Shot with my little iPhone and the Hipstamatic app.

Great snapshot setup, back to the 50/60/70′ties i say.

Messed up colors, burned edges and nothing is controlable…

Love it

Finally we’re moving into serious snapshot territory with the new iPhone. While it’s all nice and new (and quicker, with higher res. screen), the best part of this is that i finally discovered Hipstamatic.

I thought i have to move to Williamsburg to truly enjoy it, but the stuff i shot so far are dangerously fun by themselves. Thanks Steven for the intro on my birthday…

I promise i’ll post more snaps in the future

And while getting serious about the moving image it becomes clear that sound needs to become it’s own item.

Not only does it alow to mix the image seperate from ther sound track, the sound quality is so much better, due to much less and better compression on the audio recorders.
It really is a different Element, that needs serious consideration and equipment.
And with the input from my shoot as stiil photographer on the set of “Homework” i got a serious headstart into this not so new field (My dad was a sound engineer and is a huge Jazz collector, so i kind of grew up behind a mixing board).

Again a nice amount amount of reseach was helpfull (and online resources can point very much in the right direction, but real world feedback is still the best, so thank you, Pro-Sound New York).

I rented the Zoom h4n and the Sennheiser M66/K6, both great units, form them for a test. While i liked the mic, even that it was on the dry side (Think Zeiss lenses) i wasn’t in love with the recorder. The XLR plugs don’t have a secure lock and after researching a bit i came across the Tascam DR-100 which a lot of people like better.
I wanted to up the quality and got a Marantz PMD-661, upgraded by the Oade brothers with better components. That is twice the price of the others but the sound is fantastic.
We also got Rode NTG-2 mics for boom (to the PMD) and on camera with a XLR to
stereo plug. The reason for Rode, great reviews, “cheap” and Phantom and AA power.

We also got the Rode Stereo video mic for room sound, that i personally hate, the base level of the noise is too high (hissing, think grain). Also, forget the build in mics of the Canons, Marantz PMD or any other handheld recorder for anything but emergency backup. The noise of actually just holding the unit actually gets recorded, so put it on a stand and just turn it on if you have to.

Oh, another necessary thing is to get is a nice set of headphones, Sony MDR 7506 seems the standard on movie sets, and that’s what we use now.

Our whole kit, PMD-661 ($650), 2 Rode NTG-2 ($250 each), 1 Rode SVM ($250), 1 Sony headphones ($95) and a couple of cables, rechargeable AA batteries and SD cards (probably $150), total $1645 for audio (Lav mics, to pin on, we rent as needed).

Getting just a small recorder, like the Tascam DR-100 ($300) and Rode NTG-2 with headphones gets you in the door for around $750 (cables, SD and batteries).

As for top of the crop recorders there’s Sound Devices, but that’s a very different category.

If you’re in NY, talk to Pro Sound or Abel Cine, both great outfits with very deep knowledge, a movie background and equipment to demo and rent.

As for shooting, the best option is obviously to work with a pro sound guy, but in a pinch (and a doc we’re working on right now) we do it ourselves with great results, but it needs to be monitored all the time, juts like the camera…

After doing research online and reading all the reviews I could get my hands on, testing equipment from Fotocare and Able cinema we got around to put a nice and small system together for better camera handling while shooting moving images with the Canon 5D.

What I do find interesting is that the Movie Directors of Photography keep the cameras and accessories small, with prime lenses and very little other equipment, maybe a loupe, maybe a small LCD.

But the still photographers try to add everything possible to the unit, large Matt boxes, a separate audio recorder with shotgun mics and huge shoulder rigs in addition to the loupe and monitor.

The last resulting in the most comical contraption that’s unwieldy and takes up huge amount of space to transport, rig and move around. Kind of defying the purpose of the small unit with incredible image quality.
The solution that I prefer is a simple Redrock rig with two handles upfront and a simple gun stock, while the camera gets a Zacuto loupe mounted on the small LCD.
I could see adding a 7″ Marshall LCD at some point, especially when shooting from a tripod.
But I really like the feeling of the handheld shooting, conveying and more engaging with an immediate point of view.

A great addition to the still image, i can see this mixing well on the iPad and web editions of stories all the while keeping the feel and perspective very close.

I wonder, will it save publishing, will it replace my print portfolio, will we be able to replace Laptops, will we able to set it up as a preview screen on a shoot, how will my iPhone feel…

Anyhow, i can’t wait, my 3G is on the way, perfect for my trip to Europe. The hype is a little overblown, but it will do a lot.

I feel we’ll be ending up like those little round guys in WALL-E, sitting on a hover chair and having a iPad strapped in front of us. Interesting to think that Steve Jobs vision of the future is laid out in a children’s animation movie and no one picks up on this (iAd anyone?).

Wasn’t there something like this not too long ago. Radio survived and that’s a good thing.

Now video is again at it, and the photo world seems to discover a new calling. Only, isn’t there something like a Director of Photography (who are great photographers themselves) on every film set. Nobody is waiting for the still photographers to come and reinvent the wheel. The DP’s are taking the small DSLRS and shoot footage previously unable or only obtainable with very difficult rigging. Maybe that’s the convergence of technologies. And it will be interesting finally and really incorporating editorial photography with video, at least to an extend…

My prediction: Still photography will come out of this even stronger than before. It’s hard to hang a movie or video on the wall, and moving images will enhance and add to the still portfolio in any publication (once we all have an iPad).

People will go back to actually capturing a moment rather than spending days reviewing, developing and editing RAW RED footage… In the end it’s all about the efficient method to get to the final product.

Not so much new content went up, but the internal settings have been tweak quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.

I still have to work on some more fun and facts for the image descriptions….

20 years of exponential improvements of post production (Whatever happened to Quantel??).

I thought i loved photography when the final image was “only” an 8×10 slide and everything had to be in that frame, exposure, contrast and color where you needed it.

I remember when the first rounds of Photoshop hit, i so desperately wanted a Mac and play around with black and white pictures. But at the time it was really a low quality tech geek with very little if any artistic or high end vision involved. Am i happy this changed and the artists were able to take over and claim photography once again for the art form with all the possibilities once the image is recorded electronically.

Today I feel i can push the picture much quicker, more precisely and repeatably to exactly what i want and feel about the subject and situation. And i don’t need a lab or digital technician. I’m still not a fan of artificial constructed visions of never occurred events (that’s called CGI and not photography) but i’m warming to this as well…

Anyhow, thanks to the Knoll brother’s and the team at Adobe to enhance Photography, making it a much more popular art form along the way and bring on discussions of relevance, reality and our image of beauty and distortion.

As you might be aware the wide spread usage (and resuse) of internet content undermines the legal status of many copyright issues. Even that the usage is clearly regulated, new ways of communicating are taking away licensing fees from artists and writers in a big way.

Therefore i support the Copyright Alliance effort to protect and extend what already is status quo and internationally recognized.

To learn more about this initiative and help bringing this matter to larger attention on a national level i suggest following the link below and signing the letter to the US President.

www.copyrightalliance.org/letter/

Interesting development. I do love my iPhone for snaps but the quality is obviously less than great, so maybe a little adjustment can make them bearable. And it’s a free download from the app store so why not…

http://mobile.photoshop.com/iphone/

So our couples of days in Paris finally come to light.  What a great team it was and I have to say that Dior are a fantastic client. And we all loved Marion and Toni…

http://www.ladydior.com/thefilm/

The web campaign looks great, what a mash up of media, images. I put a little gallery together with some of my contribution.

http://markschafer.com/#/NEW:%20on%20set%20Dior%20%2709/on%20set:%20DIOR%20%2709/1

Rounded out the arsenal with some more gizmos to get the most out of the fluorescent light. Mostly Chimera boxes.

What a great advantage to crank up the sensibility of the Canon DSLR’s to get a workable f-stop.

It wasn’t too long ago that we needed Fuji’s 800 ASA for KinoFlo sets and still only got an f5,6 on the Mamiya RZ.

The only drawback is that the light bulbs only work at 110V, so I can’t use them international.

Nice, Monday 13th, and I just realize during my cleanup on Friday I erased all my work from the previous week. It was copied over to another directory but somehow never made it.

For the first time I actually am getting mad at something.

Finally got my hands on the new Canon can’t wait to test it out. So much smaller than the 1Ds I usually shoot. And the quality is said to be on par as it uses the same image chip.

Well, at least there no small images anymore I my library.

Serious photography has to hurt a bit, if not it’s just not serious (anybody said Canon G10???)

A new year and it’s time to start the tech upgrades: this time a new Wiebetech RAID box a my primary image storage. It’s quite impressive how for down the pricing for this technology has come.

And the file transfer was done in a few days. Now I upgrade the offsite storage and we’re ready for a great year in photos…

Upgraded the system to the new Lightroom 1.4, no changes which is fine with me, as long as we’re stable kids…
And finally got the Kodak Plug in dilemma worked out. Now it’s finally all installed and ready to go, can’t wait for more portraits to be worked on.
I can’t believe that Mac’s 10.5 is still not working stable enough for the Capture one, Epson printer drivers and Eye-One software, i can’t wait to propel my Mac into the year ’08…

Spend my morning shooting and the afternoon checking out Lightroom 2.0.
Looks great, just as the old one, Clarity got a diffusion direction now, very Hamilton and thus not my cup of tea, the search abilities are much improved but cut into the image area, a little on the negative when only on a laptop.

Otherwise i love that the tools (crop, spotting, etc.) are now neatly on the right side and pop out like the other command items, much clearer and easier to access.
Oh, and i hear there’s now dual monitor support and a dodge and burn tool, very fine with me.