BB: Bortoni Blog

Observations and Pontifications

Lessons Learned and Tips for Shooting a Wedding

May 7

Posted by ed in Photography | No Comments

Recently I mentioned that I was asked to shoot a wedding for a friend and that I planned to use this as learning experience for shooting events. Wow. I want to go on the record right now and pay my deepest respects to wedding and event photographers. It is incredibly stressful and tiring. It is a non-stop affair, no sitting down, no eating, no drinking, NOTHING.

Here are some of the things that I learned that others might benefit from.

  • Visit the location BEFORE the event. You need to get the lay of the land. In my case there were several obstacles that I would have loved to know about. One example is that the location had really tall ceilings. This made bouncing the flash off the ceiling useless. Also, the buffet area was next to the happy couple and it was sending out some bright fluorescent light that made it hard to expose correctly without blowing the background.
  • Indoor wedding are almost never bright enough. Take your fastest lenses.
  • If any videography is going on, talk to the person and develop a plan to not get in each other’s way. No reason why both of you should have your shots ruined.
  • Take some test shots to see what sort of exposure settings you’ll need. With this in mind, you’ll be able to make changes faster if the need arises.
  • Take a backup of everything. You don’t want gear failure to ruin the whole shoot.
  • Know your camera in and out.
  • Do not bring gear you are unfamiliar with. This is not a time to experiment.
  • Shoot RAW. You’ll need as much flexibility as possible to fix any errors in post processing.

These are just a few. If you really are considering weddings, then I suggest you work for free as an assistant with another experienced photographer so you can get some experience under your belt.

Working with 24p video from Canon camcorders

Apr 21

Posted by ed in How To, Mac, Videos | 5 Comments

Hey guys, been busy lately but I thought I should do a post about converting 24p AVCHD footage that is wrapped in a 60i wrapper back to true 24p footage. Canon camcorders are notorious for doing this type of thing. I know that the HF100, HF10, HV20, HF11, all do this. Instead of just giving you the pure 24p footage, they include extra frames to ensure 60i compatibility. This is really annoying, and worse, the 60i wrapped footage has a diferent cadance for every clip (you’ll notice that the first and last frame of every 24p-converted clip might be unusable).

If you read my post on my AVCHD workflow, then you know that I like using Toast to process your AVCHD MTS files. I will summarize this part of the process as well… Here we go!

1) Take your MTS file and add it to Toast in the Convert->Video Files section. Note the SIZE and the AUDIO Bitrate.

2) Press the “Big Red Button” to continue. In the Player Setup screen, select QuickTime Movie for the “Device” and the press “Change”.

3) Select “Video Settings”. On the following screen select “Apple ProRes 422 LT” for the Compression Type. This is a good codec to use to edit and it should be of high enough quality for the type of video these camera’s record in. I suggest leaving Gamma Correction to “None”. Next Press “OK”

4) Next Select “Video Size” and use your clip’s size. I was recording in 1080p mode.

5) In the Sound Settings, select the following: Linear PCM, Stereo, and 48 kHz (this rate should match what toast reported originally).

6) Now select Covert and let Toast do it’s work.

7) Now it’s time to actually remove the extra frames and get back your pure 24p footage. The easiest way to do this is with Compressor. Follow these steps to create a preset you can reuse in the future. Begin by making a duplicate of the “Apple ProRes 422 for Progressive Material” setting.

8 ) Now edit the duplicate as follows, select the “encoder” tab and click on Video Settings.

9) Set the Compression Type to Apple ProRes 422 LT and set your frame rate to “Custom” and enter 23.976. This is what people call 24p. NOTE!!!  Also change the Gamma Correction to None. I prefer to not have compressor control gamma.

10) Go to the “Frame Controls” tab and turn the controls ON. Set Deinterlace to “Reverse Telecine”

11) In the Filters tab select the Color subtab and set “Preserve source”. Again, better to not have Compressor change any color.

12) Rename your new setting to something appropriate and give it a good description. Press Save. You now have a preset you can use with all your footage.

Now all you have to do is take your output file from Toast and use this new preset on it. Tada, 24p footage. FCP will recognize it as such. Another side benefit is that your file is smaller since it has thrown out some unneeded frames.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments below.

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Chase Jarvis’ Ideas Worth Stealing

Mar 19

Posted by ed in Photography | No Comments

Some really cool ideas to get your creative juices going! Tempted to try some of these.

Running dry on ideas to push yourself and your photography portfolio? Here’s 5 ideas worth stealing. Perhaps one might catch your attention, or inspire to you do something similar. Or very very different.

* Read

Review: Aperturent.com. A Place to Rent Lenses in Atlanta & Everywhere Else

Mar 5

Posted by ed in Photography, Reviews | No Comments

When I first got my Nikon D40, it came with the 18-55mm kit lens. I thought this lens would be all I would ever need. Nikon then released the 35mm f/1.8 prime for their DX cameras. I bought it and was hooked with it’s great low light prowess. 2 lenses, who would need more right? Well, I was now bitten by the lens bug. I had tasted the sweet nectar of fast lenses and now I’ve been reading up on a bunch of other lenses.

Recently the opportunity came up to shoot a wedding for a friend, and this was the perfect chance (i.e., excuse) to try out a new lens. I’d heard that there were places online where you can rent lenses for quite affordable prices. When I found out about the wedding though, there was not much time to order something online, so I started looking for a local place here in Atlanta. I was disappointed to not really find any options nearby. There was one place, but it charged ridiculous rates. Then I found Aperturent.com. These guys run a rental website site that is based in Atlanta, and conveniently, they offer local pick up.

I browsed their site and settled on the 70-200mm f/2.8 and gave them a call. I spoke to Oscar and he was very helpful. When you pick up locally, you avoid the shipping costs and the shipping time, so it was perfect for me. I arranged with Oscar to pick up the lens and he was there right on time (actually, I was a little late). I tested the lens and found it to be in perfect order.

I used the lens for a week and then met up with Oscar to return it. Overall, I was very satisfied with Aperturent.com and would recommend them to anyone, specially if you are in Atlanta and are looking to try a new lens or perhaps some lighting or even a camera body.

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So You Want To Build A Hackintosh?

Feb 22

Posted by ed in Mac | 9 Comments

I have a couple of friends that have been asking for a Hackintosh parts list, so here it is. This configuration works well with Snow Leopard and has some Quad Core goodness:

  1. Mother board: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P
  2. Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
  3. Video Card: GeForce 8800GTS 512MB
  4. RAM: 8 Gigs 2 x (4GB (2 x 2GB)) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
  5. Ethernet Card: TRENDnet TEG-PCITXR 10/ 100/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Copper Gigabit Network Adapter
  6. Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
  7. DVD-Drive: Pioneer Black 2MB Cache SATA CD/DVD Burner
  8. Case: Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply
  9. Cooler: XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler & XIGMATEK ACK-I5361 Intel Core i7/Core i5 compatible Bracket Set
  10. Thermal Compound: Artic Silver

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No Pressure Wedding Photography

Feb 19

Posted by ed in Photography | No Comments

A friend of mine is celebrating his 25 year wedding anniversary tomorrow night and is having a ceremony and reception to commemorate the event. He casually asked me if I could take some pictures. Now, photography is a hobby for me. I like it, I want to continually improve my skills, but I’m by no means a professional. Because weddings are very important life moments, I would n0t try to shoot one for money as it would be too much pressure to deliver great results at this stage of my photographic development (pun intended).

This is the reason I’m excited about tomorrow, it’s no pressure! I’m not charging, so I don’t feel the pressure to deliver something great. It’s not a real wedding, it’s more like a “take 2″. It also will allow me to practice in a “real world” situation.

Just because it’s no pressure doesn’t mean I’m not taking it seriously! On the contrary, I’m taking it very seriously. I see this as a view into the future, and as a test to see how far along am I with this. So here is my plan:

  • I’ll be shooting with 2 Nikon D40’s (mine and a friend’s). Two reasons for this, it’s critical to have a backup camera, and I know how to use it well. It’s a crop sensor, but it’s all I have access to.
  • Weddings usually mean low light, so I’m taking two pretty fast lenses: a 35mm f/1.8 prime, and a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom. I plan to put these on the 2 camera’s and just change cameras as needed for the shot.
  • Taking plenty of storage capacity in multiple cards. I plan to shoot A LOT, thus giving me many pictures to choose from and be able to deliver the best takes.
  • I’ll be taking two flashes, my Nikon SB-400 (small and light) and my YongNuo YN-465 (a more powerful flash with variable rotation on the head).
  • Shoot RAW. I usually shoot JPEG as it’s more convenient, however, for this key event the post-processing flexibility will be critical.

I’ll post a follow up after the fact with some select images. Wish me luck!

Photo Credit: Bob AuBuchon

Memory Colors

Feb 19

Posted by ed in How To, Videos | No Comments

Excellent article in ProLost today.

… skin tones are just one of a small handful of what I call “memory colors.” Memory colors are colors that are, in the minds of your audience, inseparable from certain common objects or events. For example, the sky is so associated with blue that you might feel that you see those two words together as often as you see them individually. The same goes for green and grass.

The most basic idea of color correcting is that you are making colorscorrect, which is to say that you are making objects on the screen appear to be the colors that we know them to be.

I’ll keep this great info in mind when color correcting video or stills.

Thanks Stu.

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Effective Final Cut Pro AVCHD Workflow on Macs

Feb 15

Posted by ed in How To, Mac, Videos | 2 Comments

AVCHD is quickly becoming a more common way to record footage in consumer and other mid to higher tier camcorders and cameras. It has many advantages, the primary being that it compresses high quality video into smaller files, thus allowing for more footage to fit in inexpensive flash storage. AVCHD has also been a source of extreme frustration for Mac users who wish to edit, organize, and archive their footage. In this post I’d like to provide some guidance based on my experience working with the Canon HF10 (similar to the HF100) camcorder.

The first thing that folks new to using AVCHD devices need to know is that although recordings from your camera are digital and are files in the storage card, they are stored within a structure such as this:

As you can see, the videos are not just at the root level of your card, but rather part of detailed structure made up of the videos themselves as well as other files that contain information “about the videos.” This brings us to our first challenge. Let’s say that you went to a party and recorded 45 video clips. In all likelihood there will be some clips that you might not want to keep. Well, if you go through each one in your camera and delete them there, then the other files in the AVCHD structure will be updated and you will be fine. However, if you copy the entire directory structure to your mac and later decide to delete a few of these videos, you are in trouble because the other files in the structure will not be updated to account for this deletion. Why does this other data matter? Final Cut Pro does not support editing AVCHD video files directly (as of FCP 7). The clips must be transcoded to an intermediate codec. Usually, ProRes (LT). FCP imports / transcodes AVCHD footage via the “Log and Transfer” dialog. The unfortunate thing is that FCP will not work with your video files if the AVCHD directory structure is not intact.

So how do we overcome this problem? The best solution is to find a way to transcode that does not require the entire directory structure. With such a tool, one would be able to selectively keep individual video files knowing that they could be converted to a FCP-friendly format without much trouble. There are several tools that can do this, the best two are VoltaicHD and Toast Titanium 10. After much trial and error, I found Toast to be the preferred choice for this for reasons that I will outline further on.

Before continuing with solutions, there are still a couple more things that need to be understood about working with AVCHD in general, and specifically with the Canon HF10 (or HF100) camera. Frame rates.

The HF10 and 100, both can record in 3 frame rates: 24p, 30p, and 60i. This is great, but there is a drawback. When recording in any of these frame rates, they all get stored in the same 60i wrapper. This means that when you record 24p, the file has some frames inserted to make it 60i compatible. You don’t want these frames and they must be removed before being able to edit the footage as 24p footage. The other major and annoying drawback with this is that you have a bunch of MTS files with mixed frame rates, it’s difficult to tell which is which since they all appear to be 60i.

With all this, I come to my workflow:

  1. Set your frame rate as desired for a particular project and record all footage without changing it. Do not use the “Easy Button” if you want any frame rate other than 60i as it ignores your frame rate choice and always records at 60i.
  2. Copy all the MTS files to a folder on your mac.
  3. Use VLC to look at your footage and decide if you want to completely delete any recordings.
  4. All files are named 0000.MTS, 0003.MTS, etc… You might have gaps in the file number sequence since you could have deleted some recordings. It’s time to rename these into something meaningful. I recommend the excellent and free program Name Mangler. Rename your files into something like this: 01_project_name_24p.mts, 02_project_name_24p.mts. This gives you meaningful file names as well as mark the frame rate you used.
  5. Use Toast to transcode the MTS files. Select the Convert tab, and then choose video files. Add your files and transcode. I recommend ProRes LT, same size as your footage, and uncompressed audio. Set the destination to a new project folder on your scratch hard disk (any drive that is NOT your main boot drive).
  6. If you recorded in 24p, you need to remove the extra frames your camera added to maintain 60i compatibility.  You can use Compressor for this. I’ll post the details on how to do this in another post. UPDATE: Check here for the details.
  7. Start up Final Cut Pro and create a new project. Now, immediately save it with a proper name. This is important. If you start to work on a project without saving it first, your render files will NOT be neatly organized in your scratch disk! Save your project file on your main hard disk (I use a folder I made in the my accounts Documents folder). In this folder keep all assets EXCEPT video files. They should be in a different drive as mentioned on step 5.
  8. Add your files to your project and edit them to the time line. If your footage is 30p, then you need to verify in the Sequence Menu->Settings that the Field Dominance is set to NONE. It usually is, but it’s good to check.
  9. Complete your edit and output your final edit in whatever format you want (MPEG4, h.264, etc).
  10. Your project is done, save your original (renamed) mts files and delete your ProRes files as well as any audio and video render files. If you do this and ever want to reedit your project, open your project and Final Cut will ask for the location of the ProRes files. You can just recreate them as in step 5 by going back to your saved original MTS files.

Hopefully this is useful to you, I will follow up later with how to convert your 24p footage that is wrapped in 60i as well as an effective back up strategy for your footage.

Leave a comment if you have any questions.

-Ed

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Chase Jarvis’ Awesome Plexiglass Floor

Dec 3

Posted by ed in How To, Photography | No Comments

Just ran into this video of how to make your own plexiglass “stage” to use for video and still shots. Awesome. Anyone out there want to build one?

Filming Interviews

Nov 25

Posted by ed in How To | No Comments

Here is a great article that gives some excellent tips on shooting interviews.

http://benjamineckstein.com/2009/09/filming-interviews/

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