Vu and I are spending the next couple days documenting the Hollywood portion of the Zacuto Great Camera Shootout 2011… If you know anything about the one Zacuto did last year you will know this is a MAJOR event.

Today was the prep day and Vu and I met up with Steve Weiss, Jens Bogehegn, Scott Lynch and the big crew here at Mole Richardson in Hollywood. There are a bunch more very important people here… I’ll try and find out who all is here and list them out in tomorrow’s post.

Right now they are building up the sets for the tests, everything is amazing to see… so much of the equipment is very specialized and scientific…

More to come soon, the fun is just beginning!

I’m here at the Royal Sonesta in New Orleans for the IN[FOCUS] event filmakers event to give a presentation titled “The Gateway to Online Revenue”. We will be in the main ballroom at The Royal Sonesta Hotel tomorrow at 10:45am.

Wedding Video at the New Orleans Royal Sonesta

The Royal Sonesta hotel is a very nice place for wedding videos… I took the panoramic photo above in the lobby and can imagine how awesome a wedding video will be when I shoot a wedding video here.

And that is why I’m making this post. I’d love to make a Royal Sonesta wedding video some day soon. So, if you are getting married here and want an awesome Royal Sonesta wedding video give me a call right away. You can see some other wedding videos we make here.

The best spots in the hotel to do some epic wedding video shots will be in the lobby and just outside the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street. Here is a photo of the Royal Sonesta from Bourbon Street:

After shooting some wedding video in the Royal Sonesta I’d love to go out to Bourbon Street to do some motion portraits. We did do some portraits in the streets outside of the hotel yesterday at our lighting workshop. The portraits came out so good I want to come back and do them again… but this time with some motion in them.

Basically, motion portraits are portraits with motion. I like to add them into my wedding videos because they add in an element of portraiture to just plain video. One of our more popular motion portrait videos is the one we did at the Streamy Awards last year.

Ok, so in closing… if you are looking to get married at the Royal Sonesta and found this page because of that… give me a call or check out the following wedding videos we have made recently:

[liveblog]

I was asked to shoot a wedding fusion video for Laura and Sasha this past weekend. It was a really beautiful wedding, Laura and Sasha were so fun to work with.

Jesi Haack wedding planners made the day go perfectly and Mark Brooke from Mark Brooke Photographers took the awesome still photographs you’ll see in the video. For Laura and Sasha, I did a same-day edit of their AMAZING wedding incorporating photos shot by Mark. We shot at the hotel through right before the ceremony, then I edited the footage so that video was shown at the reception, thankfully to wonderful applause and compliments at the end.

TECH: For those wondering, it was shot on a 5D mark II, edited in Final Cut Pro, exported and sent to iMovie to add the photos (because it’s easy!). The video was presented on a MacBook Pro to the guests.

MUSIC: Paul Dateh – pauldateh.com

If you like this video you can check out another same day edit we did for Tiffany and Ty in Cancun.

It is always a struggle to shoot with the iPhone and get stable video. There are some options out there but none of them seem to really get the job done right or they are always missing some features. If you have ever shot video with your iPhone, iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs, iPod Touch or even the iPhone 4 you know the video looks good but it is really hard to make it look great by stabilizing it. There are really only two things you can do to make the iPhone video look its best… make sure the audio sound perfect… and stabilizing the iPhone video.

The easiest way to stabilize any video camera is to put it on a tripod, this is easy with a camcorder or still camera but the iPhone does not have a way to mount it on a tripod. There are a ton of DIY iPhone stabilizer kits or tripod mount DIY projects out there but none of the ones I saw looked like I wanted to put my $700 phone in and trust it.

The next thing you might want to do to stabilize it would be to rig it up with some sort of handheld support to take away all of your axis movements and then you would have stable footage. Again there were a ton of DIY things out there but they all seem to be for people who don’t mind risking their phone dropping.

My favorite solution

The best solution I’ve used has been the Zacuto Zgrip iPhone JR. It holds your iPhone perfectly snug for shooting video and allows you to mount it to a tripod or just hold it and you will be shooting stable iPhone video. The Zgrip iPhone Jr is only $69.

The one better solution

The Zgrip iPhone JR is great if you only shoot with an iPhone… but sometimes you have other small cameras that you might want to use with the zgrip… in this case you would want the Point n Shoot Pro and an iPhone Cradle. This way you can shoot with pretty much any small camera and get stable footage and then you can also shoot with the iPhone and get stable footage from the same rig. The Point n Shoot Pro is $89 and the iPhone Cradle is only $32.

The Pro solution

The Zgrip iPhone jr and the Zgrip iPhone Point’n’Shoot kit are great solutions but if you need a bit more… the Zgrip iPhone Pro is the best. It has more configuration options and can even shoot vertical with the phone. It is more sturdy and give you more expandability. The Zgrip iPhone Pro is only $295.

The Cinema solution

If you want to shoot outdoors and actually be able to see the LCD on the phone perfectly and get even more stable shots then the Zgrip iPhone Cinema Kit is the best option for you. It is basically a Zgrip iPhone Pro with an arm and adapter to attach your Z-Finder to it. Now I know it sounds and looks all big and crazy… but until you have actually shot with it you really can’t make fun of it. It is so awesome to look at an iPhone 4 retina display with a Z-Finder, even if you don’t have the iPhone Cinema Kit I would just go grab my Z-Finder and hold it up to the back of the iPhone 4 just to see. Then imagine having a proper handle and an easy way to swing the arm out… so awesome.

The iPhone Cinema Kit is not for everyone at $499… but if you are serious about getting the best possible and more configurable footage out of your iPhone then this is the only way to go.

The Tripod solution

How to mount your iPhone to a tripod? All of the iPhone Zgrips can be mounted to a tripod.

iPhone directors finder

Artemis Director’s Viewfinder is the app I use as a directos finder for my iPhone. But there are also two other apps that some people like to use… I have not used them yet so I might have to do an Artemis app review or a Artemis VS other viewfinder apps review. The other apps to check out are Viewfinder Basic and Viewfinder Pro

The biggest reveal at CES, at least if you’re measuring in crowd size, had to be the Polaroid Grey Label reveal. I waited patiently for 2 hours plus an extra 45 minutes, standing in the same spot as the crowd grew and pushed in. I was excited and still am to see the new Polaroid. Sure, the reveal by Lady Gaga could have been a little more exciting and I’m still holding a grudge over the destruction of all the old Polaroid machines but I think the new GL30 does a great job of bringing Polaroid into the next generation.

As Lan talks about in the video above, the new GL30 uses Zinc Zero printing technology that produces a pretty good instant print using thermal paper. Each pack comes with the classic 10 prints. You can choose the vintage polaroid border that is so dear to our hearts or other new and fun borders for printing. You can also share your images digitally on the articulating screen. The body is solid and substantial when you hold it, you can even frame up your images like an original land camera or using the articulating screen.

For more on the GL30 and the rest of the Grey Label you can check out the Polaroid website.

We caught up with Camtrol at CES 2011. Camtrol makes some amazing camera stabilizers for not only large DSLR cameras but smaller cameras and camcorders as well. There are two rigs, the Prime and the Grand. There are also accessories for each that can customize for an iPhone or other comparable pieces.

The Camtrol rigs are not your normal stabilizers, they are highly customizable and adjustable. Popular for the ease of low angle shots they make hand held camera operation a breeze. On top of the accessories the Prime and Grand have adjustable handles and legs that fold out so the rig can be sat on a surface without having to lay it over on it’s side.

Just in case being easily customizable and adjustable isn’t enough for you we don’t want to forget to tell you about the ability to add a thumb controlled remote, so all of your controls are easily accessed when you’re shooting.

The Satarii Star is a camera mounting device for iPhones or other such small devices that automatically tracks and follows your movements. This means you can video or photograph yourself without assistance, no more awkwardly asking for assistance from strangers or waiting for friends to help out. It’s small, portable and can mount an iPhone either landscape or portrait. There will also be accessories for other similar devices. The Star is still in prototype and the guys behind it, Brian Lamb and Vlad Tetelbaum, have a campaign going on Indie Go-Go. You can donate and pre-order yours on their Indie Go-Go page.

There was no shortage of new 3D gadgets at CES 2011, but one of the most exciting is the Fuji Finepix W3 3D camera. This little camera has 2 lenses and 2 sensors that can be used independently, which essentially means you can shoot 2 different exposures and focal lengths simultaneously. The LCD displays your photos and video you can view in 3D without glasses.

You can display your images digitally or have lenticular prints made through Fuji.

Dropbox might change your life.

Dramatic enough? It’s true, though. Before Dropbox I had a terrible time trying to deliver large files to clients or back and forth with Lan or Erica without using services that required zipping or that didn’t look professional.

Enter Dropbox. It’s a file sharing service that doesn’t look or work anything like what all file sharing services looked like. It’s simple, fast, efficient and does it’s job without ever getting in the way. Here’s how I use it and why. (Oh, and the basic service… which would serve most people more than adequately… is FREE.)

DESKTOP CLIENT

You install the desktop client and it creates a folder on your computer that will constantly and automatically stay synced with Dropbox’s servers. On a Mac the folder shows up automatically in your Places sidebar in Finder (I’m sure it’s similar on Windows).

You can also have an icon in the top bar that gives you additional features and current upload status.

MOBILE

There are also iPhone, iPad and other mobile device apps. A few times I’ve dropped maps and other items into dropbox so that I could reference them while out and about… and when I send clients proofs they have often used the app on their iPhones to view them (both photos AND videos). It’s sleek and simple, and allows you to mark files as favorites which saves a local copy of them so you don’t have to download them to view them immediately (GREAT for when traveling abroad without a data plan).

WORKING WITH CLIENTS

Dropbox has been a huge time saver when it comes to working with clients. There are a few things that suck about doing photo and video projects for remote clients… but the biggest headache has to do with getting media and proofs back and forth. Dropbox really does make that a lot easier.

First you create a new folder in your Dropbox, then context click it and click the share settings. Enter the client’s email, type a quick note to them to explain what you’re doing, and click done. The client will get an email with links to install the desktop client on their system and start an account. I usually tell them about this ahead of time and they love it and make their other vendors use it as well. Let’s say you have a video edit to show the client… you export a draft, drop it into the folder you just created, and it automatically starts uploading. Whenever the client installs Dropbox it will automatically start downloading on their system. When the download is complete they get a Growl notification pop-up on the screen.

Now let’s say the client has an image they want me to switch out… but I don’t already have it. They just drop that image into our shared folder in their finder window, and the file automatically goes up to the servers and then down onto my computer. I don’t need to click anything, it’s just there as fast as my connection will allow it to be. This is MUCH more efficient than emailing back and forth and much easier to keep track of.

If you delete a file from dropbox, or update to a new version… the entire history is saved for 30 days on Dropbox’s servers and you can restore any version at any time. You also have the option of paying for unlimited undeletes, and your files will be saved forever even once deleted (though you do have the option of “shredding” them for permanent deletion if you don’t want it to stay there, you know, after your drunken night of sending naughty pictures to your favorite client).

SENDING A QUICK FILE

If you want to send a file to one or more people but don’t want them to all have to install Dropbox and get an account, just drop a file in your public folder, it begins uploading to the servers and you can immediately click it and get the url, before the file has even finished uploading! Though the file is technically public, it’s not indexed or searchable anywhere… so while technically this is a publicly accessible file… no one can get the file without the unique URL (there is no URL for the whole folder, each file gets its own).

Send the URL in an email, IM or tweet and the recipients can download with a click.

IN THE OFFICE

Lan, Erica and I all share a folder titled ‘The Bui Brothers’ and we keep all our files that we need to access often there all the time. We also use it to send other project files back and forth. Since we all work together but not in the same office, it’s nice having a folder on each of our computers that stays in sync, just as though we had a shared network drive.

GALLERIES

Wow I almost forgot to write about this part. No, really, I actually have the rest of this article done and I just scrolled back up to add this VERY important part.

Galleries!

In addition to the public folder which is used to share files, you have a photos folder which is used to share galleries of photos. Create a new folder in your ‘photos’ folder and drop some photos into it. Right click the folder and you can copy the gallery link and send it out.

I use this for any shoots where I’m not selling prints, typically when I’m doing headshots and I just need the client to give me a short list of picks. Since all my files are numbered they just give me the file name after browsing through. The gallery is simple, fast and works extremely well.

You can see a sample gallery I uploaded HERE. It’s full of good lookin’ people, so enjoy.

THE DAMAGE

As I mentioned above, the basic Dropbox plan is free. You get 2GB with that and have the ability to raise that up to 10GB by referring people (which I am doing each time I have a new client use the service). That actually works for most people. Once it becomes integrated into your work and life… you may feel you need more, and that’s when the higher plans come into play. Worth every penny if you need them, and nice to know that you can scale up when you do or down when you don’t on a month-by-month basis.

Unlike many free services there is no catch, there are no ads… you are only limited by storage space.

OTHER USES

Besides simple file sharing there are a number of applications that use Dropbox to sync files. 1Password is one of them (I’ll do a post on another day about why you should be using 1Password). 1Password keeps an encrypted file on my dropbox that allows me to sync between computers and with my iPhone. Sweet, right?

ALTERNATIVE

There are actually many alternatives to Dropbox for some of its duties… but it’s the only one I know that works in EVERY single way I want it to. One cool new company that I’ll be using though is ge.tt (thanks to Mike Ambs for the recommendation!). No software to install, only a few fields to sign up for an account, then you click a button, choose some files, they start uploading, and you get a link. The amazing thing is that you can send that link out… and people can download the files BEFORE they are even done uploading!

This is great when speed is of the essence or when your dropbox is full or when you’re sharing a file from someone else’s computer. The interface is dead simple and it seems quite good. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

I actually wrote an initial short Dropbox review back in 2009, if you care to see where I started.

So… go download Dropbox and sign up for a ge.tt account. Together you should never have trouble sending files again. You can thank me later. With cash. Or jewels. Or even gift cards. I like those.

Getting Paid

Very often small business owners need to get paid from clients. Many times these clients forget to send the check… then forget to send the check, then think they sent the check, then try to send the check, then never send the check… then finally write you a check when you show up at their office after you overdrew your account and have to pay $333 in overdraft fees because some automatic payments to Dropbox, Netflix, Hulu and Evernote came out of your account along with the gas and snacks you bought the other day.

Well, how do you get paid then? Checks might never get to you, checks might bounce… and checks have no fees! PayPal is instant, PayPal has small fees… but some people don’t like Paypal. And any other merchant services, gateway terminal or credit card processor has some crazy monthly fee and/or some setup and rental and other stupid fees… so what is your best option?

How we take money

Here is a general breakdown of how we take money from clients… well.. better said… how we accept payment for our hard work.

Cash – If you pay cash, SWEET! We will take any amount. Cash is KING.

Check – Anything over $1000 I usually prefer a check, fees get too expensive for my taste when someone pays more than $1000 on a Credit Card. But when they book, I’ll likely ask the client to pay the deposit or retainer with something listed below.

PayPal – Anything under $1000, jobs for a few hundred dollars or even just retainers and deposits on bigger jobs are usually done with PayPal. I get the money right away, know it is good and can even get access to it with my PayPal Debit Mastercard.

Google Checkout - If someone does not like PayPal and I’m not going to be physically next to them… this is the next best option. Unlike PayPal, I won’t get the money for 3-5 days… but once I charge it I know it will be there.

Credit Card – Anyone that does not like PayPal or Google Checkout or does not want to pay with a check… or someone that has not paid for some reason or another… well… I’ll suck it up and just take the hit on the fees just to get paid. I’ve used various methods before and just a few months ago I got Square… That changed the way I look at taking credit cards.

Square

Square is a tiny divice that works with your iPhone and iPad to swipe and charge credit cards and debit cards. It is beautiful. The website is beautiful. People look at it when you whip it out in amazement and awe. I love it.

The receipts are gorgeous and the geo integration is perfect.

Square’s card processing fees are:
Ideal for less than $1,000 per week (but you can do as much as you want)
Monthly Service – $0 /month
Swipe Rate – 2.75%
Keyed Rate – 3.5%
Transaction Fee – $0.15
Square card reader – Free (Free replacement card readers too)
Monthly Minimum – None
Activation – None
Gateway – None
Early termination – None
Setup Fee – None

I was all happy with Square and then GoPayment just came out with a free option… so Square vs GoPayment? What will be better GoPayment or Square? Square vs GoPayment??? I listed below the comparison between Square vs GoPayment.

GoPayment

Something new to me is this GoPayment thing. I just ordered mine so I have no real life experience with it yet… but it looks great. Right now you can get the unit for free (not sure how long that will last) and it seems like a great solution. I really don’t expect Intuit to have a website as awesome and beautiful as Square, but I’m sure it will get the job done. The unit does not look as cool as the Square, but again I’m sure it will get the job done.

All in all I think it is a great option to look at if you are taking less than $1000 per month.

Intuit GoPayment Low-Volume Plan
For businesses processing less than $1,000 per month
Monthly Service – $0 /month
Swipe Rate – 2.7%
Keyed Rate – 3.7%
Transaction Fee – $0.153
Intuit Credit Card Reader – Free for limited time ($179.95 normally)
Monthly Minimum – None
Activation – None
Gateway – None
Early termination – None
Setup Fee – None

Which should you choose?

I really like the way we do things here… I’m going to try out the GoPayment system and see if it is a good fit, but likely I’ll just be sticking with Square. What are your opinions between Square vs GoPayment?

UPDATE

Jan 12, 2011 – I just got the account approved for the GoPayment account but unfortunately in the email they sent they did not provide the information they promised:

Once approved, you will be provided information in your approval email on how to redeem your card reader.

That was in the fine print on the website where I signed up. So I am on a live chat session with their support and they just told me it will automatically be sent to me… Hang on for updates… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Well, the chat went on.. here is the entire transcript:

Please wait for an Intuit Payments Solutions Chat Agent to respond. Your wait time will be approximately 0 minute(s) and 2 second(s).

All of our Intuit Payment Solutions Chat Agents are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. The estimated wait time is ’0′.

Welcome to Intuit Payment Solutions. Your chat session is now live.

Ashley: Hello, thank you for chatting with us today. How may I help you?
Ashley: We have not heard from you. Do you wish to continue the chat?
Ashley: We are ending this chat session since we have not heard from you. If you have additional questions, please feel free to chat with us or call us at 1-866-492-3611.
Lan Bui: Hello, I just received my approval email for my account… the pricing page where it says I’ll get a free reader says in that email it will tell me how to redeem my free card reader… it did not.
Lan Bui: Once approved, you will be provided information in your approval email on how to redeem your card reader.
Lan Bui: That is what the website said.
Ashley: It will automatically be sent out to you after you application is approved.
Lan Bui: I’m confused…
Lan Bui: So there is no need to reddem the reader?
Ashley: Which merchant service did you sign up for?
Lan Bui: GoPayment.
Ashley: Which phone are you using with GoPayment?
Lan Bui: iphone 4
Ashley: Okay, sorry about that.
Lan Bui: So I will get the reader automatically?
Ashley: When you get the e-mail you will fill out a form and they will send you the free card reader.
Lan Bui: I received the email and there was no form.
Ashley: You will receive another e-mail after you application is approved, that e-mail will contain the form that you will need to gill out?
Lan Bui: The email I received was the application approval email.
Lan Bui: The account is approved and open.
Lan Bui: I can forward you the apporval email if you want.
Ashley: Unfortunately, we can send or receive e-mails.
Ashley: Give me just one moment to do some research for you.
Lan Bui: ok
Ashley: Thanks.
Ashley: What day did you apply for the service?
Lan Bui: Three days ago.
Ashley: And you have received the approval e-mail and the activation e-mail?
Lan Bui: yes
Ashley: Okay, you since your account is active you will need to speak with Customer Service 1-800-558-9558.
Lan Bui: Seriously??? That was the first thing I told you… I said “I just received my approval email for my account… the pricing page where it says I’ll get a free reader says in that email it will tell me how to redeem my free card reader… it did not.”
Lan Bui: Why did you not tell me to contact customer service then?
Ashley: This is a brand new promotion (started this week) and we have not been informed of all of the specifics.
Lan Bui: I’m even more confused… I was on the website and a LIVE help thing came up offering help on the page with the promotion… was I safe to assume that LIVE help would be able to help me?
Ashley: In this particular department we sell merchant services. For technical help and ordering card readers you have to contact customer service.
Lan Bui: Thanks for your time… I’m blogging about this and would like to give you the link so you can share it with your superiors. http://thebuibrothers.com/blog/2011/01/square-vs-gopayment-squareup-com-vs-gopayment-com/

Update:

There is a way to do it AUTOMATICALLY!!! (Vu just told me)
Photojojo did a post here.
Here is the Pic Scatter Facebook app to do it automatically.

I just got friended on Facebook by Tariq Elmeri and saw his awesome Facebook profile photo layout. I had to know how he made his Facebook profile photo so awesome so I just asked…

Tariq lead me to Mashable link and the tutorial that he used and I thought it was great and wanted to show you how you can also make a really cool Facebook profile photo thing.

Here is the how to video:

So… who is going to do this to their profile? Comment below…

Update:

There is a way to do it AUTOMATICALLY!!! (Vu just told me)
Photojojo did a post here.
Here is the Pic Scatter Facebook app to do it automatically.

It’s day 2 here at CES… and we leave today. Sadly, though I have really enjoyed my time here in ways I’ll discuss below, I have to say I’ve been overwhelmingly underwhelmed. That sounded dumb, but it really accurately describes what I feel right now, sitting on the tradeshow floor.

The biggest letdown was perhaps the Lady Gaga / Polaroid announcement. They built a little too much hype and excitement surrounding the announcement… not to mention a crowd that outgrew their booth around 20-fold

I don’t expect that every year we are going to have ground-breaking mind-bending unexpected and hot new technologies… but from everything I’ve seen here I have to say it’s just been at most slightly warmer than room temperature announcements. If last year was the year of 3D, this year is the year of MORE 3D… and somewhat more exciting… 3D without glasses.

Fujifilm and Sony have some cool new 3D cameras that you can shoot while viewing in 3D without glasses. They aren’t the easiest screens to work with, you really have to align your eyes and you lose the 3D view fairly easily (though I suspect this will get easier with practice) but they are something new that’s actually kind of exciting. We actually shot some quick product videos that we’ll release in the next few days giving a quick rundown of each of these cameras.

The best parts of CES, just as with any conference, are the people. I know, I know… you hear the same thing everywhere… but only because it’s true. While I wouldn’t say that CES is the conference to attend to meet people (you’d be much better off attending a smaller conference that caters more to your specific industry or niche), it can work if you’re a tech geek and want to meet people and make connections with vendors and companies and build relationships that you can then foster into the future.

One thing I suck at is follow up, though. I meet people, I like them, I talk to them, connect, bond even… but then I go home and get busy and don’t follow up until the next time I see them at a conference. I might add them on Twitter or Facebook… and we may see each others updates… but it’s a huge failure to start a promising friendship or business relationship then just let it fade away and join the ranks of social media “friends” who never interact much more than the occasional ‘like’ on each others’ Facebook posts.

If I met you or reconnected with you at CES… I am really going to try and keep that going! Otherwise, what’s the point? Well besides looking at a giant wall of Panasonic 3D screens.

One AWESOME thing I’d like to mention was the time I got to spend writing this post at NBC Universal’s “The Hub” with a FAST hard line connection and comfortable seating and refreshments. Thanks to Anthony Quintano at NBC for inviting us!

Vu and I got asked to come in to the NBC Universal booth at CES 2011 to blog! Anthony Quintano (@anthonyquintano) saw us at the CES 2011 show and asked us to come back to join in! We also saw that CC Chapman here yesterday too!

Next to us right now here in The Hub is Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback and Linda Sherman… both quietly blogging away. It was really great to meet Jim and see Linda again.

I think it is really great and amazing that NBC Universal is providing this space, and it is a really great booth too!

Next up is to finish up shooting our new tech reviews of some products… ok time to go!

Vu and I got booked for CES 2011 at the last minute. So off to book a hotel… everyone said the cheap hotels were $350+ and that none would even be available… so… here we are. Day 0 at CES 2011 Las Vegas.

Drew Gardner’s Brown Bag Video Series

The above trailer is an introduction to Drew Gardners behind the photo series that has been named by Strobist blog “Drew Gardner’s Brown Bag Video Series”.

Vu and I had the great opportunity to do all of the production work for this video series. We were hired by Drew to shoot the videos, edit them… and now we worked out a deal with Drew to actually finally get our 5 dollar tutorials website launched!!!

We started 5 Dollar Tutorials last year in hopes of getting video tutorials to people instantly and for a very reasonable rate… After hearing Strobist name it a brown bag series we know it makes complete sense. Our goal is to help people avoid paying $200 or $300 for a DVD and only getting one or two bits of information out of it… for one or two things we thought it would be plenty worth $5 to $10… and that is kind of how 5 Dollar Tutorials was born.

If you think about it… a typical photography lighting DVD might cover two, three or even four different lighting setups and cost you $250. Lets imagine that Drew made his ‘brown bag videos’ into a DVD instead and sold it for a cheap $200. At that price the Drew Gardner’s brown bag videos name would not really apply… but you get the point. Even if you loved and benefitted from 10 of the videos.. that would only bring the price to about $20 per video. So we cut out all the stuff you don’t want and just offer it to you for a very low price of $7.50 (wait… why not $5? We explain it here) so even if you buy every video you are only spending $112.50.

But we really get it down to make it fit the Brown Bag video series nickname… you can get all 15 videos for just $75. So here you go, take a look at the teasers to the videos on 5 Dollar Tutorials and when you are ready you can just buy the entire Drew Gardner’s Brown Bag Video Series.

A few weeks ago Brianne Davis came over with her makeup artist, Violeta and we had a really great portrait session. This was such a simple photo shoot, but Brianne is so easy to work with and I think we got a great range of images.

Brianne and I had talked about updating her head shots, about doing a photo shoot for her that was a little different than the stuff you normally see of her. She had recently cut her long blonde hair short and the types of roles she is playing have changed, so we wanted to do something captivating that shows off Brianne.

Erica and I took some behind the scenes footage that we hope you enjoy!

IN[FOCUS] event

When Chris Jones of the IN[FOCUS] conference contacted us about speaking at the conference we were coming up on our first New Orleans trip ever. PartnerCon was coming up and we’d be speaking there, and we were pretty excited. Even though we could unfortunately only be in New Orleans for 2 days, it’s always great to visit a new city that’s on your list of places to go.

It didn’t take much for Chris to convince us… especially once we heard how he wanted to include us. IN[FOCUS] is an event for wedding filmmakers, which we are a part of (see our short wedding film at The Wedding Boutique)… though it’s most definitely not a prominent part of our business so it wouldn’t make too much sense for us to share our wedding filmmaking experience. Instead we are going to be speaking on using video to make money… but in ways OTHER than as wedding films. You’ll have Kevin Shahinian and Patrick Moreau to take care that!

We’ll talk about shooting behind the scenes videos without hiring additional staff, shooting with the gear you have available, the 3 important things needed to make a video go “viral” and other topics that lead up to using your existing talents with video to make money that don’t involve actually delivering a product to a client (and a few that do).

See the details about all the awesome presenters at IN[FOCUS] and sign up for the conference HERE!

New Orleans Photo Lighting Workshop

As part of our venture with IN[FOCUS] we will also be giving a photographic lighting workshop. If you’ve been following us for a while you’ll already be familiar with these. We focus on two things… getting you familiar with creating a variety of lighting situations and showing you the great results you can achieve with the most inexpensive gear.

This time we’ll have a new treat as well, though… The Flash Centre in London provided us with an amazing Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit and we’ll have this along with us. They are tiny and portable and ULTRA powerful for their size. We’ll be traveling from LA with these and our usual cheapo kit and will show you how to use both (which pretty much shows you how to use anything).

WHEN

January 23rd, 2011 from 1pm to 7pm.

WHERE

The Evangeline Room, Royal Sonesta Hotel

We’ll cover some lighting techniques and gear in class… then go outside and put that knowledge to good use.

See details about the workshop HERE and reserve your seat HERE! It’s only $249 and there are only 20 seats available!

BTS of the above video

The video above was shot with 2 iPhone 4s with audio on an H4n and an H2. Lan’s in LA and I’m in Phoenix right now and we decided instead of our usual Skype recordings we’d do something more fun. It was still quite simple, we shot and recorded it and I dropped the footage and audio into Dropbox and Lan edited it together in FCP.

Gear used: 2 x iPhone 4, Zoom H4n, Zoom H2, Zacuto Z-Grip iPhone Pro, Zacuto Z-Grip Jr., Litepanels MicroPro, 3 x Nasty Clamps and a couple of home depot fluorescent clamp-on lights. Oh and two MacBook Pros. Ok I guess when you list it all out it seems like a lot, but really it’s not.

So here you go… for fun. ;)

What an amazing experience… a photo shoot with an awesome model, a fantastic trip to UK and now one of the best videos we have ever made!

Drew Gardner is one of the most talented photographers I’ve ever met. He is an amazing person and his work… well it just speaks for itself. He is the first person I have seen doing true Epic Fashion photography. He combines fashion photography with epicness in something that is best described by just showing it. So I encourage you to go to his website and look at some of his past work. My favorites are the forest series and descendants!

We met Drew last year at a conference in LA, he came up to us after we spoke on stage to chat and we hit it off right away. We all ended up at dinner that night and have since become great friends. When Vu and I heard that Drew was doing another Epic Fashion shoot we had to be there for it… and since he needed a behind the scenes video made we got the job booked right away!

As you can see from the video, the shoot was of an awesome model and a zebra! A zebra photo shoot… it was something new and out there… so great.

Learn from Drew Gardner for under $10

While we were there we actually shot a ton more things… we shot 15 full videos of Drew explaining in detail how he put together some of his biggest and most notable shoots. He explains in detail the lighting, the logistics and all of the camera settings and equipment used on each shoot. He also speaks in each video about other things… the kinds of things you usually don’t hear about… the kinds of things you usually only learn on the job when they happen to you.

These videos normally would be packaged into a DVD and sold for $300 or so… but after shooting the videos and brainstorming with Drew we came up with something I think is going to be really popular and makes a lot more sense for everyone.

A while ago Vu and I started a website called 5 Dollar Tutorials, our intention was to make very affordable tutorials for photo and video stuff. We see all the time someone making a DVD and selling it for $150… $200… even as high at $900!!! This really sucks when all you want is one or two or even HALF the things off of the DVD. You have to pay for everything even when you don’t need it all. So 5 Dollar Tutorials was born… detailed tutorials that were basically like a chapter of a DVD sold for $5!!! How could anyone not like that?

Well, it’s been over a year and we never had the time to actually start shooting our tutorial videos, even though we completely believed in the project. If you look now you’ll see we only put up a couple repurposed free tutorials and some video blogs. We have had offers from people to partner up with us to get it started but for one reason or another it just never happened.

This is where Drew comes in!!! Since we were already making 15 videos for Drew, each of them worth WAY more than $5 (I think he could easily sell the 15 videos on DVD for $300) we worked out a deal with Drew to offer the videos on 5 Dollar Tutorials!!! We have not finalized the price yet, but we know they will be a few dollars more than $5… still plenty worth it (even if it doesn’t match the name of the site hahaha).

Once they are released you can pick and choose which photos you love and wonder how were done… and just buy the ones you are interested in. You’ll also have the option of buying the entire set at a steeply discounted price. Digital downloads lower the cost of production versus DVDs, and that savings easily passes on to your price.

Learn from Drew Gardner for FREE

We will be giving away one free video for a limited time sometime next week, if you want to be first in line and guarantee you get that video for free sign up below to get updates about 5 Dollar Tutorials and Drew Gardner:

The video series is called ‘Behind the Photos with Drew Gardner’. After watching each video you will know everything about how that photo was created.

Don’t miss out on the free video.

Learn from Drew for FREE LIVE!!!

Another opportunity to learn how Drew makes his images is to check out his free live webinar on Monday, December 6th. Click here to see what time the webinar will be in your time zone and register.

Conclusion

I wrote this post in a hurry… I just finished the Zebra video a few hours ago and have to get to editing up those 15 behind the photos videos right now… so I’m sure there is more that should be said about the shoot and the upcoming videos but I’ll leave you for now with two things to do… first take a look at this photo…

That was shot on the iPhone… yep… iPhone… we even printed it out and it looks great! Which leads me back to encouraging you to sign up to get updates on 5 Dollar Tutorials… one of our first tutorials will be how to shoot good epic panoramic photos on the iPhone (we get emails and tweets all the time asking how we do these).

And that brings me to the last thing… I really don’t think you should miss out on Drew’s free video we will be sending out next week, so here… sign up to get updates about 5 Dollar Tutorials and Drew Gardner:

I just sent an email out to our newsletter subscribers because I got such a big response to the last email I sent out… the email I sent basically had my final thoughts on like mindedness. I ended that email talking about a retreat I went to last year… the Photog Retreat. I was a speaker there and had a chance to live with like minded people without any distractions… it is amazing to do that. You can read the email I sent here.

Basically, after that email I got a ton of emails back from people interested in the Photog Retreat… so here is what I just sent out…

Thank you so much for the massive response to the last email. I’m going to be very short in this email… because I’m sure you have so many things to do today.

After getting so many responses back from all of you about the Photog Retreat and how you all really want to go… I thought why not try and get some sort of exclusive Bui Brothers discount… just for our friends. Here is what happened…

I got on the phone with Kathryn (Photog Retreat) and told her all about the emails that I’ve been sending and how I wanted a special discount exclusive for all of the people we get to sign up. I’ll try and summarize the conclusions of the conversation for you:

- 10 speakers
- 7 days
- No other workshop has that high of value
- Other 2 day workshops cost the same or more
- Even at big annual conferences you realistically don’t get to see 10 speakers
- It is a retreat / vacation
- Attendees get to live with the speakers (virtually unlimited face time)
- It is the only worksop your family can come to and BE HAPPY to be there with you!!!

So after that conversation I was pretty much convinced that a discount isn’t needed because there is so much benefit already build into the retreat. I’m talking about the ultimate chance to live with like minded people…

Well… after all that, the awesome Kathryn approved a one day $400 discount. We can call it a Black Friday sale… Kathryn is a little too nice and wanted to be ‘fair’ so she is offering this discount to a limited amount of people who reserve their spot today. She can’t sell that many spots at this discount so if you don’t get on it right away… well this will not be offered again.

$400 off Black Friday only

-Lan

PS. Since this is open to anyone, let your friends know about this if you think they might be interested.

Oh and call me if you have any questions… 714-906-8496

So head on over to reserve your spot NOW!!!

The Survey

The other day I emailed our newsletter subscribers (sign up here to get in on the conversation) because I was thinking about like minded people and what it means to others… here is a copy of the email:

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… why do we always get such a high after we go to a conference or workshop? Well, I think I have it nailed down to something pretty simple… like minded people.

If you have a day job that is unrelated to photography or video I’m sure you can relate… you get some great industry news and can’t share it with anyone at work because they don’t care, or even worse… they just think you are a big geek. At a conference… everyone you run into will sit for hours and chat about the same geeky things… there it is… like minded people.

I’m sure you are busy, so I’ll stop here and just ask that you answer two very quick questions… don’t worry I’ll talk more about where i’m going with this after I get some responses

Click here to answer two quick questions now

-Lan

We received a lot of responses… and I was very surprised and ended up feeling very sad after going over the numbers and essay responses. Here are some quotes from the answers to the question “We would love to hear about a memorable experience that resulted from being with like minded people. Please also talk about stuff that resulted from it and if you feel like you want to experience something like that it again… maybe even how you think you could recreate that type of situation again…”:

I loved my graduate years at **** as a graduate photography student because we got to share our similar passions and our ideas, and we discussed and critiqued each other’s work. After I graduated, and started to focus on building up my own photography business, I found it very challenging to find like-minded people where I was living at (and still does) and even doubly challenging in that I am Deaf and uses ASL as primary mode of communication whenever I’m around like-minded people. I have had so much personal growth during my graduate years at **** that I’m now still seeking to get back to that kind of atmosphere. It’s not so easy having to find an interpreter and most often whenever I do join a photography group, I found myself being left out of the group discussion, thus I have to work doubly harder to engage people to discuss with me about what’s what within the photography world. Internet has helped to level that playing field somewhat, but not 100% but it’s better than nothing.

… in 2003 I auditioned for american idol… And there were 8,000 people standing/sitting etc singing/ practicing and it was amazing to just be around everyone who all shared the same passion… It was like everyone just got “it”.. No one had to say anything.. It was just an unspoken understanding. Wppi gives that on a different scale.. It’s not quite as magical but would be nice if it was! It always seems like there’s competition at phoography conferences.. Like “who’s who” and It takes a lot away… We don’t have anything in common anymore- instead you feel like you’re not quite good enough…

As artists, entrepreneurs and explorers, so much of this experience requires “breaking off from the pack”. Taking time with your own thoughts, examining your personal values and understanding the needs of others. This process requires risk and most of all….outside support (once you’ve established what you’d like to pursue within yourself). Like-minded people help remind us that no journey is ever really alone. We are all in this (to some degree or another) together.

I WISH there were like minded people up here!

I am a gamer. Ever since I first held my first joystick on an Atari 2600 I have been hooked. For several years I have been on staff of a huge computer gaming event in Dallas called QuakeCon. I work with a team of video enthusiasts and we create some fantastic videos celebrating what we love to do, play games. We work our butts off for an entire week but some great things come out of it. I would love to work with a team of people and produce great gaming video content.

I think it’s important to have spaces for folks to be together from similar backgrounds/experiences and spaces for folks to share across backgrounds/experiences. What usually results is a sense of deep connection to one another and a commitment to building something together (i.e., better communities, spaces for learning, etc.).

And I think this one is my favorite… haha…

Doing a photo and video shoot in a forest with a zebra…. oh and two guys who were totally inspirational in their approach, their knowledge and just being plain nice to be around!

There were so many essay answers I didn’t want to post them all… I did read every single one and really enjoyed reading them. Thank you so much for all of your responses! It personally meant a lot to me to hear from all of you.

So Sad

What made me so sad was thinking of all of the responses from people that wished they could spend more time with like minded people. Here is the picture I have in my mind:

A person is married and their wife/husband doesn’t share any interset in their passion, they go to work at a day job… because it is the right thing to do… because they get insurance and they went to school for it. No one at work is like minded, they are all pale robots working in white fluorescent lights staring at 15 inch LCD monitors having conversations like “Did you hear about blah blah blah?” … “yes blah”. This person gets to go to one industry trade-show a year and that is the one thing keeping them going every year, they get a high of all highs every time they go… and they get post trade-show blues for months after they get back home.

I’m sure that is pretty exaggerated… but it is just what I saw after seeing this graph from the survey:

42% of the people surveyed don’t get to spend any time with like minded people more than once a month… I could not live with that!!!

Of that… 9.9% only get to spend time with like minded people once a YEAR!!! OMG… that must be horrible.

I’m still thinking about this survey and just had to share the results because I was so surprised by it. I’ll be writing a follow up soon, so for now leave your thoughts in the comments or talk to me on twitter about it.

-Lan

PS. Oh… and if you want to have some interaction with like minded people for FREE… join me in Beverly Hills (LUXE Hotel Penthouse Suite) this Monday, November 22 at 7pm. RSVP here now (free pizza too).

Wow, The Beatles, the band that changed everything, now on iTunes!

Ok, so I don’t know all the details on why they were never on iTunes but im very glad that The Beatles are now on iTunes!!! I remember searching iTunes for The Beatles a few years ago when I first got an iPod… I was so sad i could not get The Beatles on my iPod. Years later I again tried to find some Beatles music on iTunes and had no success. I think the last time I got a new iphone I wanted to put The Beatles on my iPhone but iTunes didn’t have The Beatles!!!

Here I go now I’m going to buy up a ton of iTunes Beatles music.

You may be asking “What Beatles albums are in iTunes?” The following albums are available on iTunes (this is a complete and comprehensive list of all albums on iTunes by The Beatles):

The Beatles Box Set
The Beatles (White Album)
The Beatles 1967–1970 (The Blue Album)
The Beatles 1962–1966 (The Red Album)
With The Beatles
Beatles For Sale
Abbey Road
Magical Mystery Tour
Rubber Soul
A Hard Day’s Night
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Help!
Let It Be
Please Please Me
Yellow Submarine
Past Masters, Vols. 1 & 2
Revolver

If you are a fan please let me know in the comments below… also, please click here to follow me on twitter.

-Lan

It’s been a little bit since Lan and Vu spoke at the PhotoCine Expo 2010. There was a great turnout and over the past several weeks there have been several requests for the presentation. We would like to take this chance to share it with you.

If you click here you can download the presentation and view it at your leisure.

If you were following us twitter then I’m sure you heard about last nights big DSLR Teradek meet-up at the Volcom skate park in Costa Mesa. Thanks to everyone who made it out! The turnout was amazing and we had such a great time checking out some great new gear from Camtrol and Marshall Electronics and the new Cube from Teradek. It’s always exciting to meet new people (and see old friends!), get hands on with new equipment and take awesome photos and video!

The Cube is amazing. It is going to completely change the way photographers and videographers organize and collaborate during their shoots. The Cube is tiny and, contrary to it’s name, is actually a rectangular box which easily mounts to your camera, allows for H.264 HD streaming to a connected network of computers/laptops/ipads/iphones in real time! The Cube will change the way a production team communicates and stream line the workflow.

Rod Clark from Teradek was on his skate board using the Cube and the Camtrol. Zadi Diaz brought her 7D out to try on a Zacuto rig. There were so many of you out shooting video and stills, we can’t wait to see what you came up with. Teradek is doing a video mashup of the evening. If you would like your footage to be included please send it over to rod@teradek.com

We hope you like the teaser video above. Lan and Vu shot video with a Zacuto rig and the Nikon 7000 as well as the Canon 5D Mark II. Thanks to Sara Moosbrugger from Nikon for hooking us up! There will be a longer version ready to go soon so stay tuned!

I’m not going to say much about this video… just that Drew Gardner had Vu and I shoot a promo for his photo shoot in the UK. We had a great time and can’t wait to release the full video, which will be happening soon. Well… I’ll also say… I’ve had a chance to see rough edits of the photos and they are really EPIC!

-Lan

UPDATE: Althought the slow motion is not technically perfect, I really loved the way it turned out. It has dreamy motion effect that works perfect for the look we wanted. Sometimes something undesired and technically wrong works to your benefit! Seriously I love the dreamy cool look it made.

Also a quick bit from Drew’s post:

In fact if you want to know more about this shoot and the rest of ‘The Forest’ series why not join me (its FREE!) at my Manfrotto School of Xcellence Webinar Tutorial on December 6th.

A few months ago we did a photo shoot of the the lovely Maurissa Tancharoen.

Maurissa is a mega talented television writer, singer, actress and lyricist. You may know her from Emmy award winning Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog where she was a writer as well as the lyricist for many of the songs for the score. She is also a producer on Spartacus and writer for the new Dollhouse comic book among other amazing things!

We had a ton of fun doing Maurissa Tancharoen’s photos.

This is my favorite photo of Maurissa Tancharoen from the day… it is actually on my desktop as my desktop background right now!

We’re excited to be a part of the Teradek HD-SLR Meetup on Monday, November 8th at the Volcom Skatepark in Costa Mesa. Teradek is bringing in some awesome skaters so that instead of shooting each other (which is what we all usually do at a meetup) we’ll have something visually INTERESTING to shoot (no offense to you, I’m sure you’re very visually interesting). Hats off to Teradek for figuring THAT out!

Not only do we have great subjects to shoot but it’ll be dark… so we’ll get to make the most out of some high ISO shooting. It should be perfect.

WHAT

We’ll be shooting skaters (and some meetup BTS) and talking and answering questions all about DSLR video and gear. It’s going to just be interaction and Q&A… no official presentation here.

Refreshments will be provided and there will be a ton of gear to mess around with and out… we’ll have people and stuff from Teradek, JAG35, D|Focus, Camtrol, Marshall Electronics, and LitePanels.

Jared Abrams of cinema5d will also be with us!

WHEN and WHERE

Monday, November 8th, 7pm 10pm.
Volcom Skate Park (click here for map)
900 Arlington Dr
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

REGISTER

It’s free, so just click to sign up and then show up!

Bring your cameras and iPhones… let’s shoot some cool stuff!

Lan and Vu met cinematographer/director Rodney Charters about 1 year ago and have since become good friends. Rodney recently needed some new head shots and promo video for the launch of his new website. It took a mere 3 months before their schedules were able to coincide but finally this past June they were able to meet up and create some amazing portraits.

The video was all shot and edited on the iPhone 4, the photos were all shot on the Canon 5D mark II with Westcott TD5 lights.

Hello! My name is Erica Hampton. I just moved from Michigan to L.A and am excited to announce that I’ll be Lan and Vu’s new assistant! You might see me on photo shoots, writing blog posts and generally freeing up some time for Lan and Vu to create more awesomeness.

It’s great to be here and I’m sure I’ll see you around!

The other day Kaile came over with Ken to shoot a mashup video with Paul. I was working on some videos and needed a quick break… so I asked Paul what he had in mind for shooting it. As usual, he was just going to shoot it himself with his Canon Powershot SD940IS point and shoot camera… which actually looks great… it shoots HD video and you can lock exposure so you can get some great video out of it, but it is really not comparable to what you would get out of a Canon 5D mark II. So, I offered to shoot it… I mean they were going to be in our studio upstairs… I wanted to get off my butt… so it all worked out.

I set up 4 Westcott TD5 lights with daylight balanced fluorescent bulbs in strip banks as a thing I call a fashion square… you can see the setup in the photos below:

Now… I didn’t know we were going to actually shoot two videos. So I got everything set up for the single shot one video. Then after shooting it they were talking about a second video, well… why not right? So I ditched the white background things and left them just on the black backdrop. I also pushed in the lights a bit closer to fill in the fashion box lighting a bit more… We ended up shooting each person individually on black so we can do some fun things in editing.

The nice thing about shooting video on the 5D mark II is that at any given moment you can just snap a photo. That is exactly what I did, I don’t think Kaile even knew I took this photo. We were just getting ready for her shot and I thought she looked cool so I hit the shutter. So here is what you get with four Westcott TD5 lights and a Canon 5D mark II:

And finally, here is a quick little behind the scenes video from the shoot:

Follow me on Twitter:

DSLR EVF – Zacuto Z-Finder EVF

Just after Photo Cine Expo everyone is excited about all the new fun things that came out for the video DSLR cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Canon T2i and Canon 60D. The top people using these cameras have been asking for… the perfect… or the best EVF for Canon 5D mark II. Just now announced is the Zacuto Z-Finder EVF…

It is the perfect way to make your DSLR more ergonomic.

This is very exciting!

EFV

What is an EVF? EVF is short for electronic viewfinder. It is the perfect solution for near camera or on camera monitoring for the Canon 7D and Canon 5D mark II.

Zacuto Z-Finder Electronic Viewfinder

Take a look at the video below, it will give you a great overview of the benefits of a EVF on your DSLR for shooting video:

Some of the things I’m very excited about using an EVF on my 5Dmk2 is that all of the cool places I used to put my camera and not be able to see what I was shooting can now be seen. That is the thing I loved about using the Marshall monitors was being able to get the camera anywhere… in a crack or hole… and still be able to see what I was shooting. The camera is great for unique and odd angles and places to shoot from, it just sucks to have no way of seeing what you were shooting.

Now that the Z-Finder EVF is coming I think it will be much better to use the 5D mk II as a cinema camera. Thanks Zacuto for making this!!!

Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI first impressions

Today I received a Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI HD monitor to use with our Canon 5D mark II as a demo unit to test out on a music video shoot tomorrow. The HD monitor looks great so far… I have not yet read the manual but the Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI seems to be pretty easy to use even though it has a lot of robust features.

I’ll be writing a full writeup about our experience with it after we have a chance to use it on a shoot. For now, if you are looking to buy a Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI as an HD monitor for your 5d Mark II, you can from the link below (we get a small percentage of the sale).

Fill out the form below to get email updates about Pryce series… will be sending out an email very soon with a link to the exclusive clip we showed at Celebrate the Web during Comic Con in San Diego.

Zacuto

Zacuto, makers of FilmFellas, is one of the best companies I’ve ever interacted with. The employees are happy, everyone is friendly and I even found out some inside information… employee benefits are amazing at Zacuto. So… naturally only the best of people work there and they really do give the best service.

Vu and I travel a lot for business. We’re fortunate enough to have companies fly us around the world to teach and work (and sometimes play)… this trip to Chicago really stood out as amazing. Every little detail was planned out by the great Zacuto staff, from having a fantastic driver pick us up from the airport to having us pre checked in to the hotel… everything was smooth and I felt completely taken care of. That really made an impact… Zacuto genuinely cares about people.

FilmFellas Cast 8

The cast of FilmFellas season 8: ACS Cinematographers:

Rodney Charters ASC, CSC, (Television Series: 24)
Nancy Schreiber ASC (The Nines)
Stephen Goldblatt ASC, BSC, (Julie & Julia, Lethal Weapon)
Jens Bogehegn (DP/Producer of FilmFellas/critics)

FilmFellas is directed by Steve Weiss.

Polaroid during show setup

Vu and I had never had the chance to meet Nancy Schreiber or Stephen Goldblatt before arriving in Chicago for FilmFellas season 8. Since my flight was delayed Nancy and I were picked up by the same driver and we talked the entire way to the hotel. It was really cool to get to know such a fantastic person like Nancy. She is really smart.

Nancy Schreiber, ASC

After the boat ride, which I’ll talk about in a bit, Stephen, Rodney, Nancy, Vu and I went to a bar and talked for a couple hours. It was such a great chance to get to know Steven and was very inspiring. Stephen has worked on so many great films (and is an accomplished photographer)… hearing him tell stories about his career was awesome. He also shared some never before seen photos he took way back in the day of some of the most iconic musicians… I was again inspired.

Stephen Goldblatt, ASC

Rodney has become a friend over the last year and I love to hang out with him. I’ve learned so much from Rodney… it seems like if you spend 5 minutes with him you learn something new.

Rodney Charters, ASC

Jens and Steve are the kind of guys I want to be like when our company gets bigger. Awesome people that really care about what they do and care even more about the people around them.

Jens Bogehegn

Steve Weiss

Z-Boat

Holga shot from the boat

One of the special parts of attending FilmFellas 8 filming was getting to go to the party the day before. Yes, it was on a boat!!! We took a river and lake cruise and got to see one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how Zacuto planned it… but they ordered up the perfect sunset.

While on the boat I figured I’d make a time lapse of the cruise. So here it is, FilmFellas Cast 8 Chicago Lake Michigan Time-Lapse Video.

That cruise was so cool, we got to go in the rivers under the bridges… which are very low… and have a great meal. It was so cool to see the city that way, especially since it was my first time there.

The Bui Brothers and Rodney

The Shoot

On day 2 we met at Zacuto headquarters early-ish in the morning… where the Zacuto crew had seemingly been working for a while already… as they were completely set up and ready to go. Shooting FilmFellas is no small ordeal… they completely rearrange a giant room in their building to accommodate the shoot. There were black drapes covering all the walls, 6 cameras (all HVX-200′s) set up on tripods, a dolly and a jib… and in the center of it all, a small table with a single light above it.

the setup

the setup

This hanging light is the only light source during the shoot, and with the white tablecloth and tablewear as bounce provides the perfect light setup for the shoot. They have 4 cameras on sticks, each set up to shoot one person from the front, then one camera on a track that constantly circles the table and one on a jib for some awesome movement in the shots. It’s no small production… when Zacuto wants to shoot something, they get serious about it. Filmfellas is one of the best looking shows (with some of the most insightful content as well) on the web.

Everyone was busy and setting up until the last minute when the food was served and the taping began. The entire shoot lasted around 90 minutes or so (I don’t really remember exactly). We just sat there in silence and soaked up the conversation happening at the table. It was a fantastic experience.

the food before it was devoured

Zacuto is awesome

Our experience in Chicago with Zacuto and the 3 ASC cinematographers was short but so very memorable. We’ll be forever grateful for the experience!

To see the rest of the photos we shot from the trip (half shot digital, half on film), see the flickr gallery HERE.

To see the episodes of FilmFellas season 8 click HERE.

Thanks for reading, click here to follow me on twitter:

When Vu and I attended the filming of FilmFellas 8 we were brought on a really cool boat tour of Downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan. Zacuto took us on the Free Spirit Yacht and Captain Joe did some cool maneuvers to make the time-lapse have some really nice shots in it.

It is a bit long, but I figured I’d just leave the river boat tour time lapse of downtown Chicago as it is…

I have not done many time lapse videos but right after we left and I knew we were going to go on the lake and under the bridges I knew I had to make a timelapse video. It was pretty funny, when I finished making the time lapse I didn’t really want to edit it so I just looked in Soundtrack Pro and there ended up being a song exactly the length of the video.

The video was edited in Final Cut Pro and each photo is one frame of video at 30p.

I really want to go back to downtown Chicago some day.

Thank you so much Zacuto for bringing us out on such an amazing boat tour!!! You guys rock.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting a same day edit wedding fusion video for Southern California wedding photographers gabriel.ryan.photographers. Gabriel and his wife and partner Carlie Renee were the photographers for the wedding and they brought me on with the sole purpose of shooting and editing a wedding video the same day.

The wedding floral and design was by Carissa Jones and the wedding coordination and planning was by Jesi Haack. It was great to work with such a magical team.

A few days earlier I was talking to Aaron Dieppa about photographers offering video products to their clients and I ended up wondering if I could show up to a wedding by myself and make a wedding fusion video same day edit. The goal would be to offer photographers a cost effective way to add video to the day without adding much expense or effort.

So… after talking to Aaron I tweeted to see if anyone had a wedding coming up… I got a number of responses and the most promising one was with Gabriel Ryan. So began the planning…

How could I possibly shoot high quality video from multiple angles, capture sound, bring tripods and stedicams and other video stabilization gear, shoot video of everything… then capture it all and edit something together with photos from the photographer? I was thinking about it all wrong. A same day edit wedding fusion video would have to be less complicated.

My first goal to make this fusion wedding video a success was to gear down to the bare minimum. That would be the only way a crew of one could pull this off. So I set out to have only one camera bag and just bring pretty much what I could fit in it. The following is what I ended up with in my wedding fusion video camera kit:

- Canon 5D Mark II
- Canon 28mm 1.8 lens
- Canon 50mm 1.4 lens
- Canon 100mm 2.8 L IS lens
- Steadicam Merlin
- Zacuto Cross Fire
- Zacuto Z-Finder
- Tripod with Manfrotto 301 fluid head
- MacBook Pro

I’m sure you noticed but the tripod and the Zacuto rig didn’t really fit in the camera bag… but that was fine. They stand on their own.

My second goal was to shoot for the edit. So while I shot I would delete clips that were bad, I would only shoot things I knew I would use and I didn’t waste any recording time. I did end up with over an hour of recorded video but in the final wedding fusion video I think I did a good job of shooting for the edit.

My last goal was to make sure I had enough time to make the edit. My plan was to stop shooting and get started editing during the portraits session and that ended up working perfectly. If you are really interested in the editing workflow please let me know in the comments below and I’ll make a post about it if you all really want to know how the editing went.

Over all I am very happy with what we ended up with and I think I will do this again. If you are interested in hiring me to come and shoot a same day edit wedding fusion video please contact me with our contact form.

We’ve teamed up with photographer Leeann Marie to help bring a full-day Bui Brothers “affordable lighting” workshop to the Pittsburgh, PA area on July 13th, 2010. Leeann will be handling all the logistics and venue planning, and we’ll be flying in to teach the workshop itself.

Workshop Description

Our “affordable lighting” workshop will teach you how to use natural light and inexpensive flashes off-camera with your DSLR to shoot headshots, portraits and fashion photographs. One of the lighting kits we will be teaching with costs less than $300 for everything (two flashes, wireless triggers, light stands and light modifiers). We’ll be showing you the actual reasons behind each lighting setup with the intention to teach you to be able to create your own… not just replicate the exact things we show you at the workshop. Finally we’ll take the images we’ve all shot from the day and do a complete workflow and simple Lightroom/Photoshop editing lesson.

Buy now, seats are only $249. We are selling only 25 seats, and they may sell out, so book now to reserve yours. (note: after 7/01 there will be no refunds on booking deposits)

Course Breakdown

The workshop will cover these general topics and more:
In-class education:
- natural light and off-camera lighting examples and placement
- selecting gear
- gear explanation
- camera settings explanation
- image selection workflow
- editing in Lightroom
- Photoshop editing techniques
Outdoor shoot:
- the perfect headshot
- shooting headshots/portraits with natural light
- small flash off-camera dramatic lighting
- small flash off-camera fill lighting
- using studio lights outdoors
- overpowering the sun

You’ll need to bring your camera and lenses and you’ll want to bring a laptop if you have one… or at least something to take notes on if you don’t. We’ll be breaking off into two groups for most of the outdoor session and will be shooting live models.

UPDATE:

We now have our location!
The Rex
1602 East Carson Street

Basic Schedule (times are subject to change slightly but the general structure will remain the same)

noon-2pm: in-class education (lighting theory, gear, camera settings)
2pm-3pm: lunch break with Q&A
3pm-6pm: outdoor shoot
6pm-8:30pm: in-class education (workflow, Lightroom, Photoshop)

BOOK NOW:

Buy now, seats are only $249. (note: after 7/01 there will be no refunds on booking deposits)

While in London for Converge Two, Vu and I were playing with Drew Gardner‘s Kessler Pocket Dolly… this is my first time using it.

Up close with the RED EPIC camera

Vu and I were at Cine Gear 2010 at The Studios at Paramount and were browsing the expo when we spotted a red epic camera. We could not hold back and had to ask to play with it. If we had more time with the red epic we would have loved to make a longer video showing you the production feature set… It would have also been nice to get some more detailed video footage of the red epic or better yet some real test video from the red epic. Now that would have been great to get awesome test footage from the red epic, even if it was a pre production red epic…

Ok, so some new goals will be to get some real test footage from a an epic camera and then make a red epic demo video.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this quick clip of the RED EPIC.

Come see Vu and I in UK May 4 and 5 for Converge Two.

We will be giving a one hour talk about video marketing and give real life examples of our video marketing success. If you are interested in all of the gear we use on our shoots you wont want to miss our HDSLR gear workshop. We will be showing off some great new gear and taking about what gear to use on various types of HDSLR shoots.

Here is the schedule:

We are very excited to be speaking along side of the following super fantastic people:

Rodney Charters (director of photography for the show 24, cinematographer, director)
Phillip Bloom (DP, director, filmmaker)
Drew Gardner (photographer, advanced lighting expert)
Richard Jobson (writer, director, convergence innovator)
One Dead Pixel (digital media production house)
Pinknoise (location audio specialist)

Buy your tickets here.

UPDATE:
“Den Lennie from F-Stop Academy found Rodney Charters at NAB and spoke to him about Converge Two”
(via Converge Two Blog)

“Whilst at NAB, Den Lennie from F-Stop Academy met up with The Bui Brothers and asked them about Converge…”
(via Converge Two Blog)

At SXSW Interactive Vu and I gave a presentation about what DSLR gear we use and recommend using.

We were very happy when Kent Nichols asked us to participate in the DSLR 3 part workshop SXSWi 2010. We were up there with Philip Bloom, Barry Green and Kent. Philip gave a presentation about how to unlocking new visual possibilities. Barry gave a presentation on understanding strengths and weaknesses. We gave ours about gearing up for success. Kent moderated us.

Here is our presentation, I modified it to include links to the videos:

SXSW 2010 DSLR Gear Presentation PDF

There has been so much talk about the Streamy Awards 2010 this year. Our experience of the awards show was magically unique because we were hidden away with one goal… to document the event with photographs.

This is our version of motion portraits for the award winners and presenters.

We knew nothing outside of our photo area, so please enjoy the video above and see how we experienced the Streamy Awards 2010.

If you liked the look of the video take a look at the photos we took in that setup here.

Actually, without our production team we could not have done this either:
Josh Allard
Megan Chrisofferson
Mark Bealo
Scott Kearse

We’ve teamed up with photographer Lydia Shannon to help bring a full-day Bui Brothers “affordable lighting” workshop to the Ft. Lauderdale / Miami, Florida area on May 11th, 2010. Lydia will be handling all the logistics and venue planning, and we’ll be flying in to teach the workshop itself.

Workshop Description

Our “affordable lighting” workshop will teach you how to use natural light and inexpensive flashes off-camera with your DSLR to shoot headshots, portraits and fashion photographs. One of the lighting kits we will be teaching with costs less than $300 for everything (two flashes, wireless triggers, light stands and light modifiers). We’ll be showing you the actual reasons behind each lighting setup with the intention to teach you to be able to create your own… not just replicate the exact things we show you at the workshop. Finally we’ll take the images from the day and do a complete workflow and simple Lightroom/Photoshop editing lesson.

We’ve made the price an affordable $129. We are selling 30 seats, and they may sell out, so book now to reserve yours. (note: after 4/27 there will be no refunds on booking deposits)

Course Breakdown

The workshop will cover these general topics and more:
In-class education:
- natural light and off-camera lighting examples and placement
- selecting gear
- gear explanation
- camera settings explanation
- image selection workflow
- editing in Lightroom
- Photoshop editing techniques
Outdoor shoot:
- the perfect headshot
- shooting headshots/portraits with natural light
- small flash off-camera dramatic lighting
- small flash off-camera fill lighting

You’ll need to bring your camera and lenses and you’ll want to bring a laptop if you have one… or at least something to take notes on if you don’t. We’ll be breaking off into two groups for most of the outdoor session and will be shooting live models. Makeup will be provided by Giselle Sanchez.

Basic Schedule (times are subject to change slightly but the general structure will remain the same)

noon-2pm: in-class education (lighting theory, gear, camera settings)
2pm-3pm: lunch break with Q&A
3pm-6pm: outdoor shoot
6pm-7:30pm: in-class education (workflow, Lightroom, Photoshop)
7:30pm-8:30pm: image competition and critique (optional) and giveaways

Giveaways

We’ll be giving away amazing items from Shootsac, borrowlenses.com, Blinkbid and more.

BOOK NOW:

Click to book your reservation $129 – (note: after 4/27 there will be no refunds on booking deposits)

Gustavo Fernandez was gracious enough to pretty much do all the work in setting up a lighting workshop for us to teach in Concord, CA the day after our talk at the SF East Bay SMUG (also hosted by Gustavo). All the gear we needed for the shoot was sponsored by borrowlenses.com:

We were a little worried that the location for our workshop was going to be at someone’s house… we’ve done lighting workshops at hotels, parks, cafes and studios… but not private residences. THEN we saw the house and met the hosts. The house is an Eichler (don’t worry, I didn’t know who it was either… shhhh just pretend) and is very open, airy and bright! The backyard was large, had a really cool industrial strength (which means I could play on it) swingset and offered the perfect setting for a couple of the things we planned… and the living room was giant and comfortably seated all the workshop attendees and the projector and screen.

photo by Carrie Stuk:

The owners, Sara and Chris Goetz… um… what can I say about them to actually do them justice? They were the most amazing hosts I could ever hope or dream for and are truly wonderful people. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t at all. Not only did they open their home to us and our workshop attendees, but they made muffins, offered coffee and beverages… it was AMAZING and I am eternally grateful to them. (notice that the muffins made it FIRST on the list of awesomeness? Future workshop hosts take note ;)

photo by Carrie Stuk:

The workshop itself was split into three parts. 2 hours of indoor lighting theory, lighting setups and explanation and general questions; 3 hours of outdoor shooting in natural light and with the off camera flashes and also Profoto heads; then 2 hours of workflow, Lightroom and Photoshop training with the images we shot from the day. Everyone edited at least one of their images from the day and we did an image competition to finish up and the prize was a brand new Shootsac and cover.

Almost all of our gear was sponsored and provided at no cost for this workshop by borrowlenses.com. It was VERY cool that we didn’t have to fly with anything, we just showed up and the gear was there. We got a 5D mark II, 3 580EXII flashes, 4 pocket wizards, a 3-head Profoto kit and a bunch of stands. Basically everything we needed for the lighting workshop. It was really nice to fly carry-on only with our clothes in our carry-on bags and no gear to lug!!! It was our first experience with them… but I can see that at future workshops we’ll likely use the same service, because traveling with gear is costly, dangerous… and honestly a pain. We did bring one 5D mark II with us (ALWAYS have a backup) but if you have the gear arrive the day before you do at your hotel you’ll be able to keep everything tracked and know exactly where it is.

photo by Sara Goetz:

We were also lucky to have some awesome models. Goldie Chan, Sam Harnack, Madison, Crystal Peterson and Marissa Louie.

All in all it was a great day for a workshop and we had a really fantastic group of people. After seeing all the work done by everyone that same day (after the workflow and editing portion of the workshop) it was awesome to see that not only did the attendees come away with great images from our instruction and setups, but also from breaking away from the group and trying things out on their own. Here are a few of the images from the day:

Thanks to our photographers for the great images, here are all the ones they sent in from the workshop (including some behind-the-scenes stuff) in one nifty slideshow.

Images by:

Stephen Wong
Sara Goetz
Rosaura Sandoval
Ron Rutkowski
Pepe Abarca
Kathi Cook Photography
Joseph Pascua
Jessie Cho
Exquisit Photography
Carrie Stuk

We had a great time, and can’t wait to do our next one! Look for more lighting workshops coming throughout the year.

photo by Lydia Shannon

Wow, what a week in Vegas we had.

I’m sure that same thought has passed the minds and fingers of many of the 12,000 or so attendants of WPPI 2010. It truly was an amazing week, and it flew by.

We started this year with big plans for our actual time at WPPI. Last year we teamed up with Dane Sanders to bring the first WiFi Blogging Lounge to a photo industry event… and this year we all wanted to one-up it. Pictage had stepped up as sponsor for the booth… it was renamed the New Media Lounge… Dane was providing live streaming interviews and vignettes… so we decided to try something new and provide a live photo stream and a general presence to help people with their new media questions on a one-on-one basis.

We were also asked by our friends at SmugMug to speak at their booth about video marketing, we were hired by KISS to shoot a fun party video, we planned our own lighting workshop for 20 people the day before the tradeshow started (will be shown in another post), we planned on attending numerous parties… and of course hoped to do the usual and make new friends and strengthen old relationships.

You know, just a couple of small plans.

New Media Lounge

Instead of just having a lounge like we did last year, we wanted to actually offer something fun and different. We settled on a live photo stream that would literally update itself as we took photos no matter where we were, as we took them. We knew the technology existed, we just had to figure out what would work for us.

Pictage

Pictage really did an awesome job of making the New Media Lounge what it was this year. They were also completely supportive and helpful in getting us exactly what we needed for our contributions to the booth (two large LCDs for one thing) so that we could make this happen.

They also had their Pictagerazzi (absolutely brilliant idea) who were taking pictures all around WPPI, and a few of them were contributing content to the booth’s live photo stream as well. It was great! If you were at WPPI there’s a REALLY good chance your photo was taken by one of them… you can find them here. They are also doing a special where you can get 5 prints free, so check it out!

We truly couldn’t have asked for a better partner for the lounge, and are very hopeful that we will team up again and be able to take it to the next level and make something even more amazing next year.

Whrrl

We got in contact with the amazing folks at Pelago, the company who created Whrrl (a location based photo/text/check-in sharing service). We liked their service, their iPhone app and their web interface. As we spoke with them and worked out our plan with them… we came to like their people too. They basically set up a custom page for us that would look great on one of the big screens at the booth and would automatically update itself every time a new photo was taken on the stream. Before we found Whrrl we had looked EVERYWHERE for a solution that would do what we wanted… and found nothing. Coming across Whrrl was truly the most lucky thing that could have happened to us.

The Whrrl service itself is based on location check-ins… and everything you do revolves around them. You check into a location (it uses your phone’s location service to give you a list of places in your immediate vicinity but also has a search function in case you don’t see it listed) and once you’re checked in you can do a variety of things. We were using it mainly to add photos. The unique and wonderful thing about Whrrl is that you can add many photos to one check-in and they become a visual story that is contained nicely in one post. So no matter how many photos (or text posts) you upload… they are all in one spot and saved in chronological order… which allows you to view them as a slide show, and makes them REALLY easy to share.

Not only is the iPhone app amazing (and in our opinion better than Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite combined) but their web interfaced is designed in a similar fashion and works seamlessly with the app. You can caption your photos, tweet them, facebook them or share the event front page. You can also pretty much comment on anything in the Whrrl universe.

There is also a sort of game behind all the check-ins and you actually earn points not just for checking into places but also for making recommendations (favorite food or secret menu items at a restaurant or bar, etc) or for completing other peoples’ recommendations. There are also special offers that certain vendors (restaurants, shops, etc) can offer directly through the app. This will grow as the company and service grows, but it was nice to see some great discounts when we were at SXSW in Austin the week after WPPI.

We actually have more to say about Whrrl and the service and will write a longer review in a separate post coming soon! For now, go to Whrrl.com, install the app, and check out our WPPI photo stream!

Eye-Fi

Whrrl also put us in contact with Eye-Fi, the only company that makes memory cards with built-in wireless capabilities. It’s amazing. I really mean it. Like… I have no idea how they fit it all in such a tiny package. It seems impossible. It’s an SD card with built-in Wi-Fi that wirelessly uploads your photos.

We pitched Eye-Fi our project and they were able to send us 6 2GB Geo cards to be used by us and some of the Pictagerazzi who would be live photo-streaming the event.

Eye-Fi cards are equipped to upload wirelessly to any network you set them up for… and are already made to link directly with many services including Whrrl, SmugMug, Flickr and a host of other services. What’s great is that you can also have them send a backup copy of each image directly to your computer where it can be set to either drop into a folder or go straight into iPhoto. The images sit on Eye-Fi servers until your computer is on… then they download automatically… no action required on your part. Perfect!!!

We also used Sprint MyFi cards (3G mobile wireless routers) that we had connected our Eye-Fi (yes, we mixed them up all the time) cards to so we literally could upload live from wherever we were!

Olympus

We also pitched the project to Olympus when we visited their booth at PMA and they provided us with two fantastic little micro 4/3rds cameras, the Olympus PEN E-P2. Wow. I am absolutely infatuated with this camera… and will write more about it in a full review in a separate post. Not only did it draw questions everywhere we went (mostly because of the awesome retro design) but the image quality and video quality were fantastic (you can see some of the video quality in the KISS video below).

The Results

The plan worked pretty seamlessly. Over 3,000 people viewed the Whrrl photo stream, mostly people from home who couldn’t make it to the WPPI and wanted to live vicariously through our cameras. Some were people who installed the Whrrl app at WPPI and just wanted to see what was going on. The photos also updated live on screen at the booth, right beside another monitor which provided a really cool view of all the tweets with the hashtag WPPI… and there were tons of them.

SmugMug Booth Talks

Videoblogs can be a powerful tool in not only educating your clients but in allowing them to feel they already know you before your first meeting. They’re also a great look behind the scenes of what you’re doing for other photographers who might be fans of your work and style.

SmugMug put together quite a good variety of talks and we were happy to be a part of it! They also printed an AMAZING metal print of one of our more popular photographs… a shot of Brigitte Dale.

The Parties

One of the big attractions of any major expo/tradeshow is the fact that everyone throws a party. Some of the skill that one develops over the years has a lot to do with which parties you want to attend. We had our eyes on a few but pretty much like to go with the flow… the only one we knew for a fact we’d attend was the KISS/Pictage Studio 54 party because we would actually be working part of the event.

Sunday: Pictage Party / GO|BEE Party at the Luxor

After our lighting workshop on Sunday we decided to head over to the Pictage WPPI Private Party at the Luxor which then turned into the WPPI GO|BEE party. Last year this one was off the chain, so to speak, and was at one point at shoulder-to-shoulder capacity. We decided to attend this one a little earlier this year and came as things were just getting fun. As always the photo booth was a blast… and we got to hook up with Mike Larson again after hanging out a bit earlier in the day at our workshop.

We of course attended with our friends Joe Philipson, Lydia Shannon, Jessica Ashley and Erin Campbell.

Afterwards we took off for some delicious McDonald’s where Joe showed off his amazing burger eating skills (literally an entire burger in ONE BITE that you can see over on this post on Lydia’s blog.

Monday: Mike Larson’s Character Talk

I’ve met Mike Larson on numerous occasions, but we really got to know him this year at WPPI. I hope to some day write a post JUST about the importance of using WPPI not ONLY to run around meeting lots of people and making new connections… but also to spend the time to strengthen relationships with old connections.

Mike stopped by our workshop on Sunday for a bit to check it out (with Eric Farewell who we’ll talk all about in our post about our workshop), then talked with us for a while at the GO|BEE party, then came by the New Media Lounge and spent a good deal of time chatting with us there on Monday morning. Although we’d never invested time in getting to know each other… I was SO extremely pleased to get to know him now. I came to find that he is a kind, genuine, giving person who’s also just a cool, fun guy to hang around. So when he invited us to stop by his talk on character Monday night… we just had to… and although we meant to just stop in for a little while, his words and message were so compelling we had to stay for the full session.

It was awesome. We sadly missed the beginning but what we heard was wonderful and the reaction from his audience was amazing. I look forward to a lot more time spent with Mike in the future and was grateful to have the time with him we did at WPPI this year. The man’s got character (get it?)!

Tuesday part 1: Pictage Studio 54 Party with KISS and ShootQ

Studio 54 is a pretty darn cool place… and Studio 54 during WPPI is a pretty crazy place… and KISS and Pictage made it a heck of a lot cooler AND crazier for a few hours on Tuesday night. This was the party we had been looking forward to… and it was also the party that KISS had brought us in to shoot. They basically just wanted a simple but fun party video that would showcase their awesome fashion show which displayed their colors on some beautiful models in a runway setting. You know… every day normal stuff.

The party was fun, the alcohol flowed, the crowd was RIDICULOUS, and the show was amazing. I guess better than mere words, the video will speak for itself. Needless to say, it was a great time for all who attended and we were happy just to have been there.

Tuesday part 2: SmugMug Sleepover Snuggie Party

After a little bit of shaking it on the dance floor at Studio 54 we headed upstairs to the SmugMug sleepover party… where there was definitely no sleeping going on… but there were a heck of a lot of Snuggies.

I will admit, I’m not a fan of the Snuggie. The function makes total sense… but the look of it… I just can’t get over it. I will ALSO admit though that on the cold outside balcony… I had a little bit of Snuggie envy. Oh yes I did.

photo by PhotoCabina and SmugMug

Word has it the party was shut down soon after we left… which was sad but also understandable… no one should be allowed to have THAT much fun for too long.

At the SmugMug party was Scott Jarvie, who was doing some amazing things with his Jarvie Cam.

Friends

LAST, but most definitely not least… we have a lot of friends we rarely get to see… and WPPI is one of the places where they all end up at once. I won’t even try to list all the amazing people we got to hang out with from our past… or great new people we met… but here are a few photos of just some of the people that we saw AND were fortunate enough to actually break out a camera with. If only everyone would share their photos on places where you can tag your friends (hint: Facebook, Flickr) we’d have so many more! ;)

Special friendly thanks definitely go out to Lydia Shannon, Jessica Ashley, Erin Campbell and Megan Beth. They spent a ton of time with us and made sure we were ALWAYS having fun. We had an amazing time and would change none of it… except maybe when Erin wandered off to the oxygen bar and we had to go searching for her.

Ads

A few days ago Canon released the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro (download it here). It is very exciting for all of us using the Canon DSLRs and Final Cut Pro. We (Vu and I) mostly use the Canon 5D mark II and Canon 7D for our videos… both cameras are supported natively in the new E1 plugin. Unfortunatley the new Canon T2i is not supported in the E1 plugin yet.

This is very upsetting because the video quality from this T2i is actually very good!!! I had a chance to play with Rodney Charters’ T2i a few weeks ago and talk to him about it… basically the T2i is a 7D in a plastic body.

So, for all of you that want to use the T2i in Final Cut Pro and want to use the E1 plugin for FCP… watch the video above to see how to get it to work. I basically follow this method (by Nathan Beaman) on finalcutuser.com) I found on a post on Planet5D.

That method will work for future videos because you need the entire file structure of the card… so what about past videos you have made???

Well… for past videos you shot on the T2i or 550D you can see in the video how to just add some files to your directory with your original .MOV files and get the E1 plugin to work with your 550D or T2i in FCP. The files are all .THM files and all you really need to do is add them to your directory of original T2i .MOV files. If for some reason you have renamed the original .MOV files just rename the .THM files to the same name of the .MOV files from the T2i.

Download the T2i 550D E1 compatibility files here

Rodney was kind enough to send me some T2i files for testing (Thanks so much!!!)

Ads

UPDATE!!! – Not working???

I’ve received a few comments and a few emails saying that you all are doing exactly what I did and it is not working… Well.. after quite a bit of troubleshooting Joe Fitzgerald ended up trying a bunch of different things and we came to the following:

Use a a real text only editor to edit the .plsit file. Don’t use the default mac TextEdit. I used TextWrangler because it is free and works great.

UPDATE!!! – can’t fine camera.plist

Thanks Benjaminbee for this comment!!!

Hello, Make sure you click on the finder, then MACINTOSH HD > LIBRARY > APPLICATION SUPPORT> PROAPPS> RAD MIO > PLUGINS> CANONE1.RADPLUG> CONTENTS > RESOURCES>

MOST IMPORTENT THING! >>>>>MACINTOSH HD > LIBRARY<<<<<< if you go to the LIBRARY folder from any other way you will not find the Proapps! No idea why......

UPDATE!!! – don’t use the T2i USB

Thanks to HTProductions (and a few others) for this one:

I tried uploading footage multiple times with no luck because i was trying to use my camera and a USB cable. (That’s how it works for my HVX200 HD camera, so i figured the same would work with my T2i.) I was wrong. You NEED to use a card reader!

The day is almost upon us… when we toss aside thoughts of sleep, rest or relaxation and drown ourselves in a sea of fellow photographers who want to soak in everything they can from the multitudes that surround them.

People attend WPPI for such a variety of reasons. From the practical: “I come to see the exhibits and learn at the classes” to the hippie: “I want to make friends and love each other” to the brutally honest: “I wanna get wasted on free booze!”

This year we’re doing a few new things and a few old things… and we thought we’d take this opportunity to let everyone know some of the cool projects we’ll be up to.

New Media Lounge

Last year we teamed up with WPPI and Dane Sanders to bring the photography industry’s first WPPI Blogger’s Lounge. It was a comfortable space for you to come and sit in plush LoveSacs and use free WiFi… which having access to people who could help you with your questions about blogging, Twitter and other social media platforms. It was quite a success and stayed pretty much packed the entire duration of the tradeshow.

This year we’re taking it one step further. Pictage took the helm this year by sponsoring the booth and brought both The Bui Brothers and Dane Sanders back in for what is now called the New Media Lounge. We’ll still have super comfy furniture supplied by LoveSac and free WiFi… but this year we’re also focusing on bringing WPPI to those who can’t actually attend. Dane will be doing live streaming videos from the booth… while Lan and I will be shooting a live photo stream at all times from the tradeshow floor, the various booths, and even the parties at night. Thanks to Whrrl, EyeFi and Olympus, we’ll be shooting photos that will be uploaded wirelessly within seconds no matter where we are in the city to the special page we’ll have set up specifically for this stream. If you see us any time, Sunday night through Thursday, strike a pose noteworthy enough to make it to the live stream! More details are to follow about this awesome project.

One on One With a Bui

A few people have asked and we know others are doing this so we’re going to have a signup sheet at the booth where you can reserve a time to speak one on one with us about anything you want. Each session is 20 minutes long, and we’ll be available for 1 hour a day. Visit the booth for more details on this.

Smug Mug Booth

We’ll also be speaking at the SmugMug booth at 11:30am on Tuesday the 9th for 20 minutes, then again at 2:00pm on Wednesday. We’ll be taking questions and talking about how merging video with photos doing behind-the-scenes videos has worked for us. There are going to be great speakers there all day long so make sure you check it out!

P-P-P-Parties!

Yes, we’ll be attending parties. As many as possible. It’s part of our live photo streaming project to attend as many things as we can, but I can’t deny that attending these functions is just plain fun. Visiting with industry friends you only see a couple times a year is a blast… and standing shoulder to shoulder in a hotel room while laughing your ass of at the crazy things the more rowdy attendees are up to is always enjoyable.

We’re particularly excited about the Pictage/KISS party at Studio 54 where we’ll be shooting THE party video of WPPI, but there are lots more to attend every single night of the show!

Stalk Us With Ease

You can find out what we’re doing at any time by following our twitter feeds, @lanbui and @vubui. We’ll be geotagging our tweets wherever we are!

What will YOU be up to at WPPI? Comment below and let us know.

- Vu

We’ve been contacted by a few people in the past few days asking if we’d be doing a lighting workshop at WPPI. Our answer for the first two people was a quick no, but after the third we started to reconsider.

We are giving a 4-hour outdoor on-location lighting workshop for Sunday afternoon (the 7th) from 1:30pm to 5:30pm. We’ll have 2 models and you’ll each get to photograph each lighting setup, so yes, bring your cameras.

We’ve made the price an absolute no-brainer $75 (so we don’t take away too much of your gambling funds). We’re only taking 20 people max, so seats may sell out. Book now to reserve yours.

UPDATE:

Sold Out

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The workshop will cover:
- the perfect headshot
- shooting headshots/portraits with natural light
- small flash off-camera dramatic lighting
- small flash off-camera fill lighting

We’ll obviously be in an urban setting and will do a number of fashion-style shots. We’ll also explain the reasoning behind each light placement choice and camera setting, so you’ll be able to not only replicate the scenes but use the knowledge to create your own.

Special workflow and editing add-on $45 :

(I’ve been meaning to write about photographers and SXSW for a while when suddenly yesterday I received a message from Jasmine Star asking the exact question I wanted to answer… Thanks Jasmine for motivating me to actually write this)

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First, for those that know what SXSW is and do not want to read this post… Yes, you should go. It will change your life.

Second, for those of you that don’t know what SXSW is… South By Shouthwest (or SXSX) is a music, film and interactive media festival held in Austin, Texas each year. That description does it no justice though so I’ll elaborate. SXSW attracts 29,000 registrants each year to teach, party and mix with each other. Of the three parts of SXSW I’ll mostly talk about SXSWi (or South By Southwest Interactive) because that is where it all happened for me. I have participated in some of the music festivities; I love to walk down Sixth Street and stop in and listed to a random band that makes me wonder why they are not signed to some major label (and making it in the top ten on iTunes). I’ve also been to a few films at SXSW; many are independent films that you may never hear of again but they are gems, and you can also see early releases of what will become major independent films months later.

So… SXSW Interactive…

SXSWi… Is where I first really started using Twitter… Three years ago… Yep, three years ago, way before Oprah and Miley Cyrus and likely even you had even heard of it. I feel lucky that when I started using Twitter, we didn’t even know what it was really going to become. It was just the best way for groups of friends to follow each other and keep in touch. That, again, was three years ago… I can’t wait to find out what is new this year at SXSWi that will change my life.

SXSWi… Is where you will really learn what New Media is. I’ve been able to sit down and have dinner with major players at Facebook, DIGG, Myspace and been able to sit and talk face to face with the people that are changing the world.

SXSWi… Is where I’ve sat in a session and learned mind-blowing things. The speakers don’t get chosen because of how cool they are or how popular they are… They are chosen because of how they have changed the world… or because they truly are the one person in the world that should be speaking on that subject.

SXSWi… Is where I’ve built business relationships that are lasting years. Photography industry trade shows are great for learning how a rockstar photographer built their business. They even will teach you the perfect lighting setup or the perfect workflow… but it won’t introduce you to your clients. It won’t let you sit down with, hang out, listen to live music, have a good time, get to know… and most importantly… bond with the people that just might pay your salary for the next few years.

That is where it is totally worth going. If not to find out what is cool, if not to learn about New Media, if not to hear someone speak about something mind blowing… Go to SXSW because the other attendees, speakers, trade show vendors and businesses need your services. You just need to be there to meet them.

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Oh, and one last thing… Vu and I are speaking this year… if you come you have to attend to our session, read the details here now.

-Lan

Vu and I were so happy to be hired to shoot The Guild Season Three DVD cover!!! We were fortunate enough to have done a photo shoot of Felicia Day before and when we got the call to shoot the DVD for The Guild Season 3 we got very excited. (Thank you so much Kim and Felicia!!!)

I wish the video clip above had more of the shoot in it, everyone from The Guild cast was so nice. We didn’t end up shooting much behind the scenes video because were were busy working… That reminds me… while taking photos at the Streamy Awards we were able to take a photo of the entire cast of The Guild.

The photos for The Guild Season Three DVD cover were all taken as individuals by Vu and I on green-screen and then the final design was done by New Video Group, Inc. (used with permission)

I’m very happy with the way everything turned out for the Season 3 DVD cover.

One other thing we shot, were some images for Greg Aronowitz to use to make scuptures… here is a sweet blog post detailing the Vork Unbreakable Bank sculpture featured in “The Guild Sells Out”.

If you are looking to buy The Guild Season Three on DVD, get it from Amazon here now. You can also get all three seasons of The Guild on DVD:

The Guild Season 1 DVD :

The Guild Season 2 DVD :

The Guild Season 3 DVD :

The amazon links on this page are affiliate links

It has been quite a while since we shot this promo video for Furious Photographers… I think the result is still pretty awesome.

Furious Photographers hired us to go with them to Cancun and Isla Mujeres to shoot two weddings back to back. Well… we were there to shoot a promo of them and not really the weddings. We did end up shooting a Cancun wedding video as well, but that was just for fun.

Many of you may be interested in how we shot the photography promo video, what equipment was used and how it was edited. Here are tome technical details about the promo video:

Cameras used: Canon 5D Mark II and Canon HV20
Camera Stabalizers: Stedicam Merlin and monopod
Software used: iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Motion, PFhoe, photoshop and compressor.
Music used with permission by: Paul Dateh and Ken Belcher

Some of my favorite shots are when we took two boats out to sea off the coast of Tulum. It was pretty amazing to be shooting out there on the water, the Canon 5D Mark II even got a little wet.

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This page is the home of the Canon 7D Film Challenge (or we can call it a deathmatch, some of you OG people remember…)

We will update you here as things advance and ideas grow… but for now here is the idea:

1. Shoot on a Canon 7D
2. Take only 7 hours to complete EVERYTHING
3. Final video is exactly 70 seconds
4. Challenge Date TBD

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Canon 7D Slow Motion

We took the 7D out and shot some fun footage at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval. The parts with audio were shot in 24p with the 7D and the slow motion parts were shot in 60p. We used cinema tools to conform the 60p videos to 24p, we could have slowed the 60p video down to 30p but wanted to shoot in 24p for coolness.

Looking to buy a Canon 7D? Click our affiliate link here to buy one!

The 7D slowmo shots came out really good. Since we were just out to have fun, all of the 7D footage was done handheld. It actually looks great handheld because once you slow the 60p videos down to 24p you don’t see how shaky the clips it.

So, if you have a Canon 7d, I would recommend you go out and shoot some stuff in 60p to make some good 7d slow motion movies.

I think this is a great 7D slow motion test video or Canon 7D slowmo example.

UPDATE:
Lot’s of you have 5D mark II’s and would like to shoot slow motion video with it… there isn’t a great way to do that right now. We hoped that they would have given us 60p for the new 5D mark II firmware and we would be able to use it for slow motion video but that did not happen. We did get standard frame rates though!

If you are looking to shoot slow motion with a 5D mark II then I would recommend either buying a 7D or T2i to do it or just renting a 7D. I know that is not the perfect solution… but it is the only way to get good looking slowm with a DSLR.

We have tested a few software solutions for making 5D2 footage slow… but none of them are worth recommending. You are better off buying a T2i and using that… and on that note:

Click here to buy a Canon T2i and start shooting 60p for slow motion video!!!

Ok, that’s all…

-Lan

We have been fortunate enough to have photographed some amazing talent (and great people) in the past year… and two of our clients and now-friends (Veronica Belmont and Brigitte Dale) have been featured on G4 Television’s Attack of the Show – Women of the Web, with our photographs being showcased on their television program.

This lead up to G4 approaching us about being the photographers for their Women of the Web contest, which is going on right now. Basically the contest is open to women (sorry, dudes) who submit up to a 1-minute video of themselves expressing why they should be chosen as the next “Woman of the Web”. 20 will be chosen by Attack of the Show and posted to their website, where viewers will vote for their favorite. The top 5 will be aired on the show… and the most highly rated girl wins a trip for 2 to Los Angeles and a photo shoot with The Bui Brothers which will be filmed and aired on television.

Neat, huh?

All the details can be found on the official contest page, where you can also upload your video submission. So check it out and enter! Deadline is November 2nd!

A few weeks ago Vu and I shot Paul Dateh and Ken Bencher‘s first music video. Here is a quick behind the scenes look into what we did while shooting the video for 99 dollar music videos.

Last weekend I was in Las Vegas working with Jack Hollingsworth shooting some promo videos for Fotolia at Photoshop World in Las Vegas. More on this great weekend to come in a later post…

Well, what I’m posting today is from Brad Nielson (a great guy that works with Jack)… he is basically a grand master digital tech guy. He just sent me an email with a photo which I think will be classified as The Bui Brothers first “Fan Art” piece:

Ok, I’ve been trying to get this blog post up all day… I wanted to do something clever… but the day is almost over and this just needs to get posted…

Philip Bloom is a fantastic Director of Photography, Director and Editor of moving pictures. We met Philip once while shooting a commercial in Joshua Tree which is in the middle of the desert in California. Not that we were working together… actually, he was shooting some footage with a prerelease Panasonic GH1 and Vu and I were shooting a commercial for Hog for Kids. We just so happen to choose the same spot for shooting.

We chatted for less than 10 minutes, and I ended up saying… “You are the guy with a popular blog right?”… little did I really know who I was speaking to!!! After getting home and looking him up I then realized we should have brought him out for dinner to talk about the future of film! It’s all good, we ended up keeping in touch via Twitter here and there.

That is until now, when I find this video…

In Philip’s words… “Just a word of warning. There is the odd F word in there, so don’t watch if easily offended! Sorry about the odd typo in there…”

If you watched the entire thing, and read the entire thing, you will have noticed why I think this is so funny and why I posted it here.

Rock on Philip!

About a year ago we worked with a company to launch a membership website… and the first week of the launch brought in a total of $147,000.

It was not due to luck, lies or magic.

We’re trying to get our SXSW panel voted in… where we go over exactly what steps it took to create the following, buzz and ultimately the frenzy that it took to generate such a successful launch.

This has nothing to do with the product at all, but the plan that went in place to launch it. When we set the plan in motion we knew it would have an effect on the number of people who would be excited to “buy now” during the launch, but we actually were unprepared for how well it worked.

It was so successful that there were actually people who hacked into (it was hidden behind a password) the purchase page the night before the sale so they could pay their money and make sure they didn’t miss out on the launch sale.

Please click the link below to vote for our panel to be included in SXSW 2010, and we’ll tell you all about it when we see you there!

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UPDATE:
A lot of people are asking what we are selling…

We are NOT selling anything, or promoting any services… just going to share what we did and how we did it.

A few weeks ago, Vu and I (The Bui Brothers) had a great time shooting photos of Justine Ezarik. You may know her as iJustine… if that is the case, please enjoy these photos of iJustine.

One of our goals was to give iJustine photos of herself that were unique and something out of her element. We think we accomplished that very well. Justine was so awesome putting up with us all day, she was up for anything and never ran out of energy. Thank you so much Justine!!!

Of course the photo shoot of Justine would not have been possible without the following people:

Original Music : Paul Dateh and Ken Belcher
Makeup/hair : Tracie Cotta
Wardrobe : Bonny Pierzina
Style : Doug Chan (Furious Photographers)
Location Sponsor : Lawrence Chan (Tofurious)

Here is a series of photos we call Harajuku iJustine photos:

Here is a series of photos we call Internet Junkie iJustine photos:

Finally here are is the series called On The Bed With Justine photos:

(Although I think I could have come up with a better name)

If you would like to receive updates about the things we (The Bui Brothers) are up to… we talk about video blogging, business video blogging, pretty much anything to do with video on the web, photography, learning about photography and how to do photography lighting… please sign up for our newsletter:

Thank you for viewing these photos, we can’t thank Justine enough for working with us (Thanks so much Justine!!!). If you liked these photos and would like to work with us please contact us with our contact form.

Makeup, styling and video (her first ever) by Tracie Cotta. Video shot entirely on iPhone 3GS.

Tracie set up this shoot with Micah, choosing “silent film” as our look for the shoot. We decided on Old Town Orange as the location… having an older look than most areas in Orange County. We also decided to add an “environmental portrait” as well as some fashion shots of Micah in his backyard.

People often ask us to explain in more detail our lighting setups… and I’ve already had a few requests on this shoot. So I’ll go a little more detailed than usual and include some crudely drawn diagrams done in Skitch. They look like they were done by a child, but they should explain the lighting pretty well… so don’t complain.

We started the shoot with the “environmental portrait”… it was a simple setup right in Micah’s bedroom in front of his DVD collection and assortment of figurines. We set up two 580 flashes on wireless triggers opposite each other pointing directly at Micah, and an Alien Bees AB800 with a narrow 10? grid pointed up at the poster.

Diagram:

After that we moved on the the fashion shots, using the backyard and existing garden gnome as background and prop. For these we set up two Alien Bees AB800s as back/side lights and an ABR800 ring flash on camera.

Diagram:

Before leaving the house we decided to take one more shot out in the front of the house. This shot was lit entirely by the street lamp out front… with backlighting by the security lights behind the house at a nearby restaurant.

Micah then got dressed and Tracie did his makeup… and we took off to downtown Orange for the whole point of the shoot day… the silent film shots.

The first two shots were lit with a single 580EX flash… held by Tracie… set to 105mm zoom.

Diagram:

Diagram:

We then put Micah up on a staircase which was already backlit by a single incandescent bulb… while Tracie crouched down on the bottom step and used a small flashlight to light his face from below… for a nice creepy portrait.

The last couple shots were just done with existing light which were mostly provided by street lamps with a little fill from storefront window lights on the closeup.

All in all it was a successful shoot… and the music Tracie chose for the video conveys the mood of the portraits extremely well. We hope you were all able to enjoy them and learn a little about our lighting at the same time.

-Vu

In a few days the TV commercial we shot for J!NX will air on TV. We (The Bui Brothers) shot the entire commercial on a Canon 5D Mark II. In this post we want to talk a little about the good, the bad and everything in-between that we encountered while shooting a TV commercial on a DSLR.

Taken from www.JINX.com:
“J!NX is a clothing brand heavily influenced by gaming and geeky interests.”

First, we want to thank Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz from Smashface for bringing us on to be the directors of photography and sound for this TV commercial. We also want to thank J!NX for being so awesome, Tracie Cotta for providing excellent makeup and style, and Sarah Atwood for keeping things together!

Here is a look the team that made the first US TV commercial shot on a Canon 5D mk 2:

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The Good

Let’s start by talking about the good. The good actually started with excellent planning by Steve and Zadi… they had a great script written and a very thorough shot list… also it didn’t hurt that Zadi was the main subject of the commercial… and we know each other and have shot together (photo, not video) before. Also, we decided to bring along a 26″ HDTV as an external monitor. Although bulky and not that easy to move around the set, we were able to focus extremely easily on such a large screen. Pull focus is not easy, ever… but it’s really difficult to nail any kind of focus at all on the 3″ screen on the 5D mark II. All we needed was the TV and an HDMI cable, and we had a giant monitor.

Of course another part of the good is that the files that come out of the 5D mark II are AMAZING. While reviewing footage on the huge monitor… we were always very pleased. This helped move the shoot along well as everyone was literally stoked with every shot we reviewed. Using the 100mm macro let us really get in tight with ridiculous shots of minute details… able to focus in on words on a MacBook Pro monitor to the point where you could see the pixels on the screen. Of course, with the larger scenes, it was all about lighting. Colored gels, a hallmark of Smashface/Epic Fu style… really have the background some interest… and of course… color.

Another amazing thing is that even at high ISOs the footage is still fantastic. This means that if you are lighting your sets on a budget, you have a lot more flexibility. We were lighting most everything with a couple Arri 350s and an Arri 600 fresnel… which would actually be tough in some situations with, for instance, an HVX200 which we’ve also shot with. You just don’t need that much light, and our travel kit will now include just a bunch of Lowell Omni lights and a Tota or two. Small, light and more than bright enough for the amazing and wonderful light-sucking sensor in the 5d mark II.

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The Bad

Then there was the bad. First, worst, and FIXED NOW (thank you Canon!)… at the time the 5D mark II didn’t have any manual control… so we were going from shot to shot trying to match exposure of the last shot… which was pretty much impossible. It was frustrating enough while shooting… I can only imagine how tough it was to edit. Not only did we not have manual control, but we were sticking ourselves with wide-open because attempting to control the aperture with the set, DOF preview, and unlock lens method just wasn’t worth it… so we just went with the wide-open unlocked lens solution.

So the shutter speed and ISO pretty much changed itself from shot to shot… we were able to lock it with exposure lock, but not set it.

(NOTE: now that the manual controls have been fixed with the Canon 5d mark II firmware update, this is not an issue at all. We have since shot another television commercial, and it was a perfect experience)

Another issue has to do with the way the 5d mark II handles its HDMI output. I am not sure what Canon was thinking… and whether or not this can be fixed with another firmware update… but basically you only have the proper aspect ratio while reviewing clips you’ve already shot. While setting up your shot everything is super squeezed, and while actually recording it’s stretched. This isn’t a huge issue, especially once you’re used to it, but if you’re working with clients who aren’t able to visualize what things are going to look like when they are perfect… it may be tough for them to approve and like a shot without you shooting some footage and playing it back for them.

We also had a couple cases where there was something in the frame that we didn’t notice because it was covered by the overlaid display data… something to note.

Using the giant HDTV was great when it was already in place and we were using it to focus, but not so good when it was time to move to the next shot. Bigger isn’t always better… and we actually had a much better (and EXTREMELY economical) solution for our next commercial that we’ll talk about in that post.

Audio. Yes, audio is an issue with the 5D mark II. There is no way to disable the auto-regulation that goes on… and the only solution we’ve heard of is by Beachtek and has to do with outputting a continuous tone into one channel in order to keep the levels… well… level (UPDATE: We have learned about a few more solutions, a follow up blog post will be made about this). If you are shooting something for the web… and the audio isn’t that important or is going to be well masked by other sounds or by music… go ahead and do it. If you are shooting a television commercial as we were… find another option.

We opted to record audio through a Sennheiser MKE-66 shotgun microphone into a Firepod into a Macbook pro into Final Cut. We recorded into the ADR module, because it was easy to set up and use… and it worked perfectly. Luckily we only needed audio for the “talking head” segments, so there was minimal syncing that was needed. This went perfectly… but we also now have a much better solution for this that we’ll talk about in the next post.

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Conclusion

The Canon 5D mark II was literally perfect for the television commercial shoot (if you don’t count the exposure problems which have been fixed)… we just needed to learn a little bit about the things that need to be done surrounding the camera to get the best out of it. The commercial looks fantastic and will air soon and be available online, at which time we’ll post it on this blog as well.

We shot all of the talking head shots tripod mounted and locked down… and most of the B-roll (which is most of the commercial) either handheld directly on the camera or on a gorrilla pod which offered a small amount of stabilization but left the real-life movement we were looking for.

There were quite a few challenges we ran into, and some minor inconveniences… almost all of which have been completely solved for us. We’ll talk about all the new devices, software and workarounds we are using now in the next post… which took our next commercial shoot to the literal next level.

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