bradleysteenkamp.com

I’ve just had my first techniques article published in the widely read music magazine Sound on Sound. They have recently started a video section and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to write something for them. It’s available now in whsmith and other stores, even my local Tesco has it available! It’s also online here but unless you have an esub subscription will cost 99p.

There will hopefully be more to come in the next few issues!

Colour grading is a very important part of the video editing process. While you might have some great footage straight out of camera I promise you that your final product will be even more professional if you take the time to grade the footage before uploading to the web or sending it to the client. If you happen to shoot with an HDSLR (such as the Canon 7D, 5d mkII or 550d) then you might have heard about shooting flat. I won’t go into too much detail but it basically involves setting up a custom profile to shoot with low sharpness and contrast and reduced saturation (excellent blog post by Stu Maschwitz here. Shooting flat gives you more latitude for grading but the footage usually doesn’t look great straight out the camera. One of my favourite colour grading tools is Magic Bullet Looks. It’s incredibly flexible with an easy to learn interface. It’s capable of everything from simple 3 way colour correction and contrast adjustment to over the the top music video style looks. I’ve put together a short video overview of the interface which can be viewed below. For more information go to www.redgiantsoftware.com

My studio room is now complete and I decided to go through the painful DIY process of making my own acoustic treatment panels! I did this with the advice gathered on the Sound on Sound forums.

The panels I made are about 120cm x 61cm x5cm and area mounted at reflection points around the studio rooms. They are very effective at reducing the excessive room tone and can also be used as bass traps if spaced away from the wall or mounted in the corner.

They are quite simple to make and don’t require a great deal of DIY skills. They are also very cost effective at about £15 per panel (the professional ones cost from £50 plus per panel).

If you can’t find a local supplier or prefer to order online then Insulationexpress is one of many options. The rest of the required items can be found at B and Q, Homebase or other hardware store.

As great as HDSLR’s such as the 550d, 7d and 5dmkII are for HD filming they do have a few major issues. For me the worst of them is the Aliasing and Moire that occurs on areas with complex lines such as buildings, roofs, guitar strings and tennis nets!

The video below features some slo-motion clips filmed at 720p 50fps on the Canon 7d. The aliasing is most noticeable in the net is very annoying once you’ve spotted it!

All shots filmed either with the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 or Canon 55-250 IS. Completely handheld at up to 200mm. IS comes highly recommended!!!

Like most people I find it very hard to suppress the desire to upgrade to the lastest model of apple computer! I’ve been using a macbook pro 2.6ghz core 2 duo (2008 model) for about two years and decided now was good time to upgrade.

I decided to go for the 15″ i7 with 8 gig of ram. My initial performance tests have blown me away. Editing in Premiere Pro on the 2.6 core 2 duo was never a problem even with native Canon 7D footage but it didn’t cope so well with added effects playing back in real time. For example, a single insert of color corrector and magic bullets mojo results in very jumpy playback. Not the case on the i7, it’s very smooth. This becomes a huge time saver as I don’t find myself rendering all the time in order to preview the grading effects I’ve added to the footage.

I’ve disappointed that Apple decided on an SD card slot rather than an Expresscard (found only on the 17″). You can buy a card reader for £10 (or an SD only reader at poundland for £1!) so what’s the point of choosing that over the expresscard!!!

Still, it’s a great upgrade and highly recommended if you are thinking about upgrading.

I’ve included a couple of screen captures below. Both the same H264 export taking about 18min on the Core 2 duo and almost half that on the i7.

I recently spent an afternoon at Wakehurst Place (owned by Kew gardens) filming various scenes with my Canon 7D and indslider mini. I decided to put an edit together with one of my own piano based compositions. The lenses used (with and without polarizer) were the Olympus Zuiko OM mount 35mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 as well as the Zeiss 135mm f3.5 for some of the static shots. These three lenses are very affordable and offer superb image quality combined with focus rings that are much easier to use for video work (Manual focus only though!). The selected colour profile was a custom one based on a Kodachrome preset found in the discussion here on cinema5d. I wanted to illustrate footage taken directly from the camera using a custom profile so have embedded two versions below. The first is raw footage with no colour grading and the second is the colour graded version. My colour corrections are quite subtle so it might be tricky to tell the difference but hopefully the clips in the graded version flow more seamlessly and have improved colour and contrast. Both videos can be viewed in HD directly on Vimeo.