Born TWiPy

ProLost is the Site of the Week on TWiP. If you're a first-time-visitor, thanks for stopping by! Here's a topical greatest hits to make you feel at home:

• The post that got me in is this, my tinker-toy musing of what the digital cinema camera of tomorrow might look like. Since then camera gear manufacturer Zacuto has gotten in on that game.

• But in order for all that stuff to make sense, we need camera manufacturers to get serious about this new class of camera.

• The first to do so may be Panasonic, with their announcement of the Lumix G, the first SLR-esque camera designed specifically to shoot video. Thoughts here.

• I wrote a letter to Canon asking for 24p support on the 5D MarkII.

• I wrote about RED's plans for making DSLRs obsolete.

• I explained why, as lovely as it is, Reverie looks like video, not motion picture film.

• Long ago, I preemptively praised Panasonic for the specs of the LX3. Today mine arrives from Amazon!

• At any time you can see all my posts tagged Photography or Cameras.

• On Flickr, here are my 12 "most interesting" photos, here are some of my selects, and here's my photostream.

Enjoy! I read all your comments and respond where appropriate. You can also find me at the Rebel Café, where we discuss stuff related to my book, The DV Rebel's Guide.

UPDATE: I appreciate all the requests for my impressions of the LX3. I'm going to refrain though until Lightroom supports it's raw files—until then, it's not a real camera. But I did post a couple of sample 720p24 videos on Vimeo to appease those who wanted to see how much of an improvement they represent over the LX2:

Panasonic LX3 Video Sample: Chairs from ProLost on Vimeo.

Dogs and Cats Living Together

Looks like I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see what a DSLR-based shoulder mount would look like. From Zacuto, makers of shiny red things that cost more than your camera:

View fullsize

View fullsize

The matte box isn’t just to impress the clients. If you want to shoot wide-open with a 1/48 shutter regardless of lighting conditions, you’d better be prepared to dial in exposure with ISO and ND. Screwing threaded filters on and off gets old quick. And grad filters will be your friend.

[Via the 5D MarkIIFacebook Group]

What Should a Movie Camera Look Like?

If there’s anything certain about the crazy camera events and announcements of the last few weeks, it’s that folks are thinking about what matters to them in a motion picture camera from a much broader perspective. Let’s recap:

• Panasonic announces the LX3, a pocket stills camera that shoots 720p HD movies at 24p
• Nikon releases the D90, a live-view DSLR that shoots wiggly 720p HD movies at 24p
• Canon announces the 5D MarkII, featuring 1080p video at 30fps
• Ikonoskop announces the A-cam dII, a uniquely-shaped HD camera with a super-16 CCD that shoots up to 60fps uncompressed DNG
• Panasonic shows a prototype Lumix G, a Micro Four Thirds interchangeable-lens camera designed specifically for HD shooting, to be released next year
• RED scraps their Scarlet designs because “the market has changed.”
• RED announces the Digital Still & Motion Camera (DSMC), designed to “mark the end of DSLRs” and, presumably, to offer more professional control over big-sensor video in a compact housing
• Vincent Laforet unveils Reverie, a short film shot with a pre-release 5D MarkII
• 650 people and counting add their voice to Laforet’s plea to Canon for 24p on the 5D Mark II

Interesting times to say the least. Would you want to shoot a movie with something that looks like the above? If you could have any camera capability in any feasible form factor, what would you want?

Comment your way to 24p UPDATED

OK, I’ve asked you to call, I’ve encouraged you to write. May I ask you for one last favor regarding the Canon 5D Mark II? Please head over to the blog of Vincent Laforet, creator of Reverie, and post a comment telling Canon how much you want 24p and manual shutter control.

Vincent writes: 

As far as 24p - I know they’re listening (Canon that is) - but they NEED TO KNOW just how important this is to everyone - including me..

So this may be a little silly - but let’s get AS MANY COMMENTS on this blog - possible… let’s break 300 or 400 comments - asking simply: WE NEED 24P etc etc… keep it simple - the idea is for them to see how overwhelming the need for this feature is - it is in my opinion the single most important feature request…

So go ahead… request it… one comment at a time (only one comment per person please :)

24p and 1/48th is key… keep going… they will understand that it’s a MUST do firmware update…

I understand that it’s a silly tactic - but it works a LOT better than a carefully crafted e-mail or letter… trust me. If we hit 500+ comments asking for 24p - they can’t ignore it.

This is great that Vincent realizes the importance of a 24p mode, and of full manual control for movie capture. Support him, post a comment, and help Canon help themselves right into the forefront of the revolution.

UPDATE: It might be working guys. From canonrumors.com:

From Laforet’s blog

“One of the visitors of Photokina 2008 Trade Show in Cologne reported in a well known German Canon forum today (http://www.dforum.net/), that Canon is now actually discussing a firmware upgrade to enable 25 fps mode. Furthermore, the Canon technician, who revealed this information, confirmed, that the 25 fps can be achieved by firmware change only, no hardware modifications are required.”

I’d direct link but I couldn’t actually find that on Laforet’s blog—must be buried in the hundreds of comments?

AE CS4's Best New Feature is Backwards

The details of the next release of Adobe After Effects are now public. AE CS4 features 3D object rendering (objects come in via Photoshop CS4 3D documents) and a full seat of Mocha AE. But my favorite new feature is more subtle than that. It fixes perhaps the biggest problem with After Effects. And out of the box, it's backwards.

In order to do real compositing work in After Effects, you frequently must precompose, creating nested relationships between compositions that can become quite complex and deep. Navigating these relationships can be the least enjoyable aspect of working in After Effects. Taking over someone else's After Effects project is notoriously difficult for this reason. As a VFX supervisor, a good amount of my time looking over an After Effects compositor's shoulder was spent watching them search desperately for which tab, which alphabetically-sorted comp, contains "the place where I did that."

After Effects CS4 adds a new feature for rapid, graphical navigation of nested comps. It's called the Mini-Flowchart, and it resembles the After Effects Flowchart View that was previously the only visual way of browsing the relationships in an After Effects project. No one ever uses the Flowchart View, because its half-implemented status punishes you for doing so. But it's a good idea, and the Mini-Flowchart extracts some of the best things about it. It's a little slice of nodal goodness integrated seamlessly into the slick new CS4 user interface.

But did I mention it's backwards?

As you can see, I have four source comps that I'm using in Main Comp. I then have two different output comps, HD and SD. But if you're like me, the flow is backwards here. The sources are on the right and the outputs on the left. The arrows show that images flow from right to left.

The theory, I’m told, is that you might perceive your After Effects comps as nested folders, and like the NEXT-inspired column view in OS X, your top-level directories are on the left and your deepest-nested assets are on the right. The problem is, nested comps are not files and folders. You can have a footage item that is deeply-nested from one comp and used directly in another. You can't do that with files and folders.

But more importantly, compositing is not storage. It's defining a process. After Effects projects are lists of instructions, and the ones that happen first belong on the left, the ones that happen last belong on the right. At least in countries that read left to right!

Luckily, if you agree, you can fix this easily enough. Just click the wing menu and select Flow Left to Right.

Much better. Source on the left, output on the right. Arrows flowing right to left. If, like me, you hope that AE will someday do more with nodes, this would be a good change to make (you only have to do it once). Obviously, nodal systems tend to flow left-to-right and/or up-to-down. It's a bummer to me that Adobe chose right-to-left as the default—it feels like it puts more distance between me and a nodal future for After Effects.

But whether you roll left-to-right or right-to-left, the Mini-Flow is wicked awesome. You access it with a button in the Timeline, but better still you can bring it up with a quick tap of either Shift key. You can then easily navigate it with the arrow keys, jumping into any comp by hitting Enter. Trust me, before long you'll wonder how you lived without it.

UPDATE: "An unordered, approximately comprehensive list of new features in After Effects CS4" can be found here.

Visit the ProLost Amazon Store for upgrades to Adobe CS4 Production Premium and support ProLost.

Update 2021-08-30

Thirteen years later, I still love this feature, still insist that it ships backwards, and felt the urge to mention that the shortcut key is now the Tab key, making it even easier to access, even with the dedicated button having been removed..

I just want to fly though my After Effects comp structure.