Gord Stephen, Director of Photography, Editor

Astrophotography

Posted on August 29th, 2011

I’ve just started into this, but I’m really enjoying it so far. There’s something amazing about being out in the middle of nowhere, completely alone yet keenly aware of the unfathomable trillions of distant celestial bodies that join with our own tiny vessel of a planet to form the cosmic community. It’s a humbling reminder of the improbable – and ultimately insignificant – nature of our existence.

On a lighter note, astrophotography’s a lot of fun, and the results are pretty satisfying. As you can see in the photo below I wasn’t in a remote enough location to totally escape light pollution – the orange-ish glow at the bottom of the frame is Kingston 35 km to the southeast. It does add a nice bit of color to the shot though. Framing was a challenge in the dark: I was basically shooting blind. Next time I’ll compose a shot during the day while I can still see the trees and horizon.

The X100 continues to impress. Photos are quite clean at high ISO settings, which is perfect for this kind of application. Noise also hides fairly well in starfields… I shot the photos here at ISO 3200, and I’m looking into stacking (taking average pixel values over multiple exposures) to potentially get even cleaner photos at ISO 6400 or even 12800 – although I’ll believe that when I see it. I shot mostly at f2.0 with 10-second exposures – it would be nice to be able to stop down a bit, as the X100 lens is a bit sharper towards f4.0, but for a $1400 complete package I don’t think I’m entitled to nitpick!

I just shot with the camera and my trusty Gorillapod. To stay lightweight and mobile I don’t think I want to get into tracking (precision rotation of the camera to match star movement), although I know that limits my stacking ability. Timelapse and motion control are both very impressive as well, but for now I’ll just embrace the simplicity of static still photography. As I learn it allows me to focus on getting one great image instead of a sequence of average ones – and the appeal of a small camera and tiny support is pretty special.

Tagged astrophotography, gorillapod, stills, x100
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So that’s what a stills camera is

Posted on July 2nd, 2011

I’ve never owned a stills camera before: I’ve always used my phone or borrowed someone else’s point-and-shoot to take pictures, often resulting in frustration as I tried to wrestle some semblance of manual control out of a highly automated device. For the past few years I’d figured that I would eventually own a video camera that was a proper stills camera as well, so although I enjoyed taking photos I didn’t see the logic in buying a dedicated stills camera.

In the past few months though, I came to the realization that even if a professional video camera that also took ‘proper’ stills did exist, I wouldn’t want it: by its own definition it would involve more ergonomic compromises than I would be willing to make. That epiphany freed me from the waiting game I was trapped in, and I decided to buy a dedicated stills camera, eventually settling on the Fuji FinePix X100.

I put down a deposit on one and was lucky enough have my unit come in last week, in spite of the crazy supply issues Fuji’s been having. I won’t talk much about my impressions of using it – I’m not really qualified to critique it, and there are enough X100 reviews out there anyways. The engineering student in me does want to mention that from a technical standpoint, mirrors and rangefinders have no place in the world of modern digital imaging – so I was happy to invest in something more forward thinking.

Beyond that I’ll just say that, as of 48 hours into ownership, I really like this camera. Crazy as it may seem, my favorite part is the fixed prime lens: as a beginner, I’m forced to develop my fundamental photography skills as opposed to being distracted by materialistic ambitions like building a lens collection. Forgot about the stuff, focus on the art – we need a lot more of that in this world.

Here are the highlights from my first day shooting around the house. A big thank-you to Hoot, Churchill, and Tiny Ted for posing for the portraits, they were very patient subjects…

Tagged gorillapod, stills, x100
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A note on mobility…

Posted on June 26th, 2011

It rocks.

Like most people, my full-time postproduction tool of choice has historically been a desktop PC, parked in a single location, continuously upgraded over the years, and affectionately referred to as HAL. (Okay, maybe the last part isn’t like most people…) Recently I’d been living in one city for school, and commuting back to another to work – and so HAL became a little too sedentary for my requirements. What I needed was some sort of production studio in a backpack. A beautiful dream, no?

HAL and his friend the projector - the monitor had the day off

Working with video on a laptop isn’t a new concept, but in the past (at least for me) it’s almost always implied a compromise. Few people who edit video for a living would describe a laptop as their go-to workhorse machine – they’re often underpowered, not readily upgradeable, tend to require extra peripherals and add-ons, and cost more. In the past few years, however, we’ve seen a sort of plateau in video editing power requirements, given the increased tendency to transcode to high quality yet editable intermediate codecs like CineForm and ProRes: meanwhile, processing power has steadily increased. The result is that modern laptops are becoming more and more qualified to handle full-resolution HD post-processing, and should be for a while still. (At least until 4K+ comes along… and seen as I have yet to deliver a project in 1080p, I don’t see needing to go down that path for a while yet!)

Given this power-requirement plateau, three months ago I decided to take the plunge and buy a (reasonably) high powered mobile workstation. A week after receiving it I moved back to Ottawa for the summer, leaving Kingston (and HAL) behind. Since then I’ve used it almost every day for editing, basic compositing and image correction, and encoding and transcoding footage. Not once have I missed my desktop: probably because this 15-inch ThinkPad W520 is more powerful than my custom-built, full-size desktop was. Of course, I also upgraded my Adobe Creative Suite from version 4 to 5.5 when I switched computers, so the new (to me) hardware acceleration is a big speed boost as well…

The office... for today

And although it may not be a custom desktop machine, the laptop (named Locutus) is upgradeable and self-contained to some degree – I’m only using a quarter of the supported RAM, and when I get a break between projects I’m set to install an 80GB micro-SATA SSD for the OS and program files, leaving the stock 500GB hard drive free for footage and project assets. On top of that, there’s the potential to hot-swap the DVD drive out of the Ultrabay for a 2.5″ hard drive enclosure, making backups or extra storage a breeze. No more cables and external drives! Do that out-of-the-box on a MacBook! (I kid, I kid, I know you probably love your Mac… and I’m very happy for you)

Captioning a video from the living room... why not?

Of course, I’d previously enjoyed having my five-year-old Thinkpad R61i (Lore) to use for day-to-day and lower-power tasks like email, web work, and school stuff, but since replacing HAL with Locutus I’ve been able to move everything I do to one of the laptops. It’s great: I usually work upstairs, but on hot days I just move to a lower floor. When I’m up for a change of scenery, I just move to a different room or sit in the shade outside. I could take it to meet a client and make edits on-site, at a location that’s convenient for them – or I could leave town and work from the road, with no impact to my capabilities.

Finally, a use for the laptop pocket!

Granted, I know all of this probably sounds stupidly obvious for some, and just stupid to others. Let me qualify this by saying that I’m not a full-time video editor, colorist, or compositor, nor do I aspire to be one. The majority of the post-production work I do is part of a larger ‘complete package’ that I provide to clients. That being said, post-production is an integral part of what I do right now, and as such I need the appropriate tools to efficiently accomplish the tasks it entails.

Luckily, those ‘appropriate tools’ now fit in the back pocket of my Kata bag. The production-studio-in-a-backpack dream isn’t just a dream anymore…

Tagged laptops, mobile lifestyle, postproduction
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I moved sites (as you can tell)

Posted on February 6th, 2011

So… I moved my site. I’m trying to consolidate all of my web presences into one spot that will stay relevant in the long term – and unless I change my name, GordStephen.ca sounds like a good place to do that. I switched from StepCoMediaProductions.ca because a) my personal projects aren’t frequent or numerous enough to justify their own site, and b) the majority of what I blogged about there wasn’t necessarily SMP related anyways. Old links to the SMP blog should get redirected to the corresponding page here, and in time I’ll probably shut that site down altogether.

Now, looking ahead, there are a few changes I’d like to make to this blog:

I’m going to stop writing about things you can read elsewhere. Regurgitating press releases is a waste of everyone’s time: there’s no point in me writing about new cameras and gear that I don’t own and haven’t used. If you want my opinions on industry news – and that’s a big if – follow me on Twitter. I don’t really have any particular insight – I’ll limit my thoughts to 140 character spurts and leave the long-form posts to wiser people than I.
I’m going to write shorter posts more frequently, but when needed and no more. A lot of what I write here borders on short essays, which is silly because I don’t like writing essays. No wonder I don’t write here much. I’m going to try and let myself put up shorter, more fragmented pieces – no minimum lengths or stylistic limitations. But I also won’t post anything because “it’s been too long since my last post”. Regularly scheduled hot air… is still hot air.

I’m already trying to think up more stuff to write about, because I feel like I didn’t spend enough time writing this… but according to what I just wrote that’s not how I roll anymore. You don’t want to read filler and I don’t want to write it. So I’m just going to post this instead…

Welcome to my new site.

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The Canon 60D – or “Sweet, a fold-out LCD”

Posted on August 26th, 2010

It’s been rumored for a while, and now it’s here: the Canon 60D. No real surprises: it’s a midrange DSLR that fits right in between the Rebel and the 7D. Nothing too interesting for 5Dii/7D/1Div shooters, but for someone previously looking at a T2i it seems like a great camera. For a few hundred dollars more than the Rebel, you get an articulating LCD and a handful of ‘pro’ features.

For all that I’ve written about VDSLRs, and as intently as I follow the market segment, I still don’t own one, despite having said that I could buy first the 7D and then the T2i. I won’t say anything so brash this time around, but I should say this: in the past few months I’ve come to realise how completely dependent I am on articulating viewfinders and LCD screens: I find them to be essential tools that enable me to shoot what and how I do. That realisation has lead me to take another long hard look at the GH1 (particularly after the firmware hack). With the 60D, there’s now another fold-out LCD option on the table.

Of course, there will no doubt be plenty of other options before long. The GH2 is supposedly due out this fall, the overall VDSLR segment is beginning to mature (even Nikon’s finally gotten around to 1080p ), and large-sensor prosumer video cameras from Panasonic, Sony and Red (apparently…), which are what we all ultimately want, are looming on the horizon. I think it’s pretty safe to say that the 60D won’t be the most interesting thing we see this year.

Tagged 60d, cameras, vdslr
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Some preliminary adventures in canoe and kayak mounts

Posted on August 26th, 2010

For a while now I’ve thought it would be cool to mount my HMC150 onto a canoe or kayak – doing so would open up all kinds of possibilities for shots in expedition documentary work and nature cinematography. Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with developing a mount for this purpose, using material that I have lying around the house.

The first thing I tried was to create a mount that could clamp across the front of a canoe. The design I ended up going with was a simple wooden frame attached to a larger plank of wood with a 3-inch hole cut into its centre. I disassembled my Pegasus Carbon Slider system and bolted the links to the central plank, which held the 100mm bowl from the PCS in place above the 3-inch hole. After that it was just a matter of clamping the frame to the gunwales of the canoe with C-clamps, and placing a tripod head in the 100mm bowl. Big, heavy, and ugly… but it was solid!

Libec H38 head mounted across the bow of a canoe

Of course, in a boat, the sturdiest support system can still give shaky results, as the craft itself bobs around in the water. A trial run with the canoe mount determined that this was definitely the case here: the design of my canoe results in particularly low primary stability, meaning that while it’s resistant to capsizing altogether, the craft rocks noticeably from side to side. When the paddlers shift their weight around to stroke, the boat (and the camera secured to it) rocks, resulting in unstable footage. The motion seemed okay for expedition-documentary-type work where the camera’s pointed backwards filming the people in the boat at wide angles, but shooting wildlife or scenery at longer focal lengths was a no-go. When the canoe was coasting (with no one paddling), rocking was definitely reduced, and footage was more stable, but still not solid. The water was fairly calm during the test, too – conditions that were any choppier would have been a deal-breaker.

Trying out the mount on the Rideau River outside Smiths Falls

Ok, so if a canoe isn’t stable enough, how about a kayak? With the craft’s lower profile the camera can be mounted closer to the water, theoretically reducing the amplitude of the rocking motion. To see if this held up in practice I built a support frame onto the front of a kayak, and screwed the frame from the canoe mount onto it. Again, far from elegant – but for a proof-of-concept project it worked well enough. In the future I’ll probably experiment with using a suction cup system to mount the camera directly to the plastic hull.

Now it's a kayak mount!

The results were encouraging. The smaller size of the craft made it more sensitive to shifts in my body, but once I held myself still, stable footage was also easier to achieve. Gliding through the water on a calm morning resulted in some very stable shots, as well as many that could no doubt be easily stabilized with a bit of motion tracking in post. The kayak’s improved maneuverability over a canoe was also better suited for shooting, making it easier to line up shots and get closer to the shore.

Kayak mount with H38 head

So, for this type of work at least, it looks like a kayak is going to be the boat of choice. In addition to a lower profile suction mount for the camera, I’m also thinking about adapting some sort of fold-out stabilization wings (sort of like a collapsible catamaran?) to further reduce rocking while I’m shooting. But that’s probably a project for next summer… How the heck is it late August already??

Tagged camera support, canoe, h38, hmc150, kayak
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Parking Lot

Posted on August 9th, 2010

If you follow me on Twitter or Vimeo, you probably already know that I put up a short video a little while back called ‘Parking Lot’. It’s a collection of some clips that I shot (guess where? ) back in June while I was in Toronto for ProFusion 2010. At the show I had a chance to meet Preston Kanak, a DP and filmmaker based out of Regina (although he sure travels a lot!). We had hoped to work together to shoot a short for his 3 Minute Shorts project, but his plans changed at the last minute and we weren’t able to get together.

When I let Preston know about Parking Lot, he was kind enough to feature it on the 3MS+ website – you can see it here. Thanks Preston!

And here’s the video:

See it at vimeo.com/13686333

It was shot at golden hour in the evening, so the gear I used was what I had carried with me through the day – just my HMC150 and a Gorillapod. Post was my usual process: CineForm transcode, Premiere Pro offline, After Effects online. The soundtrack is by Moby, from the awesome mobygratis.com – basically, Moby has a bunch of tracks online that artists can apply to use in their projects. For non-commercial works, the licensing is free. Very cool.

Tagged cineform, gorillapod, hmc150, premiere pro, preston kanak, toronto
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Pegasus Carbon System Impressions

Posted on July 26th, 2010

I’m back from a day breaking in my new Cinevate Pegasus Carbon System, and as promised in my last post, here’s what I found:

It’s smooooth. I had been worried about shaking and vibration being amplified as a result of the system’s high centre of gravity (camera on top of a tripod head on top of the 100mm bowl on top of the rails). I had noticed this happening when I first set the system up after receiving it, and it did happen while I was out shooting, but it’s the result of my shaky hands, not the design of the system. By changing how I position my hands and where I place my body weight when sliding the camera I can significantly reduce the effect, and I expect to develop a steadier hand over time as well…

It’s adaptable. I had the rails tilted on all kinds of weird angles to fit the anything-but-flat topography of the rocky creek bed where I was shooting, and could still manage to level the tripod head every time I tried (with a combination of adjusting the bowl and the slider links). As long as all four of the stubby metal legs were firmly touching the ground the entire assembly was rock solid, regardless of the angle the track itself was on. I had brought my old tripod and my Gorillapod to use to support the slider and gain more height, but I ended up not using them much – it was simpler to set up the slider without them, and the lower-to-the-ground shots looked better, too. When I did try using them as supports, I found that the Gorillapod tended to vibrate and didn’t handle the weight of the system very well, so I don’t think I’ll be using it for that purpose very often. But the ability to do it is cool nonetheless, and I can definitely see using the system mounted on two tripods in the future.
It’s the right length. At times I did want to span longer distances, but longer rods wouldn’t be practical for carrying. One meter was more than enough length for most situations, and I don’t think I would want any less. Sure, it’s not Tom Guilmette’s skateboard dolly, but it doesn’t weigh as much either, which brings me to…
It’s light! I was really, really happy about this. I was able to pack up the slider system, tripod head, camera, my old tripod, the Manfrotto 535 feet (which I didn’t use), and assorted smaller pieces of gear into an incredibly lightweight, small and completely portable package. The single-trip hike in to the shoot location was effortless. Once on location and set up, I could grab the slider (with the camera mounted) and hop across the creek on dry rocks, or work through thorny brush with the gear held above my head. My mobility didn’t feel hindered at all.

All-in-all: I’m totally satisfied with my purchase. The ability to easily pull off tracking shots in a backcountry setting will be a huge boon to the production value of the nature footage that I shoot, and it should certainly help in my city jobs, too. As I improve my skills with this new tool I expect that the quality of footage I can achieve will increase as well: that being said, I’m pretty pleased with the results I was able to obtain on my first try!

I do want to put together a quick compilation of a few clips from the day, but I’m a little behind on some other editing right now… If I can get caught up I’ll cut something and put it online. Look for the rest of the footage in another project down the road, and probably in my stock footage offerings as well.

Tagged camera support, h38, hmc150, linear tracking, nature video, pegasus carbon system, provincial parks
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Summer gear…

Posted on July 23rd, 2010

With the rapidly advancing state of technology these days, I’ve decided to focus my gear acquisitions over the next little while on “low-tech” pieces of kit that won’t be rendered obsolete tomorrow and that will serve me well for a long time to come. I’ve been able to get my hands on some new tools in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been happy to incorporate into my shooting.

The tripod saga…

For a while I’ve been looking at upgrading my tripod setup to replace my rather flimsy and broken Wal-Mart model. When Manfrotto announced their new 504HD head at NAB, I thought it might be the one for me: feature packed, affordable, it used a 75mm ball mount, and perhaps most importantly, it would be readily available in Canada! I planned to order it with the Manfrotto 535 carbon fibre legs. Manfrotto and Sachtler (which is way out of my price range) are the only two major brands of support gear that I can find at camera retailers up here, which really limits the gear selection process. I was able to get some hands-on time with a 504HD/535 combo at ProFusion last month, and was suitably impressed to place a pre-order.

But… when I got back home I started having second thoughts about the 504HD head. It was big… and heavy. For the outdoors shooting that I do, it would probably be too big and heavy. I looked at 75mm bowl heads on B&H (in the US) and found that many were a kilogram or more lighter. (I should mention that while at ProFusion I asked Philip Bloom what he thought of the 504HD… he told me then that was fairly big and that there were smaller options. Smart man… )

So… I ended up importing the Manfrotto 535 legs with a Libec H38 head from the States. It ended being less expensive (the legs were almost half the price of the same product here in Canada!), it arrived quickly, and there weren’t any crazy brokerage charges, which I had been worried about. I was charged about $50 in duty, which I’m going to appeal, as professional video equipment and accessories are classified as duty-free. I also had to pay GST/PST (I guess it’s HST now ) as well, which is only fair. All-in-all, way less painful then I had imagined! And I have a real tripod combo now too.

Libec H38 head with Manfrotto 535 carbon fibre legs

I tried it out last weekend at my favorite provincial park and it worked really well – easy to sling in and out of a canoe, the legs can go high (close to 2 metres) and low (not much taller than my Gorillapod)… and that leveling ball? How did I ever shoot all-terrain without it? The Libec head is nice and smooth and, while it doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the 504HD (variable drag, balance adjustments, etc), it got the job done just fine.

But wait, there’s more!

When I arrived home from shooting at Charleston Lake, I was happy to find that I had another package waiting for me… My Cinevate Pegasus Carbon System slider. Like with the tripod system, a major consideration in selecting a slider was size and weight – the PCS can pack up very compactly, doesn’t weigh much, and can still achieve very smooth motion. I’ve tried some interesting setups with it and plan on giving it a real test this weekend at another nearby provincial park.

I can’t say much more about it yet as I haven’t had much of a chance to use it, but I’ll be sure to post again after this weekend with the results of the testing. I have a few more camping/shooting trips scheduled, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this new gear holds up in an outdoor adventure-type setting.

Tagged camera support, gorillapod, linear tracking, nature video, pegasus carbon system, profusion, provincial parks, stock footage, tripods
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Gearing up for ProFusion 2010

Posted on June 15th, 2010

I’ll be heading down to Toronto this weekend for ProFusion, a pro video tradeshow put on by Vistek. It promises to be a fun couple of days, meeting people and checking out cool gear.

What I’m most excited for is the chance to hear from Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC, and Philip Bloom. It was a brilliant move on Vistek’s part to get guys like these involved in the show – they’re the reason I’m going!

Rodney Charters is an accomplished DP who’s very well spoken and has some tremendous insight that he happily shares – if you haven’t listened to his interviews on the Crossing the 180 and 16×9 Cinema podcasts, I’d urge you to go have a listen. And on top of that he’s a CSC member… how cool is that?

Philip Bloom… well, does he really need an introduction? He’s the most well known VDSLR shooter in the world, and was also arguably the most well known 35mm adapter user before that. I’ll be attending seminars from each of these cinematography “giants” on Friday.

Preston Kanak and I are hoping to meet up on Friday night to do some shooting for his 3 Minute Shorts series, and then on Saturday I’ll be hitting the show floor and having some fun checking out gear! I particularly want to check out Manfrotto’s new 504HD head and LS Light’s LED panels (think budget-brand LitePanels). If only Cinevate was going to be there… I’d love to get some hands-on time with their Pegasus Carbon linear tracking system.

If you’ll be at the show and want to meet up, let me know – send me a message on Twitter, Vimeo, or plain old email. It would be great to see you!

Tagged philip bloom, preston kanak, profusion, rodney charters, toronto
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