Down at the Carl Zeiss booth this morning I got to check out the full range of Zeiss CP.2 primes on various cameras including the new M4/3 mount for the AF-100 and also an E-Mount for the Sony NXCAM 35.  These lenses really are stunning and solidly built.  Check out some shots below to see the new Sony cameras and some of the lenses including the Zeiss LWZ.2 zoom lens with a Canon mount.

Zeiss E-mount for SONY

Zeiss CP.2 on a Panasonic AF100 with m4/3 mount

Zeiss E-Mount for Sony on NXCAM 35

Canon 7d and Zeiss LWZ.2

Canon 7d and Zeiss LWZ.2

Sony kicks off the big NAB 2011 announcements with the unveiling of their new F65 8K video camera.  Whilst 4k is expected to be the next standard Sony is clearly already thinking towards even bigger things!  For now things top out at 4k but Sony says that updates in the future will allow much more.  Read on for full release and more info. Continue reading »

I thought its about time that I shed a bit of the gear that is cluttering up my office. If you are interested in any of the following items please send an e-mail to blog@dancarrphotography.com

All the items are in located in Whistler, BC and anyone in the area is more than welcome to pick thing up from me or come and check something out. All sales are final, if you need more photos of the product than I have posted then let me know. Payment needs to be via paypal.

Canon 1.4X Teleconverter II – Excellent condition – $350 including free shipping.

Great condition, no scratches on the lens or the body. They sell for $470 + tax s0 you can save a decent amount. It is in as-new condition, comes with the little canon protective pouch. Will ship for free to anywhere in continental N.America, all other locations will require an extra charge.

Pelican 1610 rolling hardcase $140 – SOLD

This thing is big but it has wheels! Awesome for carrying lighting gear around in. And it comes with the camera padded insert too to give some extra protection. This is great if you need to ship a lot of gear on the plane. Due to its size it would be best to sell this to someone locally…. but if you are really interested then let me know and I will figure out shipping cost to your location. These sell for more than $230 plus taxes normally so you can get a good saving on this one. Obviously it shows signs of usage on the outside but these things are built to last and it has years and years left in it! Pelican products are also guaranteed for life.

Interior Dimensions:
21.78″ x 16.69″ x 10.62″ (55.3 x 42.4 x 27 cm)

Think Tank Airport Acceleration bag & laptop case $150 including free shipping

I used to use this bag when I was flying with my gear. Its a great carry on bag and comes with a removable laptop case too. The bag has no major faults , no tears or anything nasty like that. It obviously shows some signs of usage but still has a lot of life in it. The laptop bag was not used so much and that is basically as new. The laptop case itself sells for about $40 on its own and the bag is $279 plus taxes and shipping on the Think Tank site. As with all Think Tank gear it is made to the highest standards so it has a long life ahead of it. Other great features include backpack straps that hide away for easier stowage in overhead bins on the plane and a full rain cover as well as tripod straps on the side of the bag. I will include free shipping to anywhere in continental N.America.

Think Tank Change Up – Nearly new, great condition. $100 including free shipping

This cool little bag from Think Tank is both a belt pack and shoulder bag all in one. Check out more info on the TT website http://www.thinktankphoto.com/products/change-up-belt-pack.aspx I have had this sitting around for a while and used it a couple of times when shooting photos from out the side of a helicopter. Its useful to have a belt pack like this to stash an extra lens in so that you have it on hand. It comes will all the original shoulder straps, rain cover etc and really it looks pretty much brand new. They sell for $130 + tax and shipping from think tank so again you can save a nice little bit on this. I will include free shipping to anywhere in continental N.America.

Since the beginning of November Whistler has received 493cm of snow, and it’s still falling. This has smashed the previous record for November with 10 days still to go. Originally the mountains were due to open next weekend on the 27th but with the heavy snowfall early in the month, Whistler Blackcomb pulled out all the stops to get some lifts turning for everyone a few weeks early. Thanks for all the hard work guys!

Mike Henitiuk heading into heaven...

Leboe

A couple of days ago I headed up the mountain with Jeff Thomas from Poorboyz, Mike Henitiuk, TJ Schiller and Riley Leboe as they begun filming for the new movie.  Overnight there had been 2ft of snow to add to the already impressive coverage and it continued to fall all day.  This is the 7th winter that I have skied at Whistler Blackcomb but I can honestly say that was as good as it gets. Bottomless powder.  In fact it was almost too much, the alpine is yet to open so we were left skiing mid mountain lines in the Garbanzo zone.  With that amount if snow you need some steep pitches to maintain speed and it was a struggle to keep moving as the snow piles up above your waist.  We hunted around the same zone all day and eventually found some nice pillow lines for the guys though.

Me - Stoked to be back to work!

The long range forecast for this place is equally impressive, looking like we will smash well through the 500cm mark in the near future which would account for half of Whistler’s average annual snowfall in just one month. It’s a pleasant surprise to be back into winter work so early and if this is a sign of things to come this year it’s going to be one to remember.

Riley Leboe all smiles

Big thanks to the Whistler Blackcomb PR guys and girls for hooking our crew of riders up so we could get out there and start to document this crazy weather!

TJ Schiller. Skullcandys workin the pow too!

UPDATE: Here is a sneak peak from Poorboyz with intro from yours truly.

A nice surprise in my mail box this morning.  I knew about this for a couple of weeks but today was the first time I have seen the finished product.  This is my 8th cover but my first one in N.America so i’m really pleased with this one.

Max Hill is the man on the cover and the shot was taken last April in Whistler, BC.  I had the idea for this shot about 3 years ago but that year at the time we didn’t have the snow for it.  Last year there was plenty in the spring time so finally got to make it happen.  When I took Max and Leigh Powis to this spot and explained that I wanted them to jump over a railing, hand plant on it AND grab their ski they looked at me as if I was mad.  Once they’d given it a couple of attempts though and built a small jump to pop them over the railing it didn’t take any time at all.  I think this shot was only about the 4th or 5th time that Max hit it.

Shot with a Canon 1dMKIIN , 15mm Fisheye , 1/250th , f7.1, ISO 250.  Lit with 1 Elinchrom Ranger and 4 Nikon speedlights all triggered with pocketwizards.

I have made a quick lighting diagram for those interested in that sort of thing.  Click for larger

I hadn’t taken the time yet to try shooting 60fps with my Canon 7d.  But it started to snow heavily in Whistler village this morning and as I watched out of the window it looked like the perfect chance to try it out.  I put the Canon 85mm 1.8 lens on the 7d and opened my front door to get a few shots.

I had mistakenly thought that creating nice slow motion shots with the footage would just be as simple as dropping the 60fps clips into a 30fps timeline in Final Cut Pro.  Actually that’s not the case though.  Doing that just drops every other frame and you end up with regular looking footage and simply setting the clip speed to 50% does not take advantage of all those 60 frames you just shot.  I did a quick search on the net and found a good tutorial by Philip Bloom.  I can only speak for Mac users here I’m afraid but the solution is pretty easy so long as you have Final Cut Studio.

If you have FC Studio you will also have a program called Cinema Tools.  Fire it up and hit command+O to open a clip.  The clip will open in a video viewer and on the right hand side will be a button that says “Conform”.  Clicking on this will bring up a drop down box with various frame rates in it.  Select the one you want (29.97 for example) and then hit “Conform”.  The transformation is instant and requires no rendering, all that is being modified is an internal part of the file that denotes how the video is played.

WARNING:  This process is not reversible.  Once you hit the “Conform” button there is no going back so I highly recommend that you do this process to a copy of the original file.  I created a sub folder called SlowMo inside the folder containing my original files.  Then whenever I found a file that I needed to conform, I copied the original to that folder, Conformed it and then imported it into Final Cut Pro.  Don’t forget that you will also need to transcode the 7d files from H.264 before you do anything.  Make sure you transcode the files before you conform them in Cinema Tools!

I shot about 10 quick shots from my door to have some footage to test this with and the result is below. Winter is nearly back!!  Click though to the vimeo page to watch it in HD.

Winter’s Coming – Whistler, November 7th 09 – 60fps 7d from Dan Carr on Vimeo.

So once you have all of your video in a format that you can work with, import it all into Final Cut and set up a new project.  This is where you need to tread carefully, depending on which version of FCP you have.  I have Final Cut 5 and that caused some problems to begin with because I had no clue what I was doing.  In FCP 6 and later, when you drag a clip into the timeline, it automatically converts the timeline/sequence settings to conform to the setting of your clip.  In this case 1920×1080 , 30fps, AIC.  In FCP5 though, this does not happen and it caught me out for a while.  I had changed the Video&Audio settings under the file menu, but I was not aware that there is a settings panel for the sequence under the “sequence” menu, or ou can hit Command+zero.  In this menu, you also need to specify the video size (1920×1080), the codec used (in my case AIC), and also the frames per second (30fps NOT 29.97fps).  You will have to enter the “advanced” menu to find the drop down menu for frames per second and change it from the 29.97 default to 30fps.

If you forget to change these settings, when you export the finished product you will be left with video that has been stretched from the default 720p size up to 1080p and it will look terrible!  This took me a while to figure out….which some of you will no doubt find amusing.  But bear in mind I am speaking as a person who only just opened Final Cut Pro for the first time and there’s a lot to take in!

As you now have your timeline set up as an AIC timeline, all the transcoded clips you made will now play and edit in real time.  Once you have that setup its plane sailing.  With a reasonable amount of RAM in your computer (i’d recommend 4gb or more) you will be able to throw clips around and add transitions to them in no time at all.  For me, once I had those steps figure out, it all started to come together.  Video with a 5dMKII is not that daunting after all.

Tomorrow I will post the first video that I made and also some practical information about the physical shooting side of things.  Lens choice, shutter speeds and ND filters.