Yesterday, I took a short road trip to visit my old college to talk with some of my professors. It was really great to see the college again as I haven’t been there in quite a few years. And talking with my professors inspired me once again to just finish my computer science/engineering degree. Even though I like filmmaking, I’m still an engineer at heart. And if I can somehow combine the two together, I’d have my dream job.
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I was playing around with SoundTrack Pro (part of Apple Final Cut Suite) to record voice overs for commercials. I use a M-Audio MobilePre USB preamp and two nice condensor mics for the recording. The MobilePre also has headphone and stereo line jacks so you can listen to the audio as you record it. So I setup SoundTrack to use the MobilePre as the recording and monitor device, and I pumped the audio through the MobilePre’s outputs. This allows you to listen to your own voice and hear the background music at the same time without the mics picking up the music. However, when I set this up, the voice track coming through the headphones was horrible, like it was peaking very badly. I triple checked all the settings to make sure the audio wasn’t peaking and even made sure the headphones weren’t to blame by sending the finished audio track back through the headphones, which came out fine. So I decided to try out a different software package to see if that helped. And sure enough, Audacity, the open source sound editor, worked considerably better than SoundTrack Pro but still not 100% better. I truly wonder what is causing this issue…
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Posted by g1powermac under Other | Comments Off
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes
But it’s home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I’m the only one and I walk alone
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone
I’m walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
Read between the lines
What’s messed up and everything’s alright
Check my vital signs
To know I’m still alive and I walk alone
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone
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Alright, so I decided to do one more test shot of my 35mm depth of field adapter. It is just so nice of a day today that I just had to do one more shot. So here it is:
The clip was shot with the 85mm F/1.8 Canon FD lens. The camcorder’s aperture was set at a high F stop while the Canon FD lens was fully open. In this footage, you can really appreciate the very shallow depth of field achieved with the adapter. Also, the footage just looks ‘creamy’ which lends a real nice film like look to it. These results are so nice it just makes me want to go out and shoot more random stuff in my yard.
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As promised, here’s the explanation on how I built my 35mm depth of field adapter. First, here’s a close up shot of the adapter with all the parts marked:
Everything on that image is fairly self explanatory. Almost all of the parts I purchased on eBay, minus a few things. Besides my camcorder, I also did not purchase on eBay the 55mm to Canon EOS extension tube step up ring and the holder for the Nikon F3 focus screen. I purchased these parts from Daniel’s site.
The build is also fairly self explanatory as everything just screws together. The trickiest part is the ground glass/focus screen installation. I used Daniel’s static focus screen holder which looks like this:
The focus screen goes inside the square cut out in the holder, and the holder is then placed inside the Canon EOS extension tube with two screws on each side of the holder which expands it just enough to hold it in place. There are two caveats with this, however. First, the shiny side of the focus screen must be facing the 35mm SLR lens. Second, you must place the focus screen the exact flange focal distance from the SLR lens. This is alot easier said than done. I basically put the holder and screen in the tube and manipulated it until I got proper infinity focus. I also had to be very careful not to touch the ground glass during this as a finger print would ruin it.
Also, you maybe wondering what the purpose is of the 55mm polarizer filter with the glass removed. This is so you can twist the body of the adapter to allow the ground glass to be in the same horizontal plane of the camcorder. And since I only wanted the mechanical part of the filter, I got rid of the glass.
So there it is. Any questions on the adapter, just leave a comment.
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Alright, so I can’t resist continually testing my DOF adapter under different requirements. This time I decided to keep the focus steady but move the camera using a simple pan. I used a chain link fence in front of my car to show the shallow depth of field. Also, if you notice, the background behind the car is also blurred. I’d never get that kind of shallow DOF using the stock lens on the Canon GL2. The footage was shot using the Canon FD 85mm lens (the footage is heavily compressed which makes it choppy):
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I got in a Canon FD 85mm f/1.8 lens late last night and decided to test it out on the DOF adapter during this morning’s golden hour. Here’s the results:
Doesn’t that look nice? This was actually shot without using the ND filter setting on the Canon GL2. However, it took quite a bit of tweaking to get a nice looking shot without grain coming from either the ground glass or the camcorder itself. The best way to avoid the grain is to make sure you frame your shot with a minimal contrast range. Like, do not shoot something that is dark with a bright background behind it. The background will be washed out yet the foreground will be dark and grainy caused by the camcorder.
Major rule of thumb: if you see grain on the LCD screen on the camcorder, you’ll really see grain on bigger screens. So when framing the shot, try to get rid of all grain on the LCD screen.
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I decided to fiddle around with the adapter outside to see if I can get it to work without the hideous grain. I found a nice combination of settings to get a halfway decent shot without resorting to ND filters. I set the 35mm lens aperture all the way open and put the Canon GL2 in ND filter mode. With some fiddling of the GL2′s aperture, I was able to get a nice image. Here’s the shot starring my dog:
This was shot using a Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 lens. As you can see, there’s some issues with this method. Any areas with high contrast get a bit blown out and get some chromatic aberrations (the blue haze). I’m not 100% sure what is causing this, but I suspect it is because there is just way too much light hitting the ground glass. As you can also tell, I shot it holding the camera. This really was not easy as the whole rig must way about 10lb and the center of gravity is totally off which makes any of the handles on the GL2 useless. I definitely recommend using a tripod or other form of stabilizing system with this kind of rig.
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