material you could have discarded by mistake. 

So I had a thorough look at all I shot and recorded (the sound is crucial, throughout the video, especially at 2:01) to make some changes. 

I realised that the first edit I made was most importantly the final part of a project,my first video project. Yes, there was room for improvement on my editing ( I used Premiere on a 3 year old Dell PC by the way...had to replace the hard drive 3 months later !!) but what I've learnt by doing this reedit on Final Cut Pro isn't all the tricks I know now and didn't at the time, it is the fact that my whole approach of the project wasn't the best. 

Excessively organised as I am, I planned my shooting with John, I was so conscious of not wasting his time (in fact I only spent 2-3 hours with him, including a good part of walking from one end of the park to another, and the rest of the day on my own) that I had planned all he was going to say. 

We had talked so much during the photo project and all the time I spent at the NCBI, I knew him very well, and I had made up my mind on what I wanted to say about him, what questions to ask him for my story but most importantly what he was going to answer me. I restrained him in what I wanted the documentary to be about and I didn't let this fantastic character show all his colours. I don't mean that I tweaked reality but I feel I put some "blinders" to the story, I limited it at the shooting time when actually the decision should be made post shoot.

So a year afterwards, I'm quite happy with having done this, as my first video work, but I also see how inexperience and stress limited the potential of this little vid, or at least rejected the power of spontaneity, how rewarding it can be to let people open up to you and be what they want to be. Actually I did know, as a photographer, that the best shots are the ones in between the planned and structured shots...strangely I didn't let the Videographer Me know about that !

It's happening in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. Hope you like it ! As usual comments, advice, suggestions are very welcome. (for full HD, go to Youtube)

Versatile solution for HD DSLR

HD DSLR video offers an unprecedented image quality and such a versatility compared to traditional video cameras (if you've tried a pro lens with a Canon 5D mkII, you'll know what I mean !) but it is still pretty much a work in progress. A lot of guys are experimenting to compensate for the high prices of DSLR-specific video accessories and the relatively poor choice that are offered right now, especially in Europe...these guys are my favorite DIY... they just make me laugh with their creations and ...really made me wish I was a better DIY person.

Anyway, though the list of gear you need to have is a never ending, I realised that this is what was really crucial to offer the best quality and the sharpest HD videos :

• An LCD Video viewfinder : attached to the LCD screen, it is a life saver when it comes to focus with precision and continuously. It also blocks any light from your vision so the image is really clear and your eyes don't get exhausted in an hour.
• A sturdy tripod with plenty of controls, ideally a video head. Avoid ball heads and joysticks as any movements will be too abrupt on the screen. Lately I've been very keen in actually switching to a monopod with a good foot to minimize the space taken by the camera and also to be able to go to corners etc.
• A stabiliser...depending on what or how you shoot, you will need something specific for yourself. My best fit was a habbycam shoulder brace  to be able to move around without a tripod, have the mic attached to it, and being able to bring the camera high and low with a minimum of camera shake. That's what I used for this video : 

• A good external mic : as a lot of HD DSLR bloggers mention, the sound on cameras is ... crap. That's just a few holes on the front of the camera that take more noises from your hands than from the scene you are recording. I've chosen record my sound completely separately and to sync the video with the audio at post production stage. That's the best workflow I've found, both in quality and in time management. I have 3 different Zoom mic that are pretty handy and good : the H1 which is the smallest and still gives me all the controls I need; the Q3, that is older but still decent and the Q3HD that has the handy feature of doing HD videos (I'm yet to review this feature in terms of picture quality but hey that's a great way to have a 2nd camera view !)
• 
  
• A LED video light with manual controls : oh so important whenever you are indoors. I used it as a fill light on this video

And here's another demo of it :-)

That's the basics but if you are really keen in knowing more about HD DSLR, you probably know its master, Philip Bloom