the editman.com

I found this flash handle at a local flea market and tried it out on the GH1 for run n gun.
Worked out pretty well and made the camera more stable. I think I payed $5 for it.



This handle is suppost to go upwards on one side of the camera but I managed to turn it around and use it that way.
After awhile it became somewhat fatiguing due to the imbalance holding at the far right edge of the GH1.
But I got some great shots and I liked the added stability.

Today I was at the race track shooting a Swedish actor in his racing Porsche.
The weather was really bad. Cloudy and rain hanging in the air all day.
Daylight is also pretty spars this time a year and I really don't know how this will turn out.

What's exiting with this project is I used all my cameras. The GH1 was mounted in two locations inside the Porsche.
My FT1 I mounted with a suction cup to the side of the Porsche and finally every other exterior was with the 7D!

How this will turn out I don't know due to the bad or non existing light conditions this day. But it was fun and interesting to do this.
Video coming later this week.

Interior of the Porsche.

Neither the GH1 or the 7D has good audio capability so external devices is a must.
I've looked a lot on different solutions for audio recording and bit by bit it falls into place.

Several factors were important to me. Portable, clean sound, easy to use and not to expensive.
I like the sound of a shotgun mic more so than a lavalier mic. I tried a cheap shotgun ($35) and the sound quality was
ok but construction quality another thing. The first time I removed the XLR cable the whole bottom part came loose!
After some soldering and putting in a beefier cable it works again but I do not trust this one. Instead I settled on an Audio Technica AT897.
It's a shotgun mic with really good rejection and low noise. You can power it in several ways. AA battery, 48V or even 12V will work.
It's also smaller than the cheapo mic I first got. Price including shipping was $240.

I have a Sony PCM-D50 which I wanted more than the Zoom H4N which is very popular. D50 is cleaner sounding and has a really good limiter so sound quality
was the deciding factor. It's a solid piece and runs really long on the batteries. Prices from $400.

A small headphone and foldable to fit in my backpack steered me towards Sony MDK-V300.
They get the job done are foldable and are light on the head..



The next step is to try out a Juicedlink CX231 ($299) connected to either camera.
I'm eagerly awaiting the Magic Lantern firmware for the 7D.

Here's the making of Axe/Pokerstars commercial. I used my Panasonic GH1 and some Nikon lenses.

The behind the scene feature says it all.
Anyway it was a fun project and althou I didn't actually shoot this one I did all post production
(and assisted the DP). I love this camera!

I just came home from another day in our studio. Today the HVX200 have the chance to rest and my 7D came to use.
Editing later this week and I'll post the final result and maybe some behind the scenes feature.



Still from the 7D

I had to do something this week so I captured some action and faces in our studio this Friday.
7D 16-35/2.8 1/50 ISO320 1080p25 hand-held:

This is a small behind the scenes feature I did a while ago. It really shows what the GH1 can accomplish. Especially with nice primes from Nikon.

Documenting RED work with GH1 from editman on Vimeo.

Captured with GH1. A comparison towards the end of GH1 and RED footage.

RED footage was imported from the 4K RAW file into Avid at 1920x1080 rez. GH1 was converted to MXF 1440x1080 DVCPROHD. A slight advantage for the RED footage. Some jello due to handheld camera.

GH1 was set to 1080/25p. 1/50s, ISO320 for most of the clips. Lenses used: Kit lens, Nikkor 24/2.8D, 35/2.0D, 50/1.4D and 85/1.8D.

Music: Black Magic Woman

To complement my GH1 I got the Canon EOS 7D. My very first impression was - This is a big camera! Compared with GH it's huge and it weight double as much.


It didn't take long for me to adjust the Mattebox to the 7D.

Since I sold the D90 I really missed a decent still camera. The GH1 is fine but with poor lens choice and 2x crop it's hard to really get that isolated object feeling when taking stills.
Now this camera is a machine gun when you trigger the high speed shutter. Khachonk Khachonk Khachonk... 8 times per second. The shutter sounds very different from the D90 or any other Nikon I've tried. It's not as refined to my ears. But it's superfast!

Going from Nikon to Canon I can't find the right buttons at first and so far I have to say Nikon makes better cameras if you look at how they are constructed and how buttons and controls are made. I do have some great Nikon primes 24/2.8 - 35/2.0 - 50/1.4 - 85/1.8, they sure will stay and be great to shot moving pictures on the 7D. I also got a tiny adapter from ebay so any Nikon lens can fit an EOS Camera and at the same time I got an adapter to hook up Canon lenses to the GH1. Just to get the most out of every lens.

Since I already have the Nikons I decided to only get two Canon lenses.The first one an EF 16-35/2.8 L USM and the second one an EF 50/1.4 USM. The zoom lens is a high quality lens and feels solid on the 7D or GH1 but the 50/1.4 is a bit flimsy more so than the Nikon 50/1.4D but still great to take snaps indoors. I also have a Sandisk Extreme IV 8GB card and a spare battery.

The mattebox works just as great with the 7D as it does with the GH1. When shooting with the 16-35 lens you have a field of view equivalent to 25,6 mm - pretty wide - and if you adjust the mattebox it doesn't intrude on the lens scope. But it's borderline and I would consider exchanging the mattebox plate to the 4:3 one which has more headroom above and below. Using a wider lens is not recommended but you could always remove the mattebox for those shots.

Right now I have a cluttered desktop - lenses, adapters and stuff so I have some sorting to do before making some sort of feature with the 7D!