Today Apple announced the iPad, and what I like most about what we’ve seen so far is that Apple clearly thinks it’s important that we be able to make things with it. The redesigned iWork apps are impressive experiments in creating stuff using a multitouch display. I liked my iPhone enough when it was just a phone, but I love it now that I have Storyboard Composer (formerly Hitchcock), Screenplay, and Photoshop Mobile, to name just a few.

I also use an app called Air Mouse to control the Mac Mini in my home theater. That, and the many other apps that allow your iPhone or iPod Touch to act as control device for your computer, made me ponder the possibility of using the iPhone’s multitouch screen as a control surface for Magic Bullet Looks. But I never took the idea very far because of the small size of the screen.

Folks doing color correction either know first-hand the value of a dedicated control surface, or avoid finding out for fear of the can’t-live-without-it sensation. An understandable fear, given the cost of these peripherals. Back in 2008 when I wrote about gestural interfaces and hardware devices, I expected to spend a couple grand at the very least for any kind of multitouch control device. Video pros routinely spend much, much more for large, cumbersome, single-purpose color control surfaces. Read any review of them and you’ll see one common thread: once you work a three-way color corrector with a set of trackballs that allow you to adjust multiple parameters at once, you never want to go back.

Imagine the dude above is looking at a stripped-down version of the Magic Bullet Looks interface on his main display. The Tool Chain, Preset and Tool Drawers, and touch-friendly Tool Controls appear on his iPad.

The iPad may seem expensive to people with a laptop, a smartphone, and little room in their life for something in between, but for video and film professionals looking for a general-purpose way to get more touchy-feely with their creations, it’s beyond a bargain.

As long as the software shows up.

So what do you think? Is the image above something that interests you? It’s just a hasty concept—nothing more. But it’s got me thinking about all kinds of ways that an iPad could become a part of the way we make films—not just with dedicated apps, but with companion apps that give us new ways of interacting with our favorite desktop tools.

Update on Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 11:58AM by Stu

I wanted to thank Przemion in the comments and Vrijegeest on Twitter for bringing hexler.net’s TouchOSC iPhone app to my attention. They are doing this now for audio applications, and even have a free desktop application (Mac and Windows) that you can use to design your own control layouts.

 

A frequent concern about shooting to a heavily-compressed digital format—something the DV Rebel often finds herself doing—is the degree to which the footage will be “color correctable.” Will the shots fall apart when subjected to software color grading? Or will you be able to work with the footage as fluidly as you tweak your raw stills in Lightroom?

It’s a valid concern. The movies that the current crop of HDSLRs shoot are highly compressed. This compression is perceptual, meaning that it takes advantage of visually similar colors and shapes, and represents those regions with less accuracy than the detailed and varied parts of the image. This makes perfect sense, but often in color grading one seeks to enhance color contrasts—to make a face pop off a similarly-colored background for example—and so you may well create high contrasts between colors that were once nearly identical, and as such were given short shrift by the camera’s compression.

You might have noticed a similar phenomenon in audio. An low-bit-rate MP3 that sounds decent enough can suddently sound awful after even a tiny amount of EQ. Another case of perceptual compression limiting your options.

While you will never find as much data and detail in your HDSLR video as you do in that same camera’s raw stills, the H.264 movies created by the Canon 7D, 5D and 1D Mark IV will withstand some massaging in post. Here are some tips (similar to those found in greater detail in The DV Rebel’s Guide) to help you get the best results.

• Shoot flat. If you read Flatten your 5D, you know that I am a proponent of setting up a “flat” Picture Style using the camera’s built-in controls. The same settings I specced out for the 5D Mark II apply to the 7D and 1D Mark IV as well, although with the 7D I’m less likely to use Highlight Tone Priority, as this setting can increase shadow noise, and the 7D is not as noise-free as the other Canon HDSLRs.
• Chose WB wisely. Use a white balance preset that gives you as nuetral an image as possible. Shooting with an incorrect white balance reduces your dynamic range, because you wind up with an image that’s prematurely blown-out in one color channel, dark and noisy in others.
• Expose to the right. Make the brightest image you can without clipping something important. A rule-of-thumb considered gospel by many photographers, but our reasoning is a bit different. Yes, we, like the stills guys, wish to avoid excess noise in the shadows, but that’s not our main concern. Remember that term perceptual compression. Dark areas of an image get less bits. If you underexpose, you’ll have to brighten the image in color correction, and you’ll reveal all kinds of nastiness the camera thought you’d never see.
• Do denoise. It doesn’t really matter what denoising software you use, but use it. When you carefully and subtly denoise your footage, you rebuild your pixels anew, which is especially nice when you follow the next tip:
• Work at high bit-depths. If you start with an 8-bit image and do a gentle de-noise, you’re blending pixels values together to create new colors. Although there’s no such thing as something for nothing, doing this at a higher bit-depth means those new colors have massivly more gradations than the original image. Your subsequent color work will hold up much better.
• Sharpen last. Your flat Picture Style removed the camera’s built-in sharpening. Add your own at the very last step. The amount you use will vary depending on the output medium, so test test test.

By folllowing these guidelines you can make good-looking shots even better with color correction. But what about a shot that isn’t so great to start with? Turns out there’s hope. Below is a 7D shot that I grabbed in an uncontrolled situation. In my haste, I underexposed, and used the “cloudy” white balance when I probably should have used tungsten. But with a little denoising, careful analysis of the colors in the image, and a Colorista Power Mask, I was able to rescue this shot.

Yes, you can color correct your HDSLR footage, and you should. Color correction can make a good shot great, and in a pinch, put an unusable shot back in the game.

Nothing profound here, just some fun new gear mixing well with some trusty old gear into what for me is a “where have you been all my life” rig.

Pictured here is the Canon 7D with the venerable Canon 50mm f/1.4. It’s sitting on the skeleton of the Redrock Micro “Captain Stubling” rig, handles removed, and slipped into Redrock’s tripod platform plate. That’s sitting on a crusty old Bogen fluid head that I had lying around (the current equivalent in size would probably be the popular Manfrotto 701HDV).

That’s mounted to my new slider rig from Glidetrack. It’s the Glidetrack HD to be specific, and I chose the 1M length, which feels like the right balance of utility and portability for me. I’m more likely to use it for push-ins than for side-to-side motions, and when you’re using it for the “slow creep,” there’s only so long a slider can be before it shows up in your shot. There are a number of terrific options out there for slider rigs, but the Glidetrack was the right choice for me because of its minimal weight and mechanical simplicity.

Hovering above it all on the Noga arm is the Ikan V5600, which is a comparatively inexpensive, lightweight HDMI monitor. It doesn’t have quite the full 720p resolution the peaking features of the Marshall V-LCD70P, [CORRECTION, Mitch below pointed out that the Marshal is not 720p—in fact it has a lower resolution than the Ikan!], but it’s still quite usable for focus. The photo above lies in its streamlined simplicity—the power and HDMI cables for the monitor make it quite a bit messier in practice.

Speaking of focus, the Redrock Micro whip makes that a little easier when back-panning on the slider. The whips come in sets of three — shown below is the shortest of the bunch. The build quality on the Redrock whips is very good.

What’s missing obviously is a good set of sticks, or possibly two, to properly support the Glidetrack. I’m still shopping and open to suggestions.

Gear porn shots like these requires bokake, here courtesy of the Canon 50mm f/1.2L on my 5D Mark II, the price of which was recently lowered.

Disclaimer: I contributed to the design of the Redrock Micro Captain Stubling rig, which recently received a glowing review on episode 53 of the always awesome Red Centre podcast.

As always, I am grateful if you shop through any of the above links, or at the ProLost store 7D Cine page!

Canon has proudly placed Nocturne on their website, echoing the up-down-up pattern Reverie experienced last year.

Astute ProLost readers will have noted that Nocturne has always been viewable on my YouTube account, since Canon never asked me to take it down, just Vincent.

As you will recall, Nocturne is a short film shot entirely in available light using two pre-release Canon 1D Mark IV HDSLRs.

Vincent Laforet wrote about the film here and here, and has a fresh update here, along with a behind-the-scenes video edited by Joseph Linaschke.

My making-of post is here.

The 1D Mark IV is starting to show up in peoples’ hands and looks to be a rockin’ solid action SLR with the autofocus that Canon shooters have long wished for. As I wrote here, it is undoubtedly $5,000 worth of stills camera. It’s probably not $5,000 worth of HD video camera, unless you very specifically need the unmatched low-light performance.

Which you very well might. It’s obviously awesome.

Just remember that the Mark IV has no ergonomic concessions to video shooting—not even a dedicated video start-stop like the 7D has. And while it has greatly reduced rolling shutter skew (Nocturne is ample evidence of this), the video aliasing/moiré is no better than that of the 5D Mark II (something you can also see in Nocturne).

Man, it’s been quite a year. Let’s buy some stuff.

I know you have this friend: “Yeah, I just got this new (insert name of entry-level DSLR). I really like it. I haven’t really had much time to learn to use it though. I mostly leave it on auto.” When they say “I really like it,” they sound like a coffee shop employee describing the vegan chocolate cookie as “delicious,” i.e. lying. They hold up their camera and sure enough, it has the kit lens. Flimsy and slow, not even worth the $120 it added to the price of the camera, it is the reason your friend is not as excited by their DSLR purchase as they thought they’d be.

Rock their world with a fast fifty—a 50mm prime with a large maximum aperture. For Canon, there’s the no-excuses 50mm f/1.8 II ($100), and the best deal going 50mm f/1.4 ($360). Or show ‘em you really love ‘em with the crazy 50mm f/1.2 L ($1600). For Nikon, there’s the 50mm f/1.8D ($125), and if you want to go big I recommend the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX ($500).

All of these are available on the ProLost Store Fast 50s page.

You also have this friend, or more likely a family member: They have a Canon PowerShot that’s never done them wrong over the several years they’ve owned it. It has a tiny little LCD screen and uses its flash in anything less than searing sunlight. They have no idea how things have improved since they spent $400 on that little beast. A new Canon Powershot that beats this oldie-but-goodie in every way can be theirs for only $150 or so: the Canon PowerShot SD1200IS. It even comes in fun colors.

What’s nice is that Canon has not changed their menu interface much over the years, so there’s not much new to learn with a new PowerShot.

For the director in your life, here’s a weird but amazing gift idea: A green laser pointer. I use these on set for everything from placing background talent to describing the height of a light, or the cut of a shadow. The green ones are visible in broad daylight, and of course demand cautious handling, as they could damage human eyesight if abused. Once you spend a day on the set with one of these in your pocket, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without one.

(There are many cheap laser pointers out there, but they are most likely lower-power lasers being overdriven. Don’t skimp.)

Another great gift for anyone who spends time on a film set is a Gerber 22-41545 Multi-Plier ($52). You can schnick out the pliers with one hand, which was something I first saw on a shoot, and it was such a profound sight that I threw my Leatherman into the ocean.

Do you still know someone who doesn’t have The DV Rebel’s Guide? If so, buy one and bludgeon them about the head and shoulders with it.

Blu-ray is the best way for a movie fan to enjoy their favorite films, and the players are not only getting more affordable, they are also starting to be as good at Blu-ray playback as the Playstation 3. The Sony BDP-N460 ($200 or less) not only plays back Blu-ray disks with the speed and slick interface of the PS3, it also streams Netflix and Amazon on-demand movies via a wired internet connection. Want to use it wirelessly? Pick up the Linksys WET610N Wireless-N Ethernet Bridge ($80).

You’ll want some good Blu-rays to play of course. I recommend a few recent sci-fi classic remasterings: Close Encounters of the Third Kind ($32) (because Spielberg films are film school every time you watch them), The Terminator ($10) (because Jim Cameron was a DV Rebel before there was DV, making this movie for $6 million, roughly the bottled water budget of Avatar), and Galaxy Quest ($17) (because damn it’s funny, and my name’s in the credits).

Lastly, something from the jaw-dropping inspiration department: Stanley Kubrick: Drama & Shadows. From 1945 to 1950, Stanley Kubrick was a photojournalist for Look magazine. Will it shock you to learn that his photos are stunning? Even though he was a teenager at the time? I didn’t think so. This book is a reminder that every photo you make can be a step down the road to becoming a better filmmaker.

Happy holidays from ProLost!