First Test Video, Canon 7D

Well as promised (threatened) here is my first attempt at shooting video with my 7D. As you can see it is far from perfect and would have benefited greatly from a little planning before hand like a script or even just a shot list but … I didn’t know how long Chris and James would put up with me sticking my camera in their faces while they tried to cook.

You will quickly see that shooting hand held is not as bad as it could be but my initial attempts at shooting hand held are not as good as they should be!! Another problem I had was accurate focussing while shooting. I don’t have a focus puller device or even rails to hold it so I am now trying a piece of white electrical tape on the focus ring and marking relevant distances off on that.

It’s just a bit of fun so enjoy.

It is available in HD (1280×720) on You Tube.

I may have to change the background music, I borrowed this piece from Microsoft which was fine to show friends but now I have published it on You Tube they may object. I am already in dispute with You Tube over another piece I uploaded some time ago where someone claims to own the copyright of the music I used and that was all Royalty Free, from an excellent DVD by Andrew Kramer at Video Copilot called Pro Scores. The frustrating thing with You Tube is that although you  can lodge a dispute you have no way to add any information to backup your dispute and no way to contact them. I tried sending several emails, most were rejected by their hyper efficient spam filter and when I did get one through the response was “…your message will not be reviewed”, it would appear you can only contact them to complain about someone infringing your copyright.

Anyone who has been to see the Video Copilot site will immediately notice a slight influence in my opening title.

Mike

Southport Photographic Exhibition

Its been a busy few days. Went to an open day at Annabel Williams Studio on Friday. If anyone is thinking of attending one of their excellent courses it is a good idea to go to their open day (it isn’t a hard sell for one of their courses) or perhaps one of their short courses to get a feel of the type of style they use. Not everyone responds the same way to instruction. One of the speakers was an ex student of their “Bespoke” course, a lovely and genuine young wedding photographer called Jodie Chapman have a look at her web site.

Sunday I was judging at Southport Photographic Exhibition with the redoubtable Bob Moore and renowned Don Byatt. 1300 projected images with a very high overall standard. Any that got accepted did very well and there were many excellent images that just fell short of the acceptance level. The awards were a very close fought contest, we would have liked to award twice as many certificates as were available. There was no disagreement to the top three in the projected images.

Some of the best ideas just tripped themselves up at the finish post with little things like not grounding people and objects. That tiny little shadow that you may not even notice when its there is very conspicuous by its absence.

There were very few landscapes entered in the projected section and even fewer that made it into the exhibition I did see a few that would have benefited from use of HDR techniques.

Mike