Don't worry about it. This thread is getting very long!

Nikon Lens on JVC HD
 

Any one out there who does underwater, filmed dolphins, manatees etc. May have a job for 2-3 months. I do wildlife check the link below for using Nikon Lenses on the new JVC GYHD100 HDV camera.
Pls email to vfxstudio@gmail.com

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=53380

My presentation
 

Hello,

I'm a french videographer, so apologize for my poor english.

I'm filming the wildlife with the Sony FX1 and editing on Final Cut 5. On my website
http://ronanfc.free.fr
you can see some samples of my work and some pictures, too. I hope you'll enjoy it !

Regards,
Ronan

ronan, thanks for sharing. i got a big laugh out of your zoom-out on the squirrel pensively looking out over the vast canyon. very cute.

the fx-1 is undoubtedly the best landscape camera in its class, i think.

Maybe we should petition Chris to start a forum just on wildlife, we have one for weddings right? There are a lot of us that do wildlife for fun and maybe profit. Bob

excellent suggestion, bob....this thread is unwieldy, hard to refer back to, but full of fabulous info! i think we could squeeze a whole lot more out of the topic if we could break it down into component parts. three are other threads out there, too, which could be consolidated.

howzabout it, chris?

Really good idea Bob. It's a wide-ranging subject within itself.

So much videography is about social or commercial events that manual focus and tripods are assumed as normal equipment. Even shooting field & track sports frequently allows pre-settings & a tripod (Example: Last week a well-publicised shot from about 100 yards of a stumbling cricketer parting company with his 3 stumps & 2 bails being scattered by a ball travelling at 85+ m.p.h. ... all items appearing in excellent focus only because manual focus was simplified by the fixed position of the point of ball-contact.)

Several on this thread have shared their delight in close-up videography and will hopefully continue to do so.

Questions about wildlife videography that interest me a lot include:
'How to get the best out of auto-focus at various distances?'
'Tips on how to shoot "run+gun" at distance?'
'How to prepare for videography among mountains, cliffs, gorges, seashore etc?'

... then there's a host of questions about equipment to use and editing the footage? (But let's not get bogged down in discussion of patience & timing & a steady hand, none of which can be learned through discussion.)

And wouldn't it be bloody marvellous if the Editor insisted that the purpose of the forum was to open up but also simplify the whole subject while attempting to identify best practices worldwide from all-comers?

Where does one begin, Chris?

I'll second that suggestion. In addition to special circumstances regarding equipment and its operation for wildlife video, there's other areas that could be discussed.
Good locations for wildlife photo ops, both specific and general, could be shared. Those who have needed clips of hard-to-get wildlife subjects could make contact with whoever wanted them. In wildlife video, there aren't nearly enough means to get your footage into the right hands. If interested parties learned they could make contact on such a forum, the membership would grow. There's also the big topic of capturing good wildlife audio for video, which can be very difficult.

Steve McDonald

I would love to see a forum specially dedicated to wildlife videoing as opposed to 16mm film. I am sure that with this forums worldwide membership it would be well supported. It would also enable those with a need for specific animal/bird/plant footage to contact a person that location to obtain it for you or to help you location details etc

Yep, great idea.

Regards

Mick

i'm soooo happy!
 

finally, someone read my mind and manufactured my almost-ideal backpacking tripod. i just ordered one today.

http://www.kirkphoto.com/MightyLowBoy.html

i have a question for jeff sayre. in a different post on a different thread, lauri kettunen said that the wimberley head was not a good fit with XL cams and long lenses because that combo is too heavy for a friction-based system. but you say on this thread that you are using the wimberley head. what camera/lens combination are you using on the wimberley head?

the reason i'm asking is because kirk is now making a wimberley-like head (the king cobra head) which seems sturdier than than the wimberley (at least in its photos):

http://www.kirkphoto.com/cobra.html

i have a 516 head which works well with an XL2/long lens, but it weighs a ton and is hard to pack and needs big legs. i'm thinking something wimberley-ish might work better, but the reports seem somewhat conflicting on whether wimberley heads are good with this combo or better reserved for DSLR usage only.

can jeff or anyone else enlighten me?

note to Chris: WILDLIFE FORUM WILDLIFE FORUM WILDLIFE FORUM!

Meryem:

Thanks for the question. I use two different lens/camera combinations on my Wimberley Head. First of all, I have the full-sized Wimberley Head, not the smaller Wimberley Sidekick Head. (http://www.tripodhead.com)

I use:

*Digital Canon SLR with various high-end telephoto lenses
*Sony HDV Z1U--with built in lens--cry :( [Yeah, maybe a canon XL H1 with interchangeable lenses is in my future]

Both combinations work very well with my Wimberley Head--no weight, lens length, or friction issues.

When you consider that a Canon Telephoto EF 600mm f/4.0L lens + digital camera can weigh over 15 pounds and be almost 2 feet in length, it is hard to believe that Lauri Kettunen said that "the wimberley head was not a good fit with XL cams and long lenses because that combo is too heavy for a friction-based system."

The beauty of gimbal mounts (like the Wimberley Head) is that it allows the user to find the center of gravity of the lens/camera system and virtually make it seem weightless when adjusted properly. There are four ways to adjust the head system to establish a perfect weightless feel.

Now Lauri might have been talking about the Wimberley Sidekick Head which is intended for smaller and lighter systems. However, the full-sized Wimberley Head is a fabulous system that works extremely well. However, beware that it is a heavy head (it adds another 4+ pounds to your tripod) and is bulky to pack (although it breaks down into three parts). Wimberley has just introduced a reengineered version of their full-sized Wimberley Head. It weighs about a pound less and I believe has two not three parts.

If you can stand the extra weight, I would consider buying the Wimberley Head. I do not have any experience with the King Cobra head but it looks like it is trying to compete with Wimberley's Sidekick and not their full-sized head.

Check out this Wimberley webpage for an example of a setup with a high-end 600mm lens: http://www.tripodhead.com/products/wimberley-main.cfm

The only issue I have using my Sony Z1U with the Wimberley head is that is is sort of difficult to access the mounting-plate release since the video camera is almost too wide for the mount. I have to remove the side-mounted hand strap from the camera to successfully mount it on the head.

Good luck!

thanks very much, jeff. i always appreciate how thoughtful your responses are.....

my main concern remains that i still would like someone to weigh in on the XL2/EF adapter/long lens combo with the wimberley head, because there's three connecting parts which makes for an oddly balanced system (the Z1, by comparison, is a very balanced cam with fewer moving parts, so to speak). it's more of an issue of the unwieldiness than the actual weight which concerns me. i wonder how that mess would balance, compared to the Z1.

i need a demo, but i don't know anyone who owns the wimberley. it looks potentially promising, but would be a pricey mistake to purchase blindly, especially since my 516 does a fine job--it's just a brick to carry!

The issue is with the fulcrum point. If your camera-lens system is attached to the head via a plate on the camera, then the combination would create an unbalanced lever. However, if the system is attached by a foot off of a lens ring, balance can be created by moving the position of the fulcrum closer to the axis of rotation of the head.

This latter set up is exactly what is done with the very large (and heavy) Canon 600 telephoto lens systems. The system is attached to a plate via a lens ring and not on the camera. (see the Wimberley product catalog for examples: http://www.tripodhead.com/WimberleyProductCatalogue.pdf)

What kind of a lens are you using with your XL2? Does it have a lens ring to which a mounting plate can be attached? If so, you will need to purchase a sliding mounting plate that allows you to adjust the position of the camera-lens system so that the system's center of gravity is centered at the axis of rotation of the head.

As I mentioned, there are four adjustments with the full-sized Wimberley Head that allow you to precisely position your camera-lens system to achieve the weightless feel. However, your system must allow you to attach it to the head in such a way that the center of gravity can be successfully manipulated.

that makes a lot of sense. i get what you're saying about creating a fulcrum system based on finding the unit's center of gravity. my canon 70-200mm lens has a tripod collar to which a long sliding lens plate can be attached. my concern is that the range of available adjustments, even with a long lens plate, will not be adequate to find the still point, so to speak, of such a bulky and unevenly balanced camera/lens unit with so many "moving parts", so i was hoping to get some idea of how you were using yours and with what systems. and wondering if anyone else here has tried the wimberley head with XL2/long lens combos. i can see where this would work nicely with the Z1, because it is already a very evenly balanced camera and the lens does not have a separate attachment, which could be weakened by the weight-bearing of a fulcrum system. and a dSLR, compared to an XL2, does not put much weight stress on the point of connection between the lens and the camera.

ron armstrong has this issue solved, and his system looks really nice, but i am trying to find a more portable solution. but "portable" and "XL2/EF adapter/long lens" are completely antithetical!

Meryem:

I would suggest calling the Wimberley people directly and describe your situation. I've called them on several occasions before. They were always nice and very helpful. I believe they would tell you if they felt your set up would not work with their systems.

Jeff

wildlife video
 

I don't have much to offer Mick, but I have begun to use XM2 to shoot griffon vultures in flight at 2 gorges in Crete, Selinari and Seli Ambelou and at Pena Falcon in Extremadura, Spain for black stork, griffons, eagle owl and imperial eagle. Good close-ups were brief indeed but the XM2 was quite good for footage from above of griffon gliding at c.100/200 metres particularly from top of east-facing edge of Seli Ambelou. With practice and patience I should do much better at these 3 locations.

Lumbier, east of Pamplona, Spain also has a resident population of griffons but their daytime haunts there are on lowland with no cliffs nearby and any flight is a matter of flapping away from me which does not facilitate good stills or footage.

What have you been up to and what are you using? Have you tried digiscoping?

chris mentioned today that he is considering opening a special interest forum for wildlife videography at this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...643#post396643

go there and encourage him!!!!! we need another display of public interest!

solidarnscz....

Hi Brendon,
I'm sorry for the delay in replying to to the above, returned yesterday from filming a train journey across the Andes in Peru( Cucso to Puno) not much footage on wildlife unless you want Alpaca's, Lama's and wild Guinea Pigs. To reply to you, I don't think you need to have a lot footage, but more importantly its the fact that if somebody requires a particular or specfic shot they can make request for it , hopefully on the new forum that Chris is going to set up.
Incidently my main interest is Bristish Wildlife and in particular Red Deer , but I do have quite a lot of footage on exotics mainly from Africa ,Asia and Central America.
I am at present useing a Z1 usually with a 1.6 century converter. I tend to research the subject I'm after and position myself so it comes to me, rather than use a camera with a long lens. Does require a lot of time and patience.
No, I have not tried digiscoping.
regards

Mick

Well it sounds like Chris is listening to the group and may do a Wildlife forum. That would be great. I have videoed all over the US as well as Africa, Amazon. Patagonia and places in between. However, my best macro shots of insects were done in my yard in Atlanta. As I have said in other posts, you don't have to go halfway around the world to find wildlife, wildlife is all around you, just go look for it. Bob

Done: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=111

ALL RIGHT!!!!! Hey Chris, Thanks!!!!!! Bob