Winter Is Coming – How to do slow motion with the Canon 7d

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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. …

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F-Stop Satori Camera Pack

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Almost more than any other question I get asked is ” What camera bag do you use?” This is the answer…… well, one of them anyway. F-Stop is a company which specializes in camera bags for the adventure minded photographer. If you like to ski, hike, climb or ride a bike with your gear these are the bags for you. My main use for the Satori is backcountry skiing and my previous one saw some heavy action over an 18 month period. During this time, F-Stop was constantly seeking feedback from a group of action sports photographers including myself and …

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Shooting video with the Canon 5dMKII – Part 3

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When I decided I needed to get this video stuff dialed, I needed something to shoot. There’s no point trying to figure this all out unless you have a purpose and some footage to play with. Leigh Powis, a local skier from Whistler, told about his crazy plan to put a trampoline on top of a cliff to help him practice a few new tricks before the winter. This was the perfect chance to try filming some action AND some lifestyle. So below is my very first ever video with the 5dMKII. We shot it on 3 different days for …

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Shooting Video with the Canon 5dMKII – Part 2

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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. …

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Shooting video with a Canon 5dMKII – Part 1

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When I first got the 5dMKII last winter, the camera world was buzzing about the incredible HD video that it can shoot as well as the beautiful 21MP images. This will be great I thought, I can shoot some videos in between shooting photos. When it actually came down to it though, nice idea as it is, I didn’t have the time mid-winter to learn about shooting video and editing HD video or learn about all the weird idiosyncrasies that the 5d’s video has. I made a couple of short videos that never turned out how I expected and then …

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Think Tank Photo announces the Takeoff roller backpack

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Regular readers of my blog will know that I am something of a fan of Think Tank products. I own many of their bags and they all have very different and specific uses for me. One thing that they have become very well known for, is their line of roller bags for airport travel. There are several bags in the range that are suitable for both international and domestic flight. The new bag in the range is called the Takeoff. And what makes this one special is the shoulder straps that lie concealed in the back panel. A roller bag …

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Whistler Blackcomb Peak to Peak campaign

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Back in the spring time I was asked to shoot a campaign for Whistler Blackcomb. The ads were to center around the new Peak to Peak gondola that spans the gap between Whistler and Blackcomb and the first versions have now hit the news stands in Freeskier magazine and Transworld Snowboarding. We had some difficulties with the weather for these shoots and they were postponed multiple times but in the end it turned out really well. On the left is Max Hill, on the right Mikey Pederson.

NZ Trip – What worked and what didn’t

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I’ve seen similar post on a couple of other photographers blogs before and always found them to be interesting and useful. When heading off on a long trip it can be tough to figure out how much gear to take and in what combination. On my recent trip I had to do just about every type of ski photography you can imagine. Backcountry skiing, heli skiing, daytime and night time park shooting, product shooting and portraiture. I was trying to accomplish this with only 2 pieces of checked in baggage (32KG each) and one piece of hand baggage and that …

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Canon Announces the 7D

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As I blogged about the other day, there’s been a lot of speculation about this camera for a few years and today is finally the day that Canon have announced the elusive 7D. It fits into an entirely new position in their SLR lineup, right between the current 50d and the 5dMKII and comes in at the VERY attractive price point of $1699 US or $2099 CDN for the body only. Specification run down: Canon has made some extraordinary advances with this camera and I think it’s going to be a huge bit with action sports and adventure photographers such …

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Flying with an Elinchrom Ranger

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This morning I was woken up at 4am by someone hammering on my front door. I was ecstatic. Why? Because the guy who was banging 7 shades out of my door, was also carrying my pelican case full of flash equipment that I had last seen at Queenstown airport in New Zealand 4 days ago. If you own and travel with an Elinchrom Ranger (or similar batery powered flash) then you would be advised to read on. Let’s face it, if you put a Ranger through an x-ray scanner at an airport , it’s going to trigger some alarms. And …

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Something Intersting This Way Comes…..Canon 7d

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If you Google Canon 7d you will find speculation about this camera dating back several years. Fake photoshopped boxes and fake adverts have popped up before but over the last couple of months there has been more compelling evidence that this camera is about the make the transfer from mythical to physical. UPDATE: Photos of the Canon 7d The rumors about such a camera took a bit of a backseat while the 5dMKII was announced last year and in fact it seems like many people mistook this new camera for the 50d replacement initially. In light of some recent information …

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