the editman.com

I'm currently looking to expand my 7D rig with additional support gear. It's really a jungle of items from different manufactures and most of them are pricey.
My current baseplate and rods has worked so far but as I become more familiar with how to use the camera more needs emerge.

Top handle, side rods, adjustable rods, well there's a plethora of stuff to choose from but I'm onto something very interesting! Stay tuned for more info about a week or so.

I had a small 3.5" monitor on order and today it arrived. This is a cheap monitor and I wasn't expecting that much.
Running composite from the 7D is not the highest resolution one can get from the 7D but worth a try.


Display and 7D

With a small bracket attached from below the camera plate and a small ball head I have a swivel external display for the 7D.
The display has internal rechargeable batteries and I guess I'll know how long they'll run after my first film shoot.
I will get some sun hood in the 4" size and it will fit with velcro going round the monitors housing.

More to come once I get to use it...

Updated 21 Feb:

I've used this monitor for many jobs as of now and have more to tell.

First of it's an inexpensive monitor from an ebay store.
The resolution is only 480x360 but being such a small display it actually works pretty well.
Colors are not exact but it's not way of. Red/pink tends to be a bit yellowish sometimes but green and blue are ok.
Exposure is very easy to nail and with the 10x focus assist on the 7D or GH1 makes focusing spot on.

Two weak areas is: one, the corner mounted tripod screwhole. It would be much better to have it centred.
Two, the in and out jacks are 3.5" and 2.5" of not the greatest quality. I always loopthrough the signal going from the 7D to the monitor and then out from the monitor to an external display.
Sometimes you have to fiddle just for a few seconds to get a clean loopthrough. I would say the quality is ok and good enough for a client to watch during shoots.

Colours are always tricky since most monitors have their gamma curves but as long as you know in what span you are safe within, then it's not a problem.
There are so many good grading tools today and as long as you are in the neighbourhood your fine.

The batteries last for about 3 hours before charging and charging is pretty fast. You can run the monitor on the supplied power adapter and at the same time charge the batteries.
It will get hot when you charge and use it simultaneous but seams to be working fine despite the heat.

I've made a modification to the 7Ds videocable so that instead of a video cinch connector it's a 3.5" connector going straight in the monitor.
It's not so pretty to go with these cables because they are not rugged, but when everything is mounted I usually tape them so that they are out of the way.

We had one shoot the other week where I even runned this monitor attached beside the camera and two external monitors daisy chained with good picture on both monitors.

Videosignal is of the lowest possible quality - composite, but it makes it so easy to connect any monitor. I use older CRT monitors we have at work and so far so good.
HDMI would be great but at the same time more expensive and I would have to have both a HDMI monitor and some typ of HDMI splitter/divider to make everything work.

Here's a link to for more ifo about this monitor.

I guess I have to much time making BTS videos :)
Anyway it's great to have these short videos documenting our shoots. We all tend to forget and it helps to watch it again and remember how we solved things.

This BTS is for a new beverage "Briska" from Spendrups in Sweden. The actual commercial is once again a sponsorship this time for "Desperate House Wifes" and we try to get a similar look for some of the key characters in the show.

It took two whole days to shoot this one. From 8 AM to 7PM each day and it seams to be insane when the final result just gonna be 20 seconds...

My Canon 7D was used to shoot the commercial and I had my "B" camera - the GH1 to make this one.

What I really love about the GH1 it feels natural. I would say the 7D has a more filmic look to it but it's not as natural as the GH1. Love both cameras and that's why I have both.
I don't like tungsten, daylight is much better and most important more natural.

A still from the last half hour of the shoot. I guess everybody was a bit tired...

These are the final billboards for Just Glow.

We made them to differ using a warm color in line with Cougar Town TV-series and the other to a cooler nordic look.
I assisted the DP and did the editing/grading. I think the 7D worked very well for a project like this.


This is the billboard for Cougar Town (warm):

This is the billboard that has the cooler nordic look:

I had time to make a short behind the scenes video using my GH1 and 20/1.7 lens.

This Monday we had another shoot using my Canon 7D. It was for a shampoo (Glow) sponsorship it's to be aired on Swedish channel 5.

We built a shower-set in the studio and spent whole day trying not to get everything to deteriorate due to the water.
Lessen learned - water is tricky.

We had two models to make two different spots, one blond and the other brown.
They experienced standing in half warm water most of the day but both had a good spirit and did a very good job.
All clips came out beautiful, thanks to the girls, photographer, electrician and the rest of the team. All in all an excellent team.

My 7D worked without flaws and didn't heat up although we had live view on most of the time.
I does feel a bit awkward having such a small camera and getting these kind a images. Price to performance is excellent.



Lenses used to capture it all was; Canon 100/2.8 IS L, Canon 135/2.0 L, Canon 50/1.2 L and Canon 35/1.4 L.
BTS video and actual spot will appear later.

This week I got a small lighting kit based on fluorescent lights. Three heads, tripods and softboxes.
Everything neatly packaged in a robust black bag.

I had a Redhead-kit but really didn't like it mainly because the heat they generated and the mismatch when mixing Redheads and daylight.

      

At 5500K these are just like daylight and makes skin tones look really nice.
They are soft thanks to the softbox and by the nature of fluorescent lights.
They don't produce much heat and they don't consume a lot of energy. Great!




Even near the softbox you can get a nice soft shading and I like the skin tone.

Now, this is a cheaper kit and it took me some time to get the first softbox together.
This and the somewhat weak tripod stands are the low point.
The rest is okay and you feel comfortable using this to lit a nice lighting for interviews, even with a bit of mood.




If you ever had the pleasure of working with Kinoflow banks of fluorescent light sets the Kinos are much better and easier to setup and transport.
But for the indie on a tight budget why not? There's nothing wrong with the actual light and you can adjust brightness in five levels on each lamp head.