Charlotte Gets Secrets of Video Production for Photographers

Secrets of Video Production for Photographers is coming to Charlotte on June 18 and 19. I’m looking forward to my first visit to what promises to be a charming city.

Friday night is going to be the APA evening presentation from 6:00pm to 9:00pm at Paradox Film & digital where I give a basic outline of the process of video production. I do this keeping in mind video is an additional component to a still production. I will discuss the techniques and tools needed to do video production. See http://charlotte.apanational.com for more details.

Saturday’s workshop is always fun and informative as I have more time to really get into video production. In the morning, we look at the basics from a different point of view and then build on those basics including when to call in a post house like Rawworks to help. In the early afternoon we do some lighting and camera techniques followed by a short commercial shoot with the latest equipment from Manfrotto, Panasonic, Ziess, Marshall Electronics, Redrock Micro, Beachtek, Sennhieser, K-Tek, Hoodman, and LaCie. I then take that video into Final Cut Studio, edit it and output it for various distribution methods. The day gives anyone interested in video production a good outline to follow in video productions. See www.tiny.cc/june18 for more details.

Video production is changing by the day and can be confusing to photographers just getting into motion. Having a working understanding of the overall picture, helps give the photographer getting into video production an understanding of how to judge what equipment and software to use.

Christopher Lozano www.tlsHollywood.com did this time lapse click (MOVIE) of the LA evening presentation.

Good HDSLR Sound

Sound recording remains the Achilles’ heel of Canon’s HDSLRs.  Although the recent 5D Mark II firmware update lets you manually control audio levels, there still are issues.  The 5d connector is a mini stereo plug, so you have use an adapter to use most professional quality microphones, which use XLR connectors.  Beachtek has a handy solution in the DXA adapters which give you 2 balanced XLR inputs, 1 auxiliary mini-jack input and dual MIC/Line level switches, all packaged in a metal case.  An exception to the XLR connector issue is a wireless system like Sennheiser’s very nice EW G3 100 wireless system that gives you a choice of connecting to the camera via mini plug or XLR adapter.

Sennheiser also has the on-camera mounting MKE400 small shotgun mic which is great for reportage and much better than the onboard mic but not very good for most productions.  On camera is usually not the best position for a microphone as placement is for best picture not best sound.  Of course, there are pigtail adapters from mini plug to XLR but that puts a lot of strain on the mini connector, so try and figure out some method of strain relief.

Beachtek-DXASLR

The 7d is still completely automatic gain controlled, or should I say out of control, audio with no explanation why Canon is able to do a firmware update for the 5D but not the 7D.  Of course, the 7d has the nice selection of video formats, which the 5D does not.  The 7D chip size is close to feature 35mm film size which gives both a similar DOF look, which is another plus. Beachtek comes to the rescue with two DXA adapters that both have agc disablers.  By disabling the agc and manually controlling the audio levels, you will not have the wild swing in your audio recording that often causes distortions and problems in editing your sound.

I will give each of the Beachtek adapters their due in up-coming entries.  Until then, remember sound is often considered 50% of the production until it’s bad sound and then it’s 80%.