Yeah all hand held with a rain coat on for the dust. First time using it hand held. As you can see from the gate drop I'm still getting used to the speed of the variable zoom button. The rain coat made me feel limited because it was hard to change options with the coat on. Nothing that a little practice cant fix.

Rock Video xh a1 (1 Camera Shoot)
 

Hey everybody here is a promo piece of a rock band that I shoot using my xha1.

Comments Please.

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=1144883984

Cool! Another 16:9 image in a 4:3 display.... tall and skinny people.

Not sure what to say, Kevin. There was no rhythm at all to the editing. It just seemed random, without thought or planning, having nothing at all to do with the music, which was out of sync with what was going on. As a viewer, I felt disconnected.

Sorry but have to agree with Brian.
Not very structured and random cutting.
I would re-edit, cutting to the beat.
Leave the footage at 16:9.

I'd try and bring in some more extreme closeups (hands feet etc) to help reinforce the beat

someone had posted a video up here a few months back that had a really great energy going on - even though I believe he cut from various songs over the course of the night - it still looked perfectly matched to the tune

It was a high energy song to begin with and the band really moved on stage - which helped obviously, but I thought the cutting was superb

couple of questions
did you shoot all with one camera and cut in from various songs?
did you use a canned cd track from their album or was the live performance recorded?

Trish

Lunar Eclipse 8-28-07 with XH-A1
 

Here is a short timelapse of the lunar eclipse through the lens of the XH-A1
We had a great view of the eclipse here in California
enjoy


http://ekmedia.blip.tv/file/356640/

This is cool! Did you use ND on those shots?

No I didnt.
I stuck with adjusting the aperture and went all natural with the shooting

marlon, your work is AWESOME!
can you please tell me the custom preset you used for your film.. because even the uncorrected shots look very nice. =)

Pups
 

Some footage of Jack Russel Terrier pups harassing my father in his garden. There's some focus problems in these shots, I use manual focus most of the time but on the odd occasion I resort to auto I keep forgetting to switch back to manual, so after making my adjustments the camera takes over again :)

http://www.olikai.com/pups

I was really pleased with a couple of the closeup images, especially the ones attached, I'd be happy with these from my stills camera.

Paul.

I think you captured the dogs really well - these are not easy subjects to get with so much energy going on. And getting right down on the ground was perfect for it.

I loved the shots under the green bench. The coloring on some of the garden items were rich, especially the metal green legs of the bench.

Just noticed here and there the whites of the dog coats got somewhat overexposed. I'm not sure how you'd avoid that though without dulling down the normal color of everything else.

And one far away shot with them under the tree fighting over the bark was a bit bright in comparison to the lusher shots throughout. Sometimes I find I have to underexpose just a touch gets richer results. Not sure if that's proper etiquette or not though.

Trish

Thanks Trish, it certainly was a bit of a challenge the dogs hardly ever stop moving so it was generally a case of finding a spot and waiting for them to stop on it :)

Yes, the shot under the tree was overexposed, I was very dark under there so I flicked off the ND 1/16 which I'd been using for the rest of the shots and didn't really re-adjust properly, I should have left it darker as it would have resembled the reality of the shot better - I'll know next time.

regards

Paul.

I don't know about leaving it dark under the tree but I guess if you know they are going to come running out into the sun you have to set the shot based on where they'll be going to. Hard to guess when shooting unpredictable subjects.

I'm finding with the ND filters the difference between settings OFF, 1/16 and 1/32 is not very subtle. And in full sun sometimes not enough if you want the lens open somewhat.

I'm thinking of getting a polarizer or even an glass ND filter to compensate. I had to shoot in full noon day sun on the weekend with the mini horses and all the subtleties were lost under the brightness.

I should have followed the approach you did for the mini horses - get in a position and wait for them to come into the frame - I spent too much time trying to chase the shot.

trish

nice video and music :) and really cute pups