Before I had to compromise on shutter speed or iris to get the exposure I wanter, now I can get it exactly right with 1/60th shutter in and as wide open or closed down as I want more or less. Also the joy is the ability to gently adjust exposure by turning the variable ND wheel on the front of the lens which gives you what is missing from still camera 35mm lenses, smooth exposure change during a shot. With these you can.

I can’t recommend them enough. All the shots came out great. I was finally able to get the shutter and exposure spot on for every shot. Tough with these Video DSLRs.

The ungraded frame grabs below were done with the Fader ND or Vari ND on a variety of lenses. They only one that isn’t it the handlebar shot that was done stopped right down using a Sigma 14mm.

I was getting slight vignetting on the Singh Ray on my 24mm lens but that may be because I was using an 82mm Nd with a 77mm filter size and step up ring…

Is there a drop in colour reproduction or sharpness? Certainly not in video mode that I could tell….

THE BATS!!

Thanks To Gaurav again for the great photos!!

Lucy Campbell-Jackson from Greenpeace is the director, Prajna Khanna is the producer and I have my twitter buddy Guarav Sharma as my assistant as well as his friend and fellow 5d owner Umesh

We’re here for a week and so far today we have just shot B-Roll. We went into Old Delhi and into the Spice Market. Wow that was pungent! We went up into one of the shops to get a top shot and we walked through where they were bagging all the spices, I actually felt quite dizzy and sick it was so overpowering!

Once again I am shooting on the Canon 5dmkII. Popular camera this…I get asked a lot for it! I like shooting with it, great pics and small, but the limitations and frustrations still get to me a bit. Loved to do some nice timelapse or overcranking but that’s a no go with the 5d. You can shoot stills for timelapse but that’s a pain for the client.

Here are a few frame grabs from today’s B-Roll… (all straight out of the camera, no grading)

There is a heck of a lot more to shoot. But it’s all fascinating. The poverty does get to you though. There are so many beggars, poor people, starving people. Something needs to be done…and with Climate change things are only to get worse. You can do your bit at the Greenpeace India Website.

I went on a cycle Tuk-Tuk and felt quite ill…probably because it was after the spice market.

This is the first time I have ever used a monopod on a shoot and it was terrific. Really nice steady shots. Not tripod, but not handheld. Perfect for the narrow streets. I only used my tripod for the high stuff.

Do check out the little video at the bottom of the page which explans it all.

I used both the Fader ND and the more expensive Singh Ray ND. Both worked very well but seemed to screw up my metering quite a lot. I did get vignetting on my 82mm on the 24mm f1.4, but this was possibly due to the step up ring from the 77mm thread to the 82mm Singh Ray. Looking at the footage they both performed really well. Have to believe the Fader is so much cheaper than the Singh Ray!

The monopod really was a joy, really nice stable footage with the touch of gentle handheld. The miller again proved a great combo for the 5dmkII, shame when it was really high I had no clue if I was in Focus.

We almost got into deep shit whilst filming at the Metro station, due to the bombings in Mumbai security is VERY tight, even with the 5d we got pulled aside and they tried to make me erase what I had shot…but I somehow convinced them I hadn’t actually shot anything yet. They cited terrorists take photos of targets before they strike. Am pretty sure they don’t use a 5d with Zacuto Rig, Rode Mic on top and have 3 people around them carrying the other gear!

I have also brought the SmallHD but not used it yet due to space in the bag…but soon!

Thanks to Gaurav for the stills and to Greenpeace for permission to put up the screen grabs.

Here is a list of what I have with me:

Canon 5dmkII

Manfroto 561 BHDV monopod

Milles DS20 Solo Carbon Fiber tripod

Glidetrack Compact

Zacuto Tactical Shooter

Z-Finder

2 32gb cards 2 16gb cards 1 8gb card

Lumix Gh1

Sigma four thirds 30mm f1.4

5 Canon 5d batteries

3 GH1 Batteries

Lumix FT1

13″ MBP

17″ MBP

4 Lacie Rugged 500gb drives (got some work in progress on a couple)

1 Western Digital My book passport 500gb

1 Lexar FW800 CF Reader

Small HD monitor

Canon 24mm f1.4

Canon 24mm F3.5 TS

Canon 35mm f1.4

Canon 50mm f1.2

Canon 80-200 IS f2.8

Zeiss 85mm f1.4

Nikon 17-35 f2.8

Sigma F3.5 14mm

Zoom H4N

Marantz recorder

2 uWP sony wireless lav mics

1 ECM 77

1 Kata OC 84 Camera Bag

1 Nat geo bum bag

1 Domke Wax bag

Fader Vari ND 72mm

Singh Ray Vari ND 82m

UV filters and polarizers.

Want to learn how to create the film look and much much more? Click below.

First off a little history. Am sure by now you have seen my little short film “Sofia’s People”. Something I shot on my way to dinner whilst doing the first F-Stop Academy Workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was just me being obsessive about carrying a camera around with me and the size of the Canon 5dMKII with a simple 50mm f1.4 on it made it really portable.

I was amazed at the reception the film got as it was an extreme version of my “Portraits series” and just a fun experiment. I also rarely shoot handheld for my own projects, I do a lot for my paid gigs but I like tripod shots generally.

To show how popular the film was I was contacted by half a dozen of the people in the film saying “Hey, someone sent me the link to your film and I am xxxxx, thanks so much etc”. It was great to get such a reception. Also being a relative 5dmkII newbie, it was only the second thing I had ever shot with it and the first thing handheld, it was great to get such a positive reaction…

Anyway to cut a long story short, DBB Bulgaria, part of DDB, one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies (they had revenue of over $12 billion dollars last year!) contacted me about 3 weeks ago to say they loved my Sofia’s People film and they had an idea for a commercial called “On Your Shoulder” for M-Tel Mobile phones and they wanted me to come over, Direct, DP and Edit it and also get it finished so it could go out on air the same week! Bulgarians are apparently addicted to last minute projects so this was going to be one of them!

Of course I leapt at the challenge and a chance to go back to Sofia.

Still frame from commercial

Yordan Zhechev of DDB also wanted me to shoot on the 5d so we would keep the same feel and look as Sofia’s People. Although the concept was quite different, 7 different couple rest their head’s on one of the other’s shoulders and just 30 seconds he thought I could bring a Sofia’s People feel to it.

The casting of the couples was done without me as I didn’t arrive until the day before the shoot, so I spent the afternoon in the production company going through the couples and then we went out to look at the locations they liked so I could see what I thought would work. Obviously Sofia’s People was spontaneous, meeting strangers and shooting them where they were. This was much more choreographed, as it had to be for a commercial. But I wanted to keep it as loose as possible (I think this worried the production company who were much formal in their way of working than me! ). I looked at a dozen or so possible locations, took some shots but basically said to them that will see how it goes tomorrow because we are so light equipment wise let’s just see what works and if one place doesn’t work let’s move up the street. So we were totally guerilla doing this, just filming where we wanted to. We had to get permission for one location though, that was the tram.

So talking about being light let’s talk about what gear I took with me…

Well this is what I shot with:

Pretty minimal gear really! Especially for a commercial. Lens wise I had the same Zeiss I used on Sofia’s People, the 50mm F1.4, I also had a 35mm and a 24mm f1.4 Canon and the 70-200 Canon f2.8 IS. There is also a litepanel micro which I used as an “Obie light” to give a slight glint in the eyes of people for some shots and of course the most important part the 5dmkII with the Zacuto Tactical Shoot Gorilla Kit with Z-Finder. This was the only way I would get decent handheld footage. I also had to shoot stills which would be used in the print campaigns, my first time as a paid photographer. There is convergence for you! I did bring my Miller DS20 Solo tripod with me JUST IN CASE, but I didn’t use it!

So we set out about 830 am. Myself, Teodor (who organised the first F-Stop Workshop) my first AC and BTS cameraman, Angel my translator and second AC, Yordan and a couple of people from the prod company and occasionally some of the clients. Teodor filmed a really nice BTS which I will get around to editing soon and post of the F-Stop Academy website as free content.

First stop was the boating lake. We had the mother and young daughter. Got some nice stuff in the rowing boat from them but I also wanted to try something else with them afterwards and in the end that worked out best. It was them having Ice Cream and mucking around with it and it worked out so much better and more natural which was really what I was striving to achieve.

showing the shot back to the little girl

Because I was after something specific rather than just simple poses it took longer to get than normal. Also there was a language barrier but I managed to convey the direction across pretty well and got what we needed.

Showing a shot back to Yordan of DDB

It was bloody muggy so I was very sweaty, not attractive!

The plan was to take each couple in two different locations to see which ones worked the best in the edit, so we got the mum and daughter in the boat and ice cream.

Whilst walking to meet the next couple we had a Sofia’s People  moment. I saw a dad with his young son on a bike and said we had to get them, so Yordan approached him, after a short bit of persuasion and a release form later I got some lovely stuff with them.

We then met the teenage couple and tried them in front of a really cool fountain covered in lilies. I tried a number of experiments as well as the needed “shoulder” shot just to have options, in the end we used them at night as the end shot which is a shame a bit as the fountain was so cool!

That’s my Lumix TZ7 in his hand. Awesome camera!

We then shot the middle aged couple who were a dream, I was a little worried to start with as they seemed a little dour but a few patented Philip Bloom gags later I got them laughing and captured a perfect shot with them, we decided it was spot on and wouldn’t need them again for the second location.

Next up was the subway scene, something a little bit more urban to match the couple. We had great graffiti on the walls but I had to make sure there was nothing rude there or any brands in shot. I tried them in about 4 different positions, in the end I went with the one with the least depth but still close up. I liked the fact they were up against the wall, it made a change from the shallow backgrounds of the others.

The above is also a frame grab from the commercial.

Next up we tried something that was in the original brief but I wasn’t sure would work. It was a young couple cuddling in bed. My reservations were it felt like the camera had stumbled upon these people in the previous shots but by having a camera in their bedroom shattered that illusion. We got a great shot but I had a strong feeling I wouldn’t use it. One thing though I had trouble getting a natural cuddle from them, it was stiff and unconvincing. So being the perfectionist that I am I showed our man what I needed by erm…getting into bed with the girl and I showed him the natural movement I needed , it took a few attempts for me to be happy (this was captured in the BTS video to come soon)!!

Shot unused in finished film

So we did the two girl friends next in the cafe having a drink. Nice and easy once I got them to give me their big smiles!

We did the girls in a second location later that didn’t work well at all, we also had big problems with the sun as it was right above us giving us horrible light and bad shadows, as we were guerilla we had no big flags or silks!

We were really actually hoping for a bit of rain to give us a really different look for one of couple but it didn’t come during the day at all even though it was supposed to!

So we waited until dark to do the next stuff. We had the teenage couple back, by this point it was raining so we got the brolly out and I did a LOT of filming with them. I just struggled to get the right chemistry from them, they just didn’t come across well on camera. So I worked with them for about half an hour then a godsend came along. The local nutter popped up and started being very odd just behind me which gave me the perfect shot, them laughing their heads off. I got it and was very thankful!!

Still frame from commercial

Next up was the tram, we had our couple from the subway back and also the grandmother/ grandson couple. I got some nice stuff of the subway couple but I liked the stuff with them in the subway so much I knew that was what we were going to use. So we got the grandma and grandson in place and to be honest it was tough. It was very late by this point, they were tired, we were tired and getting them happy was pretty much impossible, so we decided to capture them as they were and it worked terrifically. It was actually my favourite shot of the film but alas it didn’t make the final cut! It was so great, the low light, the coldness of the carriage and the distance and separation between them. got some great flickers as lights went on and off too!

Grandmother and Grandson

Shooting the with the 5d was such a joy and I cannot say enough good things about the Zacuto Tactical shooter. When using Canon lenses you need to check focus and set iris, shutter with your right hand on the body. The left hand stays on the barrel for focus. Once I got the exposure I moved my hand to the pistol grip which gave me great stability. If I wanted to I could have left my right hand on the body in Zacuto Rapid Fire mode and this works great too. But having the Tactical Shooter gives you the choice easily. I would rather have the choice than not!

Also the Z-Finder is about as essential as the camera itself! Without this there was no way I was going to get the shots. I used the Version 1 which is now sold out. V2 comes out in August and is much improved (I saw it in Chicago a few weeks back). It gave me an extra point of contact, my head, and is comfy and gave me perfect field of view. There is NO WAY I could have made this commercial without the Z-Finder and without the Tactical Shooter it would have been much more wobbly like Sofia’s People.

I did a Tumblr blog throughout my time in Bulgaria. It’s worth a read as it give you a lot of insight of how the shoot was going. So go to the link and go a couple of pages back.

Doing my Tumblr blog on my Blackberry

During the day we took breaks and I dumped the contents of the CF cards onto my hard drive with my little 13″ Macbook Pro and a LEXAR firewire 800 CF reader for super quick dumping! It gave me a chance to look back at the shots, do a quick edit to the music that was chosen to see if the shots were working for us, I even emailed the client a private vimeo link with a rough cut at lunchtime of what we had done! So easy this tapeless workflow!

We finished about midnight and I went back to the hotel. So what I did first was convert everything to ProRes so I could edit the footage. Editing H264 is almost impossible. So slow, it’s not designed for editing. It’s a finishing format. So using MPEGSTREAM CLIP I converted everything. It’s much faster than compressor and gives the same results. I then opened up cinema tools and change the timebase of the whole lot from 30p to 25p causing a slight slow down, almost imperceptible really, but it also gave me perfect 25p which is what I needed for Bulgarian PAL SD broadcast. This was not going to be an HD commercial. So compressor was not used at all! Normally I would have made a backup of my prores files in 30p but as I had the native files backed up I didn’t bother. 25p slightly slower was what I was after anyway.

I did a rough cut the next morning and took it into the agency where we had a play around with the order. I had to catch a flight that afternoon so we had to leave it there.

I continued the edit as soon as I got home and had a couple of versions uploaded privately on vimeo for the agency to see. Unfortunately the music we had planned to use didn’t pan out. That’s the problem with rights for commercials. Hard to negotiate. This was the song we were going to use…Original music. We came so close but it wasn’t to be. It’s a shame as it had the perfect feel for what we were going for. So the next night I spent all night searching pump audio from getty images there are some amazing tracks on there. Not cheap and I found a couple that worked for me, but we needed something that worked for me, the agency and more importantly the client. By this point it was Thursday afternoon and the commercial was to air on TV the next evening and I still didn’t have a cut with the new music. It got sent to me and I had a new version to show the agency and the client within the hour. The new music was much more upbeat and gave it a different perkier feel which is what the client wanted. Great thing about Vimeo Plus is the super fast conversion so it was a painless task to share videos privately. We had to lose the grandma and grandson as the client felt it didn’t fit with the feel for them which was a shame as I loved that shot. I am hoping at somepoint I will be able to do a longer edit with some of the material I didn’t use to a new track for a bit of fun!

In the end the shots I used in the edit were all done with one single lens. The Canon f1.4 35mm. An amazing, but pricey lens. A great great lens!

This camera is very much in demand from clients. I am going to India in just under two weeks to shoot a 90 second commercial for Greenpeace on Climate Change on the 5dmkII again. They also want it handheld so it’s the Zacuto again. I am also bringing the GH1 with for some overcrank.

Anyway after all this talk here is the commercial. It’s for M-Tel Prima, the pre-pay part of M-Tel.  It doesn’t have the end graphics as they were added in Sofia for me. I FTP’d the ProRes file to them the Thursday night (took about 3 hours) and then got it all done and put on digi beta the next morning. So enjoy the commercial. I hope you like it!

It was graded using my favourite of course, Magic Bullet Looks. If you want it don’t forget the code Bloom20 to get 20% off at the checkout!

Thanks to Teodor for the snaps and the behind the scenes. To Angel for all his help. To Diyana for putting up with my cheekiness. To Boyana for all her help and of course to Yordan for hiring me in the first place and for letting me share the end product on my blog. Thanks!

The behind the scenes film will be up soon. So make sure you are signed up to F-Stop Academy to get this free content!

Want to learn how to create the film look? Click below.

My kit in Sofia

I of course jumped at the chance to go back as I really enjoyed my time in Sofia. The only daunting thing is I am directing, shooting and editing it and only arriving in the country a day before the shoot. I have not had a hand in casting but the people they have chosen look great! The other scary thing is it needs to be finished and ready to go out on National TV in Bulgaria on Friday night as the time is already booked. So that’s a hell of a turnaround!

Also, I will be taking stills of each couple with the 5d for print campaigns, so a great example of convergence here.

It’s funny how what was essentially me just doing some filming on my way to Dinner has evolved into this. As I always say, keep on plugging away. Keep posting your work and you may get a lucky break.

I will be twittering (follow me @philipbloom) and tumblring (follow me here). Tumblr is a mini blogging site and a great way to integrate and expand upon twitter but not be a full blog like this one…

Here is what I have put on tumblr so far.

All packed and ready to go…

Taking with me for the commercial shoot in Sofia on 5dmkII…

The camera of course. 24 and 35mm f1.4 canon. 50mm f1.4 zeiss zf nikon mount, 50mm f1.2 nikon, 70-200mm IS canon f2.8.

Zacuto tactical shooter as this should all be handheld, this i find essential after using it on cherry blossom girl in Chicago, but i did just drop it on my foot and it hurts.

if I decide i want tripod shots got my Miller DS20. perfect for 5d with a second manfrotto base plate for quick change to tripod and tactical.

4 16gb cards, 1 32gb. no need for so many but may as well bring them all. Three Canon batteries.

Canon vixia hfs10 for behind the scenes filming.

lumix tz7 for still shots

macbook pro 17 for editing and dumping, lexar f800 offloader for CF.

macbook pro 13 for blogging, working on storyboard etc…

two stupid t shirts, clean underwear, wash bag with just one after shave!

thats it!

hold luggage comes in at 23kg. 3kg more than their limit but that is the lightest i have ever travelled for a shoot!

No sync on this shoot so no need for any sound equipment.

wish me luck! be twittering and tumblring the whole time

Want to learn how to create the film look? Click below.