A handmade slider by Rob, the retired engineer

A few weeks ago, I got to test a Varavon 80cm camera slider. Quite unimpressed by the track which didn't allow smooth movement and footage at all. I guess it needed to be oiled big time. I only needed to see how it looked on screen to know it was pointless to bother recording it since we didn't have time to oil it or figure how to make it work. There are some instances where you could get away with a bumpy footage, but that's not often the case and that's a ridiculous amount of work in post for cheap gear.
That's the kind of stuff you really need quality material to be worth using.
I don't really felt a great need for a slider but this experience challenged me to find something better and still at a low price, considering I wouldn't use it often anyway but would appreciate to have one every now and then.
And I found this really helpful chap, Rob, with his own version of the slider (turns out there's also an angry fella selling a similar version but I'm not going to entertain any discussion around who's the original designer). Rob's slider is much wider and with quite a different design from the vast majority of entry level sliders out there.


I've done my first tests using the first tripod I could find (Slik with a Velbon vid head, which turned out to be not the best suited for the job since it's a bit wobbly), put the slider onto the Velbon quick release, and then I used the 3/8" screw to mount the camera. A note here to say how I wished we could all stick to the metric system as these quarters and three eights don't mean shit to me :-D
Anywho, I then figured I could just mount another tripod head so it's always on and mount the camera on it, as otherwise it is time consuming to try and screw the thing onto the camera with the narrow space you have under the plate. But this will be for the next time.

The tests I did today were done fixing the camera straight onto the plate.
For a first tests, and the first proper times I got to use a slider, I'm pretty happy about it. It tends to bend a bit on both ends, which is noticeable on the footage but I expected to be worst. I was using a 5D MkII with a 24-105 L lens, so, 'bit of weight. (1.5Kg according to dpreview...). I think 2 tripods on each ends (or a tripod with a better head) and a bit more pressure on the camera and I slide (along with a better rhythm on my end) would be ideal in my opinion.

I think its main strength are the wheels and how they roll.











Have a look at the 3 tests that I made. Like I said, I barely had practiced this before so my "technique" doesn't compliment the slider at all, and neither does the use of just one tripod at its centre with a lousy video head, please bare that in mind. Also I've used most of the length, I'd say 3/4 of it on each scenario. I haven't tried vertical slider. I'd need to get my hands onto another tripod head that would allow me to rotate it 90 degrees. I'd be interesting to see how it does with downwards shooting in the semi vertical position.

Hope that's helpful !

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 !

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)

Timelapse in Dublin

Back in October when the sun was still shining in Dublin and clouds where dancing and disappearing fast, I experimented with timelapse techniques. I am lucky enough to have a good (and open) view from my living room so I set my camera on a tripod with a timer for a couple of days (evening to evening). That was actually quite fun and it really made me want to try that a few more times, maybe during different weather conditions (like during the snow or a windy& cloudy weather..) and different seasons.

What I took out of this experience was that

- Yes you do need to completely block the indoors light at night because everything will be reflecting (well, I actually thought it was interesting that the image at night was a mixture of the scene outside and the one behind the camera, from the room, that was cool I think to be able to see so much information like that)

- a 5 min lapse between shots is too large, 1 min is  best but then you end up with 1440 pictures a day !!

- a dull grey day is still dull on the camera...but clouds are very photogenic !

-It may look like an easily automated process to use non pro video editors but Final Cut really gives the best result, especially when you add your music (which I got from Pascal from Route 66 and Armchair Coyote by the way...)

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 !)
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• 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