1.30.2012
Kathy Peterson is a beautiful person, I love her and her family.
O.K. this is one of the last projects Tim and I did together. Big thanks for about 10 years of collaboration. It turns out that we are drifting to different parts of the world. Ranch Exit is a refection of the time we spent traveling the world doing documentary work. We are both going strong, but we are not usually in the same country or state. We will still work together for sure just not everyday like we almost did during most of the 2000’s.
Thanks Tim, we did some cool stuff
Get updates of Tim here.
and updates of Steve here.
Peace and thank you all.
9.30.2011
7.07.2011
5.29.2011
5.23.2011
4.05.2011
Spent an awesome day with Brad and Aunt Bun Bun.
Last night we had a very powerful interview with Brad about life as a pro athlete, hope, peace and cancer.
Check out First Descents here.
4.02.2011
In Colorado now, Moab, Utah tomorrow. I am directing and shooting a TV show about folks with cancer that are going to camp, this week rock climbing. I met the guy that started this camp about 8 years ago on a shoot for Subaru and Dagger Kayaks that I directed for OLN. Brad Ludden is a goofball and a wise guy with a big heart. We did a very powerful interview with a beautiful woman from Colorado that was going to camp in the morning. Check out First Descents here.
3.30.2011
3.20.2011
OK, a bit of a welcome change. I am directing a 5 part TV series about the College of Fine Arts and Communications at the university I graduated from, byu. It is a behind the scene show about kids doing art and the like. I will be shooting till Christmas. I am shooting the play "The Diary of Anne Frank," going to China with the chamber orchestra, doing a modern dance program that will take us to a Frank Llyod Wright building in Arizona, doing a printmaking exchange with art students at the University of Hawaii, going to New York City with some ad students that may turn into a Paris trip and a handful of other projects yet to be determined. I love exploring the creative process and I like having an artistic view of the world. I believe that being an artist is about what you put out into the world and just as much about how you take the world in. I will be doing other gigs too but this will be my main project for a while. Peace.
3.17.2011
3.14.2011
3.05.2011
3.03.2011
2.24.2011
So panasonic issued a firmware update for the af100. It's not a huge change, but it is a big step for panasonic who has not typically put out firmware updates to address customer feedback. This one was clearly in response to a thread over at dvx user titled AF100 improvement wishlist
The main thing it does is fix a very slight hue shift in the LCD. Also, if you look at the lower left corner of the screen in the photo. That's A.REC with a red slash through it. It pops up when you are in VFR mode to remind you that no audio is being recorded. You still get audio to the headphones and meters still bounce. So it's still not ideal, but it's a good start. Kudos to panasonic for stepping up their firmware delivery. Here's hoping for more in the future.
Panasonic also announced that native avchd editing is coming to FCP through a plugin that they are developing. This is also a huge step for Panasonic as they have historically been very slow to support anything on the mac platform.
The main thing it does is fix a very slight hue shift in the LCD. Also, if you look at the lower left corner of the screen in the photo. That's A.REC with a red slash through it. It pops up when you are in VFR mode to remind you that no audio is being recorded. You still get audio to the headphones and meters still bounce. So it's still not ideal, but it's a good start. Kudos to panasonic for stepping up their firmware delivery. Here's hoping for more in the future.
Panasonic also announced that native avchd editing is coming to FCP through a plugin that they are developing. This is also a huge step for Panasonic as they have historically been very slow to support anything on the mac platform.
2.23.2011
2.01.2011
I'm shooting a bit of PGA golf in Arizona. I really don't know much about golf, but this is hole 16 at the scottsdale arizona course. It's famous because it's the only hole on the pga tour where heckling takes place and is in some ways encouraged. It's pretty funny to hear drunk folks from the top deck yelling things out at top tier golfers in a situation where there is usually dead silence.
1.28.2011
1.19.2011
1.05.2011
1.01.2011
Thoughts on the AF100 after 1.5 days
Overall, it feels absolutely frick'n fantastic to be shooting with a video camera again. I think I never want to pick up a DSLR for video again. Having a moveable viewfinder is priceless, The flip out monitor is beautiful and in conjunction with the focus in red, is easy to use for critical focus.
Audio, Duh. Feels like I'm back on the HVX, audio controls and inputs are straightforward and require no workarounds.
1080 Variable Frame Rates. In a word, stunning. Goodbye 720.
Push button waveform monitor. Awesome.
Slow shutter during time-lapse (up to 1/2 sec), thank you.
The four thirds chip feels like a great middle ground in terms of depth of field control. If you need shallow, open up your stop, crank the neutral density wheel and you've got it. Need deep focus for more uncontrolled situations? Crank the ND wheel to 0 and stop down. Compared to the 5D where I always was sweating about focus, unsure if I was focused or not, particularly on a wide lens where the fall off is not as obvious. With this camera, I will never feel that way again. Also the ND wheel is something I will never take for granted. It's so fast and easy, this will be a HUGE timesaver.
One surprise was that the autofocus with the lumix 14-140 lens is actually quite useable! I had no intentions of ever using it, but when testing it out, I thought it performed quite admirably and I'm now sure I'll find myself using the manual mode with pushbutton auto quite often. One slight bummer is that auto focus for some reason cannot be used if you have VFR turned on.
Another nice surprise was the function knob. It's main use is to move a box on the viewfinder to set where you want autofocus and auto iris to take readings from, but the nice surprise is that you can use it to adjust the whitebalance in kelvin. Just set the whitebalance switch to preset, toggle from 32, 56, to VAR. Then the function knob can be used to adjust it manually! Very cool, I'd love to see the use of the function knob expand to allow other things like switching scene files without going into the menu.
The image itself is fantastic in my eyes. It's not noise free, but it has that panasonic "mojo" look. It's not crispy clean like the sony's, it's got some character to it, and that's a positive in my book. I'm not looking to eliminate every tiny bit of noise, to me it's just texture and character. I wasn't afraid of grain in the film days, and I still prefer an image with a bit of character, I'll take this over the plastic look of grain free images. That being said, I think the 3200 ISO on this camera is very clean for the sensitivity it gives.
Another positive is the wide range of tweakable settings in the menu to dial in the look you want. If the small amount of noise the camera generates bothers you, you can dial it out. See editman's tests at http://theeditman.com/blogg/2011/01/01/PanasonicAF101NoiseTest.aspx.
There is one big drawback and a few minor ones that I want to mention after using the camera for a day and a half.
First up, the big one. Perhaps this won't matter to other folks, but to me it's a MAJOR problem. When VFR (variable frame rate) mode is on, no audio is recorded. That's not a major surprise. BUT AUDIO METERS AND HEADPHONE AUDIO ARE ACTIVE WHEN RECORDING IN VFR, BUT NO AUDIO WILL BE RECORDED, EVEN IF YOUR FRAME RATE IS SET TO 24.
In other words, if you have VFR on, frame rate is set to 24, you start recording, you will hear audio in your headphones, the audio meters will be responding to audio, but when you stop recording and play back the shot, there will be no audio. YOU MUST TURN VFR OFF TO RECORD AUDIO. That's gonna catch a few people.
The minor problems are more just growing pains on my end. The main one is that I really really miss the scene file dial. That thing was a piece of engineering genius. It made it so easy and fast to switch frame rates. It seems like they traded it on the AF100 for the shutter/frame rate wheel. I can get use to it, but I'll always have a place in my heart for the scene file dial.
Another bummer is that you only have 3 sensitivities to choose from at one time. You have to go to the menu to set the sensitivities you want to use as high, medium and low. It would be nice to have it work like the whitebalance does where you can use the function knob to set it manually.
Another minor complaint is that the time-lapse mode only allows intervals of 1 sec, 10 sec, 1 min, 2 min. It would be nice to have more options between 1 and 10. Also, once you turn interval recording on in the menu, it only lasts for one shot then turns itself off. It would be nice to have it remain on until you turn it off.
Overall, I'm super happy. As a documentary/ sports shooter, I am so stoked to be moving on from the SLR world back to a video camera that feels like the right tool for the job. Thanks to Jan and Panasonic for taking this step into the large sensor video cam world.
All the best, Tim
Overall, it feels absolutely frick'n fantastic to be shooting with a video camera again. I think I never want to pick up a DSLR for video again. Having a moveable viewfinder is priceless, The flip out monitor is beautiful and in conjunction with the focus in red, is easy to use for critical focus.
Audio, Duh. Feels like I'm back on the HVX, audio controls and inputs are straightforward and require no workarounds.
1080 Variable Frame Rates. In a word, stunning. Goodbye 720.
Push button waveform monitor. Awesome.
Slow shutter during time-lapse (up to 1/2 sec), thank you.
The four thirds chip feels like a great middle ground in terms of depth of field control. If you need shallow, open up your stop, crank the neutral density wheel and you've got it. Need deep focus for more uncontrolled situations? Crank the ND wheel to 0 and stop down. Compared to the 5D where I always was sweating about focus, unsure if I was focused or not, particularly on a wide lens where the fall off is not as obvious. With this camera, I will never feel that way again. Also the ND wheel is something I will never take for granted. It's so fast and easy, this will be a HUGE timesaver.
One surprise was that the autofocus with the lumix 14-140 lens is actually quite useable! I had no intentions of ever using it, but when testing it out, I thought it performed quite admirably and I'm now sure I'll find myself using the manual mode with pushbutton auto quite often. One slight bummer is that auto focus for some reason cannot be used if you have VFR turned on.
Another nice surprise was the function knob. It's main use is to move a box on the viewfinder to set where you want autofocus and auto iris to take readings from, but the nice surprise is that you can use it to adjust the whitebalance in kelvin. Just set the whitebalance switch to preset, toggle from 32, 56, to VAR. Then the function knob can be used to adjust it manually! Very cool, I'd love to see the use of the function knob expand to allow other things like switching scene files without going into the menu.
The image itself is fantastic in my eyes. It's not noise free, but it has that panasonic "mojo" look. It's not crispy clean like the sony's, it's got some character to it, and that's a positive in my book. I'm not looking to eliminate every tiny bit of noise, to me it's just texture and character. I wasn't afraid of grain in the film days, and I still prefer an image with a bit of character, I'll take this over the plastic look of grain free images. That being said, I think the 3200 ISO on this camera is very clean for the sensitivity it gives.
Another positive is the wide range of tweakable settings in the menu to dial in the look you want. If the small amount of noise the camera generates bothers you, you can dial it out. See editman's tests at http://theeditman.com/blogg/2011/01/01/PanasonicAF101NoiseTest.aspx.
There is one big drawback and a few minor ones that I want to mention after using the camera for a day and a half.
First up, the big one. Perhaps this won't matter to other folks, but to me it's a MAJOR problem. When VFR (variable frame rate) mode is on, no audio is recorded. That's not a major surprise. BUT AUDIO METERS AND HEADPHONE AUDIO ARE ACTIVE WHEN RECORDING IN VFR, BUT NO AUDIO WILL BE RECORDED, EVEN IF YOUR FRAME RATE IS SET TO 24.
In other words, if you have VFR on, frame rate is set to 24, you start recording, you will hear audio in your headphones, the audio meters will be responding to audio, but when you stop recording and play back the shot, there will be no audio. YOU MUST TURN VFR OFF TO RECORD AUDIO. That's gonna catch a few people.
The minor problems are more just growing pains on my end. The main one is that I really really miss the scene file dial. That thing was a piece of engineering genius. It made it so easy and fast to switch frame rates. It seems like they traded it on the AF100 for the shutter/frame rate wheel. I can get use to it, but I'll always have a place in my heart for the scene file dial.
Another bummer is that you only have 3 sensitivities to choose from at one time. You have to go to the menu to set the sensitivities you want to use as high, medium and low. It would be nice to have it work like the whitebalance does where you can use the function knob to set it manually.
Another minor complaint is that the time-lapse mode only allows intervals of 1 sec, 10 sec, 1 min, 2 min. It would be nice to have more options between 1 and 10. Also, once you turn interval recording on in the menu, it only lasts for one shot then turns itself off. It would be nice to have it remain on until you turn it off.
Overall, I'm super happy. As a documentary/ sports shooter, I am so stoked to be moving on from the SLR world back to a video camera that feels like the right tool for the job. Thanks to Jan and Panasonic for taking this step into the large sensor video cam world.
All the best, Tim
12.30.2010
12.25.2010
12.09.2010
Tim and I both have a few days off so it looks like we are both deep into spring cleaning. Here a scan of a screen grab from our colorist in Seattle, Eric Rosen. These are kids from Mexico City that were extras in the Jack Black/Jared Hess adventure. That was one funnest documentary projects we ever worked on.
Big thanks to Tim for helping me set up my new computer. This is the view from my new office in Midway, I will be back to working out of the house, very happy about that, it feels right. I just had 2 edit jobs, first edit jobs in years. Things are looking good for Tim and I, the calendar is filling up with cool documentary projects. Life is good.
Peace to all.
Peace to all.
12.07.2010
12.06.2010
12.03.2010
12.02.2010
12.01.2010
I've been going through some old negatives i've got. Here's a shot of David law on the road out to the salt flats. Taken during the "scenic route" shoot.
11.15.2010
Hi Everyone,
Steve-o and I are unloading a bunch of video equipment as we shut down one office and
open another. We thought we'd send the list out to you folks first before blasting it out
onto ebay or the like. Everything is priced to move as I'm not to interested in spending
the next 4 weeks trying to sell this stuff.
UPDATED:
EVERYTHING is SOLD!
well, except the Beta SP deck. If any one wants a free one
come by my place and pick it up!
Steve-o and I are unloading a bunch of video equipment as we shut down one office and
open another. We thought we'd send the list out to you folks first before blasting it out
onto ebay or the like. Everything is priced to move as I'm not to interested in spending
the next 4 weeks trying to sell this stuff.
UPDATED:
EVERYTHING is SOLD!
well, except the Beta SP deck. If any one wants a free one
come by my place and pick it up!
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