Here’s the video I’ve produced for Harley-Davidson’s Swiss Harley Days event. The video was shot over four days in and around the city of Lugano in Switzerland in July 2010.

Click here to find out more about shooting this video and the kit I used.

After around three years of using a digital workflow I’ve amassed a lot of data, my source clips alone use up around 6TB of hard drive space, add to that working files, transcoded scratch files, renders and all the other bits and bobs that get generated when working on a project and you start to need a lot of space on your computer system.  Today I’m still shooting on the EX1, but the problem has only gotten worse with the addition of two DSLR’s, two GoPro’s and the Zoom h4n all filling up cards at silly rates.

Up until now I’ve simply been adding more hard-drive capacity to cope with demand, my mac is maxed out with four 2TB internal hard drives, a 2TB G-Raid scratch disk and an 8TB drobo which is struggling to keep everything backed up using time machine. My mac is once again nearing being full and with 2TB SATA drives still being the largest capacity available I really needed to come up with a way of offloading the older footage and freeing up my system for new files.

So let me talk about some of the options that I’ve looked into and then I’ll go on to describe what I’ve decided to do to tackle this ever growing problem.

Hard Drives
The good thing about hard drives is that they are one of the cheapest ways to store your files, with a 2TB drive costing around £100 that works out at approximately 0.5 pence a GB per drive.

Apparently hard drives have a tendency to seize up if not used for a few years and of course they are quite fragile devices. Drop a hard drive and all the data contained within it could be lost forever, unless of course you can afford to have it recovered by one of those super expensive clever people that can rebuild drives in a secret underground lab somewhere!

I’m a big believer in making sure that anything stored on hard drives is on at least two of them. Even if I’m using a drobo which mirrors the data across multiple drives I still make sure I have a backup on another drive outside the drobo. If a drive fails in the drobo then all is not lost, but what happens if the drobo fails and kills all of it’s drives? Call me paranoid but you can’t be too careful with anything that claims to look after your precious data.

Tape Backup
Tape systems such as LTO drives are designed with backups in mind, they provide a reasonably fast data transfer and the media is cheap. The drives themselves are quite expensive starting from around £1,000 and quickly heading into £2,500 plus for the most up to date systems. The tapes themselves offer one of the cheapest options for storing data, an LTO4 tape can store 800GB of uncompressed data and only costs around £25.

The downside with tape is that when you need to access the files you’ve backed up it can be a royal pain getting them back off of the tapes. I think as a backup system for use in data loss emergencies they do a great job, but for archiving they’re just not the right technology.

Sony Pro Disks
This was the technology I was most excited by when I started looking for an archiving solution, after all Sony must have thought about the workflow issues when they invented SxS and the Pro Disk seems like the answer. Unfortunately though it doesn’t appear to be ideal. Firstly the PDW-U1 drive costs a whopping £2,841. I’m not sure what technological goodness they packed into that little box but it must be extremely clever at that price. The disks themselves are around £45 for 50GB.

Sony Professional disks are used in the XDCAM range of cameras which record directly on to the disks allowing you to simply archive the actual disks at the end of a shoot and charge the media cost on to your client. I really like the thought of working that way but unfortunately if like me you’re shooting on an XDCAM-EX camera though you’d need to copy the footage from your SxS cards over to the pro disks at the end of every shoot.

I’ve been doing a little research into this and apparently it takes around 40 minutes to copy just 17GB of data. That doesn’t make it a practical solution at all. If I come back from a shoot with 60GB of footage on three SxS card it’s going to take three hours or more to transfer everything, and that’s with me being there to swap disks. That’s not going to work!

BD-R & DVD-R
I know a lot of people backup to DVD and Blu-ray disks but personally I don’t trust re-writable DVD’s and BDR’s as far as I could throw them, which thinking about it might be quite far if using the Frisbee technique!. You get my meaning though.  Some reports claim that the life span of these re-writable disks is less than three years if kept in ideal conditions and considerably less if not cared for properly. For me that’s just not reliable enough to be storing my footage on so I’m not even considering these at all.

So what’s the answer?
In all honesty I’m not sure there is a good answer at the moment. There really doesn’t seem to be a system that provides reliable long term offline storage with fast data transfer,  low cost media and easy access to files. I’ve read that Sony are working on a ‘one time write’ system that uses 128GB optical disks with a long life-span but that’s no use to me until it gets released and there’s no mention of write times yet.

So for now I’m going to keep going the way I have been and use hard drives. Today I’ve blown £1,100 on another drobo, this time the drobo fs model packed with five 2TB drives which is going to become my new backup drive. I’ll use my existing 8TB drobo as a footage storage device. I know I have to archive some data so I’ve also come up with a plan for that.

Of the four 2TB drives I have in my mac, two of them contain footage that’s getting quite old and isn’t likely to be needed very oftem. My plan is to use a pair of 2TB external drives and copy the data from my internal drives onto the external drives. I’ll then pull out the internal drives and store those off site somewhere whilst keeping the external drives here in case I need access to the data at any point.

I know it’s not ideal to store drives without firing them up regularly, but it really does seem like the best option for now. Hopefully Sony or somebody else will address this problem soon, I’m sure I’m not the only person struggling to know what to do with all the data I’m accumulating.

let me know your thoughts and any solutions that work for you.

It’s all well and good reviewing kit and reporting how great, or not so great it is but I feel that it’s probably more important to see the gear that I make use of in my day to day shooting. Anything I’ve reviewed is linked to that review, otherwise it’s linked to B&H or another retailer. Some items that I use are discontinued, in which case the links point to an updated version or no link is provided.

The gear I use

On 6th July 2010 HRH The Prince of Wales took the salute at a Royal Review in the Mall, London to celebrate 150 years of the Cadet Forces in the UK. Cadets, volunteers and their massed bands from across the UK marched from Horse Guards Parade down The Mall to Buckingham Palace in a colourful parade, past Clarence House where The Prince took the Salute in honour of the anniversary.

I was hired to shoot the event and make a short (under 3 minute) video featuring the highlights.

Click here to read more and comment

I’ve been shooting some corporate web videos for a company that sells conservatory accessories and window blinds over the last few months so I’ve had to light to match the natural light coming through glass roofs and windows as the fitters went about demonstrating how to install their products. These videos have been shot on a minimum budget so I’ve been using my standard tungsten-halogen light kit and using various density blue gels to match the colour of the natural light.

The most recent shoot took place two days ago in the smallest space I think I’ve had to work in, the room was no more than 10ft x 5 ft and the windows and door had to be closed to enable the fitter to work and also to block external noise. To say it was hot and uncomfortable in there would be a huge understatement! If I’d fired up my Rifa 55 soft box in there I think we’d all have passed out within 20 minutes!

Luckily however I had a Litepanels 1×1 Bi-Color light with me which I had on loan from B&H so I decided to give that a go instead of the rifa. The great thing about LED lights is that they don’t get hot so even though the light did a great job of illuminating the shot it didn’t add to the already uncomfortable heat levels in the room. The other great thing about this light is that you can dial in the colour temperature to match anything from incandescent room lights through to full daylight meaning that a quick tweak of the colour dial perfectly matched the natural sunlight coming through the window without the need to mess around with blue gels and gaffers tape.

The 1×1 is also dim-able so setting the light intensity was also easy, my rifa softbox is either on or off so any adjustments to light levels on the subject are done by either moving the lights or adding some kind of diffusion material. With the 1×1 I just switched it on and dialled it in. If you’re lucky enough to have a few 1×1′s to work with you can also link them up to each other and control them all at the same time from a single unit.

LED lights are a great choice if you’re looking for something you can travel with, they’re a lot less fragile than bulb based lights and often weigh less too which can be a factor when checking in baggage. The light I’ve been using runs on both 120 and 240v mains supply so could be used in the US or Europe. You can also power it using rechargeable V-Mount batteries by adding Litepanels LP1x1-BAPV adapter plate.

The litepanels 1×1 was a great light to work with and didn’t add additional heat to an already uncomfortable situation. As with most LitePanels products though you have a pay a premium for the LED goodness, at a whopping $2,545 the LitePanels 1×1 Bi-Color is quite an investment, especially compared to a more traditional light like the Lowel Rifa 55 soft box which retails for around $440. I’ve also seen cheaper LED lights from other manufacturers appearing on the market but I’ve not been able to compare those to the Litepanels as yet so it’s difficult to say how they stack up in terms of functionality and quality. I can certainly report that the Litepanels 1×1 is a very solid unit and feels like a very professional bit of kit.

In use the 1×1 performed flawlessly, it provided a solid spread of light with no perceived flicker or unwanted changes to brightness or colour. All of the controls feel like they use high quality components, especially the two huge control wheels for brightness and colour which remind me of the kind of volume knobs you’d expect to find on a high end Hi-Fi system.

Not having to mess around with gels and diffusion was fantastic and I loved that after shooting for 4 hours I simply switched the light off and packed it away. That might sound a bit strange, but if you’ve used something like a riffa softbox before you’ll know that you really can’t touch them for at least 20 – 30 minutes after switching them off because they remain blisteringly hot for so long.

I’d love to work with a set of four of these lights and plan on investing in more of them in the future. In the meantime I’m going to be talking to B&H about hanging on to this one for now!

B&H Photo Video sell the LitePanels 1×1 Bi-Color variable LED light for $2,545 and also the whole LitePanels 1×1 range which include floods, spots, multi light kits and a range of accessories including barn doors and egg crates for controlling light spread.

Canon EF 24-105mm F4 IS USM Lens for video

Do I really need another lens?

The latest in my line-up of event shoots for Harley-Davidson took place last weekend in Barcelona. Thankfully the weather was beautiful for this one with the sun being blocked by clouds for only an hour or so during the whole three day event.

Click here to read more & comment

I also own a Canon 70 – 200 2.8 IS lens which is fantastic, quite often I’ll prefer the results from that over my primes it really depends on what it is I’m shooting and the type of result I’m looking for. The Image Stabiliser on that lens is excellent and even though it makes lot of noise it makes handholding such a long lens quite easy.

One time when primes become a bit of a pain though is for event work. I took my 5D along with the 50 and 24 to my recent shoot for Harley-Davidson in St Tropez and although both lenses produced nice results, it seemed that the moment I swapped the lenses a shot would present itself where I felt like I wanted to swap them again. I really don’t like swapping lenses more than I have to in the field as it’s way too easy for grit, dust and other nasties to get inside the cameras.

So, for my next event for Harley which takes place in Barcelona next weekend I’ve decided to try out the Canon EF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM Zoom. Now at F4 this is by no means a fast lens, it’s not going to be on my 5D when I head out in the evenings but for daytime use I think it’s going to be a lovely lens giving me a nice range to work with without swapping lenses. It’s also not going to deliver the extremely shallow depth of field that my primes can, but again that’s not something I really need for handheld work at events.

When choosing this lens I considered another 24 – 70 2.8, but the 24-105 has some advantages over the 24-70 which are very important for event work. Firstly, and most importantly it has IS (Image Stabilisation) which works wonders for handheld video use. Dealing with camera shake is one of the hardest things about working with DSLR’s so having IS helps a lot.  When I get back from Barcelona I’ll post some examples of how much it helps.

The other advantage the 24-105 has over the 24-70 is that it’s quite a lot lighter, for event work carrying the 5D around as well as my EX1 weight can be tricky, the less weight I have to carry the better.

The 24-70 at f2.8 is obviously a few stops faster than the 24-105 and if you need a wide zoom to work in lower light situations as well then it would be a better choice. Even f2.8 can be a bit limiting in low light though so I’ll stick to my 50mm f1.2 and 24mm f1.4 for that.

The lens has literally just turned up this morning so I haven’t had much time with it yet, but from my first impressions it looks like  it’ll work a treat, the IS makes a huge difference and I can get shots which don’t look like handheld shots at all. As with all of Canon’s L Series lenses it appears to be built well and ready for the challenge ahead.

Although a lot quieter than the 70-200 the noise from IS on this lens would probably still be noticeable if using an on camera mic but for most of my usage that’s not a big issue as I generally use an external recorder for anything where I’m going to need the sound.

I’ll post more when I return from Barcelona and let you know how it worked out.

The Canon EF-24-105 F4 IS can be purchased in the USA from B&H for $1,059

In the UK Warehouse Express sell it for £929.99

I personally think we’ll see the buzz return to the traditional video camera manufacturers 12 months from now, which is quite an interesting thought considering that the whole aftermarket manufacturing industry currently seems to have gone DSLR crazy. A dedicated 35mm video sensor would be designed with HD video formats in mind so would no doubt avoid the line twitter / aliasing issues which are the result of DSLR’s sensors providing too much resolution. DSLR’s are always going to have to cater to photographers first.

Canon or even Nikon may be planning on delivering an uncompressed full res video output from a DSLR, but they are always going to have to deal with sensors that are designed with still images in mind and provide work arounds to the huge resolutions involved.

I think the whole DSLR thing has been fantastic, it gave the video giants a big kick up the behind and made them move forward a lot faster than that might have done otherwise. They seem to be moving though so it’s going to be very interesting to see which direction they go in.

I did plan on investing in an EX1r for this years event work but I think I’m going to try and make my trusty 3 year old EX1 last one more season now and see what Sony do with this new camera and what they mean by “more affordable”.

The thought of an XDCAM-EX or better body offering the features of an EX1r but using a 35mm sensor along with the possibility to use various types of 35mm lenses is really exciting. It’s hard to know if that’s what Sony have in mind at present, but it would certainly get the attention of all those videographers out there who have jumped on the DSLR band wagon and invested money in 35mm glass.

EX1 – over-cranking and audio
I shot the majority of this event using my EX1. I normally shoot these at 720/25p and switch on S&Q motion (overcrank) from time to time when I want some slow motion footage. The only problem with this approach is that the EX1 doesn’t record any audio when running S&Q. I ran into a problem last year when the client asked for audio from part of a sequence I’d shot in slow-mo so needed another approach this year.

I decided to do two things differently, firstly I took along my Zoom H4n audio recorder and whenever possible asked the guys running the sound desks to give me a feed so that I could have a non-stop audio recording regardless of what I did with the camera. I also decided to shoot the whole event in 720/50p mode so that I could create slow-mo in post using cinema tools and be able to use the footage on a 25p timeline with audio should I need it.

Shooting at 720/50 when you know you’re delivery will be at 25p means you have to be careful with shutter speeds. I normally have my shutter on the EX1 set to 180 degrees which results in each frame being exposed for 1/50th second. If I left that setting the same when shooting at 720/50 each frame would only be exposed for 1/100th of a second.

Because I planned to export the video back to 25p I turned the shutter off, effectively giving each frame 1/50th of a second of exposure giving it the same amount of motion blur as 25p in the hope it would produce similar results once reduced to 720/25. This theory didn’t really work out that well, when I imported my 50p clips into a 25p timeline the footage didn’t look as fluid as I’d normally expect from 25p. Edited on a 720/50p timeline the footage played correctly, but when exported out at 25p I still wasn’t overly happy with the results. I’ll need to look into this one a bit further.

One other downside to the 720/50 route to slow-mo is that cinema tools can’t conform XDCAM-EX footage, it needs to be transcoded to Pro-Res first which could take a lot of time considering I had hours of footage. I handled this by going through the footage and creating a sequence with all my favourite shots in which I then exported out as a 720/50p ProRes file which was then conformed in Cinema Tools and reimported for use in my edit.

Custom bike tracking shots
I used my 5D & glidetrack shooter rig during the events custom bike show.  As well as being a very light and portable rig for tracking shots the results are some of the nicest looking custom bike shots I’ve managed at an event so far, I’ll definitely be using it again. Using the Manfrotto 394 quick release plates to switch between tripod and ground shots worked a treat too.

Using the Canon 5D
I made the decision before leaving to shoot this event that I was going to shoot the majority of it on my Sony EX1 with the exception being the tracking shots on the glidetrack.

I did however also want to experiment with the 5D so I ventured out a couple of times with it on a DV Multirig. One area where the 5D shines is in low light environments so I took it instead of the EX1 when I headed out to film a couple of bands and the party goers watching them. Shots such as bar scenes and people dancing on the beach being lit by the stage lights were brought to life by the 5D where the EX1 would have either been dark shadows or a grainy mess. I did however discover a limitation with the 5D that I wasn’t aware of before this event.

I was shooting some guys riding Harleys through the event ground with their headlights on and noticed black dots appearing in the middle of the headlights. On reviewing the footage these black dots appear anywhere in the image that’s ultra bright. This also happened on occasion when shooting the bands and a stage light would shine on the camera, the light would become a small black spot on the image.

I’ve mixed up things quite a bit in the event video, to me the 5D shots are all very obvious but I’m not sure they always represent the best looking images. The tracking shots of the custom bikes look good, but some of the crowd shots from the event have a kind of “mobile phone” look about them rather than the deep focus, ultra clear HD images that the EX1 usually gathers.

Manfrotto Monopod
This was the first event I’ve shot where I took the Manfrotto monopod along. In theory the monopod should be ideal in this environment as it’s fairly low profile and yet allows for steady panning or tilting shots when required. In use though I found the monopod to be a bit of a failure. It was easier to carry than something like my Miller DS-2o tripod but I found it quite useless for trying to get smooth panning shots. Fast pans were a little better, but trying to pan slowly resulted in a kind of clicking action from the fluid cartridge in the base that was very visible in the resulting footage. I won’t be taking it again.

Workflow
My workflow changed slightly at this event mainly due to the use of the Nexto DI NVS2500. For footage offloads I continued what I’d started on the ride to the event by offloading my media cards to the NVS at the end of each day and then syncing it to an external drive.

I did have one scary moment when the external drive I was using developed some kind of fault that could only be fixed by formatting it and re-syncing. This took a couple of hours to complete, during which time I felt particularly vulnerable knowing the footage was solely on the NVS hard drive but the device performed perfectly and allowed me to re-sync my data once the external drive had been reformatted.

All in all the shooting at the event went well, I had no major problems with equipment etc. The weather even started to look up, we had the occasional shower but it stayed dry for the most part with a fair amount of sun thrown in.