Leaving Milwaukee

You might ask why my blog posts are always “leaving…” and never “arriving in…”  Well, I just never find the time to post anything on my way to a shoot because I am always worrying about the production schedule and thinking about what I need to get to make the field production a success.  However, when everything is wrapped, then I can relax in the airport on my way out, download some photos and post to the blog.  These photos were taken by Stephen Garrett who was working with me on our latest iteration of the Ford Foundation Visionaries Series for All Rise Films.  This episode features Ellen Bravo who is a feminist activist who focuses on advocating for paid sick days both in Wisconsin and across the country.  It was a treat to be part of the activists community for a couple of days and has motivate me to learn more about what activist organizations are doing in North Carolina.

Time for a timelapse

On the last evening of the produciton we took some time lapses of the city and got some beautiful shots of a front moving out.  Ann, my wife, is in the background trying to figure out where we should have dinner!

A storm front moves out

Leaving S.E. Asia

Sun setting of Hailong bay

Over the past two weeks I have had an incredible trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. Both countries offered great hospitality, wonderful landscapes and fantastic food! I was in the region shooting footage for a series of web videos about the international development work of FHI360. We documented four different development projects, including an HIV/AIDS prevention program with entertainment workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia a malaria prevention project in rural Cambodia, a methadone project in Hai Phong, Vietnam and a maternal and child nutrition project in Nha Trang, Vietnam. The trip gave me the opportunity to visit may different part s of the region and to explore the culture, people and geography from different perspectives.

Cambodia is mainly Khmer culture and the people look very similar to the Malagasy people. The culture is heavily influenced by Buddhism and you see temples in every city. We did not have a chance to see the famous Angkor Wat, however we did visit Phnom Banan a temple from the 11th century and then visit caves at the base of the temple.

Colby in Hailong Bay

In Vietnam communism and the planned economy dominates many features of the country. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of free market economic activity, but the party line dominated many of our approaches to filming and we had to get permissions to film all of the footage we needed to get. We also found it difficult to navigate the service industry, because customer service was not at the top of the priority list. For example. We decided to take a half day to travel to Hailong Bay which is one of the “New 7 Natural Wonders of the World.” It was a very rainy day, but fortunately when we arrived the weather cleared up and the task before us was to try and figure out how to get on a boat to go out into the bay. We were assaulted by a dozen representatives of boat captains who named the exorbitant price of $100 per head to rent a private boat. Most people go on a boat with a large group, but those happen in the morning or early afternoon. We were there at 3 pm and did not have the luxury of waiting until the next day, because we had to get back to Hanoi that night.

Anyway, to make a long story short we ended up booking the boat for $60 a head which was pretty steep, but we had our backs up against the wall and we were anxious to see this 7th wonder! We got on the boat and were floated over to the first island with a cave on it (about 20 minutes on the boat), then we go off ad went inside a very impressive cave with very tacky colored lights illuminating the massive stalagmites. After a quick trip through the caves we got back on the boat and started motoring through a passage in Hailong bay. “This is it” Matt and I we thinking to ourselves, this is why we paid the big bucks to rent a private boat…but no sooner were we forgetting e steep price and enjoying ourselves than we had the captain barking at us to jump off the boat and swim…but we didn’t want to swim, so next thing we know, the boat is turning around and heading back to the main land…”wait a second…we’ve been out like an hour!” well, seem like the captain was eager to get home for his afternoon tea, so he ignored our pleas to watch the sunset over the islands and took us right back to the dock. What a terrible experience! I felt like I had just been levied a village tax after paying $10 for a cold coke.

Fortunately, just as we were getting a very bag taste for Viet Nam and longing for the friendly customer service in Cambodia, we landed in Nha Trang. This southern beach resort town had extremely friendly people, a ton of exciting places to visit and things to do and great food. We also had a day off in Nha Trang and spent the first day cursing all over town on our rented scooters. We went to the beach, to the mud bath and to the finest seafood restaurants in town! The next day we were back to work filming activities from the Alive and Thrive project in Vietnam, and after a quick two days of work we were back on the plane to the US.

Overall the trip went extremely well and I was very happy with the footage and interviews we shot. Now we start post production and hope to have the first videos completed by the end of October.

Photos from Yellowstone

Here are four photos from my recent trip to Yellowstone.  I had a great time learning how to fly fish with my father-in-law, Bob Rundquist.  He has been fishing in Yellowstone every summer for 25 years, so he knows all of the best fishing spots.  His lessons paid off and during the course of the week I caught 7 fish, including 5 cut-throats that were 14″-16″ and two rainbow trout, one of which was 13″.  I will post the photos of my first catch once I get them from Bob’s camera.

FS 100 test in NYC

Above is some footage I shot handheld in NYC.  I built a rig for under $20 that I used to shoot this test footage with a 35 mm Nikkor F1.4.  I was happy with how steady the image is, however all of the images are taken while I was standing still.  In the middle of the assembly there is some footage shot at 60 fps.  The S&Q button is on the outside of the camera and very easy to use.  I love using this function for portraits and beauty shots.  It is also advantageous because it smooths out the shake in handheld shots and it requires more light, so you can lower the shutter speed.

The last shot also demonstrates handheld while walking, which is quite shaky!

FS100 – 3 weeks in

Filming a weaver in Ayacucho

I have had the Sony FS100 for three weeks now and have used it on three interview shoots and about 10 minutes of b-roll.  Here are are few thoughts about the camera based on that experience:

1. The camera is perfect for interviews – For years I have struggled to get shallow depth of field on my interviews.  In the early years Hasina, Rado and I used to move the camera back from the subject, open the aperture as wide as possible and zoom into the subject to get the background out of focus.  Of course if you ended up in a small room or any other place with limited space your options were limited.  When the Letus extreme came out I bought one for my HVX200 and eventually used with with the Sony EX1.  I bought the fast and sharp Zeiss ZF 50mm and 85mm lenses to use with the Letus.  This worked great, however, the Letus was yet another thing to carry around and it took about 10-15 minutes to set up.  In addition, there was about 2 stops of light lost to the devise and if you weren’t careful you would get an ugly smear across your frame from the ground glass.  Despite these limitation, I have shot close to 100 interviews with the Letus and it has served me extremely well.

Next came the 5D, which I have used on a couple of interviews, but I was always a bit put off by the fact that I had to do double system sound, so I actually stuck with my Letus and the EX1 for many interviews even after I had bought the 5D.  In addition to the double system sound I did not like the compromise between either choosing and image with artificial sharpening or soft edges on the 5D.

The FS100 solves the problems associated with both the Letus and the 5D.  The lens is mounted directly onto the camera body, so there isn’t any light loss or ground glass to deal with.  Using my Zeiss lenses, the images have a shallow depth of field, but what is in focus is super sharp without too much artificial sharpening (I know ever digital image is sharpened to a point by the camera, but the FS100 has been well calibrated).  The camera also features two XLR inputs, so I don’t have to deal with double system sound.

So, overall I have been extremely happy with the FS100 as an interview camera.

2. To all you digital filmmakers out there…better get to know what a matte box does and a study your filters – The FS100 does not have any built in ND filters, so the only way you can use it outside in bright daylight is to close the aperture beyond F8 and crank up the shutter speed.  Both of these things can damage you image quality or create an unintended look, so the preferred solution would be to put a matte box in front of your lens with some 4″x4″ filter  of choice.  ND6, ND9, polarizer, ND grad…there are a number of filters that would work really well with the camera. I am just beginning to process of exploring the use of matte boxes with the camera (or any camera), so I ill keep you posted as I learn more.

It is clear however, that adding a matte box will weight the camera down and make it more difficult to shoot handheld.  Again, I will be testing out different handheld setups and discuss my thought in the blog.

3. It is possible to shoot handheld – The large sensor of the 5D is a jello magnet and it is almost impossible to use an un-stabilized lens on the 5D without getting a wobble in your frame.  When I first put my 50 mm Zeiss on the FS100 and tried to shoot handheld the image was definitely not stable enough to include in a video I was shooting for a client.  However, after some practice bracing the camera against my body I was able to get images that were fairly stable (see video).  I have recently purchased a Nikkor 35mm F2.0 to use on the camera and the wider angle significantly reduces the amount of jitter in the frame.  I am also in the process of building a DIY rig to use with the camera which I will demonstrate in a later post.

Final verdict – It is possible with the FS100 with manual lenses, but you have to be steady and use a support system (Even though it is more forgiving than the 5D).  For tracking shots you need to use a stabilizer like the Glidecam or a Steadicam rig.

4. Final thoughts – There are a few other thoughts I wanted to add that don’t fit in any particular category:

* The camera’s peaking feature is exactly what we all wish we could port from the EX1 to the 5D.  It is so easy to use!

* The peaking function is visible in the expanded focus mode, so you can benefit from peaking when checking your critical focus.

* The expanded focus mode doesn’t time out. This is nice because you can take your time checking focus.

* The FS100 files expand in size when they are converted by FCP7 using the log and transfer function.  I just noticed this and have not tested out what affects the size of the file, but they definitely become substantially larger (more on this in a later post).

Leaving Peru

No polarizer, no color correction

Tonight Lucas and I are leaving Peru after a fantastic trip.  I have had the privilege of shooting b-roll in some of the most beautiful places on earth and this definitely ranks in the top 5.  The photo above was taken by Lucas Gath and has NOT been color corrected.  The air in Ayacucho Peru is so clean and thin that the sky is a saturated blue that contrasts beautifully with the golden wheat and oat fields that are ready for harvest.  We were extremely lucky because we had our own vehicle and were able to stop whenever we needed to along the 5 hour drive to grab gorgeous shots like the one above.

Today I have been working through all of the footage we shot with Tarcila Rivera Zea, who is an amazing person doing amazing work.  If you want to practice your Spanish then look them up at: http://www.chirapaq.org.pe/es/.  If you want to read a bit about them in English visit this site: http://www.thp.org/learn_more/news/latest_news/chirapaq_celebrates_25_years

Tarcila's son Inti

Yesterday we traveled with Tarcila and the CHIRAPAQ team to the small community that she is from called Pujas.  It is located in an exquisite valley and overlooks majestic mountains.  Tarcila was so happy to be back to and bring so many visitor to her home town.  We traveled with two vans full of youth from Ayacucho who had participated in CHIRAPAQ activities as young leaders of the Qetchua community.

It is hard to leave the 60 degree weather of Ayacucho for the 100 degree heat of North Carolina, but post production needs to start so I don’t have the luxary of staying longer.  Hopefully I will be back sometime soon.

The view from Pujas

Note: Lucas took all of the photos featured in the Peru blog and did a fantastic job capturing my best side and the best side of the mountains as well!

Sony FS100 in Peru

You need to stabilize the camera with anything you can find

Well I promised to put down some of my thoughts about the Sony FS100 and the process of incorporating it into my workflow and here it goes…

I love this camera even though at present it is filling a small niche within my field production workflow.  While in Peru i have shot about 12 hours of footage with the Sony EX1 and about 100 minutes with the FS100 (90 minutes of which were an interview!)  I didn’t shoot more with the FS100 for a couple of reasons…

1. I love shooting with the EX1.  The camera is so easy to run and gun with because it is so versatile.  After using the 5D and the FS100 I have gained new appreciation for the form factor and function of the EX1, which in my mind make it hands down the best camera for vérité documentary filming.  Many of you know that I do not shoot purely vérité doc footage, but rather a blend of vérité and more structured b-roll, therefore the FS100 will play an increasingly large role in my workflow, however I have to address the other reasons I shot limited b-roll with the camera on this trip, including…

2. You really need ND filters. I was shooting with my Zeiss primes, which I have always used with my Letus when shooting interviews with my light kit… therefore, I never had to battle sunlight and never invested in either ND filters or polarizers for the Zeiss lenses.  I didn’t purchase any before this trip and that forced me to crank the shutter speed whenever I wanted to use the FS100 in full daylight.  I did also stop down on the lens, but even at F8 in sunlight I needed to crank the shutter up to 1/1000 or even 1/2000.  One nifty way to cut down on light was to overcrank the frame rate.  The FS100 can shoot up to 60 fps at full 1080p and that eats up more light, so I shot a number of portraits at 60fps which looked great and also solved my second major limitation…

The eyepiece works really well when shooting in sunlight

3. You still need a shoulder mount or some other device to stabilize the camera body when equipped with manual without internal stabilization.  The hand grip and swivel LCD make it much easier to hand hold the FS100 (in comparison with the 5D), however you still get jitter in the frame even if it is tucked up against your chest.  I over-cranked my portraits, which helped to smooth out many of those jitters, but when shooting b-roll run and gun, the EX1 was still and will probably continue to be my camera of choice.

So, after a few days of testing out the FS100, I would probably want to add the following items to my kit:

- Matte box with a set of filters including a polarizer, graduated ND and other full ND filters

- A shoulder mount or other stabilizing device

- A wide angle lens (my widest is a 50mm still camera lens, which is much to tight with the crop factor)

I am sure that more things will be added to this list.

Tomorrow I will write a bit more about the advantages of using the FS100 and compared my work flow with the FS100 compared to the 5D.

Colby in Peru

Lucas Gath on the runway in Ayacucho

Lucas Gath and I landed in Peru on Monday night at 11 pm and have been shooting or traveling non-stop since our arrival.  Tonight we finally get a break, so I am updating the blog with a few short stories and a few comments about the performance of the Sony FS100 in the field.

First and foremost, I forgot how gorgeous Peru is.  Giovanni Autran and I were here in 2007 to shoot a short film for the Life Out of Balance series and I remember being blown away by the scenery, but those memories have slowly faded over the years and I was not expecting to be blown away by the people and the landscapes like I have been on this trip.  The people we have met and worked with during this trip have been amazing.  We have been shooting a short documentary about Tarcila Rivera Zea, the founder and manager of a Peruvian NGO called CHIRAPAQ.  During our five days in Peru we have spent 2 days in Lima (which were mostly spent in conference rooms) and then 3 days in Ayacucho and the surrounding villages.  Ayacucho is a beautiful city that is 8 hours by road or 1 hour by air from Lima.  We chose to fly because we had such limited time and it was well worth it, because as soon as the plane landed at 6:30 am (ouch, the thought of waking up at 3:30 to get to the airport by 4:00 still makes me wince) the sun had just risen over the mountains and we were able to start shooting b-roll of daily life in Ayacucho on our way to the hotel!

El plato tipico en Ayacucho - Chupi!

Later that day I got a taste of the local cuisine and ate Chupi, which is a field rodent (yes, a large rat).  It was…interesting…and I will probably be ordering chicken, beef, pork, fish or Alpaca next time!  Anyway, the Chupi got me through the day and I was able to shoot a bit of footage with the FS100, which I will discuss in my next post.

Back online thanks to the FS100

The last time I wrote a blog entry the Letus lens adapter was the new “it” product and the Sony EX1 was my camera of choice.  Today, I have decided to get the blog going again because I just bought the Sony FS100 and after my first interview shoot this past Friday will be taking it with me on a trip to Peru to film a short documentary for the Ford Foundation.  I have a posted a couple of pictures from my interview shoot on Friday showing the FS100 in action.  After checking out the footage this afternoon I can say without hesitation that I am VERY impressed and that the camera has already made it into my regular rotation.

I bought the FS100 “body only kit” from B&H on Tuesday evening because I have been following the news about the camera ever since some of the initial prototype images were made public last fall.  I was very intrigued by the Sony F3, but it is beyond my price range and I have always loved working with Sony since Jack Gordon and I shot our first client video on the VX2000.  On June 6th Philip Bloom announced that the FS100 was shipping, so I was checking B&H every couple of days and when I checked on Tuesday, June 14th the FS100 “body only” was in stock.  I didn’t really want to kit lens anyway, so after spending about 7 minutes thinking about it I ordered the camera and of course paid for overnight deliver (which meant it would arrive Thursday morning since I have ordered after 5:30 pm on Tuesday.

I will write  much more about the strengths and weaknesses as I observe them while we are shooting in Peru, however right off the bat I will mention a few that I have noticed in the two days that I have been working with the camera since it arrived.

Strengths of FS100:

- Interchangeable lenses – Those manual Zeiss primes that I bought for my Letus are back in the rotation.  I used the 50mm F1.4 on the interview and is was super sharp. I was able to keep the f-stop at F4  so that my subject’s entire face was in focus (no ears or nose out of focus).  The Letus really ate up a lot of light, so I found myself opening up to F2, F1.8 sometimes even F1.4  which reduced the depth of field and diminished the sharpness of the image.

- XLR cables – The 5D never really made it into my starting line-up as an interview camera mainly because I didn’t want to mess with an external audio recorder.  The FS100 has two xlr inputs and I was able to hook in my sonotrim and shotgun mic just like I always do with the EX1.

- Peaking – I think this is pretty self explanatory if you have spent even 30 seconds trying to judge critical focus on a 5D

- Form factor – The body looks crazy, but crazy is good!  The body can be stripped down like you see in the photos or you can kit it out with a shotgun mic mount, a hand grip, a viewfinder and much more.

Weaknesses:

- The kit lens – I didn’t even buy the kit lens, so I can’t really comment on it, but it is a variable aperture lens that is an F4 at best.  I really hope that Sony comes out with a good stabilized lens for the FS100 so that the camera can be used to run and gun.

- Shake – Since my primes are not stabilized I can’t really shoot handheld without having the image shake.  That being said there is much less shake on the FS100 as on the 5D, but this is mainly because the sensor is much smaller.

- No ND filters -  I guess I need to start using a matte box, but it would be great to have built in ND filters.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I wanted to share some initial impressions.  I will follow up in future posts with a few more discussions about my comparison between the EX1, 5D and FS100.

Please feel free to comment if you have any questions about the camera.

Leaving Mali

Photographer Trevor Snapp en route to Gao, Mali

I am leaving Mali after a week of filming for a public health organization called IntraHealth. We traveled to Gao, which is 15 hrs from the capital of Mali, Bamako. The temperature regularly broke 110 degrees and when the wind blew it felt like we were in a convection oven. Fortunately our vehicle had a dual climate air conditioning system so we were comfortable during the long ride.

Along the way we saw some amazing countryside, including the canyon land of Dogon Country, which is about halfway from Bamako to Gao. In the attached photo, Trevor Snapp, our photographer on the trip is getting ready to take some shots of the cliffs.

I was very happy with the footage I shot even tough the trip was very rushed. We focused our filming on a project called the “Capacity Project,” which focused on improving training for nurses in rural areas.

The Malian people we worked with during the trip were extremely gracious and I am really looking forward to coming back sometime soon.