I filmed a philanthropy cook off for Chi O, a USC sorority:
Halloween Party
I had fun messing around with footage from a halloween performance by my friend Mason Youngblood (his musician alter-ego is Callosum) and others in Moas Collective:
Experimenting with Medium Format video
I borrowed a Hassleblad 500ELX from USC and made a rig to experiment with the "camera recording camera" trick seen in other videos. I took it with me for a day in Charleston, SC. There are also a few shots in fields near Congaree National Park in Columbia, SC.
I bought some steel bars holes in them and rigged the two cameras together with a few screws, nuts and washers. The whole rig was heavy and cumbersome. It's also really difficult to know which way you're moving the camera when looking down through the screen of the T2i into the viewfinder of the Hass, which is reflected. By the end of the weekend, I still didn't have that completely figured out. Here's a picture of the rig:
Hopefully sometime in the future I'll be able to make something more narrative with this technique, we'll see...
More Big Painting
I've made progress on the first large painting, and have started another, this time a little smaller.
It's about 6 feet by 4 feet, and I started on it yesterday. One of the canvas stretcher bars was damaged, so I had to cut down a brace to fit this one. I got the wood from my brother, who had a few planks hanging around at his home in raleigh.
I'll be incorporating these paintings into my senior thesis, and am excited to see how they turn out!
I also made a quick little painting during some free time at my internship.
A Big Painting
This semester I have started work on my senior thesis, a set of paintings which will revolve around the idea of power in size. The current painting I'm working on is nine feet wide and six feet tall. It is easily the largest painting I've ever painted, and I'm very excited about it. I wish I had a better photo of the wip, but this will do alright for now:
There is still much to be done, but the composition has been set, the lighting is beginning to develop and deepen, and the detail is beginning to become more refined. I think the size of it really catches the viewer, especially when it's first seen.
I'm planning on finishing it in time to show at the senior thesis exhibition in November. Here's to goals!
On Lenses
(I've been back in the states for a while now and will soon post some stories about my travels here, stay tuned!)
When I bought my t2i, I, like many, had only the kit lens. I wished for better, sharper lenses with creamy bokeh, but they were too expensive, far out of reach. I thought I was screwed until I read about the used lens market and those who mounted old lenses on new cameras. I bought my first old lens in 2011, a 60's era Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 50mm f/1.4, for $105. I was introduced to creamy bokeh, shallow depth of field, and low-light shooting. The filter ring was bent by a friend who dropped it accidentally, so I replaced it with this copy, shown above.
In 2012 I received an old Nikon FG and some lenses from my uncle that had been sitting in a basement. There was a 24mm 2.8 and a 70-210mm 4-5.6, both giving my camera new abilities and rounding out my focal range possibilities. I stopped using my kit lens, and I still use the 24mm 2.8, it's been through some rough times and it's a little banged up now, but it still holds up great.
I wanted brighter capabilities for my long focal length shooting, so in 2012 I bought a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f/3.5 for $75. While not perfect, the lens is pretty darn sharp, has incredible macro capabilities, and some great, sometimes swirly bokeh. It is reasonably compact for the aperture, so I take it on hiking trips. I currently use a Tokina ATX SD 80-200 f/2.8 for telephoto shooting, a lens I lucked out on finding after the previous owner mislabeled the Ebay auction and sold it for $30. It's bright, big, and fun to use.
Are any of these lenses incredibly sharp? Actually, the Takumar is damn near pin sharp above f/2.8, more than sharp from 2.8 to 1.8, and reasonably sharp at 1.4. It blooms a bit bright highlights at 1.4, but I find it quite pleasing. The color of the spherochromatism is quite nice as well. Some of the adhesive between elements has yellowed due to thorium glass, but it's quite simple to compensate for the change in white balance. It also has wonderful lens flare.
The Nikon 24mm 2.8 seems to lose quite a bit of sharpness in the corners, and on infinity focus has never been exactly in focus at f/2.8, but the defects are really quite negligible, too small for anyone to notice without blowing up the full-size file to 200%. It has great color, good bokeh with pleasing spherochromatism, and reasonable sharpness. If there is one problem I have with it, it would be the ugly cold purple and bright green lens flare, a problem I have had to deal with many times. It's just something I have to watch out for.
The Tokina is not very sharp, and I haven't learned all of it's strengths and weaknesses yet. at times it has some bad purple fringing, as well as ugly purple bits in the center of bokeh circles. It seems to be much sharper at shorter focal lengths than at longer ones. When the bokeh doesn't have problems, it is creamy and beautiful. I'm often not sure how much I like this lens, and often change it out with the Vivitar Series one depending on how I feel (or if I need macro, such a wonderful quality in the Vivitar). For the most part, the defects I see are not noticeable by others, and if they are, others don't seem to care.
My point in writing this is that, if you're starting out, expensive lenses are not necessary. Hell, expensive cameras are not necessary. A t2i or Gh2 are both around $200-300, and you could have a full set of bright primes, a 24, 50, and 135, for $200 or less. At the level of detail that these cameras shoot in 1080p, L glass isn't necessary. When you use old glass, you get smooth focusing and metal construction. If you like auto-focus, that may be a problem, but, in my opinion, focusing manually is easier than auto-focus. With small depth of field, auto-focus can miss, and you have to change your composition to line up your subject with a auto-focus point, focus, then recompose. I stick with manual focus because it's cheaper and because the more I use it, the better I become.
To say what many have said before, sharpness does not make a better image. Composition, lighting, etc. make a better image. Buying cheap lenses gave me the tools to create images without using up my savings. Unless I spring for an A7s as an upgrade someday, a camera who's rolling shutter would really benefit from IS, I will not be buying new lenses. They lack character. For many jobs, that may be what is required: clean, sterile images, the look of big name commercials shot on Alexas and given high-key grades. But I'm not trying to go down that route, I intend to live cheaply and make whatever I want. And what I want right now isn't clean. I certainly wouldn't be putting film grain over my digital footage if I wanted that.
Buy some shit glass, then go out there and see what you make. It's fun, I promise. I've bought other lenses, like a 28mm f/2.5 ($15) and a 135mm f/2.8 ($10) that were crap, but fun to play with. In all honesty, shooting 1080p on a Canon DSLR, it is highly unlikely you will be able to tell the difference in quality between a $30 lens and a $2000 dollar lens.
You May Wonder What Has Happened to Me.
It seems I've put myself in Europe for the summer. May 21st, I left Raleigh, NC for Reykjavik, Iceland. After abandoning my original plan of hiking from the northernmost point of the country to the southernmost point (the season was still too young and snow covered the roads in the highlands), I spent twenty-seven days there going on shorter multi-day backpacking trips, as well as meeting new friends through hitchhiking and couchsurfing.
Hraunhafnartangaviti, the northernmost lighthouse on the northernmost peninsula of the country, sits in front of the sunrise at two am, just two hours after the sunset. During the summer, Iceland has no darkness.
It never ceases to amaze me how there are seemingly infinite numbers of connections to be made, more people in the world than can ever be met, yet every single one has their own story, an incomprehensibly huge spiderweb of interacting life. Those that think they are the center of the world have not yet met the world.
I left that country on June 16th with more memories than I could keep preserved in my head (I had to write them all down), and traveled to London. I am currently on my way north, by thumb of course, to see Edinburgh and had the luck to stop at a new friend's house and use a computer. In northeast Iceland I met two Swedish journalists who were nice enough to let me borrow a computer and process this photo, but it seems the rest of the raws will have to wait until July when I get to Italy.
A timelapse frame, near Borgarnes, in Western Iceland.
Iceland is a beautiful country. They call it the land of ice and fire. I would certainly agree.
Next stop: France.
Indiana // Tiger Hudson
Shot a music video for Tiger Hudson of Scenario Records two weekends ago, had some fun Ideas and rolled with it, check it out:
Shit happens
Or so it goes.
In other news, Julian is a friend of mine
A Calmer Friday
Every once in a while you get a feeling that the world is clear, fresh, and beautiful. Sometimes a story does it, sometimes a person, sometimes a song, but from wherever you receive it, it is revitalizing, a crisp drink of water. I was lucky enough to feel it twice in twenty-four hours. With hairs standing on end and wind in my hair, I welcome that bright tomorrow.
Also, the film, now called Thieves at Last, was shown for the first time today. It went well :) it will be a little while before I'm done with final tweaks to show it on the internet and other places. I'm glad I had the chance to do it though, for sure. It's something to make and move past no matter how well it went.
I sent the camera back on monday. I wish I had the chance to use it more than I already did. It was quite an experience, and it makes me want to rent every time I shoot something important.
I also did a quick photo shoot with Suzan Zhang a week or two ago, we got a few nice shots out of it, so that's good.
