My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

Some tips for the video users….

Just a small blog post today with a tip for all those photographers out there that are also doing motion.
As you may already know I’m a strong supporter for everything motion, the reason I updated my 5D was not because I needed the MKII, I was already shooting with MF by then, but I ran to the store because it did video. At first it was not that good with support for different apertures etc. in fact if you wanted to really use it you would have to use Nikon or other brand lenses, but very soon Canon changed the firmware and ever since I’ve been in love with video from the 5DMKII and can’t wait to see what the future brings. And it’s not just me, a lot of people are filming with the 5DMKII and much more active than me, so probably for those this blogpost will contain some old news, however for the ones starting out, or if you did not already know this, this can be an interesting blogpost.

 

To be honest I’ve been doing video for a long time, it started for me with tapes and in the PC the old FAST capture cards, talk about a hassle to get the video into the PC, later with the firewire cameras it became a bit better but still it was not like today, it really took some knowledge and most of all patience to get a nice video. We almost forget those old days of 24 hour renderings for a simple effect, today we just throw everything in a timeline and the software will just run it without rendering and most effects are real time or almost realtime.

 

On the Mac I started with Final Cut Pro and was one of the first I think that was really into Final Cut ProX, well let’s say I was one of the only ones that did not have a lot to complain, I did miss however multi cam support, and when Apple “forgot” to put this in the latest update and the possible delivery date is somewhere in 2012, it was time for me to switch to Adobe Premiere 5.5 and to be real honest I never looked back ever since. As a Final cut pro user it’s a bit of getting to know the interface but after that it’s like the update that Final Cut Pro X had to be (although I do miss the magnetic time line at times).

 

Because I made the switch to video more seriously I’m of course also looking into software that can support the things that I do, and I found the following companies that really rock and I want to introduce them in this blog post with also a small review of the software plugins.

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WorldWidePhotoWalk 2011 Kampen

During the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk we did in Kampen Wendy, Evita and Annewiek did some “backstage” videos, today you can see the video on the blog. Enjoy.

Can I ask you a question ?

At least once a day I will get an email with a question like :
What light setup did you use in blog post xxxxxxxxxx (containing 10 images)
What lens should I use for a model photo
What lens or camera is best for a night time shot
What filter should I use to get the exact same effect as ………..

And although I will always answer these questions I thought it would be a good idea to dedicate a small blog post to the answer I almost always give these questions, but first make one thing very clear, these are NOT dumb questions, these are not things that irritate me, and it certainly is not meant to make fun of people…. these are the kind of questions we all struggled with when we started out.

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Some new images

In this blog post some of my favorite images from the last two workshops, and something I hardly ever do…..
Yep it’s a composite, it was not real.
Somehow I love doing this kind of work, and up until this one I never really was happy with the end result, I guess when I look back at this one in a year I think I will not like it anymore. I heard Joel Grimes say a real good thing during PSW, when you do a composite you really really like don’t show it, do it again for a hundred times and then look back, best advise I guess…. but sorry Joel don’t have time so I have to do it with this one.

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