Well isn’t this nice. Thank you Portabrace.

They really do make exceptionally high quality bags, and no, they didn’t pay me to say that. I searched for a long time to find a tripod bag that was light enough to sling over my shoulder on location, big enough to hold a light stand or two, and heavy-duty enough for checked luggage at the airport.

When I found the TLQB-39XT Quick Tripod Case, my search was over. It’s carried my Vinten and Miller tripods with me on every assignment for the past two years, and it’s proven it’s worth time and time again. A good tripod is the foundation of any cinematographer’s arsenal, and a good tripod deserves a good bag.

If you look closely in the photo you’ll notice that there’s actually two bags. The second one is my LPB-LED2 Carrying Case for Multiple Lite Panels 1X1 which I use to pack my LED panels with me on location. It’s small enough to take as carry-on during a flight, with plenty of room for everything you need: light stand, power cord, v-mount battery, etc.

Here’s a new piece I made for UW Medicine that helped this outstanding program raise $2 million at their fundraiser on Saturday night. Thanks to their efforts, the world is a little bit safer place for young athletes who play contact sports.

The A7rii is the first DSLR to firmly grip my imagination since the 5dmkii. I spent Labor Day weekend getting to know this beast a little better. And I have a few observations to share. I’ll avoid covering the same ground as others already have. Suffice it to say that this camera records 4K internally, has built-in image stabilization, super 35, full frame video, back-lit sensor with serious low light skills, etc. On paper, at least, it looks like a documentary filmmakers wet dream. So, is it?

Here’s a few things I would like to submit for your consideration.

1. This camera really does capture 14 stops of dynamic range. No, I didn’t do a lab test. I didn’t have to, because I’ve never seen footage like this before. This is potentially a beautiful thing. But…

2. Getting a great image off Slog-2 requires much patience. I spent the weekend playing with it in Resolve, and using a variety of Slog-2 LUTs. Grading Slog footage is far less intuitive than grading Canon C-log, in my experience. However, it’s also more rewarding. When you’re done, you have an image that a Cinema EOS like the C100 could only dream of  producing. But I’m not about to give up my C100 mkii just yet. More on why shortly.

3. It’s HARD to screw up your exposure. That is, you can overexpose by up to THREE STOPS and still not worry too much about clipping. If you underexpose, you’ll get a bunch of noise in the shadows, and have to de-noise in post. But you’ll still have a usable image. It’s a lot like shooting raw, in this way. Pretty amazing. NOTE: If you’re shooting slog2 (and you should be) you will want to generally overexpose everything by two stops, to avoid noise in the shadows.

4. The image stabilization is really good, but it’s not a silver bullet. I found that it was possible to handhold footage up to about 35mm, maybe 50mm (in full frame mode); beyond that, it’s Movi time. And forget trying to shoot handheld with Super 35 crop mode – the rolling shutter is just too noticeable. Still, it’s the first time I’ve been able to seriously consider using a DSLR to handhold anything other than hybrid stabilized lenses like my Canon 100mm 2.8 macro IS. So that’s really something.

Using the camera with a lens like the excellent Sony FE PZ 28-135mm f/4 G OSS Lens, which I tested it with, yields great results when shooting in full-frame mode.

5. Full-frame video look very, very good. While others have reported moire, and theoretically there should be some,  I didn’t observe it even in finely knit clothing like sweaters. So Sony seem to have really figured out a pixel-binning algorithm that works. Full frame video suffers much less from rolling shutter than it does in Super 35 mode (but Super 35 is much better in low light).

6. The batteries are pretty much useless. The tiny battery gave me under an hour of shooting time. But you can power it off a USB charger. So here we start down the path of building our rig…

7. No built-in NDs, of course. You absolutely have to use a matte box, and now we’re really getting rigged up. This is pretty much a deal-breaker for me, for documentary use. Thought: Wouldn’t it be interesting if Sony added built-in ND filters to video lenses like the FE PZ 28-135? Seriously, I want a heavy matte box on the front of my lenses like Rosie O’Donnell wants Trump to be the next president.

At the end of the day, this is an extremely well-speced hybrid camera – half stills, half video. I will definitely being using it for special situations, like when I need to have 4K, or when I want to get stabilization out of non-IS lenses. In fact, I have a shoot coming up in which I need to shoot handheld with a Lensbaby, and I think this camera will be perfect for that.

In order for this camera to displace the C100mkii as my documentary camera of choice, it would need a lot of ergonomic improvements like built-in NDs, longer lasting battery, and faster access to the menu items I need. My biggest daily battle is just getting the shot, so I need a camera that can support me 100 percent in that effort.

Rumor has it that Sony is going to make an announcement about a new video camera later this week. Things would be very interesting indeed if Sony were to transplant this camera’s heart-stopping, full-frame, 14-stop grabbing, lusciously backlit sensor into a real video camera body for, oh, about $5K. Here’s hoping!

Why is the C100mkii a ridiculously awesome camera? It’s not the fluid ergonomics, the built-in ND filters, or the camera’s snappy autofocus. Your audience can’t see how you got the footage; they just see that you did get the footage. And the footage is what’s epic. Canon’s color science is why we pay the medium bucks for the EOS Cinema series cameras. But to get the most from your footage requires a little work. By following these steps, you’ll get 12 beautiful stops of highlight-holding dynamic range, every time you press record. Here’s how.

Before shooting:

1. Set minimum ISO to 850. Unlike with a traditional DSLR, choosing a lower ISO will NOT result in a better image on this camera. Instead, it will rob you of dynamic range. So always always always set a minimum ISO of 850. In low light you can go higher – much higher, in fact, and get great results. But never go lower.

2. Shoot Canon Log (CP Cinema Locked). This is the only way to get the full 12 stops of dynamic range out of your camera. The footage will initially appear flat when you view it. But you have plenty of quick options for giving it snap, crackle and pop by applying LUTs. More about that momentarily.

3. Enable View Assist. The image on your LCD will appear flat, and to fix that and give you an approximation of the final image while shooting, you’ll need to turn on the view assist. It’s located in the LCD menu. TIP: I add this and several other settings to the custom menu, which makes finding them much quicker than hunting through the menus.

After shooting:

4. Use a LUT. A LUT (Look Up Table) is an automatic color correction designed specifically for your camera, which is applied to your footage in post. Which LUT to use? I recommend these free EOS Cinema LUTs from Able Cine. To apply them to your footage, you’ll need an inexpensive plugin like the $29 LUT Utility. These will work as a plugin to the NLE of your choice (i.e., Premiere, FCPX, etc).

5. Adjust LUT intensity to get desired look. Using LUT Utility, you can adjust the effect from zero to 100 percent. I often find that dialing in 60-80 percent of the effect is just about right.

Here’s an example, an interview shot in front of a window. The challenge is we’d like to make her skin look awesome, while at the same time retaining as much highlight information as possible in the background. So we shoot in CP Locked, and…

Above: CP Locked footage looks flat prior to grading.

LUT applied (no other color correction). As you can see above, this instantly does wonders for our footage. But it still needs a little work.

Getting the most from LUTS

To get the most dynamic range (that is, visible detail in your image from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights) choose the CxxxLog10toWideDR_Full option (the one applied above).

To get punchier results, and more life in the skin tones, try one of the other two (the ones beginning with ABNorm- and JR45-), continuing to choose the -WideDR_Full option for each.

ABNorm_CxxxLog10toWideDR_Full applied. Adding this LUT makes our image appear too crushed, in my opinion, and slightly over-saturated. There are two ways to correct that while retaining the punchier color of the effect. You can lighten the image (in this case, by pushing up the midtones) or you can reduce the LUT intensity.

Mid-tone brightness increased to compensate, above.

Finally, reducing the intensity of the ABNorm- or JR45- LUTs, which tend to overly saturate and crush the image, allow you to dial in just the right amount of correction.

The final results. Notice how lifelike the skin tones are, and how the important detail in the background is preserved. Besides applying the LUT, the only color correction I’ve applied to this frame is a slight boost in the midtones.

Conclusion: Using a LUT, we can very quickly get everything out of our c100 footage that the camera is capable of giving us. Vibrant skin tones, crisp blacks, and 12 stops of dynamic range that allows us to hold detail in brightly lit areas of our frame, such as the background used in this example.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather spend my time thinking about the content of my films than how to color grade them. Using a C100 and a LUT, you can have both.

I DP’d a short promo film for the 60 Second Film Festival recently, which involved quite a few drone shots. After nailing them all with my Phantom 2, I made a stupid mistake: I relaxed. With my eyes off the drone for a moment,  a huge douglas fir reached out and swallowed it. You gotta keep your eyes on those trees! A professional tree climber retrieved it a day later, but it’s gimbal was damaged. When I considered the cost of repairing it, vs. purchasing a new Phantom 3, I made the decision to upgrade.

After less than a week with my Phantom 3, (which I purchased from the fine pros at The Copter Shop in Woodinville) I can assure you that crashing  my Phantom 2 was the best thing that could have happened to my aerial cinematography. Here’s 5 reasons why.

1. The DJI Pilot app is ridiculously awesome. My head is still spinning with the mad power it puts at your fingertips: a map that shows you where the drone is and how it’s pointed, an HD monitor that gives you a beautiful real-time camera view, ability to override automatic exposures or temporarily lock them during a shot, ability to switch between stills and video, and so much more. With a finger swipe, you can hide the overlays and just see the gorgeous Lightbridge video stream. Going from Phantom 2 to this isn’t just an incremental upgrade – it’s an altogether different way of flying.

2. Full manual exposure controls. On the fly, using the Pilot app, you can assert full manual control over exposure. So, if you want to do a slow tilt up over dark green water to reveal a sun-drenched horizon, now you can do that without blowing out the horizon as it comes up. Try that on your GoPro!

3. Integrated 4k camera. The built-in camera is much easier to use than GoPro Hero. For starters, you don’t have to go through the tedious step of replacing camera batteries – ever – because the camera is powered directly from the flight battery. Next, replacing the microSD card doesn’t require doing surgery on the camera with tools – just insert it directly into the side of the craft. Also, the lens has threaded filters, which is going to make it super easy to mount ND filters as soon as they are on the market (the fine folks at Snake River Prototyping assure me they are hard at work on making compatible filters even as we speak).  Also, the camera doesn’t have that silly fisheye problem that all GoPros suffer from. Sold!

4. Lightbridge. You get crystal clear HD video transmission in real time, and it allows you to fly far, far away. Like a mile or more, and still see clearly. For me, this makes full FPV flying a real option for the first time. The video transmits through semi-permeable objects like trees, no problem, while my Phantom 2 would go to static the moment I went behind a tree.

5. Instant fine-tuning of stick sensitivity. When you’re doing aerial cinematography, you want very sluggish sticks at the beginning of the stick, but you want them to respond normally at the far end of the stick. That gives you a fighting chance when doing complicated moves like circling an object, or for a parallax shot. Or just for doing a slow, feathered start or stop to a move. On my Phantom 2, I tired all kinds of advanced calibration, and ultimately junked all of them because I couldn’t get it right. Part of the problem was that you had to connect to your computer to apply a calibration, then disconnect, test, and try again.

With the Phantom 3, you get the ability to set the response curve of the sticks (see graphic at right) without connecting to a computer. All the configuration options are a few swipes away in the DJI Pilot app.

After just one evening of test flying and stick calibrating, I was able to pull off a very difficult circling-while-climbing shot that I never would have attempted on my Phantom 2. And it feels like just the beginning of what’s possible with this craft.