Rolling Shutter, High Speed Shutter and Shooting adaptor free!

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Last week I went to Vilnius in Lithuania for a VERY BRIEF trip!

I was working for Five News, they sent me there to do a story on something called the 1984 experience, it’s also known as a KGB theme park! It’s a sort of real life theatre experience to remind locals and show tourists what life was like under Soviet rule.

I took my EX1, as I mostly do these days for jobs flying abroad. It wasn’t an HD commission, but that doesn’t matter. Shooting on the EX1 and down-converting looks better than shooting in SD.

I did a few pretty shots of Vilnius on the Letus but when I got to the Nuclear bunker in the woods 30 minutes outside Vilnius and had a walk around I realised the lack of light and the lack of control I would have would make it unrealistic. So I took it off and shot clean for the first time since December last year. It’s a shame, it would have looked great, but I needed more time and more control. I basically had 2 hours, the time of the “Show” and the max time I had to do it before we had to race to the airport to catch the last flight to London.

Shooting clean I put it lots of high speed shutter, to give it a Tony Scott/ Saving Private Ryan feel. The downside to this was it showed off the limitations of the rolling shutter in the ex1 quite badly. Although only on REALLY crazy whip pan reframes, I span the camera around so fast this is what I caught.

Pretty nasty! But I did loads of proper whips pans and didn’t get any of this. So basically To get this I had to have lots of high speed shutter in and really crazily spin the camera around.

This is the only time I have come across this, as I said, it’s a combination
of shutter and exaggerated movement. Don’t let it put you off the camera!
I was so pleased with the end results. I was handheld all the time, no shoulder mount and worked great. Here is a small edit I have knocked together for fun of some of the shots. Am cutting the actual story on Monday.

The next day I was filming concession stand food for showcase cinemas new HD plasmas for their cinemas, in association with Media 14, with their permission I hope to post some shots. Shot on the Letus and EX1 Such a versatile camera!

Here is the finished news piece:

21 comments

  1. Hi Philip,

    It’s also very nice to see the EX1 with native lens. Very nice work! I loved that breathless pace in contrast to the Letus Extreme footage which I think is estethical in another way.

  2. thanks very much for this.
    rolling shutter looks a little iffy, definitely not ideal, but i think overall it is certainly live-able and not HORRENDOUSLY noticeable….with a compelling subject it can easily be ignored.
    yes, virtually filled to the brim with adequatulence.

  3. Fantastic! It’s nice to see how well the EX1 looks without an adapter. The rolling shutter skew is unfortunate, however you can avoid it once you figure out how fast you can pan. I’ve had to swing my EX1 pretty fast to get the same result you got with your posted still. For me, it’s a minor weakness compared to the many strengths this camera has.
    Great work Philip!

  4. Looks great Philip. 2 things: what color grading “scheme” and what compression did you use? Oh, and Letus has a great new, inexpensive custom hardcase for the adapter and rods (it seems they’ll throw it in for $100 retrospectively as its now offered as a bundle package).

    Thanks!

  6. Very cool little film!
    I love the high shutter speed look. I have to say I didn’t think it would look this good without the Letus.
    We just got an EX1 at my school, and hopefully I get to try it out before I graduate this spring…

    Looking forward to your next clip 😉

  7. Thanks, it really is just a knock together of a few shots. With very fast grading in Magic Bullet looks, with some tweaks for different shots. Not sure what preset I used, think it was “blockbuster” with minor adjustments…

    Sorry Exe, didn’t know anyone in Lithuania knew me!

  9. We went to this very cool bar in Vilnius but I can’t remember what it was called. We ate Tapas very late and there was a DJ. Oh, and there were lots of beautiful women there!

    We were told it was a very media hang out space. The guy I sat next to on the plane was there too. He is a well known commercials director, but I can’t remember his name and he didn’t have any cards on him!

  12. I been writing this already on letusdirect forum.. your movies inspired me to get letus adapter and pushed me ALOT towards learning cinema and different stuff related to it! I hope to meet you some day!

  14. Next time you know 🙂 if you ever happen to be somewhere here around, even latvia… drop me a line, i come to chat with you, you can find my contact data on http://www.tvideo.lt

    cheers,
    tomas

    p.s. i can’t wait for my lex anymore! it’s been exactly a month since i ordered it, and they haven’t shipped it yet 🙁

  19. Nice package Philip! Curious, some of the lighting in the corridors had to be very low. That last shot next to the locked door, what do you think, only a 100w light bulb? Maybe 150 watts. The footage is very clean. It’s amazing how well the EX1 handles low light situations.

    Exe, hang in there for the Letus. I ordered mine more than 5 weeks ago, and it just shipped a few days ago. They had a manufacturing hiccup which slowed down their orders. So, you may only have a week to go!

  21. David! That is quite funny. The vignette issue was very minor nothing like what you see here. This is all done in post for a hyper stylized look!

    Damon,

    It was very dark, but don’t forget the web compression evens out the grain. There was gain in there but it still looked amazing!

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