When I started filmmaking with a DSLR about 7 years ago, I discovered that the most difficult thing to get right in post production was skin tones. No matter what I tried, they just didn’t look right. A lot of the time, I couldn’t even put my finger on why.

Then I discovered FilmConvert Pro. With my Canon DSLRs, all I had to do was drop FilmConvert on a clip, and something magical happened. The skin tones suddenly looked human and alive. That made such an impression on me that I used FilmConvert to grade my first feature-length documentary, which was shot on a pair of Canon 60Ds.

In the years since I’ve moved into shooting more and more commercial work on higher quality cameras. Along the way I taught myself how to use DaVinci Resolve and began relying on it to generate dailies. So when I decided to try FilmConvert again recently on a commercial project, I was surprised with a new discovery: the skin tones I was getting in Resolve didn’t look as good as the ones that FilmConvert could give me!

The good news, however, is that FilmConvert works inside Resolve, so I don’t have to give up the power and precision of Resolve. I can still create complex masks, track motion, etc., while using FilmConvert. I’ll explain how to do that below as I create a nursing recruitment video. But first, I should mention that it’s possible to use the standalone version of FilmConvert  if you don’t have Resolve, or any other editor, for that matter. But it has some limitations.

FilmConvert Standalone version

The first thing I noticed about the standalone version of FilmConvert is that It feels a little raw. Some of the basic Mac OS conventions don’t work. For example, in the Clip Browser, if you want to use the arrow key to advance to the next clip, you can’t.  So you are forced to use your mouse to select clips, which slows me down. It also takes more than two seconds after clicking on a clip for the thumbnail to appear, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you start scrolling through a list of a hundred clips. There’s also no way to play a clip in the browser – you just get a static thumbnail or list view.

These days I’m shooting a lot of my projects on a Sony FS5, so I was disappointed to discover that MXF files are not supported in the standalone version of FilmConvert. You can, however,  import an XML file from an application like Final Cut or an EDL from Resolve. But that adds another step to your workflow.

On the plus side, however, once you get your clips into the app, the Film Settings panel makes it very easy to preview clips and audition different settings. Hitting the space bar plays clips as expected, but JKL keys are not supported for shuttling through footage. Once you’ve found a look that works for your project, you can save it as a preset.

The app also provides a menu called Viewing Target, that allows you to change the gamma to match that used in the three most common finishing platforms – Premiere Pro, FCPX/Quicktime or FCP/Resolve. Very helpful.

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve and I have a love/hate relationship. I love the power that Resolve gives me to control color, but with great power comes great responsibility. I hate the amount of work it takes to tweak things before they look just right, especially with SLOG footage. Also, SLOG 2 footage requires slightly different tweaking than SLOG 3. But I’m never sure exactly which tweaks.

With FilmConvert’s OFX plugin version, you can get 90 percent of the way to your grade simply by dragging and dropping. It’s a real timesaver for me to load FilmConvert, which knows all about the differences between picture profiles, as my first step. From there, the remaining tweaks are usually simple.

Before we jump into Resolve and see how this works, I should mention that the footage for this project was shot on my Sony FS5 using SLOG-3/Cine overexposed one stop to kill noise. When I open Resolve and place the clips into a timeline, here’s what one of the ungraded SLOG clips looks like:

Uncorrected SLOG-3 clip looks very flat

Note that you can do everything I’m demonstrating here with the free version of Resolve.  Then, download the OFX version of FilmConvert Pro, and follow the directions to install it in Resolve. The first time I installed FilmConvert this way, I made the mistake of trying to apply it to my clips in the Edit tab, which contains a OpenFX tab under the Effects Library menu. Ignore that, and instead apply FilmConvert on Resolve’s Color page. Here are the steps.

1. Import your clips into Resolve and add into Media Pool.
2. Create a new timeline with your clips.
3. Open the Color tab. For my workflow, I want to convert all the clips simultaneously, so instead of applying FilmConvert to each clip, I start out by switching from Clip mode into Timeline mode. This allows us to simultaneously apply FilmConvert to all clips in the timeline. 
4. Create timeline node. You’ll notice that there are no nodes in the node tree when you switch into Timeline mode. You will need to add one before you can apply FilmConvert. From the Nodes menu, select Add Serial Node (or press option-s).
   
5. Apply FilmConvert. Click on the OpenFX menu to reveal the OFX Library, and scroll down until you see FilmConvert. Drag it onto the timeline node to apply it (below):
   
6. Default profile is applied. You’ll immediately notice the clip gets grainy. FilmConvert applies a standard profile by default, and adds a lot of film grain. We’ll fix that in a minute.
7. Add a serial node. In order to make global color corrections later, I add a second serial node in front of the one I’ve applied FilmConvert to (shift-s). FilmConvert should always be applied to the last node in the node tree. Then double click on the 02 node so that it’s active.
8. Select Camera. Next, in the FilmConvert menu in the Settings sidebar, we want to select our camera profile:
9. Select picture profile. Also choose the picture profile you used when shooting. FilmConvert gives you options for +1 and +2 overexposure options:
   

   Select picture profile

   

   Image with default profile, which is too grainy for my taste

10. Adjust grain. OK so now you should see your image starting to look better. But the first thing I notice is that it looks very grainy. I’m not a fan of film grain for most commercial videos (the whole point of having high quality camera sensors is to get rid of grain, isn’t it?So the first thing I do is reduce the grain slider to 0. I DO sometimes like the grain for more creative pieces, however, and in fact, the grain can be very helpful in disguising thinner 8-bit codec adjustments. In those cases, I find that setting the grain slider between 30 and 50 is about right. But for this piece, we’ll keep it clean.
    

    With a few exposure adjustments, our image begins to pop

11. Adjust the exposure. The next thing I’m noticing is that my clip is a little dark. FilmConvert provides contrast adjustment tools within the  plugin. You can make global exposure and color temperature adjustments in the plugin’s Camera Settings menu. Or scroll down to make more detailed adjustments to lift (shadows), gamma (midtowns) and gain (highlights). However, we’re already working within one of the most powerful tools for contrast and color adjustment – DaVinci Resolve – so I tend to make my global changes in that node we added previously. But if Resolve’s controls are intimidating to you, don’t worry! Just grab the Exposure slider and move it until your image looks properly exposed.
12. Choose a film stock. OK, so with a few contrast adjustments made, our image is looking pretty good. Now for the fun part: choosing our film stock. This is the palette you get to play with, the place where subtle differences can be hard to see, but have a huge impact on your final look. I recommend using one of Resolve’s comparison tools, Grab Still, to help you see the difference between stocks side by side.  With the default Film Setting selected (KD 5207 Vis3), click on the viewer and select “grab still.”
13. Grab a still for each stock. Select the next film stock on the list, KD 5213 Vis3. Grab another still. Repeat for each of the stocks you want to compare (FJ Neo through KD TrX400 are black and white, so I’ve skipped those). Now click on Gallery at the top left of Resolve’s window. You will see a thumbnail of each still displayed in the left column. You can click on each still and give it a name that matches the film stock. 
14. Expand the gallery. In the menu at the top of the stills, you’ll notice a slider that controls the size of the thumbnails. To the right of that is a search icon and a four-arrowed icon. Click the arrowed icon to expand the gallery.
    

    With gallery expanded, you can easily compare the subtle differences between film stocks.

15. Select film stock. Choose the film stock you like best. You can make further refinements to the look in the FilmConvert plugin controls. Film Color and Curve are two controls that help you dial in the exact look you want. I find that FilmConvert’s Curve tends to be quite contrasty when applied at the default 100 percent.  You may want to back it off slightly. And Film Color is like the opacity sliders in Photoshop that allow you to back off on the intensity of the entire plugin (dialing this down to 0 returns you to completely flat SLOG3).
16. Make individual adjustments. Check the other clips in your timeline. They will likely need individual adjustments, and you can do those on the Clip node, rather than the timeline node.
17. Export dailies. When you are happy with how each clip looks, switch to Resolve’s Deliver window, and export your files in the editing-friendly codec of your choice. I export to ProRes for editing in Final Cut Pro X.

Before we leave Resolve, I want to point out one more very cool feature of FilmConvert. It’s the ability to export a LUT based on your film look. I use this a lot, because I most often am shooting SLOG on a Sony FS5 using a SmallHD 502 or 702 monitor. These monitors support LUTs, so by loading this LUT into the monitor, I can see what the video will look like AFTER FilmConvert is applied using my settings. It’s a great way to previsualize on set. If you have a client looking over your shoulder while shooting, this is invaluable. Here’s how to generate the LUT:

Click “Export 3d LUT”

The default name isn’t very helpful

Give the LUT a name that accurately describes the look being applied

The resulting .cube file can be then loaded onto the monitor.

OK back to cutting our video. The next step in my workflow is to cut my footage in FCPX. So I import the dailies we’ve generated in Resolve into FCPX, and start cutting. For this particular video, I will use some additional media (animated stills) that doesn’t have FilmConvert applied to it. That’s OK! FilmConvert works with FCPX too (provided you have the FCPX-specific plugin, which can be downloaded from the FilmConvert site.

The stills I’m working with were shot with an unknown camera. So to match them to my footage in FCPX, I drag and drop the FilmConvert plugin onto the still, and using the on-screen controls, select the Default profile.

In FCPX, we can match unknown camera types using the default settings and onscreen controls

This shot is too warm – I want to cool it off. So I drag the puck in the middle of the color wheels in the direction of my desired color shift.

Before applying FilmConvert

After applying FilmConvert

To apply the same change to all of the additional stills, simply copy and paste the effect.

Here’s the finished video:

Getting a consistent film look is quickly achievable using FilmConvert, without having to delve into the complexities of color correction. And even if you do know those complexities, grading from scratch takes a lot of time. And that’s why I like FilmConvert Pro: it frees me to focus on the story, and empowers me to ship faster. What’s not to love about a tool that can do that?

Just after sunrise, the 365-degree view from the top of Sourdough Mountain Lookout is breathtaking. Shot with Sigma 20mm f/1.4 Art series lens.

For this post, I’m going to let the pictures do most of the talking. How did I find myself in a place to take these photos? Well, Kyle Hart of Rhino Camera Gear sent out an invitation to Rhino customers a couple weeks ago, inviting us to join him and one of his team members on a backpacking trip into the North Cascades. That’s what I call customer relationship management!  I still can’t believe I was the only person who said yes.

Kyle’s goal for this trip was to find an epic spot to shoot a timelapse of The Milky Way. Well, we found that spot. It’s called Sourdough Mountain Lookout, and I’ve never seen a view like the one we saw as we woke up in the morning. The fog spread below us in all directions, like a glacier from the ice age. It was an unforgettable moment.

I hadn’t had my coffee when I headed out for this trip at 6 in the morning, and forgot the motor for my slider in my living room. (Tip: never leave the house without having coffee first). So for this trip, I left the timelapse shooting to the Rhino guys, and focused on shooting stills with my 5dmkiii.

As a result of this trip, Rhino Camera will soon have some fresh content on their website featuring tips on how to pack Rhino sliders for backpacking, and how to shoot a great Milky Way timelapse. I’ll put up a link to that here as soon as it’s up.

One of the things I’ve noticed now that I’m doing the bulk of my shooting on super 35 sensor cameras instead of a full frame DSLR is that my set of Contax Zeiss primes just aren’t getting used that much any more. Why? The lenses, most of which are f/2.8, just don’t look as good when adapted with the crop factor of f/1.5 using the Metabones IV adapter. So, why not just just use them with a Speedbooster?

Answer: because of protruding rear elements (see below) that prevent them from fitting on the Speedbooster.

It’s really quite extraordinary the difference in look that a full frame vs. a super 35 sensor makes with this glass. Using the IV adapter, my 35mm f/2.8 Zeiss becomes about a 52mm lens in terms of field of view. Sometimes the change in field of view is fine – when I want a longer focal length. But another thing happens that’s rarely desirable: what was f/2.8 on full frame now has the depth of field appearance of f/4. And the difference between apparent f/4 and f/2.8 on full frame? Huge.

Over the weekend, it occurred to me that there might be a way around this impasse. Why not get a Dremel tool and grind those nasty rear elements out of the way? A close examination revealed that the elements are useless for video work anyway. I will never be using these lenses, which are permanently cine modified already, for shooting stills on a Contax camera. So I ran across the street to my hardware store and got busy.

First thing was learning about griding wheels – turns out the one you want for this job is the aluminum oxide grinders that are designed for metal work. Pictured above is the B132 grinding stone, which worked great.

To prevent fine metal shavings from falling into the lens, I carefully used painters tape to mask off the rear elements of the lens and block the openings into the lens. Then I made sure my glasses were on, and got busy.

The metal pretty much just melts away with carefully applied pressure.

Bits of metal become flattened and hang over the sides of the real element, which I was able to scrape away with a small screwdriver. I also used a vacuum cleaner to suck out any stray metal dust.

Pulling away the tape reveals the flattened elements.

Now the moment of truth: It fits! I ground down all 5 of my lenses in my set (25mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.4, 135mm f/2.8).

I tried all 5 of the lenses on, and all fit, but I noticed the 35mm in particular was very tight. This and the 135mm were the most difficult to work on, as they were very tight when attached to the adapter. But they seemed to fit OK after repeated grinding sessions. Woo hoo! I’ve got a set of dreamy Zeiss glass with the full frame look on my FS5!

But before you get as excited as I did, let me tell you the rest of the story. When I put one of my Canon L lenses on the Speedbooster, everything seemed fine … except the image stabilization didn’t work. Crap. What did I mess up…

A close look revealed the despite my best efforts at grinding, something had remained on at least one of the lenses that tangled with the last contact in the row. For the Zeiss glass, it doesn’t matter – it’s all manual anyway. But for the Canon lenses, you need every one of those contacts in working order. Sigh.

I’m still not sure what messed that up – but it obviously did. So my solution has to make this Speedbooster my dedicated  “Zeiss only” adapter.

It now lives in the same Pelican case as the Zeiss Contax set. I had to spring for another one to use with my Canon L glass. If were going to do this over again, I’d start by purchasing one of the older Speedboosters (you can find them on Ebay for a few hundred bucks cheaper than the new Ultra Speedbooster that I used), and plan from the beginning to dedicate a Speedbooster to the Zeiss glass, instead of thinking I could continue to use the same one with L glass.

All in all, though, I’m thrilled to have the full frame look back with my Zeiss glass on Super 35 and am looking forward to shooting my next project with this glass. Here’s why:

25mm f/2.8 Zeiss adapted to Sony FS5 with Metabones IV adapter (1.5 crop factor makes approximate field of view of 37mm):

35mm f/2.8 Zeiss (after grinding) adapted to Sony FS5 with Metabones Speedbooster (.071 crop factor makes approximate field of view 37mm):

Notice how much more selective the focus is on the orange umbrella in the second frame. If you’re not noticing the difference, click on each image to view at full resolution.

PS. Since this post went live, I’ve learned that Metabones makes a Contax CY -> Sony E mount Ultra Speedbooster. Duh! I would have been much better off just buying that, saving the contacts on my EF Speedbooster, and leaving well enough alone. But then I wouldn’t have had anything to blog about, would I?

Sony has been pretty sneaky in their release of firmware version 2.0 for the FS5. There’s been no big public announcement that I’m aware of, aside from this brief post in Alister Chapman’s blog. Maybe that’s because it isn’t fully ready to roll out – for example, there’s currently no way to purchase the upgrade to the raw-output option contained in the 2.0 firmware. So what’s the big deal?

Well, for me, the auto-nd feature is pretty epic. It’s the first time I’ve gotten really excited about an auto feature on a camera since Canon released dual-pixel autofocus. Auto-nd on the Sony FS5 is like having a pair of sunglasses that automatically get darker or lighter, almost instantly, in response to brightness. You can now do things like go from indoors to outdoors seamlessly, without affecting ISO, shutter or iris. This is huge: a creative tool DPs have never had before.

Sony Catalyst Browse displays GPS info contained in video clip metadata.

Also cool: The GPS feature, which is now enabled by default. What’s it useful for? I’m not sure yet. None of the GPS info is showing up in FCPX. But it does appear in Catalyst Browse, the free app from Sony for logging and transcoding footage. I look forward to finding useful ways to use this info. Chapman has suggested that one possible use will be the universal time that each clip is tagged with. However, it does not appear to be frame accurate – the frame field is empty on all clips.

Note: The GPS feature seems to be quite unreliable, with the signal coming and going and most of the time I’m seeing “No GPS” on the screen. I know that there is GPS in my area, because my cell phone is working with it fine. So the receiver on the camera seems pretty weak.

This 2.0 firmware has me really excited about shooting raw. I can see one really great use for it: shooting interviews in 4K, to enable getting two shots (medium and tight) frame same camera.  I can’t wait to get my hands on the raw upgrade as soon as it’s available.

No shit. There I was. At the end of a long day of shooting for a commercial client with a rented C300mkii, and I get this error message: “Buffer overflow.” I tried to dismiss the error but the camera’s OS had frozen. I had to pull the battery to cycle power and restart. I hit record and same error. Additionally, another error popped up with something like “some files need to be recovered.” WTF?

My rented 256gig Lexar 3400 Cfast card was 6 minutes away from being full in slot A. I had a fresh card (same brand and capacity) in slot B, and my first thought was to switch cards. I did that, and everything was happy. I finished the shoot without further incident.

But when I inserted card A into the reader that evening, much to my surprise, my Mac froze and had to be hard-rebooted. Damn! Now I was getting nervous. This was a big project for a client who had flown to Portland from Austin, at considerable expense. I started to imagine the extremely uncomfortable conversation I was going to have to have with him.

“Um, you know that second day of shooting we did? The one where you kept telling me the shots looked so much better than our first day of shooting? Yeah, that extra day of shooting that you didn’t plan to pay for but did because I convinced you it would be worth it?”

I did some Googling, and discovered that the only Cfast cards officially supported by Canon for the C300mkii are all SanDisk cards, in capacities only up to 128GB.

I was extremely disappointed to find discover this fact, because my rental house, Lensrentals.com, had listed the Lexar drive as “works well with” the c300mkii. But who knows whether the Cfast card error thrown by the camera was related to the media anyway? Maybe it was something else. But I didn’t want to point fingers: I wanted to find a solution.

I put the bad card back into the camera, switched into media review mode, and held my breath as I tried to open the files. And guess what? I could open them! Big sigh of relief. If the data was readable on the camera, that meant the files would be recoverable. But how?

After several attempts to do disk first aid and data recovery on the card failed with the same OS freeze as before, I got another idea. Would it be possible to copy, one at a time, the files from the Cfast card onto the camera’s SD card, which normally records proxy media? Nope. No can do. There isn’t even an option for that. But as I was exploring the C300mkii’s file options, I discovered that it IS possible to copy files using the camera menu from Cfast card A to B. I took another deep breath and gave it a try and…bingo! The file copied and the copied card was readable on my Mac.

It took me about half a day to painstakingly go through all 128 files and copy them over, but it was the best half day I’ve ever spent.

I alerted the rental house to the potential card compatibility issue, and they said they’d investigate. I still have no clear optic on what caused this data drama. But I do know a couple of things. The first one is that a problem like this has never happened to me while shooting with my Sony FS5. The second is that the next time I rent a C300mkii, you can be damn sure I’ll be sticking with the cards that Canon has officially supported.

UPDATE: After investigating, the fine folks at Lensrentals.com told me “it looks like the card was defective” and issued me a refund for the card rental.  “We haven’t had any higher issues with these cards/cameras than any other. I wouldn’t hesitate to use them again – just perhaps with a backup or two.”

I’m always surprised when I see documentary shooters working without a follow focus unit. To me, the precision and added stability are essential. But plenty of documentary shooters roll with Canon zooms, and gearing those lenses has until recently required making an awkward compromise (i.e., Red Rock gears) or an expensive permanent choice (Duclos mod). I’ve written about one ring to rule them all, but those hard-plastic gears are really for primes, and won’t fit on my favorite documentary zoom, the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 (above right).

Enter Cool-Lux Lux gears. These gears are unique in my experience in that they are made of a firm yet flexible silicone, which has just enough stretch to slip on over protruding zoom lens elements. Yet when finally worked into place, they stay put. Even with constant ins and outs from a camera bag, they don’t budge and have the look and feel of a permanent solution. Plus, they can still be removed when desired.

The 76-77mm gear slides over the protruding stabilization switch on the 17-55mm f/2.8 Canon EFS zoom

After I ordered one of the gears, and raved about it on Facebook, Cool Lux’s product manager Patrick Fee dropped me a thank you. Very kind of him. So I seized the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the company and how the gears are made.

Q: What kinds of gear do you make, who do you make it for, and how long have you been doing this? 

Cool-Lux started off as a lighting company way back in 1977 specializing in on-camera lights for video professionals, the type of thing you would see on the shoe mount of an ENG camera to add some fill light or get an exposure in the dark.  Advances in LED technology has since led to Cool-Lux’s current line of Pro LED Panel Lights.

In fall of 2013 I was hired on to focus on making innovative new camera rig and accessory products for cinema video professionals like yourself.  In that time, I designed a completely new shoulder mount camera rig system for Cool-Lux based on the idea of going from a tripod to the shooter’s shoulder with the press of a button.  It’s actually a really cool system with a flip out action and chest support aimed at rental houses and production companies that use a lot of different cameras because it works on everything. I also designed some very simple but effective lens gears called Lux Gears that are just now starting to take off.

Q: The market for gears seems pretty crowded. What inspired you to jump in? 

You’re right in saying the market for lens gears is pretty crowded but everything out there was just a copy of the same old terrible design.  I always hated the one size fits all type.  Yeah they are easy for a distributor to stock but the damn buckle is not only hideous to look at, it also prevents the product from doing what its intended to do, especially on lenses that don’t have built in stops.  The only other option was to permanently fix a gear to a lens, which is fine if you’re only going to use it in a cinema type setting, or have something custom made to your specific lens that could, in theory, be removable and still give you a secure 360° rotation.  The Lux Gears filled that gap by providing a simple range of 16 follow focus lens gears that look professional and perform like a very secure permanent gear but can also be easily removed in seconds without having to get out the tools.  There is nothing else like them.

Q: The striking thing about these gears is how they stretch over the lens to fit perfectly and stay put. How are the gears made?

Lux Gears are a precision molded product.  We use a high durometer silicone material to get the elasticity needed to stretch over the lens barrel but also have enough rigidity to hold up to the amount of torque needed to turn the lens with a manual follow focus or motor driven gear.  Most people might think that a flexible gear would lead to a lot of slop or backlash when it comes to dialing a follow focus back and forth.  I actually found the opposite to be true.  Consider that with two rigid gears the engagement has to be perfect.  Either there is space between the teeth which leads directly to “slop” between the gears or the teeth are too tightly engaged which leads to a grinding of the gears.  With the high durometer silicone the engagement can be slightly too tight and the gears will not grind because of their slight flexibility.  They provide more margin of error when engaging the driving gear which is a benefit I didn’t see coming.

Q: Where are these gears made? 

We partnered with a local Chicago company that specializes in elastomers to help with the product development and make the production molds and gears for us.

So there you have it. Cool-Lux gears are the clear winner in the quest to make the perfect follow focus gear. They run about $28 each. Learn more at http://www.cool-lux.com.

The Canon 70-200mm f/4 lens is an ultrafast autofocusing lens when paired with a DSLR such as 5dmkiii, making shots like this almost easy.

OK, I just gotta rave on my newest lens for a minute. The Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS USM lens isn’t a new lens – it was released 10 years ago. But that’s one of the great things about it: it’s a lens that sports all of the fancy new technology like 4-stop image stabilization and autofocus, yet it’s been around long enough that you can find a perfectly good used one inexpensively on Ebay. I picked up mine there for $785 including shipping, and with a little more patient hunting you can find one in the low to mid $700s. It retails new for about $1,200.

As a stills lens, it’s ultra fast at autofocus. Consider these frames I snapped at a lacrosse game last night. Shot at f/4, the background is plenty out of focus at that aperture to provide good separation. The lens is small enough to carry around easily and handhold.

But what gets me really excited is pairing this lens with the the Sony FS5 for video work. With the Metabones Speedbooster, you get f/2.8 brightness (albeit with f/4 depth of field characteristics), all in an easy to carry lens that doesn’t absolutely require additional lens support (as the 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens most certainly does).

It’s compact, easy to carry, and quick to pop on and off during a shoot. It interchanges quickly with other lenses because of it’s smaller size, and you get f/2.8 performance out of it with the Speedbooster. Want even longer length up to 300mm at f/4? Just pair it with the Metabones IV Smart Adapter instead.

I’ve semi-permanently attached the excellent Cool-Lux gears to mine (the stretchy rubber gear is pretty easy to wiggle on and off should you want to remove it, but otherwise stays firmly put – making Cool-Lux gears the best focus gears I’ve ever owned). The size you want for a perfect fit with this lens is the 74-75 Cool-Lux Gear.

What’s your favorite bargain glass?

I’ll leave you with a few more frames I shot with this dandy lens over the weekend. Enjoy.

I’m a big fan of Rhino camera sliders. They are lightweight, extremely well designed, and their support is top notch. When a connector failed on mine recently, the team shipped me a brand new replacement unit, featuring a better design, BEFORE I even returned my defective unit. What’s more, they are a Seattle company!

So I’m thrilled to see that Rhino is hosting a meet up in my neighborhood, at Gas Works Park, on Monday, March 21.

** NOTE: This event has been RESCHEDULED due to rain for Monday, March 28 at 5:30pm.

They’ll be bringing sliders and the new Rhino Arc, and shooting time lapses. So this will be a great opportunity to check out some top-notch gear and see it in action, and meet the people behind the product. Everyone who attends will get a $100 gift card good for purchase of Rhino products.

Participants will meet at the south-east corner of the park at 5:30pm, and from there will spread out to find the best spots to make time lapses.  Unfortunately I’m out of town until Tuesday so I’m going to have to miss this. Looks like fun.

Here’s where you can RSVP for the the free event – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rhino-meetup-gas-works-park-tickets-20981388899

The SmallHD 502 is a monitor that feels like it was made for the Sony FS5, addressing the camera’s fatal monitoring flaw while remaining true to it’s handheld aesthetic.

Sony’s new FS5 is a killer documentary camera. After just three months using the camera on a variety of projects, I’m hopelessly addicted to it’s stepless ND, it’s 14 stops of dynamic range, and it’s hand-hugging ergonomics. But if you want to take advantage of those 14 stops, you have to shoot SLOG. And if you shoot SLOG, you need to overexpose by at least a stop, to kill noise in the shadows. On higher-end Sony cameras like the FS7 and F55, you can load monitor LUTs to compensate for this. But the FS5 doesn’t support monitor LUTs. So overexposing blows out the image, making it difficult gauge exposure on the LCD.

This problem isn’t going to be fixed in firmware, we’re told by Sony. The chip in this camera will never be fast enough to support monitor LUTs. So. What’s a self-respecting documentary DP to do? I went looking for an external monitor that supports LUTs. One that doesn’t disrupt the feng shui of this fit-in-your-hand camera. Here’s what I found.

First the bad news: many of the popular external monitors that support LUTs are too big for the FS5. I’ve used two, the Atomos Ninja Assassin and the Odyssey 7Q+. Perched on the top handle of the FS5, they are about as complementary to the aesthetic of this camera as Donald Trump has been to the presidential ambitions of Jeb Bush.

The whole point of the Sony FS5 is grab and shoot. This camera empowers you to feel your way into a scene, with everything at your fingertips. So bolting a lot of stuff, or turning it into a shoulder mounted beast like it’s bigger brother the FS7 (as Zacuto would love for you to do), just isn’t right. We need to look for an option that respects the form of this camera.

A fellow Seattle DP, Gabriel Miller, recommended I take a look at the SmallHD 502. And after spending a few days shooting with it, I got really excited and bought one. I’ll explain why in a minute.

But first, a few words about my old monitor, which happens to be the SmallHD DP6.  I’ve been using it since 2011,  and I love this monitor. But recently I’ve observed what seems to be a trend toward larger on-camera monitors. Good-quality LCD and even OLED screens must be getting cheaper to make, because there sure are a lot of them out there. And it seemed to me that having another inch or so of screen would be a very nice thing indeed.

So when SmallHD announced the 501 and 501 monitors last May,  I was skeptical. Why go small when you can go big? But all of that thinking changed when I got my hands on the 502 (The 501 is HDMI-only, and 502 offers SDI as well. SDI is the only way to go for professional use).

The first thing I noticed is that, as small as it is, the actual screen size is almost as big as the DP6 (which isn’t actually a full 6″ diagonal – it measures 5.6″). It’s very compact, very lightweight, yet manages to provide all of the essential features that larger monitors do, like peaking, scopes and support for user-created 3D LUTs.

The second thing is that the 502 is visibly much sharper than that DP6. It’s much easier to tell at a glance if you’re shot is in focus, even without using any of the focus assists. That’s because the 502 packs a full 1920×1080 pixel stack into that 5″ screen, while the DP6 maxes out at 1280×800. Those extra pixels translate into a clearer picture of what’s happening in your frame.

Scopes

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” That quote, attributed to Einstein, describes what my thinking on scopes. The original scopes on the 502 were TOO simple – they lacked any numeric display. I found it hard, for example, to figure out what the values are on the waveform monitor, because the lines were not accompanied with their number value, leaving me to have to compute where the values fell in my head every time I glanced at the monitor. So I was delighted to find, upon updating the firmware to v. 2.2, that marks had been added.

However, the histogram on the 502 remains a little too simple. I’d like to be able to drop in a zebra marker so I see where a specific value is falling on the histogram, as Sony monitors do. Here’s the histogram on the 502 (below):

And here’s the Sony FS5 histogram, which allows the option to drop a  line at the zebra level (in this case, I’ve set it to 70 percent):

On the FS5 histogram, the background darkens above 100 percent, clearly indicating the super white area. This way, without numbers, I can see at a glance where my data is falling. With the SmallHD histogram, I have to guess. A few tweaks like this would go a long way to making the 502 histogram more useful.

One very nice control that SmallHD gives you that Sony doesn’t is the ability to scale the size, location, and opacity of the scopes. You can also choose between RGB and Luma styles. And, with firmware v2.2, vectorscope has been added, which is very useful when dialing in a specific color balance using a grey card and for testing lights.

Frame grabs

Pressing the button on the top right of the monitor (about where you’d expect to find the camera button if it were a smartphone) captures the current frame as a still. Grabbing a frame captures the image without SmallHD’s overlays (but includes the FS5 overlays when sent from the camera). This is good most of the time, but there are times I want to capture all the overlays (such as for writing blog posts). I’d love to have an option for that.

Focus assist

The 502 has  3 ways to help you judge focus: peaking, and a joystick that lets you enlarge the image to confirm focus by pressing it upward, 2x and 4x. Pressing down on the stick zooms you back out. If you want to scroll around the image, you depress the joy stick and follow the arrows.

My favorite tool for helping me nail focus is the 502’s implementation of peaking. I find that the default value of 5 is too sharp – everything starts looking like it’s in focus. But setting it at 3 is just right. Focus planes snap into sharp focus while leaving out of focus areas soft. I really feel lost trying to focus without this peaking feature now, it’s that good.

Starting the 502 requires holding the start button down for about two seconds. Not bad, but I prefer the DP6’s simpler on/off switch. A switch shouldn’t require me to give it my attention for even a couple of seconds. I’ve got a lot of other things on my mind during production and having to press-hold-count to two every time I fire up the monitor actually turns out to be a minor irritation.

Support

I had a shoot against a white screen a few weeks ago, and for the first time I noticed that the screen of my 502 wasn’t quite right – there were darker, clouded areas in the monitor that I hadn’t noticed before (see below):

So I realized that I had a defective monitor. I put in a request to SmallHD service using their convenient online support system. I got an email the next day asking for clarification about the problem, so I sent in a photo of the screen. After a brief back-and-forth via email, the friendly support person sent me an RMA number and about a week later my monitor was shipped back to me, with a replaced screen, no charge. The new screen is now consistent from side to side and top to bottom, so I’m a happy customer and can say from experience that SmallHD support is prompt and friendly.

Bug: Every time I start the monitor, it opens the first screen in the menu. It should return me to the last screen used.

Design fail: It’s ridiculously difficult to get the SD cards in and out of the provided slot. You almost need a pair of tweezers to fish them out, because the protective door opens only halfway, making it impossible for anyone with adult-sized fingers to grasp the card.

But overall: This is a fantastic monitor choice for use with the Sony FS5. It’s small size, high resolution and support for LUTs enable me to preserve the ergonomic advantages while at the same time giving me essential big-camera exposure tools.

Who edits video on a desktop computer any more? Except for a final color pass and final audio mixing with studio monitors, 90 percent of what I do happens in my lap, on a MacbookPro. I edit on my couch, at a standing desk, in coffee shops, the kitchen, wherever I feel like it. But until I discovered the Samsung T1 USB3 SSD, I had trouble finding portable drives that were large enough to hold entire projects, fast enough to keep up with FCPX, and affordable.

This drive has been a game changer for me. Here’s why.

First observation: it’s tiny. With a smaller footprint than a business card, and weighing just 9 ounces, it feels almost weightless dangling from the side off my MacBook. Other drives will fall off under their own weight if left to hang like that.

But don’t let the small size fool you. The Samsung T1 USB3 SSD is a seriously professional tool, perfect for cutting video. Of critical importance, files stored on the T1 are significantly more secure than files stored on a traditional hard drives, because there are no moving parts.

But speed is where it really shines. Check out the Speed Test numbers below: 374 MB/s write and 425 MB/s read. That’s a zero-wait state for my video editing needs. This drive is FAST.

The Samsung T1 is super fast, tiny, and secure

That brings us to price. The benefits of SSD media are well known to just about everybody these days. But affordability? Not so much. Until recently, the fastest SSD I could afford was a half-terabyte Lacie SSD. However, my projects commonly climb to around half a terabyte by the time they ship. So 500GB drives aren’t big enough. There are workarounds, such as cutting with proxies and storing original media on a RAID, and reconnecting later. But screw that. I want to carry ALL the original media around with me when I’m working on a project, whether it’s across my office or across the Atlantic.

So I paid $380 for my T1. Not cheap, for sure, but having used it a few weeks, I’ve got two words to describe the price: worth it. I’ve noticed the price has since gone up to over $400 on Amazon. But for me, even at that price, it remains a value. The time saved while editing, the peace of mind of having my project files on an SSD vs a spinning hard drive, and the ability to carry ALL of my files with me wherever I go is breathtaking.

Here’s a few of the other portable drives I own, in descending order of how I rate them (best at top) and why the Samsung T1 beats each of them:

1. Lacie 500GB Rugged Thunderbolt External SSD

This drive is actually slower the T1, which surprised me, given that it rocks Thunderbolt. And it’s only half a terabyte. And it costs $500 (although you can find them for close to $400 if you hunt around). If you want to step up to a 1TB Lacie SSD, the only option currently is the Lacie Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 1TB SSD – and that will set you back a whopping $1,200, which puts it out of my league.

For smaller projects, this drive is great. But all that rubberized ruggedness translates into bulk, and I find the Thunderbolt cable is too short to allow me to park the drive on the coffee table when I’m editing on the couch, for example. So I end up sitting on it, and it’s too big for comfort. On the other hand, you won’t misplace this drive! The T1 beats this drive in size, in price, and in speed. But the Lacie is certainly more rugged.

2. Western Digital 4TB MyPassport Pro.

Despite the fact that this drive defaults to RAID 0 and sports a Thunderbolt connector, it isn’t fast enough to cut HD video with on my laptop without slowing me down. FCPX makes a lot of demands on hard drives when skimming through mountains of footage, and I find the spinning beachball is a commonplace when cutting this drive. It’s ALMOST fast enough, but frustratingly, not quite. The Thunderbolt cable is also too short at times. But it’s 4TB size makes it a great place to store backups, and that’s what I use mine for now. This drive costs $300. The T1 beats MyPassport Pro in both speed and size by a long shot. But MyPassport Pro has a lot more capacity, making it a great backup drive.

3. WD Elements 2TB.

This is a dog in terms of performance, but it’s cheap, reliable, and a great way to hand project files off to clients or other editors. The $78 price tag is very attractive. What more can I say.

4. Seagate Backup Plus portable 2TB drive.

This is another drive that’s really only useful for backups and handing project files around. It’s pretty much the equal of the WD Elements, and costs the same roughly $80. But I put it at the bottom of my list because it requires installing a driver to work on Mac, while the Elements works right out of the box.