Due to a short notice cancellation I have a spare place on either of my February 2013 Northern Lights expeditions. If your interested please use the contact form to get in touch asap. I expect these places will go quite quickly. There is ONE place open on each of the tours: https://www.xdcam-user.com/northern-lights-expeditions-to-norway/

The picture below is from my Northern Lights expedition earlier this month and gives you an idea of the kind of pictures you too can hope to get.

I’ve just ordered a new MacBook Pro. It’s a Retina MBP, so has a 512GB SSD. Upgrading this is difficult and extremely expensive. So in preparation for the new machines arrival I started freeing up disc space on my current MacBook Pro. I used a useful piece of free software called “GrandPerspective” to visualise what’s using up my disc space. While searching around I came across a bunch of files eating up a huge amount of disc space. These are Adobe Premiere’s cache files. These never get deleted unless you do some house keeping. Even if your projects and media are saved on external drives, these cache files will slowly fill up your system drive unless you select the tick box to “save media cache files next to originals where possible” under the “preferences”, “media” tab. While your there you can also “clean” your cache database to remove older cache files.

Well the picture says it all really. The December Northern Lights expedition to Tromso and Karasjok in Norway was a big success. Everyone went away with some excellent pictures and great time-lapse. I shot the picture below with one of my NEX5n cameras with the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens. I also got some great time-lapse with the FS700 which I will cut together and post when I get back home.

One of the things that’s struck me on my travels is the different attitudes to training, education and accreditation around the world.

Lets face it, these days anyone can call themselves a DoP, I do! But what is a DoP? What does it mean? It means a lot less today than it did 10 years ago. When I started in the industry there was a kind of unofficial apprenticeship system. You started as an assistant, became a camera operator, learnt how to light, becoming a lighting cameraman and worked your way up. If you tried to sell yourself as a lighting cameraman without having the skills to back that up, word of mouth would mean no one would hire you. Today however it seems that almost anyone can pick up a camera and call themselves a DoP, Director of Photography, a very grand sounding title. There is no requirement to have actually had any training or real world experience before you can call yourself a camera operator, DoP, colourist or whatever you fancy.

The problem for production companies is working out who really does have the skills and experience to back up their job title. I’ve spent many days helping production companies train their staff and frankly it’s quite scary sometimes as I’ve met many so called DoP’s and camera operators that have huge holes in their basic skills and knowledge that really shouldn’t be there.

Education and accreditation are what’s needed. I don’t just mean education through college and university courses, but real world, hands on education. Out in the field with more experienced camera operators. That’s hard to get these days as few productions have the budgets for camera assistants and even fewer have the time for mentoring and one to one teaching. You also tend to find that a production, depending on the budget will use either more expensive, skilled and experienced operators or low cost self shooting AP’s and the two rarely come together on the same project at the same time.  In addition we need certification or recognised accreditation. We need industry standard recognition of skills and experience, not just for those new to the industry but also for those of us that have long term practical experience. The IOV (Institute of Videographers) has the right idea. You can gain different levels of accreditation through assessment of your skills by a panel of IOV members. However this accreditation is not widely acknowledged outside of the IOV and is not always relevant to some areas of broadcast television.

A further issue we have here in the UK is that we don’t like paying for training. In the USA and Asia for example that attitude is quite different. I know many Asian freelancers that consider it normal to spend significant sums of money to attend week long, peer led, practical workshops. Why? Because at the end of the workshop they know they will have new or improved skills and they will have a certificate to back that up. That certificate will help them get more work or better paid work. Because the workshop is run by working industry experts, not just college lecturers, the knowledge gained goes beyond just the “how to” but also includes the “why’s” and “when’s” and practical how to run a business experience that is often lacking in traditional schooling.  Because many here in the UK either can’t afford to pay for training or simply think it’s not worth the investment they will turn to the internet for help. That’s a whole can of worms in itself because absolutely anybody can set up a web site and write anything they want. While there is a lot of very good information on the internet, there is also a lot of incorrect information and if you don’t know any better how do you know whether what your reading is right or wrong?

This isn’t something that can be fixed overnight. Our attitude to training and education needs to change, especially as the rate of technology change continues to increase. There are new concepts to grasp almost every day these days.  Great cameras do not, on their own make great pictures. It also takes a skilled operator. We need a formal way of recognising different ability levels to make it easier for production companies to find the right people for the job. I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years, but I’m still learning and many of the most useful things I’ve learnt have been from those more experienced than me. So we need more peer based training and it needs to be accessible to freelancers, not just those with staff jobs. We also need to think of education as an investment. People are prepared to invest £1000’s in a camera that may have a working life of just a couple of years, but are much more reluctant to invest a few hundred in a workshop that might give them skills and knowledge that might last a lifetime.

Finally, what is a DoP anyway? It used to mean Director of Photography. The person that directed the camera operator, chose the lenses and film stock. The DoP did not normally operate the camera. The DoP would normally be the most experienced person in the camera department, typically with many years of experience as an assistant then camera operator. Today it appears to mean anyone that can operate a camera and make a YouTube video.

So here’s the offical list pricing for the F5 and F55. Looks very attractive indeed. Some dealers are already listing the F5 body for just a little under £10.5K GBP + VAT and the F55 for around £18K + VAT.The 512gb AXS Access card at €1.5k Euro’s is not as expensive as I thought it might be. Still a pretty big investment though if you ned 3 or 4 of them. The Olivine batteries are really rather expensive. You can get similar capacity V-Lock batteries from other manufacturers for quite a lot less. OK you can’t charge them super fast but do you really need ultra fast charging?

PMW-F5  €15.340 Euro

PMW-F55 €27.804 Euro

AXS-R5 S35mm F-series External RAW Recorder €5.206 Euro

AXS-CR1 Access Card Reader €549 Euro

AXS-512S24 Access Card 512GB for AXS-R5 External Recorder €1.535 Euro

SCL-PK6/F CineAlta PL Lens Pack (6 lenses) €19.895 Euro

SCL-PK3/F CineAlta PL Lens Pack (3 lenses) €11.118 Euro

DVF-L700 7″ LCD Viewfinder for F-series €4.113 Euro

DVF-L350 3.5″ LCD Viewfinder for F-series €2.925 Euro

DVF-EL100 0.7″ OLED Viewfinder for F-series €4.113 Euro

BP-FL75 Olivine Battery for F-series €470 Euro

BP-L90 Olivine Battery Charger for F-series €766 Euro

So, first of all what is Par-Focal? Well it’s the ability of a zoom lens to maintain the same focus point throughout the zoom range. In other words as you zoom in and out there is no focus shift. Most DSLR zoom lenses are not Par-Focal, they don’t need to be, as when taking stills photos you would zoom to get your desired framing, then set the focus. Some are closer to par-focal than others, some are pretty good, others are way off.

If you have ever used a full size shoulder mount broadcast camera with a removable zoom lens you’ll know that the lenses used have an adjuster on the rear of the lens to set the back-focus. This adjustment is there to take into account tiny variations in the lens mount, the optical filters behind the lens, wear and tear and temperature extremes. If you don’t adjust this correctly the zoom lens will not be Par-focal. DSLR lenses and most PL Mount zoom lenses don’t have this adjustment. Without a means to adjust the back focus it is the luck of the draw as to how par-focal your lens will be. On the Sony PMW-F3 you can adjust the back focus by adjusting the sensor to lens mount distance with an adjuster screw. However the way the ND filters work, with one stacked above the other will shift the optimum back focus distance depending on which ND filter you use. Most higher end 35mm video and film cameras have mounts that can be fitted with shims to adjust the flange back. In addition the better quality PL mount lenses are designed to be fitted with shims so that all the lenses in a set are corrected for the 52.00mm flange back distance for PL mount.

So, seeing as all the cheaper 35mm and APS-C video cameras have no facility to adjust or shim the distance between the lens mount and the sensor you are relying on the precision of the the camera manufacturer. In addition you are also relying on the precision of the lens manufacturer and the manufacturer of any mount adapters you might be using. Overall, even if the lens you have is truly par-focal the chances of everything being absolutely perfect are small, so the chances of your focus tracking perfectly accurately is also small. As a result, in most cases when using zoom lenses on a lower cost large sensor camcorder your focus will not track perfectly throughout the zoom range.

Sony have just released a firmware update for the PMW-200. Click Here for a download link.

One of the key features of this update is the ability to automatically adjust the cameras back focus. This will be great news for the few users out there that are reporting slight focus shifts when zooming. The design of the Fujinon lens used on the EX1, EX1R, EX3 and new PMW-200 means that if the camera is bumped around, say in transit somewhere or during delivery shipment the back focus can get misaligned. The auto flange back adjustment operates by placing the camera at least 3m (10ft) from a wall with patterned wall paper or a flat brick wall (something with a texture or pattern the camera can focus on easily) or a Siemens Star chart. The camera must be square on to the target. Then execute the FB Adjust option in the menu to run the calibration routine.

The next new feature is the ability to add the CBK-WA01 WiFi adapter to the camera for remote operation from an iPhone, iPad or Android device (although I have not seen the matching app for this yet). Finally there is now the ability to save the camera setup to a USB memory stick.

Here’s a little compilation of some clips from my recent trip to Iceland. All shot with the Sony FS700 using the 18-200mm kit lens. The slow motion clips were all done at 240fps. I’ve done a small amount of grading, but nothing major, primarily a bit of a colour boost to bring out the greens and blues in the water.

Don’t forget folks that I an running a workshops at AbelCine in New York next week on Gamma curves, log and raw camera setups and workflows as well a workshop with Den Lennie on working with Sony’s large sensor cameras, the FS100, FS700 and F3. Then I’ll be in Austin Texas running a two day short film production master class where we will shoot a music video with a local artist. I’ll be teaching lighting, camera setup, pre-production, planning and post production.

For more details on the AbelCine workshops click here.

For more details on the Austin workshop click here.