It may have taken much longer than originally foreseen, but Sony finally announced the highly anticipated addition to its CineAlta series — The Venice.
The value of video production in today’s fast-paced environment should not be understated. In fact, many would argue that anyone hoping to make it as a photographer in today’s world better know how to shoot video in addition.
A great way to hone your videography skills is to get frustrated while editing video. As you may know, there are plenty of ways to get frustrated while editing. For example, let’s say you want to include a particular clip in your sequence. When you try to use the shot you realize that the videographer didn’t hold the shot for long enough, and now the clip is too short to use. Or maybe you want to use a shot that was completely ruined because a bug landed on the lens. These frustrations make you think about the shooting process. Below are a few of my favorite editor-friendly tips to consider while shooting.
Shallow focus was the go-to for us all when we first got our DSLRs that could shoot video. It looked so beautiful, and to a certain degree, it even looked professional. For a while. It was overused, and at some point, if your video consisted of only shallow focus, it was the determining factor to show whether you were a pro DSLR filmmaker or an amateur. But, it certainly has it's place, and the Nerdwriter shares how and why “The Handmaid's Tale” used it in this video.
Color plays such an important role in photography and video. It sets the mood, creates the atmosphere, and leaves the viewer with an emotional impression of what they experienced. "Game of Thrones" is most likely one of the most watched series of the past few years. It has dragons, medieval-style characters, a wall, wars, and superb actions scenes and special effects. Vox analyzed every season by playing each episode back and taking a screenshot every 10 seconds.
While the technology we use every day swiftly marches towards the pursuit of perfection, cinematographers everywhere have found a friend in lenses with character. Few looks allow cinematographers to express that pursuit of unique character more than anamorphic lenses. With the array of accessible anamorphic lenses growing and no comprehensive comparisons, renting a lens was often based on budget, and not on personality — that is until ShareGrid released their Ultimate Anamorphic Lens Test.
If you ever feel like you're stuck in a creative rut, or having a hard time progressing in your field, know that you're not alone. Any professional photographer will tell you about all of the failures and challenges they had to overcome in order to reach new heights. This video shares a brief look at some of the struggles faced by seven leading photographers, as a trailer for a new season of podcasts from PRO EDU.
Sporting the D5's 153-point autofocus system and metering sensor allows the D850 to take full advantage of the sensor inside it to produce stunning results. However, Nikon also added a number of new software-based features to really take advantage of this system. Below you can watch a series of videos that show these various features, from Focus Stacking and Focus Peaking to focusing at -4 EV. Also, get a peak through the viewfinder to see the electronic vibration reduction, and more.
The "Orange and Teal" look is immensely popular for videos of all shapes and sizes, from YouTube travel videos to Hollywood blockbusters. It not only adds depth and color contrast to a shot but also gives footage a pleasing, warm golden hour look and feel. In this video, PremiereGal demonstrates how you can easily add this color grade to your video in Adobe Premiere Pro without plugins or look up tables (LUTs).
The Sony a9 is a pretty exciting camera, as it's the first mirrorless camera to take square aim at the two highest-level DSLRs, the Canon 1D X Mark II and the Nikon D5. It's made waves for many features, not the least of which is its insane continuous shooting rate of 20 fps. This video highlights just how fast that is using a clever method.
In my old hometown of Houston, Texas, residents and officials are assessing the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Harvey which has left entire highways underwater, small towns decimated, and approximately 30,000 people evacuated. When a tragedy like this happens in our own backyard, we have a plethora of photographers to thank for capturing the aftermath. Erin Trieb is a Texas native who lives in Turkey but happened to be visiting family in Houston when Hurricane Harvey hit. Trieb has a history of documenting trauma left by war and conflict in the Middle East due to her role as a conflict photographer for National Geographic.
So you bought a gimbal! Great! But now you're wondering why your gear is still coming out slightly shaky and why the gimbal isn't doing as promised and creating a buttery-smooth video for you like magic! Odds are you're not quite using it right. But thanks to Christian Santiago, we can get a great virtual lesson on what you should be doing to shoot like the pros.
While Taylor Swift’s gorgeous looking revenge-fest music video to “Look What You Made Me Do” continues to break streaming records across the Internet, I’d like to shine a light on some of the lesser-known music videos that have stood out over the last few months that don’t demand the eye watering budget of a Swifty vid.
Nikon Ambassador Dixie Dixon got the chance to shoot with a pre-production D850 for a few days. She used a few fashion shoots to break in the D850 and shared some of those images with us here, explaining her experience "shooting in beast mode," as she called it in a recent live stream with B&H.
Sony is the most exciting camera brand right now. There I said it. They just keep bouncing from field to field making huge leaps and bounds in technology and the latest example of that is the entirely new, exciting Sony RX0—Sony’s first foray into the action sports world. But it's not exciting for the reasons that you might imagine.
Camera bodies and lenses are factory calibrated by default, but sometimes they require further adjustments to achieve better results when focusing. With the Nikon's AF fine tune feature on supported models, you can manually make precise adjustments to fix any focusing problems.
Panasonic just published the full release notes of the promised free firmware update for the GH5. Upon release earlier in the year, early adopters of the camera have been blown away with its performance, yet have come across some several teething issues that have been fed back to Panasonic. This release aims to correct some of these issues while also introducing improved All-I modes for higher bit-rate video recording.
When it comes to homes and designs like this, they need to be shown in a way that makes them unique. Emile Rafael from Nowness is by far one of the best at showing these homes and giving us a brief overview of why they are designed in such a way. Over the past year or so, I have shot for several real estate agents, seen many homes, and have learned to appreciate different things about each and every one.
EISA recently named the Sigma 135mm f/1.8 Art as the best DSLR lens for 2017-2018, and based on my experience with this lens, I have to agree. It is a fantastic lens and performs at a very high level, with incredible detail rendering capabilities and beautiful bokeh. For the longest time, the 135mm focal length had a little bit of a gap that really needed to be filled. Canon has their version, which although is a great performer, it just can't match the likes of the Zeiss 135mm f/2. However, due to having autofocus, many tend to choose the Canon version over the Zeiss. With the release of the Sigma version, it would seem that one may no longer need to compromise.
You might be tired of hearing about the eclipse, but this video explores what took place moments before, and during the eclipse for Ted Hesser and Andrew Studer as they planned a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
I'm sure by now everyone reading this is familiar with the work of photographer and interviewer Brandon Stanton and his long-running project Humans of New York. His crisp, shallow depth of field portraits and poignant interviews have gained international attention since the project's start in 2010. For the last four years, Stanton has quietly been filming his interviews, saving the footage for "something special." Now, that special something has arrived, in the form of a video series which will premiere next week on Facebook's Watch platform.
One of my biggest pet peeves is working with wedding videographers that treat their craft like it’s photography. In doing that, a lot of talented people sell their art form, and the art form of their peers, short. So what can you do to focus your videography and cinematography skills and make your wedding videos more refined? Think like a filmmaker.
Even in today’s world where all the information you’ve ever wanted is in the palm of our hand, we still get caught up in the latest and greatest tech and forget about what most important — the story. We all go through stages where it’s easier to make the excuse that you’ll start putting out better work once you buy a specific piece of gear or you’ll start practicing your video work once you get that gimbal you’ve been safe keeping in your online shopping cart. We just need to spend more hours behind the camera constantly shooting than daydreaming about the gear that we’ll have soon.
Are you considering taking some fashion video to complement your photos? Here are some great tips by Kazu Okuda, a filmmaker who has produced videos for Nike, Vogue, and the MOMA. In the video, he shares how he lights, what the differences are between lighting a feature film and a fashion orientated video, and how to achieve it.
Perhaps one of the most fundamental skills a filmmaker needs to have down pat is the ability to focus well. This gets all the trickier when you or the subject are moving. This helpful video will show you four ways to keep your subject in focus and walk you through various scenarios to show you which method works best in each situation.
You don't have a dolly, a steadicam stabilization system, or a gimbal, but maybe you have a tripod and a camera. It's more than enough, really, but you need a story. That's what this short film, "Incident by a Bank," is all about. The story has been carefully orchestrated and recorded as a single 12-minute long take from a camera on a tripod.
While photography and videography are different, they share many common aspects. Starting with one, and then also learning the other is an excellent idea to improve your craft and potentially open doors for more jobs by becoming more versatile. In a recent video Matti Haapoja released on TravelFeels, he explains to us why he believes shooting stills is crucial for videographers.
After the release of the new DJI Spark and its ability to fly without a remote, it is believed that DJI has the technology for anybody to fly. Steve Kampff and I decided to put this concept to the test comparing DJI's Intelligent Flight Modes to the Manual Capabilities of the user. In this video, we see that flying can be pretty challenging, but DJI definitely steps up to the plate allowing users to achieve more complex shots with little to no skill or experience.
Dynamic range tends to be an important feature for any camera and something many photographers either boast or complain about. Canon cameras aren't really known for their dynamic range performance, but in this "two-minute video," Peter McKinnon explains how you can use the built in Canon picture profiles, to improve performance for video.
DaVinci Resolve is a fantastic tool and has everything most videographers need to create perfect looking videos. However, the playback can be a bit slow and thus make the whole workflow a pain. But there is a one-click solution that will make your life much better. When I found out about it, my editing process became much faster.
If you’re making a film, obviously the focus needs to be on the story. It seems that’s become the popular counter to a lot of debates about the fine-tuning of an image. While Roger Deakin’s mentality of “the type of camera doesn’t matter” can hold true on most levels, if we’re going to take ourselves seriously as creatives we need to be actively making decisions about how and why we create. Why do you choose this over that? And how does it affect story? One of the most important decisions you make as a director of photography or cinematographer is about lenses.
London-based Director Oscar Hudson recently released a mind-boggling music video for Bonobo’s “No Reason,” and it's incredible. The music video, which is an homage to Hikikomori, a growing problem in Japan of adolescents and adults who withdraw from society and become increasingly isolated, was filmed using one continuous shot and only in-camera effects and no CGI.
Live streaming on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook is nothing new in the age of social media. It’s a fantastic tool for marketing or just showing how much fun you’re having on a fun new adventure. What if you were able to completely immerse your viewers in the environment you're streaming? InstaAir 360 is one such a camera and I was given the opportunity to work with it.
In a world full of copycats and sequelitis, it isn’t always easy to be inspired. But every once in a while, mixed in among the sea of sameness, you will discover a true original. I am not the only person to be fascinated by the work of Russian Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. His brief but spectacular canon of films, including the likes of “Ivan’s Childhood” (1962), “Andrei Rublev” (1966), “Solaris” (1972), “The Mirror” (1975) and “Stalker” (1979), stands among the most innovative cinematic careers in world history.
Here we have food tutorial videos inspired by Wes Anderson of "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Quentin Tarantino of "Kill Bill", Alfonso Cuarón of "Children of Men" and "Gravity", and Michael Bay who gave us "Transformers" and "Armageddon". Take yourself out of your regular industry and client mindset and envision yourself in another niche, shooting something you wouldn't normally do. How would you make a food tutorial? How can you use your influences and own unique style to make a video about something different to your usual niche?
Have you ever wanted to try your hand at dramatic macro shots of insects, but don’t have a studio setup or - let’s face it - the desire to cart strange insects back from your outdoor excursions? Entomologist Phil Torres has a neat solution. In this video, he takes us through his simple and elegant setup for shooting studio-quality macro photographs in the field.
When making films, we experiment with different camera setups, locations, times, and various equipment to try to nail that scene exactly how we see it in our head. Lately though I have been experimenting a ton with movement. It really immerses you into a location and gives you the feeling of being there yourself. It also is great way to piece a story together seamlessly. Now when I saw one of my favorite filmmakers make a video this specific subject I knew I had to share it.
Smartphone video is seemingly getting better by the minute. While they may still have a little way to go to match a $50,000 RED Weapon (though it's closer than you think), smartphones can be utilized to create videos of astonishing quality given the obvious limitations (small sensor, fixed focal length lens, noise issues created by limited ISO capability). In his latest video, popular YouTube photography personality Kai Wong discusses various tips to get the most out of your smartphone videography.
Ring lights used to just be a fun type of portrait lighting style, but now are becoming more and more popular for YouTubers and vloggers who need a soft, even light on their face for a camera that sits close to them. Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter is a self-proclaimed do-it-yourself enthusiast, and made this tutorial on how to make a light that is similar to a ring light, but creates a triangle shape instead of a circle.
Recording in 4K is the rage these days. However, most of us and most of our clients will not be using a TV or monitor capable of displaying 4K resolution, so why bother? Peter McKinnon explains how you can use the large video size creatively and gives some tips, like how 4K footage down-sampled to 1080p looks much better that shooting 1080p.
Most of the successful photographers and videographers that I know are effective at constructing a plan and making it a reality. And for the most part, this works, and when it doesn’t they usually have a backup plan. This is the base expectation for most people that have actually put time into developing their career. If you've worked long enough, you know that the odds are pretty great that things won’t go exactly as planned, so you prepare for that. But what I find is overlooked so often is not necessarily the forethought to make a Plan B but the forethought to consider how you will handle yourself when things inevitably go wrong.
Long takes in films are always impressive because they show a continuous performance of the actors within the scene without any cut. This requires very focused work both from the actors and the people behind the camera. I say "people" because it's not only the camera operator, as you can see in this behind the scenes from the movie "Atonement." It shows how they achieved a spectacular five minute long take that involved hundreds of people, horses (even dead ones), and an abundance of historical props. I thought it was all shot by a steadicam operator walking with the actors but I was surprised that it wasn't that easy.
In the quest to achieve smooth panning shots for cinematographers everywhere, there are several different methods and tools to use. Usually, if you want to do a targeted curved panning shot around your subject, you would have to set up a track and dolly system. With the advancement in drones, you can now use those for outdoor shots, but what if you wanted something that didn’t require as much space and work indoors?
A Sumatran tiger at a United Kingdom zoo strolled up to a Nikon KeyMission 360 camera, swatted it down from its perch on the fence, and chewed it up a bit. Needless to say, the KeyMission survived and safely protected the memory card with the footage in the process.
In preparing to shoot a travel video when I travel to Vietnam in October, I came across this great video by travel videographer Brandon Li. In this video, Li gives some great tips on how to plan your video practically.
Adam Hamwey has all the skills a videographer ought to living and working in New York City. However he doesn’t work for a production house, or in a marketing department — he follows somebody around all day and vlogs for them. That’s right, he’s the personal camera crew for one John Henry, a young entrepreneur based out of NYC.
If you've ever been swiping through Instagram and noticed that certain black and white images had a particularly dramatic, vintage, or even sharp look to it, chances are there was a bit more going on than simply selecting a basic filter. In this in-depth video walkthrough, Sean Tucker shows several techniques he uses to really pull the most out of Instagram images in black and white.
When I first started in filmmaking, I didn't want anyone in the world to know how I made my first video because I knew filmmakers usually have expensive tools and expensive software. At that time I didn't have either but I made that video anyway. Today I'm going to share the details with you.
It’s always good to know several different editing techniques to add visual effects to your project, as you will never know when you'll need them. Adding visual effects to your videos can make your amateurish video look more professional, just as long as you don’t go overboard with them. One effect you may have seen before is the glitch effect, in which you purposely cause your frames to mess up to give the look of a technical issue in the film.
