I recently decided do get another monitor mainly for situations with my 5D when I need an articulating screen and also for client review as they more often than not want to have a look at what everything looks like. Knowing that I wouldn’t be using it much I went looking for some of the cheaper options. Getting a SmallHD for the few times when the 5D’s LCD is blocked didn’t seem very cost effective.

I’ve bought many products from COOLLCD in the past and they have fantastic prices and better customer service than any other camera support company I have dealt with. They are based in Hong Kong but ship via DHL which takes around 3 days to the UK. I’ve had a 7 inch monitor in the past and it was just far too big and cumbersome. This time I went for a 5 inch model in the form of the HD3. An unbranded monitor that crucially has a special mode for the 5Dmk2 that prevents the long delays and 4:3 output.

Onto the actual review, the HD3 is a very well built and professional looking piece of kit. The monitor sells for a mere £110 but contains features found in much more expensive monitors. I purchased mine with an adapter plate for using Sony style batteries. Finally a battery plate that mounts straight to the monitor! Works great and a F970 battery gives 7-10 hours of battery life. Also this monitor features HDMI loop through meaning that you can output again to another device from the monitor. Video can be inputted via HDMI or composite BNC. No component inputs but that’s fine by me. There’s also a headphone jack for monitoring.

The HD3 features a very nice sunhood. It clips into the front and protects the screen when closed. Pops open easily and really does give some good sun protection.

Next the 5D mode. This works very well and overcomes all the problems associated with outputting from the 5D. There’s a button on the front called ‘camera’. Press this and the monitor zooms into the image giving full screen monitoring of the 5D’s image. There’s also no delay when pressing record which was a nightmare with older monitors. Check out the comparison pictures below with the 5D mode set off and on.

The monitor also has a fairly naff focus assist mode. It’s nowhere near as good as a red edge style assist mode but might be useful now and then.

Finally we need to talk about the one massive downside of this monitor. Colour. Why have I got the monitor set to B&W in all of the pictures above? It’s because the colour on this monitor is far from accurate and difficult to adjust. The inbuilt kelvin settings give either a blue, green or pink tint. User colour is set by RGB values which I’ve tried in vain to get accurate. Also worth noting is that when the monitor changes signal or is turned off the colour setting reverts to the default 6500K setting. So every-time you unplug the monitor or turn it on you need to go back into the menu and choose the user setting again. Not good!

So to sum up I really have no complaints about this monitor except that the colour is so bad. It’s a shame since everything else is so good! For £110 though you really aren’t going to get any better.

Extra points worth mentioning:

• Brightness is very good at 350cd/m
• Resolution is great at 800 x 480
• Brightness and contrast are accurate enough for getting good exposure
• When using on a camera that isn’t a 5D you MUST turn ‘camera’ mode off.
• Safety marker settings from 80% to 96%
• Magic Lantern works OK in 5D mode. Cuts the top and bottom off but settings can still be seen.

We began by writing a rough script the day before our first workshop. We had acquired an ‘interesting’ prop from a 2nd hand shop close to our office and decided to build our story around this. We took inspiration from the play by keeping our film mostly silent and having it narrated.

The workshop at Live Theatre was fantastic. We were given a writing mentor in the form of Fiona Evans, an award winning writer who has written for both TV and the stage. Fiona helped us to tighten our script and create an ending that would wrap up everyone’s stories. After the writing session the actors arrived to be briefed and thankfully they all loved the script!

The next day we began shooting our film. We decided to shoot the majority of it on the Panasonic GH2 due to the fact that we needed a camera that shot decent 50/60 fps footage for slow motion. The 5Dmk2 doesn’t shoot these high frame rates and cameras such as the 7D and 550D have pretty bad quality 720P video due to the fact that the Canon DSLRs do not down-sample like the GH2 does. I decided to hack the GH2 using the 88mbit EOSHD Unified patch to maximise detail in the image. The patch created amazing images but unfortunately my Class 10 SDHC cards couldn’t cope with it during scenes of high detail and deep depth of field. Since the shoot I have now reduced the hack to 60mbit which is much more stable.

The other equipment we used to create our film included our lightweight IGUS slider, a 5Dmk2 for lowlight scenes and a 312 bi-colour LED panel. These LED panels are fantastic and allow colour temperatures from 3200K to 5500K.

We were extremely lucky to get given such fantastic actors and thankfully we all shared the same type of humour! Diana will be screened at Live Theatre on August 5th as part of the Mega Bites Festival.

We initally threw around a few different ideas before all agreeing on a few things. We wanted to make a film unlike any of the other entries seen previously. Very few films entered in previous competitions had any humour and most took a very serious approach to the Sci-Fi genre, so early on we decided to create something with dark, dry humour running throughout. We also noticed the huge amount of ‘post-apocalyptic’ entries and wanted to poke a bit of fun at that specific genre.

 
Our fantastic cast included Dennis Hewitt, Jack Robertson and Amy Telford. We also had a great make-up/props team on-board with Imaginative Minds.
 

 
We spent the first day coming up with an idea and a rough script. We also shot all of the scenes that wouldn’t be taking place in our main location, Cateran hole on Saturday.

 
Cateran hole is a location our sound guy had visited a few times while walking his dog. An old unmarked, smugglers cave out in the countryside. Nobody else had ever visited it amongst the crew and in my head I assumed it would be quite spacious to film inside, how wrong I was! The ‘cave’ is more like a corridor, heading about 45m underground. Den was a great sport and I think spent at least around 5 hours underground, he got pretty comfy down there.

 
Luckily we had our Canon 5D on a very small rig with a 312 Bi-Colour LED panel mounted on-top. Our original idea was to light the cave naturally using only candles, lanterns and torches. It lit people’s faces but didn’t really show off the cave too much so we ended up sticking the LED panel on 3200K to mimic the orange candle light which I think worked quite well.

 
Apparently SCI-FI London prefer the entries not to be uploaded to the public before the short-list is announced so we are following their orders! We’ll make the final video public in about a weeks time. We had so much fun making this short and staying up till 7am Monday morning didn’t seem like much of a chore although I think we all went a little delirious towards the end. Great fun and look forward to entering again next year!

The slider has become something that we now take with us on nearly every shoot. The buttery smooth camera movements add huge production value to any project. Initially when researching sliders we needed one for a shoot within the week. We first looked at buying a Konova slider but unfortunately we just couldn’t get one delivered in time from Korea. I then looked towards the British made Glidetrack products. These run on a ‘dry’ bearing system and require no lubricant or maintenance. The Glidetrack SD, which is aimed at DSLR users costs around £240 for a 1m track and carriage.

Not a bad price for something so useful however a little bit of further research reveals the Glidetrack is made from parts readily available from the manufacturer IGUS. A quick Google reveals you can buy the exact same track and carriage used in the Glidetrack SD on Amazon, direct from IGUS for £110. Always happy to save a little money we purchased the raw materials to create our own Glidetrack! The rails and carriage come without any tapped holes so you do need a little bit of DIY know-how to get this going. We drilled and tapped both the carriage and rails to 1/4″ BSW which allows us to mount all sorts of standard camera accessories to it.

Next we needed to work out the best way of mounting and using this slider. Initially we mounted the track to a single tripod but we found our Canon 5Dmk2 a little to heavy for this set-up. The track would flex quite badly as the camera went close to either end. Carrying an extra tripod was something we didn’t really want to do all the time due to the added weight and bulk. Our solution works using light-stands, which are very lightweight and something everyone has.

The middle hole of the slider track has a quick release plate mounted to allow a tripod to be used there. The holes on the end of the track have light stand adapters which allows any standard light-stand to be quickly mounted.

This still isn’t quite enough to stop any flex so the final bit required is a 3KG lead bag which is put on the bottom of the light-stand. These little things are fantastic and cost around £20 each. Who really wants to be carrying around huge sandbags? These little bags are filled with lead shot and can be found in any diving shop. They fit in the palm of your hand and have tons of uses, we always take at least one on a shoot.

Now our slider rig is ready to use and even with the camera on the edge of the unsupported end there is no flex. If you wanted to mount a rig with mattebox, follow focus etc, then another light-stand can be added with an additional 3KG lead bag. However if you are thinking about sliding heavy rigs, you should really be looking at a larger track with 2 tripods mounted. Also for anyone worried about the lack of end stops, you can add some yourself, just give it a quick Google for a whole slew of different DIY options.

The problem with phone interference is that it invades your audio track at all frequencies. Check out the example below. The lines of squares are the phone interference, you can see they are evident all the way through the frequencies.

For certain types of interference the click removal tool works wonders but it doesn’t work with long buzzing type interference, only the clicking/popping type most people are familiar with. The example we will be looking at here is the final scene of ‘The Last Day’. The countdown to midnight (the end of the world?) is unfortunately plagued with interference and really distracts from the scene. Listen to the example below from the original footage.

Here is the audio from this clip loaded into iZotope RXII.

You can see the lines of squares plaguing the audio throughout. Luckily there is interference at the start of the clip before any dialogue. This is where we can take a noise example from. You simply select the noise you want to remove and click ‘train de-noiser’. We now have a example of both the interference and the ambient sound in the background. Once we apply the noise reduction to the audio it will have removed both interference and background audio, so we will need to add some ambient sound back in later. Here is what the audio looks like after it has been treated.

We can now export that and add it in along with some mild wind noise in the background. Here is what the audio sounds like after the repair.

The difference is massive and the dialogue hasn’t become overly tinny like some other software produces. This method only works if the scene contains background noise that is quite loud or possibly some music. The repaired audio isn’t perfect and will need something to cover it up.

This quick method won’t give the best results possible but it’s easy to accomplish and can give audio good enough for web delivery and can certainly save the day if needed. Moral of the story is make sure everyone on set turns their phones off!

All of the scenes were shot within 4 hours with the rest of the time being spent location hunting, creating characters and devising the storyline as we went. We had a lot of fun making this and we hope you enjoy it as well.

We set our own self-inflicted set of rules to create a completely improvised film. We weren’t allowed to think of any ideas beforehand, we would meet at 9am and finish by 6pm and we would all bring a few random props. We met up and pulled over in the car to check out all the props we had brought. Within a few minutes we had created our first character, Neville, an end of the world nut obsessed with radio waves.

Since we were filming on the last day of 2011, why not set the film then? We quickly drove to a supermarket to build a survival kit for Neville. We decided to film in some nearby woods and location scouted for about an hour. We had the entire camera kit packed into a rucksack so we could travel light and shoot fast. We didn’t bring a tripod and intended to do everything handheld. We knew we needed to be fast as the sunlight would be gone by 4pm.

By now we had come up with a basic story and what the relationship was between our two characters. We had an idea for the first scene and just went for it. Sophie and Lewis are absolutely exceptional at improv and the dialogue is completely off the top of their heads. Generally we all decide what action is happening in the scene, a few points the characters must touch upon and how the scene will end.  Sometimes we planned out where the cuts would go and other times I just moved the camera around the scenes as they happened.

Generally this is how the day went, coming up with ideas and just letting them play out in-front of the camera. By around 4-5pm it was getting very dark and without any extra lighting we had to the shoot the final scene by torchlight at 6400ISO and the lens at F1.4-F2. Luckily we had just got our new 5Dmkii a few days before which handled these conditions quite well considering.

Another thing worth mentioning is the radio that plays a big part in the film. We liked the idea of using the actual sounds from the radio rather than dubbing in something later. The radio can get medium and short-wave broadcasts so we made use of the foreign broadcasts in the plot and found some pretty entertaining German stations that provide an interesting soundtrack!

The edit is nearing completion and the film should be ready tomorrow if everything goes to plan. Making this film was the best way I could have spent the last day of 2011, working with a fantastic cast and crew. Look out for the completed film soon!

I’ll be honest and say that the AF100, while being a great camera, can be very tough to get really nice images from it. Maybe this is because I’ve never owned a Panasonic camera before and I haven’t learnt all the tricks yet. The big problem with the AF is it’s apparent trouble in handling highlights. The camera is very easy to overexpose and high contrast scenes are especially tough with some nasty highlight clipping usually occurring. This can be reigned in by adjusting a few scene file settings and using DRS (dynamic range stretch) for especially tough scenes. The roll off is like jumping off a cliff compared to some other cameras.

The highlight handling is my one big gripe with this camera but everything else is pretty good! We chose the AF over the Sony FS100 because of it’s huge range of features such as built in ND filters, 1080p 50fps overcrank, waveforms, a decent LCD plus a ton of others. Having built in ND filters is a god-send and makes controlling depth of field very easy. Being able to just grab the camera and lens and being able to shoot without a mattebox or a box of screw-in filters is fantastic. After shooting a lot with the Canon DSLRs, I really wanted to try and move away from huge ‘rigs’.

The AF100 is capable of excellence without needing to be surrounded by 15mm support gear. Check out the first short video we shot with the AF100 below, lots of low-light and 50fps overcrank:

Despite what many people say, the low light capability of this camera is very good. People like to bash cameras because they get noisy when they try to light a scene with a single match. Unfortunately the only example I have to hand is the shot below. I shot this with a Takumar 55mm at F2, the only lighting for the foreground was the light on the fisherman’s head. There is noise in the image obviously but it seems pretty good considering the speed of the lens and the light source. Shot at ISO1250.

The AF100 has a micro 4/3rds sensor that has the benefit of being able to take nearly any lens with the right adapter. We currently use Super Takumar lenses which have a really warm, cinematic feel to them. Check out the screengrabs below to see what I mean.

Overall I really like the AF100. It far outshines the likes of our old XHA1 however I do miss having a 1/3 chip camera with a 20x zoom and rocker switch but no camera can cover all bases. It certainly isn’t a ‘DSLR killer’ and DSLR video still has a time and a place, even in commercial videography. Despite it’s flaws (highlights!) having built-in ND filters, good quality audio recording (LPCM uncompressed) and VFR (variable frame rate) trumps all that. Also being able to record 90mins of 1080/25p footage on a 16gb SDHC card is great! A nice change from the bloated Canon DSLR codec.

Below are a few ungraded screengrabs from this project we shot on the Panasonic AF101. If you are interested in producing a video for your charity please get in contact with us via the form on this website.

DVD production for this project should be completed towards the end of this week ready for the screening at ARC cinema!