Commercial shoot with the HD100

[Steven Thomas]

Nice rig.
Looking forward to screen grabs and/or footage!

Steve

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

What is that, some sort of insane telephoto lens? The only lens I've ever seen that big is this 40x zoom I saw a sports broadcaster using on their high tight shot.

That lens is normally used for 35mm film features. I just had the time to "play" with it a little bit during wrap up. If I remember well the cost of the lens is around $25,000. It has, among other things, a spring-loaded slot in the middle of the body, to load nets. It was connected to the HD100 via the Mini35 but I believe you can use the RedrockMicro M2 as well.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Steven Thomas

Nice rig.
Looking forward to screen grabs and/or footage!

Steve

I talked about this with Ben and Brad White, the director. We can't show the commercials until the air on TV. The toys are new. But we will get some screen grabs and possibly a couple of seconds of footage with just the actors, to show the nice depth of field.

[Stephan Ahonen]

I was well aware that it was a 35mm Cine lens, I was just hoping for a couple more specifics. You don't usually see lenses that long unless they're some kind of telephoto lens.

[Ralph Keyser]

And I was curious about the baseplate and rod setup. In the picture, I can't quite see the JVC to rod mounting plate for the power cord to the P+S.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hey, here are some more pictures of the rig. The camera was mounted on a tilt plate for dutch shots. The plate was then locked to the crane.

This is a closeup of the camera. Hopefully you can see more details of the lens and the other gear.
http://www.paolociccone.com/images/hd100/IMG_1168.jpg

Opposite side with follow focus. Notice the Astro portable LCD display.
http://www.paolociccone.com/images/hd100/IMG_1204.jpg

The HD100 on the crane.
http://www.paolociccone.com/images/hd100/IMG_1206.jpg

Enjoy! :)

[Ben Jehoshua]

The lens was actualy a wide to telephoto lens, instead of getting a bunch of prime lenses we went with one that can give us all of the shots we wanted.
I'll get the specs from our script notes and put them up for you guys.
I'll also have some footage up on our server by the next couple of days, as soon as I can clear it with my clients

Ben Jehoshua
www.imagelinemedia.com

[Ben Jehoshua]

Paolo,
The pictures of the camera with the rig look really like a Frankestein construction. Our client is extermely happy with the picture results, we hope to have another project in the making very soon.

Ben Jehoshua
www.imagelinemedia.com

[Nate Weaver]

Good lord Paolo. The AC didn't tell you that you guys were nuts?

I suppose a zoom on the Mini affords some convenience, but at what cost?

[Rob McCardle]

Totally wild guys !!!

Can't believe I'm seeing that rig.
How did the shots go though ?
Can you compare them to a high end camera solution ? (heh, I know you can and would and will and I also realise there's a damn good economic reason for using the JVC)

But out of interest what would you guys have used for a camera if the JVC wasn't an option ?

tia and cheers, Rob

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Ben Jehoshua

Paolo,
The pictures of the camera with the rig look really like a Frankestein construction. Our client is extermely happy with the picture results, we hope to have another project in the making very soon.

Very cool Ben, this is pretty amazing stuff. I have a few seconds of footage taken with my camera when we wrapped up. Mako let me switch bodies and take a couple of minutes of footage with my own HD100. The scene was pretty dark pretty dark but I'll see if there is anything of value for public consideration. I just have to take care of some business piled up during my absence, I'll digitize the tape probably tomorrow.

[Ralph Keyser]

The world is a bit topsy turvey these days. You're looking at a $6K camera surrounded by $50K worth of lens and accessories :-)

[Luis Otero]

Paolo,

Did you use V3 of your setting for these commercials?

Luis

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Luis Otero

Paolo,
Did you use V3 of your setting for these commercials?

Hi Luis.

yes, we did. As a matter of fact I developed the new settings during pre-lighting. We had a very colorful set with reds and pinks. I was watching the component signal on a Sony HD monitor and a pink blanket looked quite red. I tweaked the color matrix watching the result on the Vectorscope until I found something that matched the real-life colors. We then introduced skin tones and compensated a little bit. The result was TC V. 3.0. I like that V.3.0 has basically only one parameter different from V.2.0. The overall balance of colors is the same, just with a nice shift of the red toward magenta. It actually confirms some of the observations I had while working on V.2.0. I tried to reduce the "power" of the reds but I didn't figure out a way at that time.

I think it's the most faithful color matrix that I developed so far. We shot all the commercials with it with only scene with a hint of black stretch (black eyes on a black fuzzy puppy dog toy)

As I mentioned other times, with controlled lighting TrueColor blacks should render a very nicely contrasted picture that still carries a lot of information. Ben told me that in preliminary tests, he used V.2.0 and was able to kick the blacks around quite a bit. Even if they dark spots looked too dark at first, with color correction in the NLE he was able to adjust them. This means, as expected, that the color information is there, the black were not crushed.
V.3.0 delivers the same control except that it affects the mid tones a little less. In other words, with V.2.0 you have Master Black @ -2 and Black Stretch @ 1. In V.3.0 you get Master Black @ Normal and no black stretch. The way blacks are rendered is pretty much the same but the midtones are shifted less wit V.3.0. I believe it delivers a more dramatic picture.

[Ben Jehoshua]

Originally Posted by Rob McCardle

Totally wild guys !!!

Can't believe I'm seeing that rig.
How did the shots go though ?
Can you compare them to a high end camera solution ? (heh, I know you can and would and will and I also realise there's a damn good economic reason for using the JVC)

But out of interest what would you guys have used for a camera if the JVC wasn't an option ?

tia and cheers, Rob

We probably would have used the Sony 900 HDCAM camera, or the Vericam. But we did an extensive test with a similar rig and the Wafian recorder and our client approved the look of the footage

Ben Jehoshua
www.imagelinemedia.com