StrongMocha: Charles, Tell us a little bit about your history in the movie business.

Well, being only 20 years old, my history is short, but I’ve had my fair share of vivid experiences, especially in film. I first picked up a video camera as a sophomore in high school, and I’ve been infatuated since. Throughout high school, I made a few extremely amateurish short films, but I made a name for myself in the community.

By my senior year, I produced a feature length documentary about my graduating class. Although it was shot and edited using consumer grade tools, it sold 250 copies and was a hit. Instead of pursuing film, I attended Purdue University the following year, and intended to major in engineering.

Purdue was great, but engineering didn’t fly. My sophomore year in college I attended Columbia College in Chicago for film & video and totally enjoyed it. However, film school is inherently expensive, and I’ve opted this upcoming year to stay closer to home and go to a less costly university. For the past year and half, I’ve worked alongside my partner Michael Gebben from Gebbs Wedding Films (gebbsweddingfilms.com), producing wedding cinematography and commercial films. In my free time, I love taking pictures and learning kinesthetically.

StrongMocha: We love your recent video “Inferno Flow” , tell us more about the video?
Essentially, my friend John called me one day explaining that he was trying to get into some kind of theme group. He’s into the electronic music/rave/poi scene, and to get into the group, he had to demonstrate some type of skill. So, poi and fire eating being his skills, he figured a video would be the best way to go about demonstrating them. I’ve dabbled in poi a bit myself, and I knew the pictures always looked great, but video cameras could barely keep up.

With the Canon 5D Mark II newly introduced to me, I knew that fire spinning/eating was worth testing its limits. Basically, I went to his house one night and filmed for about 2 hours. I had an idea as to what I wanted the video to look like, and I knew that I had the tools to pull it off…I just needed to make it work. I filmed John performing several times, directing him a little, but mostly letting him work his magic. Taking from my skills in wedding cinematography, I did everything on the fly, but that’s how I’m used to working. Getting a variety of angles, movements, and camera settings, I made sure that I had plenty to work with- I knew that the fast paced editing would need it. I then picked the song based on its composition and relation to my footage. John wanted something “chill,” but I knew that the act of fire spinning required a higher energy music selection due to the nature of its intense motion. Edit, the composer of the song, is part of a group called The Glitch Mob, who I had listened to in the past. I was recently listening to some of their beats in preparation for another video, and when I came across LTLP, I knew it was perfect. The slow lulls mixed with the crazy sampling and scratching fundamentally meshed great with the footage. I suppose the rest is history.

StrongMocha: Who is the brain behind it?
I am the brain behind it, I’m just glad that John approached me for the video, otherwise I doubt I would have made the connection that fire + Canon 5D Mark II= awesomeness.

StrongMocha: Tell us more about John Klockenkemper, who is fire breathing & dancing in your video.

I’ve known John since high school, and truthfully, he’s the equivalent of a mad scientist, except that he works with computers. He’s a smart fella, and we share the like of fast computers, sick electronic music, and fire, with often all three being in close proximity. I think John has been playing with fire for a year or two now, in the hobbyist since of the term. The last time we spun fire together, he was only a little better than me and hadn’t attempted fire eating, but he’s clearly gotten much better since then.

StrongMocha: Can John be hired for a Fire breathing & dancing performance?
I’m sure John would loves to perform, but I think he considers it more of just a fun, relaxing thing to do. I know he has performed in front of large groups of people, but so far, not for money. He has the skill to do it, I just don’t think he has ever actively pursued selling it. I would hire him though.

StrongMocha: Can you tell our reader a little bit more about “Lying Still”?
Lying Still is a film about perceived reality. The film was entered into the Purdue Digital Cinema Contest and won Best Documentary as well as Best Actress. In my opinion, it was a complex idea that was executed in a simple, yet extremely effective manner.

StrongMocha: For what reason did you make “Lying Still”?
Before I say anything, if anyone is reading this and hasn’t watched it, definitely do so now (Video below). Otherwise, I’ll ruin it for you. If you have seen it though, it basically stemmed from the simple, yet powerful idea of falsifying something that everybody takes for granted.

In film, home videos should ring a bell. Why would anybody ever fake a low production value/nearly worthless home video? With that in mind, I had to come up with an extraordinary event to “catch” on film. A girl confessing that she was a victim to rape was a plausible idea for the time limit that I had, which was seven minutes. It was powerful, and more importantly, a touchy subject. Presenting it alone, even without the idea of falsifying it, would be moving. But, at the close of the film, the viewer learns that everything was made up. In my mind, a majority of the population watches supposedly “real” events, such as the news or nonfiction documentaries, and takes them to be true. Home videos also fall under that category, but if someone were to fake a supposedly “real” event, more people might question the “reality” of the world that is presented to them. I optimistically question nearly everything around me, and I guess the main reason I made this film is so that other folks will follow suit.

StrongMocha: Let’s dive into the technology and software you used for Inferno Flow. You shoot it with the Canon 5D Mark II, which lenses did you use?
As far as lenses go on this particular film, I used the Canon L-series 16-35mm 2.8 and an older manual Nikon 50mm 1.4 with a Canon adapter ring. I also used a shoulder mount for the static shots and a Glidecam 2000 for all of the moving shots.

StrongMocha: While you did shoot the footage did you learn anything you want to share with our reader?
Fire is hot. It doesn’t mix well with cameras, especially expensive ones. I was singed a few times, so be careful when you shoot poi. Aside from that, trying different shutter speeds with moving objects, fire in particular, produces very different effects. It looks great with both low and fast speeds, and depending on your preference, both can work. On slower shutter speeds, however, I did encounter a bit of ghosting. Also, using the 50 prime was definitely advantageous for me- it performed awesomely in the low light coupled with the Canon 5D Mark II and gave me some breathing room with testing different exposures.

StrongMocha: Tell us more about your editing approach and the software you use?
I normally preach preplanning and preproduction, but with a great deal of event videography, things change on the fly. If you think about it, the concept for my video was extremely simple; it was just well executed. I knew going into shooting that I needed lots of variety within my footage, so I just left it at that.

The editing for this piece was more of just experimentation along the way. I wanted very beat driven movements (because that’s kind of what poi is based upon), so I rough cut about 40 minutes of footage down to maybe 20 minutes of good stuff. From there I just played around. If something looked good and flowed well, I kept it in. I kept the pacing of the video as close as I could to the pacing of the song, since I wanted to make the connection very apparent. Everything clicked really well, and I think that the combination of being at the right place with the right tools, filming the right person, and using the right music made the editing a no brainer. Getting all those things right was the hard part.

I used Sony Vegas 9. I only applied speed changes and mild color correcting as far as technical stuff goes.

StrongMocha: We here at StrongMocha started to use compression code to speed our work up dramaticly, tell us about your tricks in your daily editing  work?
I use Cineform’s standalone compression software to tame the beastly .h264 files. Converting everything to .avi makes editing a breeze. For daily editing, knowing shortcuts is huge for me. I’m constantly refining my workflow, doing whatever it takes to be more effective and ultimately faster, while maintaining quality. I try to control the tools and not let the tools control me- knowing the ins and outs of the software will only make you better.

StrongMocha: What can we expect from you next film?
I have a simple concept that, although time consuming, if done right, will be effectively extraordinary and something never attempted on the magnitude that I plan to achieve. It will involve timelapsing, a living statue, some absolutely nasty beats, and a deep concentration on motion at its fundamental level. It’s in the works right now, and I’m pretty flippin’ excited.

StrongMocha: You also work on wedding films one of your recent one is “Sonal & Saidul-HENNA PARTY”. How did you start in the Wedding Film business?

I opened up the phone book and persistently asked for an interview. Basically, my partner and I really hit it off in the beginning, we were both passionate, and we were both driven. Wedding films are being totally revamped, and our company is at the frontend of the wave. By all means, check out our films, I can safely guarantee that they are unlike (and better) than any wedding film you will ever see. Imagine Inferno Flow translated into a wedding film. Yeah. It’s cool, and we love what we do. We’re open for destinations worldwide! gebbsweddingfilms.com

Philip Bloom shows you how to prepare Canon 5D Mark II  footage ( H264) for editing in Final Cut Studio.

Michael Fletcher shares a great video from a cruise boat trip in Australia. All filmed with the Canon 5D Mark II (2 x Canon 5D MK2, Canon Prime lenses 24mm, 50mm, 85mm, 400mm, Miller Tripod, Lee Filter Kit with grads, Fostex field recorder, Rode Mics). The boat for those of you who have not heard of it is the “TRUE NORTH” and it circumnavigates the Australian continent visiting some of the most remote coastline in Australia and also ventures past these waters to many unseen Pacific Island destinations.

Images Of Western Australia’s Kimberley from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

For those of you who are interested check out Christian’s Photographs on christianfletcher.com.au or read Christian’s blog christianfletcher.wordpress.com

Some additional great Movies Micheal and Chris did make.

Images Of Karijini National Park from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

Images of Australia’s Southwest from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

Watch this review of the Canon 5D Mark 2 made by Roman Lehmann and Kevin Blanc. Roman Lehmann and Kevin Blanc speak Swiss German (Schweizerdeutsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch). Most non-swiss will not understand it, but it is worth to watch the review and test footage they produced.

A recent Video done with the Canon 5D Mark 2. The Video was filmed by Guardian photographer Dan Chung entirely on a production Canon EOS5DmkII and adapted Nikon and Zeiss lenses using manual focus.

Dan used Nikon and Zeiss lenses:

• Nikon 17-35 f2.8
• Nikon 80-200 f.8
• Nikon 85mm f2.8 shift lens
• Nikon 16mm f2.8 fisheye
• Zeiss/Contax 85mm f1.4

Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

See guardian.co.uk/profile/danchung for more of Dan Chung’s work

We all have to wait to November or December to buy the new Canon 5D Mark II, but I’m sure it is worth the wait.

Key Specifications:

New 21.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with improved EOS Integrated Cleaning System (E.I.C.S.)
New Full HD 1080 resolution movie recording
3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
High performance DIGIC 4 providing superb image quality
Maximum 310 large JPEG images in a single burst with a UDMA card
3.0” VGA (920k dots) Clear View LCD
ISO 100-6400 (expansion from 50 up to 25,600)
9 AF points + 6 Assist AF points
Additional information

New CMOS sensor
The EOS 5D Mark II’s newly designed full frame 21.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor features ISO sensitivity from 100-6400, expandable to 50, 12,800 and 25,600. Large 6.4µm2 pixels have been redesigned to capture more light and yield a better signal to noise ratio to ensure lower noise images throughout the ISO range. The full frame sensor has the same dimensions as a frame of 35mm film. This means that wide-angle lenses stay wide, without the change in angle of view associated with smaller sensor cameras. As well as benefiting from finer control over depth of field, photographers moving up to the EOS 5D Mark II’s full frame format will find the newly designed wide, bright 98% coverage viewfinder on a joy to work with.

New DIGIC 4 processor
A new DIGIC 4 processor combined with 14-bit analogue to digital conversion provides smooth gradations in mono-tonal areas such as skies, and highly accurate colour rendition. As well as HD movie shooting, DIGIC 4’s high speed provides for long uninterrupted continuous bursts of large JPEGs, near-instant start-up times and immediate and fast review after shooting. DIGIC 4 also provides for improved noise reduction algorithms, complementing the already low noise images from the EOS 5D Mark II’s CMOS sensor.

HD video capture
The EOS 5D Mark II is Canon’s first D-SLR to incorporate full HD 1920×1080 video capture. Once filming is started from Live View mode, photographers can fire off either single of continuous stills, with video capture continuing after the final frame is captured.

See everything
A new 3.0” VGA resolution LCD provides a wide 170º angle-of-view, providing plenty of clarity for accurate focus checks in playback. The screen brightness can automatically adjust to suit viewing conditions, extending battery life in low light and improving viewing in bright conditions. A new dedicated Live View button switches modes to display a real-time image on the LCD. This allows EOS 5D Mark II photographers to enjoy simplified shooting from awkward angles. Simple connection to a PC provides easy remote shooting.

Precision focus and metering
A 9-point auto focus system is supported by 6 additional invisible Assist AF points, located inside the spot-metering circle to optimise subject tracking performance in AI SERVO AF mode. For accurate exposure readings in tricky lighting conditions, the spot metering circle covers just 3.5% of the frame.

Control
The EOS 5D Mark II’s redesigned menu system includes a new Quick Control screen, for instant access to the most commonly changed settings. A new Creative Auto mode allows photographers to cede control of key settings to the camera, while retaining control over creative variables such background blur, drive mode and image brightness. Custom user settings allow photographers to switch between two completely different camera setups. This is ideal for changing quickly between two different environments, such as switching from working inside a church without flash to outdoors with fill-flash at a wedding.

Accessories
Shooting flexibility is enhanced with a range of new accessories. Shooting capacity can be extended with either the high capacity 1800mAh lithium-ion Battery Pack LP-E6, or Battery Grip BG-E6.

A new optional Wireless File Transmitter –
the WFT-E4 – offers external HDD and GPS compatibility along with ability to transmit images direct to computer or FTP server, or operate the camera wirelessly. Both the BG-E6 and WFT-E4 feature a vertical orientation shutter release and other key controls for comfortable portraiture work, with a substantial grip to help balance the camera when used with long lenses.

Technologies Explained:

CMOS
Canon’s CMOS technology is one of the company’s key competitive advantages, with noise reduction circuitry at each pixel site delivering virtually noise-free images. In comparison with CCD technology, the lower power consumption characteristics of Canon’s CMOS sensors also contribute to longer battery life.

Signal conversion in Canon’s CMOS sensors is handled by individual amplifiers at each pixel site. Unnecessary charge transfer operations are avoided, vastly speeding up the process of getting signal to the image processor. Noise generation is reduced, power consumption is limited and faster frame rate potential is increased.

DIGIC
Image data captured by the CMOS sensor is processed by Canon’s purpose-built DIGIC image processors before being written to the camera’s memory card. DIGIC technology uses advanced image processing algorithms to ensure precise, natural colours, accurate white balance, and advanced noise reduction. Ultra-fast processing speeds result in highly responsive camera operation and near-instant start-up times.

DIGIC chips work with a high speed DDR-SDRAM image buffer – reading, processing, compressing and writing image data fast enough to keep the buffer clear during long continuous shooting bursts. And because DIGIC integrates all key processing functions, power consumption is kept to a minimum.

EOS Integrated Cleaning System
The EOS Integrated Cleaning System combats sensor dust in three important ways: Reduce, Repel and Remove.

Reduce – Internal camera mechanisms are designed to minimise dust generation. The redesigned body cap prevents dust generation through wear on the cap itself.
Repel – Anti-static technologies, including a special fluorine coating, are applied to the low-pass filter covering the front of the sensor so as not to attract dust.
Remove – A Self-Cleaning Sensor Unit uses hi-frequency vibrations to shake dust from the infrared filter for a period of approximately one second after each start up. For instant shooting after power up, this feature is disabled immediately the shutter release is depressed.
Canon has also developed an internal Dust Delete Data system, which can map the position of visible dust on the sensor. This can then be deleted automatically after the shoot with the latest Digital Photo Professional software.

Picture Style
Picture Style pre-sets simplify in-camera control over image qualities. Picture Style pre-sets can be likened to different film types – each one offering a different colour response. Within each selectable pre-set, photographers have control over sharpness, contrast, colour tone and saturation. The camera’s factory default configuration is set to deliver immediately-usable JPEG images without need for additional menu settings. Picture Style presets applied to a RAW image can be revised with Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software.

The six pre-sets are:

Standard – for crisp, vivid images that don’t require post-processing
Portrait – optimises colour tone and saturation and weakens sharpening to achieve attractive skin tones
Landscape – for punchier greens and blues with stronger sharpening to give a crisp edge to mountain, tree and building outlines
Neutral – ideal for post-processing
Faithful – adjusts colour to match the subject colour when shot under a colour temperature of 5200K
Monochrome – for black and white shooting with a range of filter effects (yellow, orange, red and green) and toning effects (sepia, blue, purple and green).
Software
Digital Photo Professional Software
Digital Photo Professional software provides high speed, high quality processing of lossless RAW images. Processing with Digital Photo Professional allows real-time display and immediate application of image adjustments, giving control over RAW image variables such as white balance, dynamic range, exposure compensation, noise reduction and colour tone – plus the ability to view Auto Focus points on an image. The Lens Aberration correction tool allows precise correction of different types of distortion caused by certain cameras. Images can be recorded in camera with sRGB or Adobe RGB colour space.

Digital Photo Professional supports sRGB, Adobe RGB, colourMatch RGB, Apple RGB and Wide Gamut RGB colour spaces. ICC (International Colour Consortium) profiles can be attached to TIFF or JPEG images when converted from RAW. This allows faithful reproduction of colours in software applications that support ICC profiles, such as Adobe Photoshop. For improved efficiency, a set of image adjustments can be saved as a recipe and applied.

EOS Utility
The latest version of EOS Utility provides essential support for Live View remote shooting, camera configuration and image transfers. Tightly integrated with Digital Photo Professional, EOS Utility can be configured to monitor ‘hot’ folders, automatically renaming and moving incoming images to a structured file system. Users can also tag their images with EXIF data, including copyright information.

Picture Style Editor
Picture Style Editor allows users to create individual Picture Styles that fit with their personal requirements. Each Picture Style contains detailed information on how specific colours should be represented within an image. Once new Picture Styles have been created, they can be uploaded directly into the camera and applied to JPEG or RAW images. When working with RAW files in DPP, both personal Picture Styles and the 6 predetermined Picture Styles can all be adjusted.

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE:

New Canon EOS 7D is now available

Read more about the launched EOS 7D on StrongMocha.com here

There is no way to know if this picture is real or made up (faked) by someone with some Photoshop skills.

Keith Cooper from northlight images kindly informed me that the earlier posted image is a fake one that was as well published on flickr 10 month ago.

Personally I’m waiting for 8 Month for the 5D replacement body.