Jay Shaffer Video » Jay Shaffer

GH1 Low Light Lens Comparison

shaf — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:42:11 +0000

This is a quick non-scientific comparison video of several lenses. I compared the kit Lumix 14-140 lens to the following:
Canon FD 28mm F2.8
Minolta 35-70mm F2.5
c-mount 35mm F1.8 CCTV
c-mount 25mm F1.2 CCTV
Canon c- mount 11-70mm TV
the c-mount lenses used the SLR Magic adapter.
The subject is a wine glass, lit with 5600K daylight LED light source and the room was lit with 2800K CFL lights. The camera was white balanced for day light.
The GH1 is using the Ptools firmware hack and was shooting 24FPS no pulldown 1080P at 40Mbs with a 1/50th sec. shutter.
Edited as ProRes 422 in FCP. Output to h.264 @400Kbs

Timelapse test GH1

shaf — Fri, 21 May 2010 02:56:56 +0000

A time lapse test with the Panasonic GH1 with kit lens shooting 1/1000sec shutter in shutter priority. F stop varied between 8 and 4.1. Some shutter “wow”. I’m thinking I should have shot f4.5 in manual. any advice is welcome. Next time , I want to compare using apeture priority. as long as the shutter speed doesn’t exceed the the interval time I should be okay.
Location: Golden Colorado

Perfect spring morning

shaf — Fri, 21 May 2010 02:51:22 +0000

A perfect spring morning. Warm temps with fragrant breezes.
Panasonic GH1 Kit 14-140 lens F4.0 -5.6 fast shutter. Full manual movie mode. Working the bokeh, Man, I love this camera!

Music is from Nuevo Chic production music.

Jaybilizer 3000 DIY Camera Stabilizer – Canon 5dmk2 Mod.

shaf — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:38:34 +0000

This is a modification to the Jaybilizer 3000 to be able to handle the weight of a Canon 5Dmk2.

Super Simple Second System Sound Syncing for HDSLRs

shaf — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:24:00 +0000

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.
The most common solution to these problems is to use film style second system or double system sound.The advantage of second system sound is that you have a redundant high quality sound recording that you can sync to your camera images in post-production. The methodology for second system sound ranges from very simple to incredibly complex methods. [See this article which outlines no less than 16 different methods for doing second system sound. ]
Here is my simple method and workflow for capturing and syncing great sound for HDSLRs.
First you will need some sort of external high quality sound recorder. It is important to note that your sound recorder doesn’t necessarily have to be a sound recorder. I have several DV and HDV camcorders that have microphone inputs and headphone monitoring. So one possible method would be to use one of these as a 16 bit 48KHZ sound recorder and as an added bonus you may even get some usable B-rool video out of the deal. The other method is to use a dedicated sound recorder, one of the coolest and most popular of these is the Zoom H4n recorder. The H4n is a high quality compact rugged and versatile machine and at $300 it’s a bargain. If you don’t have one or something similar, you should buy one. Of course, you may have a portable DAT machine or some other legacy sound recorder, and any of these will work.
Secondly I’m going to presume that you can hook up a high quality external mic to your sound recording device, whether it is a shotgun mic on a boom or wireless lavalier. The ideal situation would be to have a dedicated sound recordist/ boom operator on your shoot, but if you’re a one person operation you can still use a camera mounted mic hooked up to your sound recorder.
Okay, this is the most important part of this method: DO NOT DISABLE SOUND RECORDING ON YOUR DSLR! You are going to use the sound as your reference audio. I edited a cooking show where it was a two camera shoot and the Steadicam was the A camera. Unfortunately the Steadicam didn’t record sound and they forgot to slate about half the shots. If I had reference audio for that camera, I would have saved the producer about 20 hours on that edit. So the lesson is, ALWAYS RECORD SOUND. I have a Audio Technika ATR55 shotgun mic hooked up to the hot shoe of my Panasonic GH1 and have found that actually 60% of the time, I’m using the audio recorded in camera. I”m still recording second system sound, and even when I use the camera audio, it’s nice to know that I’ve got back up audio if I need it. Also when you factor in how many of your shots are MOS or don’t need sound, you’ll be surprised how little post production syncing you actually have to do. The only thing to remember, and this is very important, is that if you can’t slate your shots using a clapper, is to be sure to have your talent clap or snap their fingers or snap your fingers when you are rolling before you shout action. ( You could sync to “action” but believe me, a clap is better.)
So lets get to the simple method of syncing the sound. I use Final Cut Pro, so I’ll outline the method using FCP, but other editors can use much the same method.
Import your video and convert it to whatever frame rate you are going to edit in. Since we are not using time code to sync, frame rate doesn’t matter. Let me repeat that; frame rate doesn’t matter.
Next, you want to import your audio in to your video editor. Hopefully your audio is at least 16bit 44.1KHz PCM audio. Recording as MP3 is not acceptable. If you are using a Zoom H4N you may even have 24 bit 96KHz audio, which is overkill in my opinion. I think that 16 bit 48Khz is the best compromise for sound quality, file size and render speed.
Once you have both your video with reference audio and your second system audio imported, go ahead and drag a shot to the timeline and be sure to include the clap or snap on the reference audio track. Next drag your second system sound onto the timeline below your reference audio track. Then line up the clap or snap by ear or even the waveforms on the timeline ( make sure you have show waveforms enabled). You can playback your tracks and if you hear flanging, nudge the second system sound track (by using the option left or option right arrow keys in FCP) until the sound is in sync.
Once you sound is in sync with the reference track, trim your second system sound track to the same length as the reference track, then select both the video track and the second system sound track and use “Command L” to link it to the video track in FCP. Now that you have your second system (and hopefully better quality) sound track synced and linked to your video shot you can trim and edit the video at will and the second system sound will stay in sync. Your reference audio track is still linked to your video and while in most cases you will mute that track in the final edit, it’s nice to know that you still have it there and in sync if you need it. Lastly you will have to repeat the sync process for all of your master shots, but once you’ve got it down, it’s relatively painless and you don’t have to do any math.
I will note here that Beachtek Audio makes a great product for single system sound recording on DSLRs called the DXA-5D. in addition to having high quality XLR mic inputs, it also tricks the auto gain control in the DSLR using an ultrasonic tone. The only trouble is, they are out of stock at the time of the writing of this article.

Mea Culpa, GH1 Sound test

shaf — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:20:52 +0000

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

Beat Back The Attack, Swine Flu PSA

shaf — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:26:35 +0000

Beat Back The Attack from Jay Shaffer on Vimeo.

This is a 60 sec. PSA for the college I teach at. It promotes the use of hand sanitizer to prevent flu infection.
It was shot in one class period using an Canon HV30 camcorder. I also used a Jag35 DOF adapter for several shots and shot all but two shots using the Jaybilizer3000 camera stabilizer.
Post was in FCP I only used the three-way color corrector and vignetted shots to match the DOF footage.

Credits:
A film by Jay Shaffer
Asst. director: Gavin Townsend
Uninfected Student: Tim Brazzell
Infected Students:
Matthew Cooper
Daniel Davenport
Susan Glarion
Brett Hughes
Roldan Melcon
Andrew Parkins
Nicholas Ramirez

KItcheneers episode 2 posted

shaf — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:47:49 +0000

McKenna Gehrke makes a personal pizza for her family on The Kitcheneers! from Todd Gehrke on Vimeo.
Kitcheneers Kid’s cooking show, episode 2 posted. Produced by Todd Gehrke. Edited by Jay Shaffer.

http://thekitcheneers.com/

How To Build a DIY Steadycam Camera Stabilizer Under $50

shaf — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:18:40 +0000

How To Build a DIY Steadycam Camera Stabilizer Under $50 from Jay Shaffer on Vimeo.
How to build the JayCam MkII Merlin-type camera stabilizer. Jay Shaffer demonstrates how to use inexpensive parts to build an versatile stabilizer for camcorders like the Canon HV30.

JayCam MK2 updated

shaf — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:35:27 +0000

I added a couple things to my DIY camera stabilizer.

Detail of the inexpensive Tripod head mounted on the camera stabilizer

First, I figured out how to mount a cheap tripod head as a camera mount. This gives me a much more precise control of the cameras front to back balance and it also significantly raises the center of gravity of the rig. Secondly, because of the raised center of gravity, I now have to use counter weights on the bottom of the arm. This gives me a little more control of the rig’s roll characteristics. I also optimized the weights for the Canon HV-30 so it takes a lot less time to balance out the rig now.
Overall the design is evolving and improving and as I practice a bit more my shooting technique is improving. I would like to get a more experienced Stedicam operator to take it out for a spin.

Wing nut holds four fender washers as a counterweight