Workshop Wednesday Update

We’ve decided to change our format for Workshop Wednesdays.  They will still be free, however we are now doing them every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month.  We are making these changes so we can make our workshops even better.  Kicking off the new schedule on June 6th we’ll have Innovision in house to show off some of their unique gear.  We’re going to start bringing in companies to educate our clients on gear, have more professionals give tutorials, and have the ability for our staff give more in depth instruction on gear.  We have some amazing Workshops lined up, keep checking out our website for updates to the schedule.  If you have any suggestions for future Workshops, send me a email at dave@strayangel.com .

FS-100 Workshop

I’m actually getting a little excited for tomorrow night’s workshop. We’re covering the FS-100 and the more I play with the camera the more I like it. It’s a great alternative to the F3 and since some the major advantages to the F3 aren’t always needed (or wanted) it really gives you a lot of bang for your buck. What features am I talking about? Well, the S-Log first of all. Often, you won’t need it. A color grade is always nice but if you shoot your stuff well in the first place you may not need it and if you shoot S-log you definitely will need to grade every shot and you’re signing yourself for a lot of work. What else? The PL mount is great but so is Canon glass. The 85mm 1.2 might be one of the nicest lenses made by anybody and there’s no easy way to use it one the F-3. Not so with FS-100, a PL and Nikon adapter will let you use just about any glass made.  The camera also offers a lot of picture profile options and has some other tricks up its sleeve. I do miss built in ND filters and the single recording slot is a pain so it’s not perfect. For the money though, it’s a very nice camera and with the 4K version coming out soon I think it’ll be hot of a while yet.

Congrats! – David Gelb!

Wanted to give a shout out to David Gelb, director of Jiro Loves Sushi and Stray Angel client. David rented some lights from us for that shoot and I’m 90 percent sure that is the reason his film is so great…or maybe it’s just him. Congrats David

Thank you!

I wanted to thank David Gil who was our special guest at last night’s workshop. By far the best one yet in my opinion. David gave a great intro to DPing in the low-mid budget feature world, shared some great lighting tips and did a quick practical demonstration. We’re going to try to bring in more and more guest speakers as the Stray Angel network is filled with great talents and great people!

Stray Angel at NAB

Another cool product from NAB that a few people have been talking about: the Tessive Time Filter. Watch the video if you get a sec, it’s a really cool product and the best part is…it fixes rolling shutter!

16mm sized sensors

I’ve been hearing a lot about a bunch of new cameras with 16mm sized sensors. In fact it seems like it’s all anyone is talking about right now. I feel a little bad for these camera manufacturers “wait, you want smaller sensors now?”

You’re not going to get that super shallow DOF you do with 35mm lenses but there are some advantages to the smaller sensor size. First of all, they are cheaper to manufacture so…cheaper cameras. Plus, there is a ton of 16mm glass out there for pretty cheap so you might even be able to afford your own PL, B4 or C-Mount set to go with your new camera which would be really nice.

One of the coolest systems has been out for a while: the Ikonoskop (www.ikonoskop.com) shoots 1920×1080 uncompressed RAW footage to a CinemaDNG format. Based on those specs alone the camera pretty much blows away anything in the sub Red/Alexa price range. That said, it still costs $10,000, needs proprietary hard drives and creates BIG files. Check out some test footage my friend Snehal Patel shot with one: http://fearlessproductions.tv/testing-the-ikonoskop-a-cam-dii-the-camera-th

The other system you may have heard about is the Digital Bolex D16 (http://www.digitalbolex.com/). This one is a bit of an odd duck but it looks like it could be pretty neat if it can deliver on all of its promise. I haven’t been too impressed with the footage I’ve seen from it but the specs are great. It shoots 2K and records mostly uncompressed (12 bit – 4:4:4) TIFF, JPEG and Adobe Cinema DNG files which are very versatile and should give people some great images. The biggest pro might be the price point at $2500-$3500, for that price it’s worth buying one just based on those specs. The major con right now for me is the uncertainty of the whole thing, it was funded on kickstarter and there are no fixed specs or releases dates so if things go screwy in the manufacturing process (a big possibility for a first time camera maker) then you could be looking at much less camera for much more money.

Perhaps the hottest new camera right now is the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/) At $3000, it comes at an affordable price, it has a firm ship date from an established manufacturer and has some great specs. You’ll definitely be hearing a lot about this camera. It shoots 2.5k 12-Bit raw files to standard SSD drives, it has a small form factor and easy to use connections and interface. It actually looks really nice. Plus, you get DaVinci Resolve for free with it. We will be getting one for sure so keep an eye out for pricing and availability

Canon C300

Had a great workshop this week. The Canon C300 did not disappoint and we had a nice turnout. It was nice to see that people are getting some use out of these workshops and I was happy to be able to do some quick ISO and low light testing with the group. I’m trying to keep things informal and letting the groups decide what they want to see and learn. We spent most of the time going through he different menu items, playing with the C-log and just generally getting some hands on time adjusting apertures and playing with the buttons. I will be curious if people respond as well to the my other workshop subjects or if they just want to get their hands on the gear. I’m going to have some really talented people teaching workshops coming up so keep your eyes peeled!