Jay Shaffer Video

Panasonic showed off a mock-up of the AG-HF100 at NAB. The AF100 is a “Hybrid” camcorder that uses the micro 4/3 sensor from the Lumix GH1. This allows the use of a wide variety of interchangeable lenses, including 35mm still camera lenses. The AF100 features a camcorder body with XLR audio inputs and uses the AVCHD codec for video and linear PCM for audio. Panasonic says it will be available in December and go for about $6000 US. Considering that the anticipated pricing for the Lumix GH2 is $1500, I’m hoping that Panasonic will lower the price of the AF100 to the $3K range.

Lunched with a couple old friends and we are looking into doing some software video tutorials as a business, Then ran down to Blue Flame Power coating to pick up a bunch of Jaybilizer parts that I had powder coated. Yeah baby! powder coating sure beats paint.
Finally got my Canon 11-70mm f 1.8 c-mount tv zoom lens and mounted it to my Panasonic GH1 with a c-mount adapter and I was immediately disappointed to find that it only covered half of the sensor. After a little Google search, I found that the work around is to use the 2X digital zoom to get a full frame image. This actually kinda sucks because you are trading off resolution by the camera interpolating pixels, and you are doubling the crop factor, so that my 11mm now has a 22mm field of view. So in reality if I can shoot at f4 I’m ahead to use the kit 14-140mm lens for wide angle shots. The only upside is that the tv lens will be good for some shots where I want narrow DOF and soft vignetted edges. Note to self, check Google before buying on ebay.

This is a weight test of the the Jaybilizer 3000 5D model with the GH1 with the kit lens, a shotgun mic and Zoom H4n audio recorder mounted on the camera. . The camera rig weighs 3 Lbs 10 Oz. This is about the maximum weight that this camera stabilizer will handle. This was shot at 720p 60fps with several shots at half speed with no frame blending in Final Cut Pro.

If you’re reading this article you probably are aware that shooting HD video with DSLRs is all the rage among digital filmmakers. There are far more reasons to shoot this way than not, but one of the problems with DSLRs are their sound recording capabilities. THe Canon 5D Mk2, the Canon 7D and the Panasonic GH1 have external microphone inputs but unfortunately these use auto gain control and have no manual control over input levels. Also these cameras don’t have headphone monitoring. Read more…

Mea Cupla is a short film exercise for my sound design class at Front Range Community College. The dialog and action were totally improvised and the video was shot in a half hour (still enough to irritate some other teachers ) We were testing recording second system sound using a Marantz PMD661 digital recorder and a EV RE-15 microphone on a boom. I was also testing shooting with the Panasonic GH1 camera at 720p at 60fps, the project was edited in Final Cut Pro 6 with a 29.97fps timeline. I used 50% speed with no frame blending for the slow motion shots. And finally I want to demonstrated some running tracking shots with the Jaybilizer3000 DIY camera stabilizer. The entire video was shot with a Panasonic GH1 camera using available light at ISO 1600 on my Jaybilizer3000 DIY camera stabilizer

Credits:
A Jay Shaffer Film
MGD-163 Sound Design Class:
Tim Brazzell
Matthew Cooper
Daniel Davenport
Susan Glarion
Brett Hughes
Roldan Melcon
Andrew Parkins
Nicholas Ramirez
Gavin Townsend