On lower budget projects, we sometimes don’t get the luxury of a prep day—or sometimes even if we do, we might only check that the gear isn't broken. But if you’re concerned with the outcome of the final product, I would encourage you to do more thor...
In addition to earning a living working in television/video production for the past 40 years, it is also my hobby. There’s nothing I enjoy more than just getting out and shooting for the fun of it – with no client to answer to or deadline to meet. ...
Here are a few frames from our last day of shooting after 2 total weeks of shooting a feature doc on food and culture. Shot on FX6 and FX3 below, I am very pleased how well they cut together.
Time-lapse is a filmmaking technique where a cinematographer shoots a series of still pictures (generally of the same frame) at a chosen regular interval for a series of time. These pictures are then played together in sequence, showing an event unf...
There's no question in my mind that the FX6 offers the best auto-focus capability of any video camera ever made by any manufacturer. But you can't just take the camera out of the box and use the default settings.I was on my way home last Sunday afte...
Hey All - Thought I'd share a personal passion project I finished this year. It's a short documentary called Janwaar that celebrates a rambunctious group of kids whose lives are transformed when a skatepark is built in their small village in India. ...
First, it's Halloween. Second, I recently got to talk to super talented DP James Kniest about how he became a horror DP and how he filmed the new Mike Flanagan series The Midnight Club. (It’s a Netflix show where eight terminally ill young adults te...
Has anyone else heard of Sony's SDK? If you have some programming ability, you can do all sorts of things with your camera through your computer!! They even provide a detailed setup guide:The SDK is compatible with most Sony mirrorless cameras, along...
As we all know, photo lenses can be fraught with imperfections (focus breathing, distracting lens flare, etc), but we use them on smaller projects when we don't have the budget for a set of Arri Master Primes.And while we can't make a $2,000 photo le...
For years have I been trying to dial in the most 'filmic' look for my look. That doesn't always mean grainy, etc. To me, that just means pleasing and rich tones and colors, ultra-smooth highlight roll-off, and some form of 'x factor' that you can't d...
I just got back from a doc day shoot in Denver telling the story of a monitor engineer for one of my clients as part of a larger series. I am now back at my desk looking over the footage, grading, and exporting a few clips and I thought I would share...
It's often tempting to rely on white balance presets as generally these will be in the right ball park for most things. On previous generations of cameras you had to use presets when shooting Log. But the latest cameras have the ability to take a whi...
I'm always curious about what others are doing when shooting non-fiction. Obviously, there are many different kinds of documentary productions, and some allow more careful planning and lighting than others. But when you're literally shooting from the...
Ever since I made my first impressions video with the FX30, where I paired the APS-C sensor with some vintage lenses, I’ve been getting questions about how you actually use older glass with the FX30.It’s actually quite simple, so I wanted to demystif...
You first have to set the camera to Interval Shooting mode (Menu>Shooting>Drive Mode>Interval Shoot Func.>On)And you might think that's all there is to it. But it's a little trickier than that.Let's say you're doing a sunset. If you go outside at gol...
