New Lens Mount Adapters for the Leica S-2

Great news from Leica regarding the S-2.

No longer will S-2 owners be limited to just four pieces of glass : the Leica Summarit-S 35mm f/2.5, Summarit-S 70mm f/2.5, APO Macro Summarit-S 120mm f/2.5, and APO Elmar-S 180mm f/3.5 lenses.

Leica plans to roll out new lens mount adapters for the S2 which will make the camera compatible with Pentax 67 lenses, Hasselblad V-series lenses, and Mamiya 645 lenses.

"It has a double benefit for us," Chrisitan Erhardt, Leica's Vice President of Marketing told PDNonline. "We have four lenses now and there are more in development but there are some unique lenses out there that we don't currently have. This will increase the options for our customers who want to use a wider variety of lenses. And for the ones we have on the market, photographers will realize they can achieve a much higher resolution if they use a Leica lens."

Leica has not announced pricing for the adapters but is hoping to make them available by the end of the first quarter of 2011.

New Canon 7D and T2i Firmware Updates

EOS 7D Firmware Update Version 1.2.3

Firmware version 1.2.3 incorporates the following fixes.

• Fixes a phenomenon in which the settings of the Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 revert to the default settings when both the camera and the ST-E2 are set to auto power off.
• Fixes a phenomenon in which the Macro Ring Lite (MR-14EX, MT24-EX) and slave flashes do not sync while shooting wirelessly.

Firmware version 1.2.3 is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.2.2. If the camera's firmware is already Version 1.2.3, it is not necessary to update the firmware.

Download it here : EOS 7D v.1.2.3

EOS Rebel T2i Firmware Update Version 1.0.9

Firmware version 1.0.9 incorporates the following fixes.

• Fixes a phenomenon in which tone jumps become noticeable in some images, depending on the shooting scene, when shooting with the Auto Lighting Optimizer settings (Low / Standard / Strong).

Firmware version 1.0.9 is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.0.8. If the camera's firmware is already Version 1.0.9, it is not necessary to update the firmware.

Download it here : EOS Rebel T2i v.1.0.9

Step by Step : Shooting Video with the DSLR

Composing and Focusing 


One of a series of posts aimed to help still photographers produce better videos with their DSLRs.

One of the many limitations or frustrations if you will of shooting video with today's DSLR is the lack of a proper built in focusing aid. Since in most cameras the mirror flops up and blocks the viewfinder, so you need to use the LCD for focusing. There are no electronic viewfinders built into these cameras as there are on "real" video cameras.

Composing and focusing your image with the LCD will work however only if it is at eye level. (The Canon 60D, Nikon D5000 and Olympus E5 are the notable exceptions with swivel LCD screens) And trying to focus on a tiny 3 inch reflective screen in the bright sun is nearly impossible. Even indoors, follow focusing can be difficult due to the small screen.

So what do we do? Right now, there are two options, a loupe that fits over the LCD, shading it from the sun and providing magnification and an external monitor. Each have their advantages and disadvantages. Early next year, we will see a third option - an electronic viewfinder that attaches to our DSLRs via the HDMI out. Zacuto and Redrock are both working on these.

LCD Loupe Advantages

• Compact
• Blocks sunlight from hitting the LCD
• Magnifies the image up to 3X
• Offers another contact point for stability when holding the camera

Disadvantages

• No easy way to attach to the LCD
• Can't be used for composing or focusing when on the ground or in another hard to reach position 
• Can burn the LCD if the eyepiece is aimed up to the sun
• Can be expensive

External Monitor Advantages

• Large screen to compose and focus 
• Extra features such as peaking, pixel to pixel magnification, aspect ratio marks, and false color 
• Can position camera anywhere and view monitor from another position via an HDMI cable

Disadvantages

• Bulky
• Needs batteries
• Needs a sunscreen
• Very expensive

This loupe from Zacuto attaches over the LCD screen to a frame that is glued to the back of the camera. It snaps right on and off and gives you a 2.5 - 3X magnification of the LCD screen. 

Composing a ground level image can be difficult without an external monitor. This monitor by Marshall Electronics is their new portable 5" monitor than runs on 4 AA batteries. Light and compact and with a long HDMI cable, can be placed far from the camera if need be.

What to buy? Tough one to answer. As you can see by the list above, they each offer their own strengths and weaknesses. I use both depending on the shoot. When I'm mobile, shooting run & gun style, the loupe is the way to go due to it's compact form factor. However, with the external monitor, there are many features that make composing and focusing your shot so much easier. If I'm shooting mostly on a tripod, I almost always use the external monitor.

An Evening with Ray Olson

Thanks to all who attended our monthly lighting seminar with Ray Olson of the MAC Group this past Wednesday.  We had a great time.  Please feel free to give us some feedback as we continue to tailor these presentations to your needs.  We hope to see you next month on the 15th for a wireless speed light presentation!

Step by Step : Shooting Video with the DSLR

Controlling Exposure

One of a series of posts aimed to help still photographers produce better videos with their DSLRs.

So, now that we have the camera all set up and the neutral picture style dialed in, let's go out and shoot.

Remember, with video, it's best to have everything on manual so select your frame rate (24, 30 or 60p) and your white balance setting. Choose your iso, aperture and a shutter speed, keeping in mind that for the smoothest, natural look, you should keep the shutter speed at twice your frame rate in what is referred to as the 180 degree shutter rule. You also need to keep the aperture constant in a video sequence. For example, you are panning a scene…you don't want the aperture to change during your pan. The viewer will notice the depth of field changing as you pan - not good. Also if there are extreme shutter speed changes, even these will be noticed, especially with movement. So, auto exposure is not recommended.

With video, you need to change the exposure manually and the best way to do this is with a variable neutral density filter. What a variable ND filter does is allow you to rotate it's filter ring (similar to a polarizer) and dial down or up the amount of light hitting the sensor. It becomes like your aperture in that it controls the light, but unlike the aperture, your depth of field remains constant. With this, you can control your exposure, keeping the same aperture and shutter speed, despite the changes in the ambient light and you can do it smoothly while shooting if need be.

A variable neutral density filter can be somewhat expensive, costing anywhere from around $125. to nearly $400. depending on the manufacturer, but to me, they are worth every penny. They usually give you up to 8 stops reduction in light which will allow you to shoot wide open apertures in full sun for that coveted shallow depth of field that seems to be all the rage these days. When purchasing a filter, buy the filter that will fit your largest diameter lens and use a step up ring for the smaller lenses.

Of course you could skip the expense of a variable ND and go with a few less expensive standard ND filters. They work perfectly fine, in fact, they are usually optically better than a variable ND. Only drawback with these is that as the light changes, you need to stop shooting and switch filters or change your aperture.

For more info about the 180 Degree Shutter Rule, check out Tyler Ginter's excellent post. He can explain it much better than I can.

Step by Step : Shooting Video with the DSLR

Picture Profiles


This is the 2nd in a series of posts aimed to help still photographers produce better videos with their DSLRs.

The H.264 video files coming out of our DSLRs are very similar in many ways to the old Kodachrome 25 transparency film. The crisp, well saturated images look incredibly beautiful if your exposure was spot on. If not, it showed. You had to nail the exposure. The DSLR video files are similar.

Since there is no RAW shooting capability with DSLR video, we are stuck with a compressed image that needs a little help. That's where picture profiles come into play. You need to set up your camera to record as much dynamic range as possible, giving you a low-contrast, low saturation "digital negative" that gives you flexibility for grading in your favorite editing application.

Here's how you do it. Again, the following steps are for the Canon DSLRs, but look for similar controls in other cameras.

Go into you picture profiles menu and create a neutral profile. You want to turn the sharpness and contrast all the way down, the saturation dialed two notches down and leave the color tone in it's default middle position.

Your settings should look like this (from a Canon 5D Mark II) :

What this does is give you more shadow detail and helps prevent blocked highlights. You now get 2 stops more latitude to play with. It's closer to a raw image with a linear tone curve. And by dialing the sharpness all the way down, you eliminate that sometimes too sharp "video" look and, it helps reduce moire, one of the dreaded effects of DSLR video.

Now that you've done these adjustments to your video clips, you're not finished. In post production, you will bring the contrast, saturation and sharpness back, but with much more control.

Just to show you what the adjusted picture profile will look like, here are 2 screen grabs of video shot with the standard (default) picture profile on top and the adjusted profile on the bottom. Click on the image for a better look. As you can see, the contrast, saturation and sharpness is down and it looks pretty horrible however with this adjustment, you now have the dynamic range to produce a beautiful image. Do not however use this profile for still photos. Instead, set your camera to raw.

BTW, I thought I'd share this funny somewhat related post by Philip Bloom, a very talented filmmaker, prolific blogger and all around nice guy. Philip is one of the pioneers of DSLR video and has been blogging about them ever since.

As an April Fools Day joke to the readers of his popular blog, Philip wrote about a new firmware update Canon just released offering raw video for the 5D. This was huge news if it were only true and many of Philip's readers fell for the joke, thinking the firmware update was for real. I know I did until I read : "Also it appears if you install the firmware on any of the Nikon DSLRs it runs a Canon emulation mode." Anyway, for a great laugh, read it here, and check out his readers comments.

And while you're at it, check out Philip's tutorials and short films. You'll learn and be amazed!

M9Info Version 0.50 for Leica M9

Forum Member Wolfram Söns provides the M9Info software tool which gives you quick access to various information from the Leica M9 DNG files. It's available as freeware for Mac as well as for Windows

• Easy: just the original DNG or NEF is needed

• Displays the preview picture. Preview can saved as BMP

• Displays serial number, applied firmware and shutter releases of the camera

• Display picture related data including used lens

• Displays the tonal value (RGB-Histogram)

• Launch up to three different programs with the opened file

http://www.soens.de/swpage/swpage/m9infoe.html

Step by Step : Shooting Video with a DSLR

Setting Up

This is the 1st in a series of posts aimed to help still photographers produce better videos with their DSLRs.

Coming from a still photography background into the more complex world of video can be intimidating, especially with the DSLR. I hope to change that with a series of short tutorials. We'll start with the very basics of setting up your camera and then in future posts, delve into more detail and go into some of the accessories that make it easier to produce a video you can be proud of. You may want to do a search for some previous posts I've done on DSLR video. Just use the search button on this page and type in Michael Maloney. You'll see a few posts that may be of help for background.

This series of tutorials will be based on the cameras I use, the Canon 5D Mark II and the 7D, as I'm most familiar with them. However, you can apply most if not all the tips I give to what ever system you use.

So let's set the camera up!

First of all you need to go into your menus and set the video system to NTSC. NTSC is the video standard for the US and most other countries. If you are shooting in Europe, you need to be on PAL.

Next set your movie recording size and frame rate. Depending on your camera, you'll see options similar to these : 1920X1080 24, 1920X1080 30, 1280X720 60, 640X480 30. The first two numbers refer to the frame dimensions, the other refers to the frame rate. Most film makers prefer the aesthetic look of 24p (24 progressive frames per second). Some will shoot at 30p, but slow it down to 24p in post for a very slight slow motion effect. And speaking of slow motion, using 60p and slowing that down to 24p gives you beautiful slowmo. The higher frame rate of 60p gives a nice smooth look. Of course with 60p on DSLRs, you are limited to the smaller 1280X720 frame size.

With video, it's always best to set the exposure mode to manual. You don't want the shutter speed to vary or the aperture as both of these will be noticed in your video and look very strange. You will notice that when in video mode, you cannot set the shutter speed below the frame rate. If you choose to shoot at 24p, you need to use a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second or faster, however to get the smoothest look, it is recommended that you always select a shutter speed that is twice the frame rate. With 24p,  you want to set your shutter at 1/50th as that is closest to 48 (2 X 24). If you don't see 1/50 as an option, you need to go into your custom functions and set the exposure level increments to 1/3 stop. In other tutorials, I'll go into how shutter speed affects the look of your video.

Now you are probably asking yourself how you can shoot video outdoors in the bright sun if you are not supposed to have the shutter speed higher than twice the frame rate. Even stopping the lens all the way down to f16 or 22 will still produce overexposure. What do you do? And how do you get those sweet out of focus backgrounds you see in some films? Neutral density filters are the answer. Since you are locked in with a set shutter speed, if you want to shoot wide open in the direct sunlight, you need a strong ND filter. We'll go into your options with filters in another post.

You've probably noticed that with most DSLRs, when you use the video mode of your camera, you can no longer use the viewfinder.  Instead, you are seeing your image through the lcd. This is normal. The reason you can't see through the viewfinder anymore, is because the mirror is now flipped up, blocking it. You'll probably also notice that you no longer have auto focus - at least while you are recording. It's back to the fine art of follow focusing which if you are like me, you are probably not very good at since we've all been spoiled by the great auto focusing of these cameras. In future tutorials, I'll get into the various magnifying loupes that you can use to help you focus with the lcd. We'll also look into another great option : a portable field monitor.

So, hopefully with this basic info, you can go out and play with video. I apologize to those of you who find this info way too basic but I wanted to start from the ground up for those shooters who are picking up their cameras and attempting video for the very first time.

With our next tutorial, we will go into picture profiles - allowing you to set up your camera to get that "film" look. Also, a great trick to squeeze two more stops of exposure latitude.