robert_edge

Alejandro,

 

With a manual camera, those marks are really useful, and there are a couple of ways to use them. Try a search on the words "hyperfocal" and "zone focusing". This short article talks about these concepts. The author uses a rangefinder camera, but the principles are the same for your camera: http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/marine/569/rusrngfdrs/focusing.html

 

Some people find that the lens manufacturer's markings are a bit optimistic. For example, right now I have an 80mm lens in front of me. The markings say that if my subject is 3 meters away, at f16 everthing from 2 meters to 5 meters will be in focus. Based on experience, I think that the acceptable depth of field with this lens at f16 is less than 2m to 5m. When I use this lens, I estimate focus by using the markings at the aperture that is one lower than the aperture I am actually using. In this example, if I am shooting ast f16, I look at the markings for f11.

 

On the other hand, you may find that you are in complete agreement with what the markings show on your your lens.

"Is depth of field small in medium format? How much?"

 

If you aren't familiar with how the markings on the lens barrel work, this is a good time to get acquainted :)

"The Sierra Club has never been an NGO."

 

Not that it matters, but I'm curious to know why you say that?

 

The Sierra Club itself thinks that it is an NGO and even uses the term in some of its materials. If you do a search for +"sierra club" and +ngo, you will get about 125,000 hits; and if you search +"sierra club" and +"non-governmental organization", you get about 18,000 hits.

 

Or, for example, see this page: http://www.ngowatch.org/ngos.php?id=123

 

Anyway, just curious to know why you think that it is not an NGO.

 

Cheers.

Thanks. Have a look at the NY Times article and his archive for December 2005: www.travisruse.com.

Ahh, "NGO goes out and hires famous photographer to help further the NGO's cause". Example: NGO XYZ hires Richard Avedon or Annie Liebovitz.

 

If that is what you are looking for, do an internet search for information on the relationship between Ansel Adams and The Sierra Club.

 

What I think you are going to find is that often the relationship is symbiotic. Adams was important to the Sierra Club, but the Club was also important to him. Were the better-known National Geographic photographers well-known before they were hired by the Society, or did they become well-known as a result of their work for the Society?

 

James van der Zee is perhaps not a good example. Nobody had even heard of him until he was "discovered" in his 80s.

 

You've raised an interesting question about the role that photographers have played, or not played, in advancing organized social causes. I hope that others will chime in.

One more. Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Organization, commissioned James van der Zee (1886-1983).

Lewis Hine (1874-1940) did work for the American Red Cross and the National Child Labor Committee.

 

I assume that your use of the term NGO excludes government-funded arms/organizations and for-profit corporations.

Fazal Sheikh works with NGOs, but I'm not sure that "commissioned" is the right word. See his website at http://www.fazalsheikh.org/ and the site for the Volkart Foundation at http://www.volkart.ch/english/index.html

If you want to see Sheikh's work in book form, Amazon is selling his The Victor Weeps: Afghaniston, regularly US$60, for $17.

 

Of course there are also organizations like geographic societies (e.g. The National Geographic Society) and environmental advocacy groups (e.g. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc.). If those are taken into account, it could be a very long list.

The hardest part is getting the knack of loading the film onto the reel. Even if you practice with a roll in daylight (a very good idea), don't be surprised if you ruin a couple of negatives per roll for the first several rolls. It takes practice. The key is a light touch, don't force the film.

 

It is much easier if you completely remove the paper backing before trying to load the film. When you do this, you wind up with the film rolled in one hand and the paper in the other. At the end of the paper, there is a piece of tape that holds the film and the paper together. Just pull the film and the paper apart, which will leave the tape on the film. Fold the bit of tape that was on the paper onto the film and start loading.

But if you carry out this experiment, a warning: you might wonder why you bought the softbox :)

"To the flash I fixed a Lumiquest Pro softbox."

 

Just to compare, you might try putting an empty styrofoam coffee cup over the flash head. You can experiment with different angles and also with tearing off a small square patch of the styrofoam.

Michael,

 

You are not wrong about Polaroids. Since you are talking about getting involved in large format, let me say that they are a wonderful tool for assessing composition, lighting, apparent depth of field and exposure across the whole of an image. When I use a 4x5 to photograph a still life, I can spend one to three hours setting up the shot. During that time, I go through a fair number of Polaroids. After all that work, it takes one to two minutes to take the actual photograph, for me usually three exposures. Why does it go so quick at the end? Because, as a result of the Polaroids, I know exactly what I'm going to get. If one is going to spend a lot of time and effort setting up a shot, using Polaroids is just common sense.

 

Beer and lobster in Brazil sounds like a grand way to spend time.

There is a New England photographer who did a series of painted light photographs in urban areas. I recall one, in particular, that was done in black and white on the roof of a building. Unfortunately, I don't recall his name, but he is well-regarded. Perhaps others will know who I am talking about.

 

Chris Jordan, from Seattle, did photographs of urban areas in colour with an 8x10 camera that were not about painting light, but that involved very long exposures, several hours long. Unfortunately, these images are no longer on his web site.

I'd like to add a final comment about this because it may may be of assistance to people who want to do street videos.

 

In large part, the reason that Matt's second video is better than his first is that he turned his car into a dolly and that he decided use pre-canned music by a major band instead of recording street sounds.

 

William and Matt and other people who want to make videos on the street and in other public places need to come to grips with the fact that if one uses an internal mic on an inexpensive video camera, it is actually impossible, unless one wants a distorted sound track for artisic reasons, to get acceptable sound.

Can't resist describing what is in the photo of the fellow in Tibet recording a street musician, because the bits and pieces are not obvious:

 

The recorder is in the knapsack. Current recorders fit easily into something the size of what Domke calls their journalist bag - it is, I believe, their smallest camera bag.

 

His hand is around a pistol grip. The red dot just above his hand is part of a lever that allows one to change the orientation of the mic to the grip.

 

The round frame at the top of the grip is a suspension that isolates the mic from vibrations caused by the recordist moving his hand or by cable movement. There are four elastic bands connecting the frame to a free-floating piece in the centre which holds the mic. The grey ball around the front of the mic is made of foam. It prevents wind hits on the mic in light wind.

 

Note that the recordist is not wearing headphones. He worked out his levels before he started recording. Setting the levels takes about 10 seconds. If you are not wearing headphones, and are standing or walking on a city street, or sitting in a subway car, you just look like a guy who happens to have a mic in his hand. Even with headphones, people don't pay a whole lot of attention. They have seen headphones on the street before, especially on just about anybody under 25.

 

The picture on the bottom left-hand page shows the same pistol grip, but there is more wind. Consequently, the recordist is using a zeppelin-shaped plastic frame that goes around the set-up shown in the photo on the right-hand page. He is using the zeppelin, covered with fur, instead of the grey foam ball.

 

There are a few companies that make pistol grips, suspensions, zeppelins, etc. This gear happens to be made by a UK firm called Rycote. Their stuff isn't cheap, but it is worth every cent that they charge for it.

Matt,

 

And if you own a Mac laptop, and don't don't need to move around a lot, this software (at either US$20 or US$260, depending on how many tracks you want) will turn your laptop into a first-rate sound recorder: http://www.vosgames.nl/products/BoomRecorder/

 

Called Boom Recorder, it is gaining widespread acceptance in the feature film industry for situations where a recorder does not have to be moved around a lot. See, for example, the comments on the site from the sound designer for the Clint Eastwood film Flags of Our Fathers.

Don't know where the screwy symbols come from. That should be 1.8" (H) x 8.2" (W) x 4.9" (D).

I should perhaps add that current digital recorders are lighter and smaller than the recorder shown in the above article. The Sound Devices recorder that I use weighs 2 lbs (without battery and flash card) and is 1.8” (H) x 8.2” (W) x 4.9” (D).

Matt,

 

That's a hell of an improvement as a direct result of accepting, and working within, technical constraints. Depeche Mode in the background doesn't hurt either :)

 

Re your comment:

 

"Unfortunately, although I could afford the sound/video equipment that you sugest, the nature of what i am doing prohibits the use of anything more noticeable than a small video camera. I am shooting this in a "Street" fashion, and were I to set up a big production with sound man and camera on tripod etc, the scenes i am trying to capture would melt away in front of me as people decided that they didn't want to be in whatever I am doing and left."

 

I'm going to try to convince you otherwise.

 

I shoot film plus sound and also do stand-alone sound projects. I'm currently working on a radio documentary for a national broadcaster. Pesonally, I don't find that shooting film and and recording sound at the same time to be a problem in terms of people's reactions, but I'll restrict my comments to what happens when I'm out recording ambient sound by itself. Even on a film project, this is a common way of working. There is often no need to do filming and sound recording at the same time.

 

My experience is that the people around me couldn't care less what I am doing. In fact, most of the time they don't even know that I am recording. I use a small, light, two-track recorder, either slung over my shoulder or in a Domke bag, about 10' of cable, a pistol grip to hold the microphone and a hypercardiod mic that is about the same size as a cigar tube. To give you a picture of what this stuff looks like, in my case I use a Sound Devices 702T recorder (http://www.sounddevices.com/products/index.html) and a hypercardiod Schoeps CMC641 microphone (consisting of a CMC6 amplifier and an MK41 head: http://www.schoeps.de/E-2004/cmc.html).

 

There are much less expensive recorders and microphones that will do pretty much the same thing, many of them reviewed on the Transom site, and as between the recorder and the microphone, the available money should go first to a good mic. One can set the recorder to filter out the low frequency rumble that you are getting. One can use a windscreen (depending on conditions, a foam ball at the end of the mic or a zeppelin and fur around the mic) to prevent wind hits on the mic. And if one pays attention to the sound levels, one can prevent clipping. Indeed, because the sound levels are shown on a prominent display on a free-standing recorder, one does not even have to wear headphones, although it is best to do so, at least at the beginning of a recording.

 

Here is an article about how this kind of gear is used for the kind of recordings that we are talking about, including a photo of the subject of the article recording a street musician (not a didgeridoo, but same idea - one doesn't have to be as close, but it is a good idea when recording a musician): http://www.schoeps.de/PDFs/PAA-05-2005-Simmons.pdf

 

If you are interested, I'd be happy to e-mail you an mp3 clip or two showing what ambient sound sounds like when one uses a free-standing recorder and mic. Or, being in the UK, just listen to a few BBC radio documentaries.

 

End of sales pitch :)

See http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=23614

Matt,

 

I'd like to explain why I took the time to comment. I think that you are on to something, especially if the title, "My London", means that you have intimate knowledge of that neighbourhood. Judging from the You Tube comments, that part of London is raw material for what could be an extremely interesting film. I think that you should stay with this project, resolve the technical issues and expand the scope of the film.

Matt,

 

I assume that you posted your video to You Tube, and in this thread posted a link to it, because you are happy to receive comments.

 

My main comment is that the discussion that your video provoked on You Tube indicates that there is a story about that neighbourhood crying out to be told.

 

Beyond that, I'm going to restrict my comments to some technical issues.

 

I think that you need to work on sound.

 

Your soundtrack contains a lot of low frequency rumble, wind hits on the microphone, high frequency clipping and too much background noise. It sounds like you are recording the sound yourself with the camera's built-in microphone. If so, you will get significant improvement by transferring responsibility for sound to another person, preferably someone who knows how to avoid the problems that you experienced, and by using an external mic of better quality. It is hard enough to play the role of photographer without trying to play sound recordist at the same time, and sound is every bit as important as visuals. Given your subject matter, an external microphone, especially one with more directionality (that is, a mic that is more selective in what it picks up), would make a huge difference.

 

Several of your scenes do not require synchronization between the visuals and the sound. For those scenes, you can improve your sound by recording your sound separately using an external recorder together with the external microphone. Consider also that if you use a separate recorder, you do not have to record the sound from the physical location of the camera, or for that matter at the same time. I'd be curious to know whether sound of the sermon at the church was recorded at the same time as the visuals (in which case that church sure carries sound), or whether the sermon was recorded separately and overlayed.

 

The scenes that require synchronization between picture and sound are more problematic. I am thinking, for example, of the sequence of the fellow playing the didgeridoo. The problem is that a recorder that is capable of synchronization with picture will cost at least US$1000, and more in the UK, although they are fairly cheap to rent. Unless you want to go that route, you just have to live with recording direct to the camera, unless you shoot the image from an angle that does not require synchronization. Personally, if I didn't have a synch sound recorder, I would try to go the latter route, especially if I was recording a musician.

 

If you are not already familiar with it, there is a very useful site on recording sound at www.transom.org. The site concentrates on radio documentaries, but the principles, techniques and equipment are the same.

 

Someone who is reasonably well-versed in a good sound editing programme, such as Adobe Audition, could clean up your existing sound track. It could also be done with a free, but fairly sophisticated, programe called Audacity. The editing would take some time, but the sound would improve.

 

I think that you need to have a clearer and more consistent position on the point of view of the camera and better control over camera movement. If you are going to move the camera during a shot, you need to practice hand-holding unless you consciously want a very rough look. Consider that there are ways to improvise a dolly. If you use a dolly, you need a friend to operate it, but if you already have a sound man around, why not make it a party. There are gyroscopic systems that make it much easier to keep a camera steady while walking around, but they take a lot of practice and they are not cheap. The simplest solution is a good tripod and good handheld technique. Have a look at the opening sequence of city streets in Paris in Francois Truffault's The 400 Blows, and also the films that I mentioned in my last post. The dolly in Pauline at the Beach for one very long sequence was a car. The extensive camera movements in I Am Cuba were not done with cranes, but by hand and, in some cases, with ropes. A good deal of the camera work in Micheal Winterbottom's In This World, and also in his film Bullet Boy, was also done handheld.

 

Two final suggestions, which are perhaps a matter of taste. I would not use so many fades. Secondly, I would use closeup shots as well as medium shots. For one thing, shot variation contributes interest. For another, it seems to me that closeups are pretty important if one is going to show a film on a small screen. In saying this, I am not suggesting that one get zoom happy :)

If I am saying a bunch of things that you already know, my apologies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William, one other thing. If you want to see some wonderful films that were made with very little money and rudimentary equipment, rent Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach, Michael Winterbottom's In This World and an old film called I Am Cuba. Nestor Almendros, who was the cinematographer for Pauline at the Beach, has a chapter in his autobiography about how one of Rohmer's finest feature films was made with a crew of five people.

William,

 

I don't share the view that there is a necessary connection between budget and quality in filmmaking. The problem is that filmmaking, unlike still photography, is a team sport. At a minimum, it takes skill as a story teller, skill as a photographer, skill as an editor of images, skill as a sound recordist and skill as an editor of sound. It is uncommon for one person to have all of these skills, which means that you need a team. In the case of a fiction film, you also need meticulous preparation and skilled actors.

 

Judging from your YouTube page, you are spending a lot of time using your video camera. That's good. You might want to supplement that by reading a book by a fellow named Steven Ascher called The Filmmaker's Handbook. It is very inexpensive and very thorough. You might also find it useful to spend some time following the discussions at www.cinematography.com. There are some very talented people who frequent that site, from experimental filmmakers to people who make major feature films.

 

I'll mention two specific things that I think would improve your work immediately. First, take into account the fact that a video camera has less latitude than the still cameras that you are used to. Secondly, bring on board someone who knows how to record sound and who has a decent microphone.

 

I enjoyed your video of the performances at a Kung Fu school. The visuals and the music were both interesting and engaging. That is the key.

 

Good luck.