Instax

I gave Steffy a yellow Instax Mini camera as a Christmas present last year, and we have really love it and bring it on most trips now. The photos are small and soft but still have that dreamy instant feeling everyone loves. Also its nice to just point and shoot sometimes! Of course i'm sure it will be just the gateway to a new instant film obsession, and i'll soon move on to full size instax, instax wide, and then i'll be selling my kidney to buy polaroid film on Ebay...

Iceland X Digital

I decided to change things up and go mainly digital on our trip to Iceland and Amsterdam this May. I rented a Zeiss Batis 25mm lens to use with my sony A7S II, figuring it would be nice to have some wide, sharp photos. I thought the lens was really great (though the built in LCD is a useless gimmick) and the photos and colors look awesome. It was also nice having reliable auto focus, since all of my other lenses are Canon EF used with an adapter. Enjoy!

Africa X Cinestill

Here's a couple of images from my trip to South Africa earlier this month, all shot on a Yahsica Electro 35 GTN with Cinestill 50D pushed +2. The picture of the aloe plant which was really underexposed ended up being my favorite in a happy accident. I think in hindsight it's pretty obvious I didn't have the right camera for wildlife shooting but since I only had 3.5 days, I wanted to bring a rangefinder and keep it easy and quick.

Catskills X Cinestill

Cinestill was a product that interested me from the start, but it took me a while to get my first roll because a. I shoot mostly black and white film and b. its really expensive, about $12 vs $5-6 for portra. I happened to be in the lomography store a couple of weeks ago the day before I was headed up for a weekend in the Catskills and even though I was already stocked up on film, I saw an employee unboxing a fresh supply of Cinestill and finally caved. I got one roll of the 50D, which I shot on my A2E mostly with a 40mm 2.8 pancake, and pushed to 100 ISO. I LOVE the photos and think I am going to buy at least one roll for every trip or special occasion from now on...

Life by the boardwalk

Here's a glimpse into my backyard, long beach and the boardwalk. Normally on a day like this I would be out surfing, but a broken wrist has kept me behind the camera for a few months now. I love living here and spring is really fantastic, I spend a lot of evenings running around with my dog on the sand and having coffee with Steffy while we watch the sunset. These were taken on 100tmax (new favorite!) with a canon A2E.

Martha's Vineyard, Part 2

I've recently been dreaming about a shiny new Contax T2 to replace my Olympus XA2 (I know, I move fast sometimes) but this roll reminded me of why I love the XA. Small enough that you hardly know it's there, so easy to pull out and snap candid moments, and occasionally somewhat sharp. I'm taking a short break from film until I have my own apartment again, which is kind of strange but I have a big backlog to keep sharing so stay tuned for more.

Ornond Beach Memorial Day

Way back on Memorial Day weekend, Steffy and I road tripped up to our friends' place in Ormond Beach and spent the weekend hanging out at the beach, at a flea market, and on the Daytona boardwalk. These were shot with a Canon A2E and Ektar 100 film. I love my A2E because I have so many EF mount lenses that I instantly had a whole package and its really a breeze to use (and cheap!). This was also the day that I acquired my beloved Olympus XA2, such good memories. 

Helios 44-2 and Helios 135mm vintage lenses

Using vintage lenses on modern cameras has recently become very popular, not only because of their attractive price but also for the interesting look they can give. There are enough articles about them to fill many books on the internet, so i'll just to share my experience with two particular lenses that I own. A great place to find more info is Vintage Lenses for Video. After the recommendation of a DP friend of mine, I started looking into old lenses that produced what is called the "swirly bokeh" look. I wanted to add some flare to my "artisans" pilot without breaking the bank. I did my research and ordered two lenses on ebay, the Helios 44-2 58mm f/2, and the Helios 135mm f/2.8. I spent about $120 total on both lenses and shipping. 98% of them come from Russia or the Ukraine and the descriptions can be pretty dicey, but using my moderate Ebay intuition I picked some pretty good ones. The only thing you need to adapt it to a canon camera is a $12 M42 to EOS adapter. Check out the photos and read about how to use them below - 

Using these old lenses can be tricky because they don't "talk" to your camera. What that means is that you have to set the aperture manually and your camera has no idea what you set it at, rendering aperture priority and shutter priority modes useless. You also will have no autofocus. For video this obviously isn't a concern which is great, but I have been using these a lot to take photos for Steffy's blog. I start by setting the aperture around 2.8 and then doing trial and error to get a good exposure. To focus, you can set it by eye but it is easier to use a live view preview and zoom in for better accuracy. It's a little more complicated than using my regular Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens, but I think the results speak for themselves. The 58mm produces a wild looking swirl when you shoot in front of a busy background, and both lenses flare like crazy. They may not be perfect for every situation but when you have the option to be creative and add some character, I don't think there is a better way to do it on such a budget. Using these lenses has opened up a whole new world for me and actually made me excited to shoot digital again! There are so many out there to choose from an experiment with, I just picked up a 35mm Mir-1B lens for $40 and have my eye on lots of others (but I do need to hold back for now). So if you have the patience and $40 or $50 on hand, get out there and do some experimenting. 

The Artisans - Shoot Day #1

I just finished the first day shooting for my Fusion pilot with Zak the Baker. It has been in pre production for a few months so I was really excited to get started. I'm planning to share my experiences and workflow throughout the process of producing so that you can see what goes into making it happen. The show is focused on two locations that we are going to film in New York next week, but I needed to have b-roll of Zak at his bakery as well. Since there was no sound, I chose to shoot this part on my own to minimize cost. The two shoot days in NY will have a second camera person and an audio guy, as well as more rental gear so that is where I am choosing to use the majority of my budget. I did rent a Red Scarlet which you can see in the photos, since I was focusing on the baking, mixing, and shaping I wanted to have the ability to shoot slow motion at a high resolution. My C100 was b-camera which I used for some shots walking in the street and on my dinky slider since the Red was too heavy. I didn't use any lights because the bakery has amazing natural light, and because I didn't rent any or have someone to help set them up. The next step is to go through this footage and prepare for the New York shoots. Stay tuned!

On editing / My new video!

Jeff Rogers Pottery from Matt Degreff on Vimeo.

The last week has been a busy one here at Footlong Films. I drove 1,000 miles in 4 days taking a Cineflex camera to mount on various helicopters around the state, from Apopka to Marathon Key. I have also been finishing the post production on my latest video for Jeff the Potter, as well as wrapping up pre production for my upcoming pilot for Fusion. This has meant only sporadic blogging, and no time to develop any negatives (I have two rolls in two cameras that are almost at the end!). Steffy got this great shot of me in my editing element so I thought I would share a little about what I use to edit and why. I usually edit from home but our power was out so we were at a local coffee shop this day. Read about my setup after the photos. 

1. Computer - 15" Retina Macbook Pro. Most of my videos are shot with my Canon C100 and 7D, so this computer is plenty powerful for editing those relatively small files. It also does a decent job transcoding Red footage, and my pilot will be 50% shot on Red so it is going to be put to the test soon. While I would love to have a killer Mac Pro setup with a 27" Apple monitor for working from home, I cant afford it and need the ability to be mobile. Half of Jeff's video was edited on airplanes or in airports.

2. Software - Final Cut X. This program got a bad rap from the start, since initial versions weren't so powerful and people felt like it was "dumbed down". It's come a long way and now up to version 10.1, and I think the criticism is unfair. I don't come from an editing background, I really picked it up as a necessity so i'm probably the perfect target market. I need a program that can handle all different codecs and has all the basic editing functions in a simple layout. Adobe Premiere and After Effects are overwhelming to me, when it gets to the point where I need more in depth editing I hope to have the budget to hire a professional. 

3. Plugins & additional software - LUT Utility, Magic Bullet Looks, Davinci Resolve 11. I have used Davinci which is an amazing free color grading program, but always had difficulty importing mixed frame rate clips. I'm sure thats just operator error, but it never felt really intuitive to me (again, a non editor). I recently bought the FCX LUT utility, which is an amazing plugin that gives you a great place to start your color correction and has LUTs for Canon log (C100) and cinestyle (7D). The magic bullet looks are cool as well, but I haven't had a project recently that called for such strong visual effects. 

4. Additional things - I keep my backups stored on 2TB USB3 G-Drives, and have a small 500gb bus powered one for editing on the fly. I've found that most of the time I can edit off of the drives pretty speedily. I have various USB3 and Thunderbolt readers for different types of cards, and an Anker USB3 splitter which just died on me after only a few months. I'm thinking about getting a Caldigit Thunderbolt station and upgrading my cheap 23" external monitor before I start editing the pilot. 

That's pretty much it, I know I have a long way to go in improving my editing but I learned everything from google and youtube so I'm proud of my progress so far. Feel free to share your setup or advice!

Nicaragua XA2

Here are some pictures from my trip to Nicaragua that I took on the Olympus XA2. The first three are from a walk around Managua (not going to lie, one of my least favorite places to be) and the last is from my drive to the coast. The one of the street musicians is my favorite, but like I saw in the first roll there is some funny haziness to the pictures - look at the Coca Cola sign in photo #2. I'm almost done with my fresh roll of Tri-X so the mystery of whether the camera or the expired film was the culprit will be solved soon. I'll be working three days this week and then heading to New York, so I should have lots of interesting things to shoot. The question, as always is what to shoot it with?

Canon Rebel SL1 + 40mm 2.8

I'm writing this post from the Managua airport, because I have 3 hours until my flight and I dont have any more photos to share from my trip (they're all waiting to be developed). Anyways, last year Steffy kept asking me to buy her a camera of her own. I have a 7D and a bunch of lenses, but I use it for work sometimes and it's too big for her to carry around. She wanted something small she could leave in the purse and use to take wherever she went. I did my research and eventually found the rebel SL1, which is the smallest DSLR Canon has ever made. It has the same 18 mp sensor as the T5i, and some neat features like a touchscreen, video recording, etc. I picked it up for a great promo price of $379 and paired it with the 40mm 2.8 pancake lens. The two are made for each other, and we love the focal length and image quality of the 40mm lens. It's liberating to have such a small lightweight camera with you when you go out rather than a 7D with an L lens. The 7D now collects dust in the closet, and this one comes with us everywhere. I cant think of a better way to recommend it than that!