Salon films in Hong Kong- great staff and extensive equipment available.
Power pod lite, Aerocrane, smoke and Jarags -ingredients for this Dragon-sensor shoot. To turn the background lights blue, a Schneider Sapphire blue filter was employed over the lens, with an orange and magenta filter applied to the key light(s) to neutralize the effect of the on-camera filter.If light levels would have permitted, an additional CTB filter would have been nice, to reduce noise levels (underexposure plus 3200 colour balance not the ideal) but it held up nicely nevertheless. Example screen grabs coming down the road.
Near Toronto’s airport, there is a great spot where you can sip a refreshment, and watch the planes fly in around 50 meters above.
Hong Kong with a 30sec exposure- lots of beautiful colours playing on the water. For sure there is an evening of shooting and experimenting in those reflections alone.
City lights, shot from my bicycle-rig, 10 second exposure, blur filter added in Photoshop. Lens was 16mm fisheye.
Wally Bublles, a friend down the street, shot with the new 35mm Art Sigma lens for Nikon D800.
Nice tonal range and contrast, super fast f1.4 is nice for low light.
Some old pics from Arizona, memories of being on the road.
It has been a while since I have done any close-cutting.
I always use photoshop and often employ the pen tool for drawing paths, creating selections and the like. This time I tried something different and used the Quick Selection tool. I’m gobsmacked with this tool- how it can be so intuitive I can’t say. Pictured here is a shot of a model on white, wearing a white top- it took only a few clicks and the Quick Selection tool had it perfectly drawn out. Amazing.
From here I just blur a mask a bit, paint out some of the hair and I have my mask, clean and clear.
The shooting setup was: NIKON D800 tethered with C1 Pro, via laptop Macbook Pro, with a second, 24" monitor in portrait orientation to provide a sizeable image to enjoy while shooting.
Strobes provided F11 @ 125/th sec @ 100 ISO.
Light and light patterns created a while ago by water, ferris wheel and hanging lights while moving the camera and zooming in and out.
Still grab from Dragon at 6K, 82 fps.
Lighting was the 30K Lablight, hence the glasses….
Dragon sensor examples.
Still from a recent shoot for Big Brother Canada.
While fixtures like the Briese and Broncolor make for excellent beauty-dish lights, so too does one of my favourites- the Aurasoft.
It creates a very nice drop shadow under the chin and is somehow hard and soft at the same time.
BRANT MATTHEWS FIRE BREATHE →
Here is a small example of the new sensor at 200fps.
At long last, the Dragon sensor has arrived.
Shown here is a 2K still, from a scene shot at 200FPS.
I have used the Dragon on a few commercial assignments so far and love the feel of the image.
It boasts 6K capture at up to 100FPS (for now), 16.5 stops of dynamic range and a super clean image up to 2000ISO.
It truly is remarkable what cameras can do these days.
The beautiful wintry shore of Lake Ontario.
Although cold, there is something very calming here, at this time of year.
While on another Phantom shoot, I had the pleasure of being able to test this beauty out.
It’s called a 30K Lablight. I believe it is made by the same folks that produced Lightning Strikes (Luminys).
Essentially, it is an unbelievably bright flash tube, which will give you a ten second, flicker free blast of light at 30,000 Watts of daylight.
I had a key light source of two 18K HMI fresnels pounding through a 12 x 12’ frame- that’s 36,000 watts of daylight. I added the 30K Lablight to the frame and doubled my shooting stop- incredible.
These units are also pretty compact (about 2-3 ft wide), however, the ballast or battery is very heavy (around 250 pounds). It only uses around 40 amps of power, and after the initial charge time of around 5 minutes, it recharges in 90 seconds, ready for another 10 second burst (about 400 seconds of screen time, when shot at 1000fps).
While this unit dumps a bit of heat when firing, it’s perfect for food, pour shots and the like. I was really impressed with this unit and will definitely be using a number of these when the job calls for hi speed work.