Fresh Snow in the Rockies — Canon XH-A1 w/ Brevis MP.1
 

A VERY short film I made while spending a weekend in Banff. I was waiting for this snowfall all weekend and when it started falling it was stunning.

The building featured in the first two shots is the famous Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. The waterfall is Bow Falls.

Lenses Used:
EF 50mm 1.4
EF 16-35mm 2.8L
EF 24-105mm 4L IS


Fresh Snow at the Banff Springs Hotel on Vimeo

Luke, we were outside in very similar conditions doing our Proteus "car rig" shoot. That looked a lot warmer though as we were at -15C. The images from that short are stunning :-) We tested out a few of EF lenses and were quite impressed with the edge to edge illumination of the 16-35mm f2.8L.

Luke, very pretty. May I ask, what is the music in the background?

Dennis:

I have been very impressed with the performance of the 16-35 f2.8L. It's very sharp and colours are great. I've found that I have to be careful on the corners though, if you miss the focus a bit the corners can be blurry.

I just got a 135mm f2.0L and I'm looking forward to trying that out next time I'm in the mountains.

I'm going to have to order up one of your follow focuses pretty soon though, I'm finding that I want more precision and smoother focus pulls.

I checked out the car rig, it looks like you guys had some fun setting it up!

Ben:

The song is "Tears of Joy" by Brian Tyler. It's from the soundtrack of "Partition".

My old beater car liked the car rig too. It was the first time it had been washed in about six months :-)

Pulling focus on the EF and digital Nikon lenses is indeed a bit of a pain. The follow focus system will be complemented later this year with an interchangeable transmission, purpose designed for these short-throw lenses. This will increase your control over focus by a factor of about 4 from the 1/4 to 1/2 turn typical in this type of lens. Other than the focus issue, your Canon 16-35 f2.8L and the Nikon 17-35 f2.8d are two of the best wide angles I've ever tested.

beautiful, but theres some vignetting on the corners isn't it?
i hope you can adjust that to a better level cause i want to get a brevis for my xha1 in the future. i have some experience with a letus 35 and there also was a similar vignetting problem, altough it was one of the ones you put directly on your camera mount instead of the ones you put on your camera lens. there was also a big deal of light loss.

Matthias,

The vignetting you see is mostly an added effect. The only lens I've encountered noticable vignetting on was the 16-35 f2.8L, but only around 16mm. If you step the lens down a bit most of the vignetting will disappear.

The brevis and XH-A1 combination is probably the best for image quality and light loss. Especially with the flip module. I believe it's between half a stop and one stop.

Luke