And don’t forget to enter to win  Tamron’s award winning SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Di VC USD lens ($1300 Retail).  Go to http://theslantedlens.com/2013/win-a-tamron-lens/ to enter. Enter by May 31st!

Special thanks to our great sponsors!

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com
www.spiderholster.com
www.PhotographyTalk.com

Don’t forget to enter to win a Tamron’s SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Di VC USD.  Enter by May 31st.

Special thanks to our great sponsors!

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com
www.spiderholster.com
www.PhotographyTalk.com

Hot on the heels of our last successful giveaway (HD-2000 hand-held camera stabilizer), we at The Slanted Lens wanted to do another one. So, we scoured the interwebs for great items to give away. Among the interested parties (hint: more giveaways to come) were the good people at Tamron who jumped on the chance to give away one of their best lenses, the Tamron SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Di VC USD zoom lens ($1300 Value). Very gracious if you ask us! I personally shoot with this lens and you will hear how much I love it in our next three videos.

So, that said, one of you photographers are going to win this lens! But before I tell you how (there are lots of ways to enter, see below) I want to fill you in on the lens’ specs, so you can start to drool a little.

To start us off, Tamron’s SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Di VC USD zoom is the world’s ONLY full-frame fast aperture standard zoom equipped with built-in image stabilization.

Even when shooting in low-light conditions with a slow shutter speed, Tamron’s acclaimed VC (Vibration Compensation) allows for both a steady viewfinder display and stable handheld camera work to render sharp images.

To achieve resolution at the top of its class, the lens uses specialized high-performance optical configuration with three LD elements, three Glass Molded Aspherical Lenses, one Hybrid Aspherical Lens and two XR (Extra Refractive Index) elements.

Using a rounded 9-blade diaphragm, the lens achieves gorgeous blur (Bokeh) effects. It also features Tamron’s USD (Ultrasonic Silent Drive) system to power a speedy AF drive, Full-Time Manual (FTM) continuous manual focus mechanism, and moisture-resistant construction to help prevent water from penetrating the lens.

So, cool that it was voted Best Lens of the Year by EISA 2012-2013.

To see the full specs for this lens, a 3d pic & picture quality, please visit Tamron.

How to win the Tamron SP 24-70mm

Excited? Well, here’s how to win this beauty. Below is an app. Simply enter your email to let us know who you are and then find as many actions you feel comfortable with completing (For example, we don’t want you to feel obligated to subscribe to our Facebook Page if it’s going to keep you up at night.). Some actions you can come back and do daily, like tweeting about the giveaway, and sharing it with your Facebook friends. Open to U.S. Residents only. Let the giveaway begin! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: If you have your own photography blog, feel free to embed this app and give your readers a little fun. You can even earn some entries for doing this (see the Blog About Tamron & Link to this Giveaway entry in the app above)!

Camera movement has changed in the last few years. It is getting easier to move the camera in smaller and smaller spaces. At NAB this year we saw the introduction of the Movi System by Freefly which looks like it will revolutionize the world of camera movement. The Movi is a Gimbal System that stabilizes the camera with a very low learning curve. It’s a one person operation or can be run by two people. One person moves with the rig and the other by remote control changes the camera angle and focus. It’s not just the Movi but there are several other innovative companies with simple small compact products. Kessler Crane has a new travel jib that collapses down small enough to fit into your suitcase. It is stable and effective even with its light weight and compact construction. Now you can get simple jib shots on the road. The ease of movement is not the reason to move the camera. Moving the camera is a conscious decision to help strengthen communication with your viewer. Here are 3 reasons, of the many, to move the camera.

3 Reasons for Camera Movement

#1 Camera movement creates interest.
This is one of the downfalls for still photographers. They don’t move the camera and want to put it on the tripod and leave it. Get it off the tripod and make the camera move. People are used to seeing camera movement and miss it when it’s gone. We move the camera to help keep the frame alive, which keeps the viewer interested in the image.

#2 Camera movement directs the viewer and make them look at what you want them to see.
I’m in a wide shot of a large landscape. The camera drops down to the ground to a man’s face down in the dirt. We have changed our framing from wide to tight and made the audience look at the individual. He goes from small and insignificant in the frame to a tight shot that shows that he is in trouble. This strengthens the tension and engages the viewer. We have made the audience look at our man in trouble. Not only we look at him but we know where he is and that he is alone.

#3 Camera movement creates emotion.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why it is so essential to filmmaking. As the camera pushes into the man in the dirt it creates an emotional response. The audience is concerned. Who pushed him? Why is he there? The camera move makes this emotion more abrupt and unsettling to the viewer. His distress in the mist of a world of tranquility makes it more unsettling. The move helped us communicate this emotion.

These are just a few of the many reasons to move the camera. I will talk more about camera movement when I speak at Photo Video West Saturday April 27th – Introduction to the World of Camera Movement. We will look at the latest equipment and how it’s shaping the emotion and ability to tell a story with camera movement.

Video Transcript:

In today’s Slanted Lens lesson, we’re out on location in downtown Los Angeles shooting for Pilot Freight Services. We’re shooting a composite image that’s going to require us to shoot chrome on location. Our shot is for a print ad that Pilot will run in consumer magazines. Let’s get started and see what we can do.

We blocked off a lane on Hope Street in Los Angeles. It looks into downtown, so we can shoot our truck in the right position to match the comp. Here’s the comp that the agency sent over, that will serve as a guide for our final image. The image has 4 main elements: First we have the background, which is the cityscape in the background. We have the driver that’s in the truck. We have the mirror, and then we have the nose of the truck.

The chances of these physical shapes of the 3 foreground elements working in one shot seems almost impossible to me. We definitely are going to have to composite these together. I brought a mirror that we attached to a C-stand to shoot separately. That gave us the freedom to place the mirror anywhere in the frame that we wanted to. This really saved us when we on location because it became the element that we could move around to make everything work.

Here’s our first shot of the mirror. In the chrome, we see reflections of all the surrounding buildings and the street; it’s way too busy. Shooting a chrome mirror outside will create its own challenges. Shooting chrome is as much about what it reflects as it is about what light you aim at it. In this case, we put up a 4×8 foam core that we reflected into the mirror and the chrome frame. The foam core is way too dark and it’s going to need light on it.

We’ll use a Dynalight Strobe Head coming from our camera left to rim the chrome mirror and to brighten the foam core. This gives us the look of sun hitting the chrome frame on the camera left side. The mirror’s been moved slightly so our foam core is not covering the whole mirror. We moved the foam core back into place so it covers the reflection in the mirror and the whole chrome of the mirror. Then we dialed the light up that’s hitting the edge of the mirror and the foam core so it’s a little brighter now, a little cleaner.

The mirror is a little too uniform; it looks too studio-lit. I asked my assistant to hold up a tree branch to see what it would do. When held in the right place, it reflected into the chrome and made it look like things around the area were reflecting into it. We want to break that reflection up just a little bit in the chrome so it doesn’t look so uniform and feels more like it’s in this environment.

As a backup, I shot a frame with just a white background behind the chrome to make it easier for Julene to outline it. Then I traded it out and used a black background. I do this so Julene can outline the image easily. I just want to give her as many options as possible.

Using this same rim light from camera left side, we shot the driver’s reflection in the mirror. He’s sitting in the Pilot truck. We can’t see the nose of the truck, at all. Actually, this truck has no nose. We’re going to have to photograph a different truck with a longer nose to add this element.

We tape our mirror to the existing mirror. This gives us a good image of the driver to strip into the chrome mirror that we just shot. He’s getting that same nice sunlight look from the Dynalight head on the left-hand side.

We now shot several shots of our background with no mirror. We did some in focus and out of focus. We did some HDR to be able to pull the shadows out and just played around a little bit with this background. We’re getting closer to having all the elements now. We just need the nose of the truck. We’re going to have to go to the Pilot facility to shoot a different truck to make this happen.

Here’s the truck nose that we shot. We set up with the strobe off the camera left side to light the side of the truck. It looks great and will fit into the composite very nicely. Here’s our final image after Julene did the compositing and then added a high pass effect and gradient map to the image in Photoshop.

Shooting chrome is a reflection process. You want to reflect a nice, white surface into the chrome, and then light that surface. It’s very similar to a mirror. It’s much easier lit with a reflection of a white surface than light on the chrome surface itself.

I hope you learned a little bit about lighting chrome. We’re going to come back and show you how to do this in the studio in a lesson very soon.

A special shout out thanks to Pilot Freight Services. They’re a great client to allow us to use their images in our lessons. Keep those cameras rolling. Keep on clicking.

Shortly after I got my Canon 5D Mark II, the question became, how do I stabilize this camera? The solution was very simple; the Redrock Micro-Rigs were the best out there at that time and continue to be so now. I got a Captain Stubling rig; had a great follow focus, a great setup that I could use, made it very simple to hand-hold it, made it very fluid.

They came out recently with a new follow focus that I think is really an advantage over the old ones. One, it has hard stops. It is so nice. I can have two stops; I’ve got a beginning and an end. I can set my far point; I can set my near point. For me, that was key. This was a very important piece of equipment that I had to get. I can’t say enough about this Redrock Micro-Focus. It’s very smooth. The gearbox is extremely smooth, a great piece of equipment.

A little shout-out to Redrock Micro; they’ve been there from the very beginning with great camera stabilization and continue to have features that help us move forward as the cameras change. This is a great feature. I’m excited to have it and I use it on my rig every single day that I shoot. Thank you, Redrock Micro.

Remember to subscribe to The Slanted Lens so you don’t miss out on any of the upcoming lessons. We have some great stuff in store for you. We’ve got great giveaways; it will start with a Tamron lens coming up next month, so look forward for that.

Special thanks to our great sponsors!

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com
www.spiderholster.com
www.PhotographyTalk.com

Video Transcription:
Hi. This is Jay P. Morgan. In today’s Slanted Lens lesson, we’re out here at the Bonneville Salt Flats. What a gorgeous place to shoot. We’ve got the white salt that has water flooded on it right now, this time of year. We’ve got the white background of the sky here in the evening. We’ve got Mary Peterson with us. We’re going to shoot some great shots of white background with dark clothing. That’s a great contrast. It’ll look wonderful. We’re also going to show you what raising and lowering the camera does to shape the body. We’ll show that on a 24mm lens and a 50mm lens. So let’s go ahead and get started and see what we can do.

I have always wanted to shoot out at the Salt Flats, but didn’t realize that in March the Salt Flats are completely under water. It’s good that we drove out here and took a look at the location before we came out to shoot. Even though it was a six-hour round trip, we came out, scouted the location and we realized we were totally under water. Not to be deterred, we headed out to shoot at the flats using them as a reflection pool rather than a salt surface. The water’s only about six or eight inches deep, so it’ll be perfect for that purpose.

Shooting on the Salt Flats requires a permit, which we got from the BLM. It also requires rubber boots for all the crew so we can work in the water all day long. If you try to shoot here without a permit, it’s very possible you’ll get a ticket. I wouldn’t advise it.

Our lighting today is going to be very simple. We’re using mostly natural light. We’re going to use one Dynalight strobe head with a Photoflex Softbox. It’s going to be over the camera left side to emphasize the highlight on her face we’re getting from the heated sun.

Here’s our first shot with just the sun. We don’t need a lot of light to add to this, but just a little bit of highlight, a little rim on the camera left side, I think, will help us a lot. Our strobe’s going to highlight from camera left. So here’s our shot with that strobe light and our natural sun.

I’m running around in the water using a new piece of equipment today called the Spider Holster. I was not sure how it would perform in this situation, but it was perfect. The camera was right at my side. It wasn’t flapping around when I was working. I found it a great solution for moving and shooting in a demanding situation.

Before we start shooting our main image, let’s take a look at how the camera height shapes the body. We’ll shoot with a 50mm lens to start with, and then we’re going to move to a 24mm and experiment with different camera heights. Here’s a low-angle shot where the camera is on the deck and looking up at her. Literally, my hand is in the water keeping the camera just above the level of the water. This gives her a very statuesque look. This is a great view for full body shots. The shot has great presence.

We’re now at waist level, and her body is more evenly proportioned. It’s almost too normal. I should have done a shot between her waist and the deck. That’s kind of my favorite place to shoot. It really gives her that nice, statuesque look but is not up to the waist where things start to look very normal and kind of uninteresting. We’re now going to move to eye level. We are emphasizing her upper body now more and shortening her legs. When you come to this point, you’re in a better place to shoot head and shoulders rather than full body shots. We are now looking down on her, and it shortens her body a lot. Her legs are shorter and we’re making her head seem a bit larger. We’re now looking at a steep angle down at her. It’s a very high angle. This far shortens her a lot. It’s kind of a comical look.

We’re now going to go to a 24mm lens. We’re going to take a look at how pronounced this change is, going from the deck all the way to overhead. Here’s a shot from the deck. My hand really is in the water, so the camera is very low, looking up at a steep angle. Her legs are a bit larger, her head’s a bit smaller. We’re getting a little more of a forced perspective.

This is a big jump. We’ve jumped from that low angle to that waist-high shot. Again, it’s very normal looking. Things are a little more normal as we keep the camera almost at her waist. This does not lengthen her legs, does not change her head size, it just keeps everything very normal, but a little bit boring.

We’re at her eye level now, and this is a really good look for her upper body. If I push in and shoot her waist up from this angle, there’s really no double-chin. Not that she has a double chin, but it’s just a great position to shoot. As we get just above the eyes, we can start to push in on her a little closer. Now we’re above her head. Because of this wide-angle lens, her body is very distorted. Her head is large and her feet are very small. This is an interesting look. It needs to have an application for it to work, though.

I’ll be shooting most of the shots today at that low angle – not on the deck, but between the deck and the waist height. It shows off the environment. It gives us a nice, statuesque look at her. It’s really at this point that we’re ready to get her in the water. Off with the rubber boots. Mary is such a trooper. Here’s a montage of the different images. I really love this high-key background with her dark outfit in the foreground. I really was pleased with how these turned out.

We make the decision on camera angle based on what we want to communicate. If it’s about clothing, we’ll choose a camera angle that flatters the clothing we’re trying to sell. Low angles are great for full body, and high angles are better for moving in with head and shoulders. We’ll talk more about this in the future, so keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.

Well, I hope you enjoyed our piece today on how camera height shapes the body. I’d like to give a little shout-out to our new sponsor, which is Spider Holster. I had no idea how I was going to love this piece of equipment. I put this on when I went out to work at the Bonneville Salt Flats. I was on set. I had put it and locked it so the camera wouldn’t fall out. I started working on set, doing things and after a few minutes I wondered where my camera was. In fact, I was looking around, I was looking at my tripod; it wasn’t on my tripod. I asked one of the assistants who was there, “Where’s the camera?” He goes, “It’s on your hip.” It’s so secure. It was just there. It made it so easy for me to work. It’s got a little switch on the side to be able to break it loose. I can lock it in place; it can’t come out. Or I can bring it up or I can lock it so it will let me allow it to bring it in and out very quickly. I want to just give a little shout-out to Spider Holster and look forward to working with them in the future.

Also, all of you who have not subscribed to our YouTube channel, please do so. Go to our web page. Get on our Facebook and like us. Like us on our YouTube channel. We appreciate all your support. We truly do appreciate all your support. So here’s The Slanted Lens. We’ll see you next time.

Special thanks to our great sponsors

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com
www.spiderholster.com
www.PhotographyTalk.com

Video Transcript:

In today’s slanted lens lesson we’ll be shooting a simple two light set up using continuous lights.  We’re pulling still frames from the new Canon 1-DC that Lens Pro To Go delivered to us. In this case the motion blur is going to be fine because our subject is relatively static; we want the motion in her scarf. I think this combination is going to work.

Let’s look at a two light set up using continuous light. We’re shooting Tiffany Taylor and have dressed her in a vintage World War One outfit. The shirt and the pants were worn by the father of a good friend of mine.  They are authentic, the leather flying skull hat was rented from Warner Brothers.

We put Tiffany on an apple box, so I’m looking up at her slightly, so, it makes her look very heroic. We will start with a duvetyn or dark background. We just want something that is dark and clean from side to side. I own a duvetyn so it’s just easy for me to put this up. But, any solid wall with no light on it or even just a dark background works.  I’m shooting on the Canon 1DC with a Tamron 70 – 200 meter lens. We are exposing at 1/50 of a second at 5.6. This will accommodate both video and stills. Because I’m shooting with continuous lights, I’m going to move my ISO to 640 to give me the F-stop I want.

This one option is the reason photographers are now starting to shoot with continuous slight more and more than ever before. I would have never have considered pushing the ISO to 640 before I got to 5-D-Mark 2. With a Mark 3 this door is wide open for continuous light.  Think about it this way, at 640 ISO I’m going to use a 2K or 2000 watts of power for my rim light. For the key light I’ll use 600 watt seconds in a beauty dish.  This is not that many lights and equipment that I have.  If I have to lower my ISO to 320 I’m going to need twice as much power or two 2K’s and two 600 watt lights. If I lower my ISO to 160, then I’m going to need four 2K’s and four 600 watt lights for my iso. Adjusting the ISO cuts the cost of production drastically and makes it so a single person can do a shoot. I’ve shot with 10K lights before on set and they are monsters. A 2K is very manageable by one person.

Now let’s get back to our lighting set. Our first light is Tungsten airy 2K. We’re going to place that on the camera right side of the frame way in the back and use it as rim light. We’ll place a blue gel on the 2K light, which will give us a nice background color, which gives us depth and interest. Here’s our first exposure with just our rim light. The 1/50 of a second gives us a nice blur on the scar. This is going to make great video and stills.

Next we have the Dynalite, HM2065 head. It’s a 600 watt second light source. I could put my beauty dish with a grid on this light source so that the light would be directional and have really nice quality. This is a continuous tungsten light source, with a strobe head as well. I’m going to put 1/2 son or CTO on the beauty dish to warm it up just a little bit.

You can see that the beauty dish with the grid is lighting her face and not her full body. I filtered this out so there would be a quick fall off on the front of her body. I’m using the bottom of the circle of coverage so it almost looks like it’s vignetted on her body. This is also going to spill on to the scarf.

Now for our last light, we’ll add a 1 K pointed against the wall to act as a fill light. I do this at times for several reasons: (1) This gives you a very soft overall feel in the room and (2) It gives us enough light to film our behind the scenes video for our lessons.

Here is our final lighting with the exception of our secret ingredient.  Smoke is our secret ingredient, smoke from our Rosco 1700. The rim light is going to catch that smoke and bring the image alive. This is the final ingredient or spice as it were to make the image have a little zest, a little jalapeno in the world of bland, a bit of salt to tempt the taste buds. OK, enough of the food analogies, but it does work, it works so well with our lighting it’s kind of like shrimp on the barbi, or lobster with butter, it’s like hummus and pita bread, or steak and eggs. Oh, who eats steak and eggs anyway? More like steak and potatoes.

This is a montage of the best image pulls from the Canon 1-D-C. After all that work to get that blue background I took it into Niksoftware and used a filter called black gold. When I output it I erased the color a little bit out of her face, then I dubbed the whole layer down 20%. I really like the look.

As a follow up to our last lesson on shutter speeds and video, let’s take a look at this set up with different shutter speeds. First we’re going to do a 1/50 of a second at 5.6. This is 1/100 of a second at 5.6. The speed of the scarf varies so much it’s kind of hard to make any kind of comparison between the stills. But, the video is starting to become a little choppy. Now we’re going to go to 1/200 of a second. The video is definitely choppier and the stills are more in focus; the 1/50 of a second works for both the video and the stills because we want a blurry scarf, and she’s not moving very much.

One last note on the Canon 1 DC ; as much as I love this camera, and the storage was a bit crazy, we shot several hundred gigs for a single shoot; that said, the footage looks fabulous.  Unfortunately we’ve got to send the 1DC back to Lens Pro To Go. I’m going to be saving my pennies.

Using continuous light is becoming more and more intuitive for photographers as we get lights like the Dynalite head that use the light modifiers that we’re used to. Still shooters had soft boxes long before the video or film shooters figured it out.  Continuous light has its drawbacks when shooting stills, but, has come a long way.  I hope you found this helpful. Keep those cameras rolling and keep on click’n.

Special thanks to our great sponsors

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com
www.PhotographyTalk.com

Video Transcription

In today’s Slanted Lens Lesson we’re out on location shooting a rain shot with the new Canon 1DC that Lens Pro to Go was nice enough to deliver to us. Our goal today is to shoot video on this new 4K camera and to pull still images from that footage. We’re going to test the different shutter speeds and see how they affect the video and the stills. Let’s go ahead and get started, see what we can do.

You know, rain is a perfect subject to test this concept of pulling still frames from video. Before we get started we need some technical background. Video is a series of single images, each frame blurring into the next frame is what creates that look of motion. Stills, on the other hand, are single images that have very little motion blur. The shutter speed in video is just like the shutter speed in stills. It’s the amount of time the shutters open during each exposure. We’ll be shooting at 24 frames a second, which means that there will be 24 exposures, images, or frames, each second. The normal shutter speed is 1/50th of a second, or twice the frame rate.

Let’s look at two different pieces of video with different shutter speeds. The first is at 24 frames per second and a shutter speed of a 50th of a second. Each image, or frame, is blurred. Now, at 400th of a second, each image, or frame, is sharp. Let’s see them rolling side by side and how they differ. The video with the fast shutter speed is pretty choppy and not really good for general purposes. 1/100th or 1/200th of a second will give us sharp images of the rain and the people, but may not make the best video. If the shutter rate is too fast the video starts to look choppy, but the stills are more likely to be in focus. If it’s too slow, the video and stills are going to be just too blurry. Unlike stills, video needs motion blur to look good. So that’s our challenge here, a balance between those two thoughts.

Before we do our shutter test let’s take a look at how we set up our rain shot. We’re shooting outside, so the rain can run down the driveway and not cause a problem. First, we’re going to put up two 12 by 12 duvetyne side by side to create a black background. Duvetyne is a black fabric that doesn’t really reflect much light so it’s a perfect background if you wanted to just go black. Using Sun Seeker, I know the sun is going to be in a back light position between 2 and 4 p.m., so I position the duvetyne’s in a manner that will allow me to use the sun as a back rim light for those two hours.

For our rain we went with our tried and true fanned spray nozzles. You can see all about making rain in an earlier video we did called “Creating Rain: a Special Effect“. These will both be placed on the camera right side shooting up and allowing the rain to fall on our umbrellas. It’s nice because our frame is pretty tight, so these two will cover the area pretty well.

This is supposed to be at night, so I’ll set color balance on the Canon 1DC to tungsten, or 3200 degrees. This makes the sunlight very blue. Here’s our first shot with the rain and sunlight only. For the camera left side we added a 1K Fresnel to be on her face. This is a tungsten light, so it will be neutral on her face. We’re trying to compete with the sun as our backlight so we need a lot of light on her face. We’ll add another 2K, and that looks much better. Our last light is going to be a fill light on the camera right side. We used a Photoflex P22, and pushed that right up to the edge of the frame. We used a large golf umbrella covered with plastic on a C stand, to keep the water off the lights.

Now that our lights are in place let’s take a look at the different shutter speeds. These first tests were all shot at 24 frames a second, at an F13. We first shot at 1/50th of a second, this gave us really nice blurry rain but our talent was a little soft, sometimes, when they moved. Our next test was at 1/100th of a second. The rain drops are shorter lines in each frame and don’t blur together as well as video. They also don’t look very good as still images because the rain just comes out as small dashes. We’re now going to go to 1/200th of a second. The rain drops in each frame are very short lines of dashes and don’t blur together well in the video. When we go to stills the rain is just small dashes and doesn’t look very good, but his face is sharp in just about every frame.

Here’s a split frame of the 1/50th of a second next to the 1/200th of a second. Again, if you shoot with too high of a shutter speed there is no motion blur on individual frames, and when viewed at normal speed the video looks choppy and stuttery. The was used very effectively in beach landing scenes of “Saving Private Ryan”. It creates an action look because things are kind of jumpy and stuttery. For us, we’re going to use 1/50th of a second with our rain. It just looks better. It looks better in the video, it looks better in the stills, we are just going to lose a lot of images to motion blur on the face as she moves around.

We added smoke from our Rosco 1700 in a lot of the images just to add another layer; I thought that was very effective. Here is some of the footage we shot at 60 frames a second and 1/125th of a second shutter speed. This is one of the stills we pulled from that slow motion footage. This is a fast shutter speed so the stills are a little sharper, the downside is you’re shooting slow motion. It’s very beautiful, but you can’t shoot in slow motion all the time.

My conclusion about this process of pulling stills from video with the intent of using both the stills and the video is that it’s pretty difficult, and only good for certain things. If you’re shooting wildlife and outdoor things I think this could be a great option, it has tremendous possibilities. The problem is that you’re going to lose a lot of frames to motion blur, especially if you’re shooting something moving like an animal. As for advertising, when you’re shooting something you have complete control over it just doesn’t make very much sense to me. I found the process of pulling frames was kind of like a shotgun approach. I kind of felt like we were just letting the camera roll, having her move, and did we get something? Was it right? It just felt very distant and not comfortable to me.

The shutter speed is really an issue that can’t be solved right now. 1/50th of a second is what looks best at 24 frames a second, it gives too much motion blur. Now, I shoot stills at 1/50th of a second all the time, but they’re not moving through the frame. They’re in position; it’s much more controlled. That said, I love the Canon 1DC want to buy one. I see times when it would be a great value to be able to shoot video and pull the stills. I’ve personally learned that this process has limitations, but there are times when it will be extremely valuable. So keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.

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You will need:
1- green gabardine fabric (from Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts) wider the better – Lars sewed two 60″ panels together;
2- “A” clamps;
1 – 120″ long PVC pipe (from Home Depot);
2 Stands- Lars used mic stands.

We hope you will find this segment useful. Share in the comments any improvements you made or what you used for the stands.
Keep those cameras rolling and keep on clickn’.

 Video Transcript:

Jay P: Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. In today’s Slanted Lens lesson, we’ve got a special DIY equipment segment for you. Lars Lindstrom is going to show us the things we need to understand about green screens, how to build our own, and some interesting facts about how to use it.

 Lars: Hi, everybody. My name is Lars Lindstrom, and today I’m going to show you how to make a DIY green screen that’s portable, effective, and very affordable. Let’s go ahead and get started. Whoa.

 There are a couple of applications for using a green screen in today’s video market. The first would be making dumb videos of people jumping over cars and things exploding, which is fun, but maybe the more practical application of green screen would be just to create a very clean atmosphere. There are lots of companies that are willing to pay good money for good looking green screen video, and you can make those videos in your living room, you can make them outside, just about anywhere with a portable green screen.

There are a couple of things you’re going to need. First and foremost, you’re going to need some green fabric. You can buy this green fabric. I think the thing you’re looking for the most is just look for something that is really offensive, I think, to the eyes. This green really is terrible. It’s really ugly. So try to find something like this.

Also, one thing you want to make sure to do is look for one that it is really wide. So this one was 60 inches wide. I think standard is about 45. Try to get it as wide as possible so that you don’t have to make as many seams. Now because this was 60 inches and I did want a whole 120 inches of green screen, I did have to sew one seam, right here, and actually you would be surprised, it’s never showed up in any of my videos. I can key it out really nicely, and when I say that I sewed it, I actually mean that my mom sewed it. So that’s something to have handy.

If you don’t have a sewing machine, you can try using some “A” Clamps or some tape on the in seam. Experiment. That’s what this is all about.

In addition to the seam down the center, you’re also going to want to sew a pocket or seam on top, where you’re going to slide your PVC pipe through. You can see here that this just goes the along the entire length of the fabric, all the way across.

As far as stands go, this is where you’re going to have to get a little creative. The fabric only cost me about $3 a yard. I think there’s about four yards in there, so $12 for the green screen fabric. Sure beats over $100 if you buy it from any of the big boys.

As far as stands go, you’re going to have to get a little creative. I was an audio engineer before I became a cinematographer, and I have a lot of microphone stands hanging around. So I got a microphone stand, and I put a mic clip on it and I found that I could actually squeeze some PVC pipe into this mic clip, and they created great stands for my green screen.

You’re going to need two “A” clamps. These were 99 cents at Home Depot, and these are going to attach to the base of your microphone stand, as you wrap the fabric around it, so you can pull it nice and tight, get rid of all the wrinkles, make it a nice, keyable green screen.

The last thing you’re going to need is a 10 foot, 1 inch PVC pipe. You can try three-quarters, if you’re worried about fitting this into your mic clips or it being too heavy. What happens with three-quarters of an inch, it starts to bend in the middle, and you don’t want that, because then you’re going to start getting wrinkles all the way down.

All right. Let’s go ahead and get started by placing both stands on either side of your PVC pipe. Extend the arms vertically, then lock them down, nice and tight. I also put some weights at the base of the stands for extra support.

Now slide your fabric onto your PVC pipe. You don’t actually have to sew this pocket. For the longest time I actually used safety pins to hold the fabric to the pipe.

Now gently force the PVC into the mic clips on both your stands. You’ll want to use some flexible clips. These are made by Audio-Technica. They work great, but anything that gives will work just fine.

 Now take your mic stands all the way up and lock them into place. The “A” clamps are going to help stretch the fabric across to make a tight, even green screen, and you are ready to shoot.

 So there you have it. All-in-all I think I spent about $14 on the green screen with the fabric and the “A” clamps. That’s not including the stands. So with the microphone stands, you could probably find a couple on Craigslist for pretty cheap, or you could come up with something of your own.

So go ahead and experiment. Let me know what you come up with. Thanks for watching.

Jay P:  That was great information from Lars Lindstrom here on green screen. For me, the thing I learned, most importantly was you don’t have to have the perfect green color to get a good key to be able separate people using green screen. A lot of different colors will work. In fact, when I first started in this career, we used blue screen. They realized really early on that most people wear blue jeans, blue shirts, blue eyes. So a really ugly, hideous green, most people don’t wear that. So you key that out. Makes it easy to separate people.

 So we got some great information today. How come Lars got to jump over a car? I don’t get to jump over a car. I mean, what do I get here, huh? I get a fat Chihuahua, that’s what I get. Barney, look good, look good.

Anyway, there’s another DIY experience for you, from the Slanted Lens. 

Special thanks to our sponsors!

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www.dynalite.com
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www.triplescoopmusic.com

One Light Setup

Video Transcription

Hi. This is Jay P. Morgan. In today’s Slanted Lens lesson, we’re going to take a step way back to the very basics of a one-light setup. Let’s take a look at what it takes to light a face.

Everything in the world is a ball, a cube, or a cylinder. A face is a ball, a round surface. Because it’s a round surface, as we set our key light, we get a nice highlight across the face. We have a nice shadow line there, where it drops into deep shadow away from the light. As we fill this shadow side, we create what’s known as the core. This is the core, the area of transition between filled shadow to highlight. If you fill in that core too much, or too broadly, it becomes very uninteresting. We want a nice ratio of highlight into shadow, where it fills up to that core, but doesn’t wipe it out completely. The problem is most people are, even though we are a round-type face, we have features. When you add a feature, in this case, when you have a nose, you’re going to want to get your light up a little higher than this one is, in order to create a bit of a Rembrandt on the side. If I lift this light up just a bit, I start to get a bit of a Rembrandt on the side. This will give us a nice triangle on the cheek here, if this was stuck next to our ball. The interesting thing about our setup here, is that we have the highlight side on the ball, and in the background, we’ve turned our light just so that we get a nice shadow side on that side of the ball that’s lit.

I’m going to rotate this to where the shadow from the softbox, is going to hit right along the line of the shadow of the person’s face, so I will have a nice highlight side on the background that separates the shadow side of the face. I’ll have a nice shadow side on the background that separates the highlight side of the face. There’s the basics of a one-light setup. The way that you get a person to stand out from the background light, both the background and the person with a single light. Then we simply bring in a fill card to fill in the shadow side, not obliterating the core, giving us a nice core transition to the front. Let’s take a quick look at a person’s face in here and see how these principles apply.

I’m loving that Kessler Crane today is giving us a lot of great shots. We’ve got Tiffany Taylor here on set with today. She’s gorgeous, so that makes this very, very easy to do. We have this softbox here. It has the face off, that gives us a very hard light. I’m doing this in order to see, on the background, exactly what it’s doing; it’s a little more obvious that way. We have the highlight side of her face. It transitions to the shadow side of her face. We have the highlight side on the backdrop, which gives us a nice contrast to the dark side of her face, and we have the shadow side on the backdrop that gives us a nice separation to the highlight side of her face.

What we’re doing today is we’re shooting on the Cannon 1DC. Everything we’re shooting is video and we’re going to pull stills of the different shots that we do here of Tiffany. We’re going to have her move her hair around. We’re going to do some interesting things with her hair and movement, and we’re going to look at those things. We won’t shoot any still today; it will all be pulls from video. I’m going to go ahead and put the softbox face on. Then we’re going to get this lit so we can get a nice shot of her. If you put the key light in the right place, it allows your model to turn her head from a Rembrandt, into a butterfly, into a split light. This gives your talent a lot of room to move and has nice light in that entire rotation.

For our key light, we’re going to use a Dynalite 1600 watt pack with an MH2065 head. We’re using a medium Photoflex softbox as our key light. I love this setup because this head from Dynalite gives me the ability to use all of my strobe modifiers with a hot light. It gives me a nice key light for my talent. Our background is a white seamless. As a fill, we’re going to use a P22 panel, to bounce a little bit of light back in on her face. Using a fan can be a little tricky. I have found that if you turn the fan down very low, and then you point it slightly up from the ground, it gives the best look for the hair. If you run it too high, it’s going to dry out their eyes and really is tough for the talent to work underneath.

I am very excited to be shooting today with Tamron’s new 70mm to 200mm, 2.8 zoom lens. This is a great SP lens. It’s very sharp and a great companion with our 1DC. Shooting video on the 1DC and then pulling stills was quite a new experience, to say the least, for me. I found it a little hard, because I was always wondering, “Did I get something? Am I getting something?” Without the ability to look back at each frame and see exactly what I was getting, I found it a little bit frustrating. It was hard. That 1/50 of a second gave us a lot of motion blur, even on a simple move of her head. We’re going to talk about this more on our next lesson: Pulling Stills Using the 1DC.

Here’s some of the stills that we pulled from our first setup. We’re now going to push our makeup a little bit, make it a bit more interesting, and come back and shoot some more. Kerry Groves of Makeup Magic did a great job; kind of gave us this Egyptian look. We did a few shots of her with a small hat on; I thought that one was very cool.

Julene brought a piece of sequin material that was very interesting just to shoot through. It even became more interesting as we brought it closer to the camera. At that point, it became a diffusion material that just gives a nice soft diffusion across the whole image. As you get it that close and shoot through it, it softens everything in the image. This is an old trick. People used to wrap hose, nylons, all kinds of things over the lens do give this kind of soft look. Here’s a couple of images looking through that material.

This has been a great shoot today. Sometimes it’s very elegant to just go back to the basics; use a single light to create a very nice light on our talent’s face. It has a very elegant look. I hope you had as much fun as I did today. Keep those cameras rolling and keep on click’n.

Special thanks to our great sponsors! 
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www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
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triplescoopmusic.com
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Now that you have a non-photography related hobby, you are actively participating in your fun hobby, and you are meeting people and manufacturers in the industry, it’s time to design your book around your hobby.

The friend that I mentioned in our previous article started his portfolio with bike shots because his hobby is mountain biking. He first started taking pictures of people mountain biking. He wanted to show bike manufacturers that he could do the work they would give him.

Next, he started to go to races and show his book to manufactures that sponsored different riders. After talking to these manufacturers, some of them used my friend to shoot little things that they needed someone to shoot. Although these were little jobs, his book soon turned into a portfolio.

This process can be used in just about any industry. Another friend of mine started as an expert in archery, taking pictures of archery competitors.

Keep in mind that these are very niche markets. They won’t have a ton of work, but you can do work in these niches to get started. You will also learn to follow trends as you try to follow the trends in your niche.

Remember that the key to success is to be constantly working on your book. You need to follow the photography trends in your niche. As you do this, your new images will reflect the direction the industry is taking. After working on your book in a certain niche, you will soon have a portfolio that is ready to show to ad agencies. Congrats! You are on your way.

About Jay P. Morgan: With more than two decades of experience Jay P. Morgan brings to his commercial studio two special qualities: a keen appreciation of the bizarre and a knack for flawlessly executing elaborate shots. Through his educational series The Slanted Lens, Jay P. shares his knowledge of photography and video. 

Video Transcription

Jay P: In today’s Slanted Lens lesson, we’re shooting in the Concord and Lexington area of Massachusetts. This is the perfect place to shoot the elements or plates that we’re going need to create our composite image showing a Revolutionary War battle. In this lesson we’re going to show you how to shoot and combine images from five shoots to make our final battle scene. Let’s look at how we shot each layer of our composite.

When shooting a composite, it’s best to shoot the background plate first. This gives a frame work for the final image. I knew I wanted a hillside so the scene could have images higher in the background, a place to put the cannons and the other army. I really wanted something that was shot in the Minute Man National Park, adding that kind of historical significance to the final image.

Julene and I walked the fields of Concord where the Continental Army first fired on the British. We looked at the field at Lexington, where the first American casualties occurred. The place we finally settle on was on Battle Road. You know, I’ve been looking for this background in several different places, but we found this little home with a field, and this will become the perfect background plate.

I’m going to shoot it on at least two, if not three, levels.  The first one I’m going to shoot at is eye level. I also shot this at a very low level. This gives me options when we go to composite. The reality is that I need to make a decision of which level I’m going to shoot this at, so I can shoot all my other images the same. In the end we decided on the eye level image. This will become the camera angle for the rest of our shots.

You know, we needed battle images of the Americans clashing with the British. It’s a pretty expensive proposition to get everyone together to create such a scene. Too expensive for our budget, so we headed to a reenactment to shoot our battle scenes. At a reenactment we have soldiers shooting at each other, all in their uniforms, black powder going off. It really gives us all the texture we need to create the background battle scene.

We shot images of the actual reenactment from the sidelines. I was not able to stop or control the process so we got what we could get from the sidelines, from the spectators point of view. I tried to focus on confined groups that we could cut out for the final image.

I knew that I wanted a cannon group up on the hill, so I was shooting that group, and the smoke that was coming from the cannons, without cropping them. If I keep them isolated, then I can reduce them and use them in the background. Uncropped groups are far more valuable than things that are cropped. This group of images we’re going to call the background battle images. That’s our second shoot. I got some great Glidecam shots as I followed people walking down the street.

The next shot is going to be the foreground battle. You know, I wanted more control of this group so I asked a group of re-enactors to come to the field at the end of the battle so we could shoot them running together, kind of clashing together. I’m going to use the ambient light as the main light source. Here’s our first image with just the ambient light.

I am now trying to get my light to match the light we had on the battlefield earlier in the afternoon. Now I’ve added a strobe from camera-right, behind the actors, to act as a rim light and imitate the sun we had earlier. Here’s our final image with our strobe light on camera right. I’m going to allow our actors to blur as they run together. That gives a feeling of motion to this background plate.

I’m using a Dynalite powerpack with a Photoflex large softbox as my light source. I’m going to run this with this portable Dynalite power source.  Our next image that we’re going to shoot is our hero shot. We ran out of light that night, so we had to bring back or main talent the next day to do our shoot. We shot him in a park along the river next to Harvard.

I’m going to use my tried and true motion rig. It simulates motion and allows us to control the look of the talents clothing and their feet. I shot Donny Osmond using a rig that is very similar to this. In this case, we’re on location, so we’re going to build a simple version that can be made in just a few minutes.

To build this rig you’re going to need a saw, a screwdriver, two and a half-inch screws, a four-foot two by two, and a two-foot one by four. Cut the two by two on a 45 degree angle. Cut the end of the two by four on a 45 degree angle. Center and attach the one by four with the screw to the two by two. Center it on the end of the two by two that you cut on a 45 degree angle. As simple as that is, you know have a rig that your talent can lean on and create a look of forward motion. Here’s our rig at work on set.

In this set up, I rotated our talent around to where the sun became the rim light and then we put a softbox at the camera, to open up the shadow side of his face. This gave us a look that will match both the group that we shot after the reenactment, and the people on the battlefield during the reenactment.

Now for the fun part. We’re going to shoot some explosions. We’re going to shoot our explosions on white, so that as we composite them into our image, we’ll allow them to be translucent. We’re going to shoot explosions using an air cannon filled with debris, firing through a small hole in a piece of plywood. First we cut a hole in the piece of plywood, then we took that piece of wood we just cut out and we set it back about five inches.  This is going to create a barrier that will spread our debris as we fire through the hole.

The front side of the plywood has a burn bar arching around it. We always keep a Sterno burning on set so the minute the gas is turned on, it lights up immediately. We don’t want a stray pool of gas hanging around on set that might get lit by some stray flame.

The air cannon had a piece of pipe running out of it horizontally across the ground, and making a 90 degree turn. At that turn we attached a funnel. This becomes the loading are to put all of that debris and things in. We loaded it with dry leaves, brown fuller’s earth, and flour. When the air cannon pushes the flower into the air and past the flame, it’s going to combust.

Here’s some of the explosion plates we shot. Flour, when it’s spread out thin in the air, acts just like gasoline. It creates a fireball. Truly, don’t try this at home. You should not do this unless you’ve got a special effects guy on set. Here’s our final image after all the compositing is finished. Julene is now going to take us through the compositing process from a placement and perspective point of view.

 Julene:

Okay. This image is a composite of about 22 images. Here’s the background and we chose as image that has this house and the trees high in the background, so that it would still show when we place other images in front of it, and create a sense of depth. In our next image, we have four different images of British soldiers. There’s kind of a ridge here that I could place them on so that they blend in well with the background.

In the middle ground we have a skirmish going on and this is a composite of four images as well. They were all shot at the same perspective. I didn’t have to worry about adjusting their bodies or anything, because they were all shot in the same setting.

Here, closer to the foreground I’ve placed some fallen images to fill in the ground and just to add to the drama of the scene. And that’s one thing you need to pay attention to. You don’t want to shoot your images too high or too low in comparison to each other, so that they all blend well together.

Here is our flag bearer. He was a composite of two images. I had to do a little bit of work in getting his legs in the right position. This part of his body is one, and this part of his body is another. So I did move his legs around a little bit, and do some work on the flow of his jacket.

Okay. In this image I just brought in another British soldier here in the front because it just needed something else to tie in with what’s going on here in the front. Here in the very front we have a cannon blast. I used four different images of flame, smoke, and leaves flying to create this cannon blast.

In this image I used a couple gradients. There’s a white gradient from the top, just to give it a haze. There’s a dark gradient at the bottom to add to the detail of the image. And then I added some smoke in the foreground to blend the flames into the front with the grass. And that’s our final image.

Jay P:

This has been a lot of fun. We’re done here now on the East Coast and we’re headed back to L.A. for our next shoot. It was nice that we were so close to the mother ship of Lens Pro to Go. We drove over, picked up our equipment, used in these little towns outside of Boston, then dropped it back off. It was great to be here, so keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.

Special thanks to our great sponsors!

www.kesslercrane.com
www.tamron-usa.com
www.dynalite.com
www.photoflex.com
www.rosco.com
www.glidecam.com
www.vanguardworld.com
triplescoopmusic.com
www.lensprotogo.com