Recently I had the opportunity to take the new Profoto Batpac out for a spin. I wanted to create photos with a Bohemian feel on location, as most of my non-automotive work has been in the studio.

I coordinated with clothing designer Kareenas Trends, makeup artist Evelyn Sanabria and models Diana Butova and Klaudia McDonald to make this happen. I am very pleased with the way this shoot turned out thanks to the hard work of everyone involved. Full blog posting soon to come on the Profoto Blog.

Diana Butova- Profoto Batpac Shoot

Klaudia McDonald- Profoto Batpac Shoot

Diana Butova- Profoto Batpac Shoot

Klaudia McDonald- Profoto Batpac Shoot

Recently I was hired to do shoot behind the scenes video footage for a NOS Energy Drink commercial. The commercial was based around the driving skill of 2009 Formula Drift Champion Chris Forsberg. For those not familiar with drifting, it is a judged motorsport that calls for drivers to control a high horsepower car while it slides sideways at high speed through a marked course. It is similar to rally racing, but is done on a closed course and judged on execution and style rather than who finishes the course fastest.

BHD3 in use

I wanted to get some incar footage to show what its like sitting next to the driver and spice up the BTS footage. I used a Canon 5D Mk II with a 16-35 2.8L lens mounted to an Induro BHD3 ballhead. While this ballhead is a bit overkill for this camera setup, it is ideal due the violent driving style of drifting. A large amount of torque is generated from to the mass of the camera as the car quickly changes direction from left to right. I have used other ballheads and they would consistently slip over the course of a run. The BHD3 is the only ballhead I have used so far that has not loosened up after a lap or two with the 5D MK II.

Still from Incar Video

About halfway through the day of the shoot, the director of the commercial asked to see some of the footage. He was impressed with the shots and asked if they could use some of the footage in the commercial. After a bit of negotiating, I handed over the memory cards and here is the final commercial which incorporated my footage at :10 :13 and :24

A few weeks later I was called to create a preseason teaser video for Hyundai and Rhys Millen Racing- another drift team. They wanted to show the changes they made to the Genesis Coupe for the 2010 season. They were testing at El Toro Airfield in Irvine, CA and I knew that the runway surface was a bit more rough than the track where we filmed the NOS Shoot. In past shoots I have noticed vibration from the incar camera here at El Toro.

RMR / Red Bull / Hyundai Genesis Coupe

After a bit of research, I have found that the vibration was not coming from the ballhead, but from the flexing of the camera body itself at the tripod socket. My solution is to have the BHD3 supporting the camera from the bottom and a magic arm with hot shoe mount to support it from the top. While the BHD3 does the heavy lifting, the magic arm provides another point of stabilization. Here is a photo of the setup:

BHD3 Incar

BHD3 Incar

Here is the final video created using the BHD3 ballhead as the main support for my 5D Mk II. At the :20 mark you can actually see the ballhead in the window as the car drives by.

I used the ballhead recently at the Pikes Peak HIll Climb to support a locked off camera as I was following the car with another camera. The ballhead was solid enough to hold an HVX attached to a Manfrotto super clamp off of guard rails, stop signs etc. Here is an iPhone snap of it in action:

BHD3 Ballhead at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb

BHD3 Ballhead at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb

I cannot say enough good things about this Induro BHD3 Ballhead, very versatile head that is capable of holding a significant amount of weight.

On an Induro side note- thank GOD I had the CT-313 tripod with me at Pikes. We had to hike all over the mountain at an altitude between 10,000 and 14,110ft elevation over a series of 4 days. The CT-313 was so light yet so rigid I was actually able to cover a lot of ground without sacrificing a sturdy base for my camera. Since I was shooting video, I had a video head on the sticks…

CT-313 Tripod at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb

Thank you Induro, your products ROCK!

So the other day I ran into an old friend that does some work with Contour Cameras. He mentioned he had seen some of my videos and wanted to equip me with some of the latest and greatest POV cams on the market. I gladly accepted and looked forward to seeing what these cameras could do and how they compared to my Sony XHR-MC1 POV camera. The street price of $329.95 made these a lot more user friendly than the Sony- which cost about 10 times more than one of these cameras.

A few days later I had a knock at the door from the UPS man with 3 pretty large boxes for me. I was FLOORED when I opened the boxes and saw TONS of goodies from Contour Cam. Here is what the spread looked like:

Contour HD 1080P & Accessories

6 cams and tons of accessories as you can see. Here is a breakdown of what comes included in the box with the camera:

Contour HD 1080P Unboxing

Each box comes with the camera, battery, instruction manual, charger / PC cable, flat mount and extra adhesive pad. As you can see, the camera itself is TINY, smaller than my iPhone…

Contour HD vs iPhone

You can access the cameras battery and micro SD memory card from the back as well as adjust the resolution of the camera from HI (1920×1080 @ 30fps) to LOW (1280 x 960 @ 30fps). Once you hit the power button on the back of the cam, on the top of the camera there is only one switch to start the recording.

The back of the camera

Black means not recording

Red means recording

So once I turned the camera on I was delighted to see two little laser beams shoot out. Since the camera has no display, the lasers help to make sure the camera is aligned with what you are trying to shoot.

Sharks with laser beams on their heads

Sharks with laser beams on their heads

Now that I was familiar with the camera, it was time to dive into the mountain of accessories for the cam. I started off with the one that comes with each camera- a flat surface mount. The camera is has these cool looking grooves heading down the side, but it turns out they are fully functional- the mounting place for all of the various holders. Its called the TRail mount system. I slid the flat mount in and slid it all the way forward to make sure it was locked into place. I later mounted this on the side of my helmet to get some POV karting action- more on that later…

Sliding the flat mount into place

The next package was the lens kit. With all of the automotive video that I do I tend to use filters for various reasons: a polarizer to cut the glare on the car or windshield, and a UV filter to protect the lens from getting pitted from debris on the track. This kit has replacement lens ring, lenses as well as step up rings for a 37mm screw-in filter. It all fits in a neat little bag and easily tossed in with the rest of the gear.

Contour HD Filter Kit

Contour HD Filter Kit

The next item in the bag is the handlebar mount. The cool thing about this and the camera is that you can mount it just about anywhere. The camera lens twists 90 degrees from vertical so you can mount the camera horizontal! You can see in this picture that the lens is still upright even though the camera is on its side.

Contour HD Handlebar Mount

Whle we are talking about biking, this next accessory is designed to strap a camera to your typical vented helmet. The straps go through the helmet and cinch down so the camera stays snug and your ride through the trails.

Contour HD Vented Helmet Mount

This next accessory is something I was really looking forward to- the Universal Mount 1/4″ x 20 threaded adapter. This slides on around the camera and gives a mounting point that will work with most of my grip gear such as Manfrotto superclamps, magic arms etc. Like the other mounting kits, it slides right on around the camera and is ready to go.

Contour HD Universal Mount

Contour HD Universal Mount

This next one is something I have a feeling I am going to use a lot- the windshield mount. This adjustable suction cup will attach the camera to a windshield or any other body panel and allow you to lock the camera into any angle you like. Being that I shoot a lot of automotive videos, this bad boy is going to come in handy- OFTEN…

Contour HD Windshield Mount

Another item I was excited to see was a case to carry the camera in. This holds the camera on one side as well as cables, extra memory cards and batteries with room to spare. It makes it easy to transport all this stuff around without having to worry too much about it getting banged up. It also has a carabiner attached so you can easily clip it onto a backpack or something.

Contour HD Carrying Case

Contour HD Carrying Case

The guys at Contour were nice enough to send spare batteries, USB battery charger, wall chargers, car chargers and a bunch of extra sticky pads for the flat surface mount.

Contour HD USB Battery Charger

Contour HD Car Charger

Contour HD Wall Charger

Phew- thats a lot of gear… Once I finally sorted through all of this stuff, it was time to take it out on the town and do something with it. I headed down to K1Speed in Torrance to put em to the test. I mounted two cameras on the car and one on my helmet for three races. Here is what I was able to come up with for our first spin out there…

Nothing too crazy, but I was impressed with the low-light performance and low-vibration from these cameras. I have used other CMOS-based POV cams and they tend to get “wonky” around the edges under heavy vibration. I am very impressed with these cameras and look forward to putting them through their paces in the near future!

So I just finished a new blog posting about the new Profoto D1 monoblocs. I give a bit of behind the scenes info on a shoot and lots of technical lighting info. Take a look and let me know what you think!

http://blog.profoto-usa.com/?p=1642

Behind the Scenes - Profoto D1 Shoot

Profoto D1 - A closer look

So after some late nights of working, the first blog post for Profoto is done. This first post focused specifically on the the old vs new zoom reflector and the Softlight reflector.

This post is a very controlled side by side comparison of the lights and light shaping tools.

Here is the link: http://blog.profoto-usa.com/?p=290

Thanks to everyone at Profoto, Samys Camera, Southbay Studios and Stephanie Sawyer for making this possible.

Wow, time flies when you are busy… Thankfully things have calmed down a bit, and life in starting to get back in order. So many things to post, so here are the highlights of the past month.

Old vs. New

So while I was at RMR filming the Genesis being built, Cole went to the swap meet in Huntington Beach and came across these gems:

Old Camera Gear

Okay- so maybe just the ones on the right… What are they you ask? Well the camera is a Kodak Vigilant Six-20.  Some of the info:

“medium format camera was manufactured between 1939-1949 and originally sold for US $38 (about US $560 in 2007).”

Some more photos:

Quite a contrast from my new Canon 5D Mk II..  More on that later…

The other find was a General Electric Dw-58 light meter:    Made around 1946 and at that time sold for $26.50.

Once again- quite a contrast between that and my Sekonic L-358 meter.  I have yet to try them out side by side, but from what I can see, the GE meter is still in working condition, just like the camera.  Thank you Cole for such an awesome purchase…  I can’t wait to load it up with 620 film and shoot some interesting pics.

OK- now for the new toy- the Canon 5D Mk II.  Wow is all I can say- for so many reasons: razor sharp photos, 1080P HD video, HUGE file sizes and being able to see down to people’s pores when  you take photos.  It is seriously amazing…  One major gripe- the old 5D battery grip does not fit this cam, and the batteries are different too.  Oh well, get to drop $400 on new batteries and a battery grip- but one problem…  The batteries are not available anywhere…  :(  I feel awkward shooting vertically with my hand twisted all around- yes, a stupid complaint, but once you are  use to having the vertical grip, its hard to go without it.

Here are some shots from a recent shoot for Hyundai of the cam in action:

Here is the first video I put together using the 5D Mk II and a 70-200 2.8L- IS.  Nothing special, but the video I am putting together as we speak will show some cool depth of field and crazy fisheye shots.

Speaking of new video- another piece of gear that I got to help out in the video making process.. Sony HXR-MC1

Got a chance to use it at Formula D Long Beach and testing at El Toro.  WOW this thing is awesome.  Full 1080 video and it records onto Memory Stick Pro cards.  I will splice some of this video into the new cut as well.

Ok- time to get back to work.  Hopefully I will not neglect the blog like I have been…