Tying a fishing knot in one second

A typical still fishing setup for trouts requires tying 3 knots. I dread tying them because it’s tedious and time consuming, especially with thin lines. I did a little research and found that Davy knot is fast and easy, perfect for an impatient person like me. The problem is that most of the videos on Youtube suck in quality, both in video and sound, so I decide to make my own! I really wanted to test the 88Mbit hack in ISO 160 anyway. As expected, the video turned out great and the sound from Rode was boomy and crisp. I enhanced the bass a bit and color graded slightly with Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista.

Fishing with Jonathan, shot with 88Mbit hacked GH2

Shadow Cliffs is a small man-made lake not too far from our house. They stock trout weekly throughout the winter. Planted or not, those buggers are still hard to catch regardless!
Jonathan and I been skunked more than half the times we have been there.
Today, however, was our lucky day. Each trout caught weighed less than a pound, but heck, they taste scrumptious no matter.
I really like my GH2 since it’s so small, especially with a pancake lens. It fits in my coat pocket and I can bring it just about everywhere, enabling to share simple joys of life, in glorious high quality HD video.

Merry Christmas family video with 42Mbp hacked GH2 and Lumix 20mm f1.7

The hack to increase the image quality for GH2 has been out for awhile. I was hesitant to install it since I thought would be a daunting task, which turned out to be unfounded.
The whole process takes merely minutes, and the quality is noticeably better than before the hack.
I really wanted to shoot something with this “new” toy, so I brought it to the Christmas Light tour, just to see how well it performed under such unusual condition. Wow, I was impressed. It cleans out the blobby noise in blacks and the footage looks crisp like finely scanned film.
20mm pancake lens is definitely worth its money, shooting it wide open at 1.7. I adjusted the ISO accordingly, as high as 1200 on some shots.
It was going to be a simple test shoot, but I got enough footage to make a little video Christmas Card out of the deal.
I was very satisfied with the color rendition, even without any color correction. I hope it shoots as well under the daylight. I am sure I don’t have to wait too long.

Mnemonic memorization of all Bible Books, in any order

For years, I always wanted to memorize all the Bible Books using a proven mnemonic major system, which I have been using to remember phone numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system
I made a chart in Excel with all the key words and mnemonic triggering pictures, and it daunted on me that I could make a video that other people would benefit.
So.. here it is, in full glory of HD and all the great pictures I grabbed from Google.
All you have to do is memory consonants that go with numbers 0 to 9 and it’s all good to go.

“Miranatha” lyrics and family rough cut

GH2 is a tricky beast. It’s pickier than T2i when it comes to exposure and overall color depth. I need to trust the histogram more than the built-in exposure meter which tends to underexpose scenes in Cinema Mode. It also has a yellowish cast which I don’t personally care for. I compensate for it during post by boosting red in the midrange.
“Maranatha” is a song we sing every morning before the family bible study. I have not memorized all the words yet, thus the caption. For now, I am just filling the video part with family stuff. The shots are rough and long and unfinished, but I just want to capture the kids the way they are, for now.

More 20mm f1.7 stuff

Did I already mention that I love the new Lumix 20mm lens? Yup, I think I already have. I was sitting around the ‘campfire’ at the dropzone, sipping a couple of beers with friends after a nice day of skydiving. They were talking about this puppy that needs to be adopted. I often have the GH2 with me because it’s small, and just in case I can get some spontaneous shots, such as this one. That’s the thing about DSLR videography — I do not need an elaborate setup. I just carry it like a compact camera, and it shoots near film quality video of ‘real’ moments without script.
After a year of experimenting, I am finally getting film quality look to the videos I shoot. This camera/lens combination takes me there. Color correction took very little time in this piece. I am either getting much better at it or it’s really easy to achieve out of GH2.

Shallow DOP with Lumix 20mm f1.7 lens

In overall, I am happy with GH2. However, I am hesitant to use it indoors since it’s not very fast. Canon, in Super Flat mode and graded afterward, gives rich “Canon” look, along with shallow DOF that is very cinematic. I’ve trying my hardest to utilize the 14-42mm kit lens for almost everything, but it just does not have the shallow DOF that is required for certain shots, so I bit the bullet and got a Lumix 20mm f1.7. “Wow” is all I am going to say for now. It is super sharp lens with desired shallow DOF I was looking for. It just might become a lens I use for most of the ground shots from now on. I am pleased with this video. It doesn’t tell much of a story, but the images are crisp and colors are rich.
To mimic the Canon further, I enhanced the indoor footage by darkening the shadow a bit with blue, and enhanced the mid-range with a bit of red. Highlights were touched up a bit, if necessary, with red/yellow.
I was bit intimidated with Colorista at first, but it’s a tool I use on every video footage.
To appreciate the sharpness of this lens, please see the video below in 1080p mode.

Open Beauty

There was a scene in the movie “American Beauty,” of a young man, of him showing his girlfriend some footage of an ordinary bag twirling in the air, caught in a whirlpool of wind, never touching the ground. Everything about it was ordinary, yet it was powerfully beautiful. We do not need to travel to exotic locations to appreciate beauty. It is with us everywhere. Like the character in the movie, I just drown in it sometimes.
Take a parachute opening for example. I have seen it thousands of times, and so have millions of other skydivers. I slowed the footage down, and magical thing happened. It reminded of a delicate flower shell in stop motion, shouting to the world, wanting to fly. I utilize whatever is around me, because there is insane amount of beauty, everywhere. I am grateful for being able to capture some of it, forever.

ND filter, DOF and color grading

As previously posted on my YouTube Channel, I did not get good results with a variable ND filter. I thought I try again with a better brand for a little more money, $79. It turned out pretty good, even though it’s color corrected/graded afterwards – and that’s what I care about, how the footage looks after post processing.
Editing to make it look like 2 cameras were used was a joy with Final Cut Pro. Doing something like this with a couple of tapes before the age of affordable NLE setup was nightmarish tedious. I don’t know how real film editor do it.

Yuri, an excellent freefall cameraman at Lodi

I am an old school skydiver, feeling most comfortable falling towards the earth belly first. I’ve been struggling with back and sit flying, something the ‘kids’ are really good at nowadays. My pink camera suit is cut for traditional flying, making me think that it’s not possible to fly on my back or sitfly with it. I challenged Yuri to see if he can do exactly that, and that’s how this video got started. After a couple of dives of watching/video’ing him sitfly, I had enough footage for a nice little story what he and many other cameramen do at Lodi, many times a day. As usual, it’s very short, because I only edit when I get inspired, and it usually lasts only a few hours at a time. The entire shoot was taken with GH2. Freefall footage was shot in 720P 60 fps.