Ahhh, an assignment that I was excited for right off the bat. For this week, I didn't even have to think to know exactly what I wanted to shoot. Living in Colorado we have so many different beautiful landscapes, but this was one that had been calling out to me for a long time. This shot looking out at the mountains was done from a scenic overlook just before entering Boulder Colorado. I shot this early at 7:20 in the morning, but I got there at 6:50 which was the biggest difficulty in and of itself. The car thermometer said it was 38 degrees out so not too cold, until I found out what my real challenge for the day was....wind. It was so windy I could barely open the car door. But who cares about the weather right? So anyways, on to the video. You can view the clip for this week below: This was shot on the BMPCC in 1080 24p Compressed CinemaDNG RAW, 800ASA, f18, shutter at 180 degrees.
For this shot I decided to use my Canon nifty 50 (Canon 50mm f1.8 for those unfamiliar) with the B&L Anamorphic Projector Lens. I chose this lens for it's focal length, sharpness, and focusing past infinity. This ended up being a great lens choice for focal length and provided a great learning opportunity for me. Normally I just use it at f1.8 on the BMPCC because I don't have an adapter that adapts electronic functions. This means that the iris is always stuck all the way open. That is unless you remove the lens from a Canon camera (such as my DSLR) while in aperture priority mode. This was fantastic as it let me set the lens for my desired F stop of f18. I shot at f18 to get a nice deep depth of field to really show off all the different edges and peaks to the mountains. I wanted to get all of the details without losing anything into blurry backgrounds. The hardest thing for this shoot was really just the wind. If there had been no wind then the only big challenge would have been how to capture the mountain range. But the wind was so bad that I couldn't even get a steady shot despite being on a tripod. Since the wind was blowing away from the mountains, it was blowing directly into my camera. No matter what I tried, I could not get the camera to remain 100% steady unless there was a lull in the wind. The reason this shake was so noticeable was due to the fact I was shooting on a 50mm lens. On most cameras that would still be wide enough to not be too noticeable, but on the BMPCC it is the equivalent of approximately a 144mm lens. Without image stabilization in lens (which of course the nifty 50 does not have) the image then would shake in the background with the smallest of movements of the lens/camera (outside of slow panning/tilting of the tripod head). So to fix it as best as possible I utilized stabilization in post using Warp Stabilizer in Premiere Pro CC. Despite best efforts there was still a bit of shake noticeable in the video. The video was also sped up to fit into the 15 second time limit that I set for my challenge. This in someways hid the shakes and also made them more obvious. All in all I'm happy with the way that this week turned out overall and I look forward to the weeks to come! If you are participating in the 52 Week Photography Challenge or the 52 Week Cinematography Challenge, please share this week's shot in the comments section below, or on our Facebook page at facebook.com/AlanMeyerVideo and be sure to like our page!
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This week marks the first week of my 52 Week Anamorphic Cinematography challenge. The assignment for this week was a self portrait, which is the one I was dreading the most so it's great that I get to knock that one out of the way right of the bat! For those that are following the 52 Week Photography Challenge that are confused as to what version of the challenge I'm referring to, please check out our last blog post describing the challenge here: My Adapted Anamorphic Challenge Enough with the shameless self promotion, let's get on with it! So where was I? Oh yes, self portrait. For my video self portrait I decided to set up right outside my apartment building on the steps in the evening. I like night exteriors generally, and the high contrast light of working in the evening sounded like a fun start to my anamorphic learning curve. Here is the video: This was shot on my Black Magic Pocket Cinema camera at 1080 Compressed CinemaDNG Raw, ASA 800, 30FPS at f5.6. The lenses used were the vintage Bausch & Lomb 2X Anamorphic project lens and a vintage Kamero 35mm FD Mount SLR lens. I lit the scene with a combination of existing light in the stairway, two LED's and two 500Watt Halogen work lights. My first biggest challenge with this was determining at what F stop to shoot. Normally, I tend to go for the lowest F Stop possible in this type of shooting situation for a nice and shallow depth of field. But this isn't really possible with the anamorphic lens to achieve a sharp image. Most reviews online from people using similar systems suggest always shooting at a minimum of f8.0 for a sharp image. I decided to experiment a bit though and only go to an F stop of 5.6 for this shot. Due to the need to shoot at a higher F stop, it forced me to really take in the surroundings for the shot since there would be a deeper depth of field. This is why I decided that I would shoot in the stairway of my building. I thought that it would be a good location due to all of the lines present in the scene, from the vertical railing bars to the horizontal lines created by the siding. Another difficulty with shooting this was the large minimum focus distance of this lens set up which is about 12 feet. This was difficult to achieve simply due to the lack of distance between the top of the stairs where I sat and the landing where the camera was placed. This week, although challenging was fun but I'm glad to have it over with. I'm excited for the weeks to come where I get to be behind the camera rather than in front of it! If you are participating in the 52 Week Photography Challenge, or have decided to also do a cinematography version of the challenge, please share your self portrait in the comments below! I read recently about a very interesting challenge, the 52 Week Photography Challenge (for anyone bad at math, that's a year). My first thought was "Well that sounds fun, I like to shoot photography." Although the relationship between photography and cinematography is quite close, there are obviously still differences. Sure, shooting photo's would still be helpful in keeping my passion flowing and helping my level of expertise as a cinematographer grow, but it gave me an idea that sounded even more challenging!
Recently I purchased a vintage Bausch and Lomb 2X Anamorphic projector lens that I in turn adapted to shoot anamorphic footage with. As I am new to anamorphic filming in general, it is going to be a huge learning experience overall. So that's where the idea clicked. My 52 Week Photography Challenge became the 52 Week Anamorphic Cinematography challenge! The original challenge (that I found) was created by Dogwood Photography. More information on the challenge as well as each week's subject matter can be found on their website here. What my challenge will be is to follow all of the same subject matter outlined, but I will be filming video with my anamorphic setup instead of stills. This obviously entails certain differences so here are the basic changes/rules that I will be following:
If you decide to also try this challenge, please share your work each week in the comments section for that week! I hope to see many more people join me in this challenge! |
AuthorAlan Meyer is an experienced cinematographer, but is no stranger to writing. Archives
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