Cyclops: One-Eyed Monster

Mounting Cinevate's new Cyclops viewfinder has a lot in common with mounting a full exhaust system on a Harley Softail. I've done both, and the Cyclops is easier. And you don't need shims.

To back up a little, I ordered the Cyclops from Cinevate and it came via Fedex in about 3 business days.



My assistant, Daphne, performing a parts inspection. The Cyclops was well-packed and came complete with unit, mounting hardware, two Allen keys, and even a cleaning cloth.





The viewfinder body and optics are quite large, and the body is made from what feels like lightweight high-impact plastic. The overall feel is quite sturdy, although I would personally prefer a more rubberlike body and eyecup.

Speaking of eyecup ---- it's HUGE! I found that with the equally HUGE optics, a practical standoff distance was 3 - 4 feet. This enables two or more people to view the image simultaneously and even read the data normally found on Liveview. The eyecup acts as a very effective sunshade -- these outdoor photos were taken during bright midday sunshine.

I find the Cyclops ideal for tripod use with my big telephoto (400ml + extenders + crop = 1792mm focal length!) on my 7D where I want standoff distance to avoid the slightest vibration -- otherwise unavoidable if my eye is contacting the eyecup. I love my Marshall 7" HDMI monitor for this (plus its peaking & false colour filters), but the Cyclops is handy and quick.

So, what's this all to do with mounting a Harley exhaust? Well, the principle is the same: at first it feels awkward to get it all fitted up properly, but I quickly learned, just like my Softail's pipes, you first loosen all 6 mounting screws giving you fore, aft, side-to-side, and up & down motion, then wiggle the Cyclops to fit the LCD screen and with your third hand gently snug up all six screws. I found a bit of tweaking here and there got me a pretty decent fit to the LCD screen. Once all the screws are firmly tightened, it's easy to remove the Cyclops from the camera by the single mounting screw into the camera body bottom.

As you can see, the Cyclops fit into my 7D with battery grip, and my wife's 7D (right) without a grip. One note: my 5D Mark 2 has a Zacuto Z-Finder frame glued to the back of the body and the Cyclops WON'T fit to it.......the frame projects backwards too far and the Cyclops cannot be backed off far enough from the camera body to compensate.

Which brings me to the final point: how is the Cyclops as a third point-of-contact for handheld shooting? It's do-able to be sure, the optics are fine. I don't find the rigid eyecup very comfortable for longterm handheld shooting, especially compared to my Z-Finder's soft rubber eyecup (now that it's anti-fogged - thank you Zacuto!).

My final take: I prefer the Cyclops for tripod use vs the Zacuto Z-finder due to the super-long eye relief (ie. stand off distance). It's optics are bright and clear....I'll be fighting my wife for this one! (Yeah, yeah, just buy her another one. Heh). For handheld - I find the Z-Finder better "in my eye" as a third point of contact/stabilization - especially for extended sessions.

For my nature/wildlife work in the field, I'll be packing the Cyclops for telephoto shooting.

Judy's Garden

This will be an ongoing work-in-progress as I record the seasonal progression of my neighbour Judy's perennial garden next door. This garden borders our two properties, so my wife Karen and I get to enjoy its beauty as spring and summer unfold.

Judy's Garden from David Rilstone on Vimeo.

This clip was filmed with two cameras: a Canon 5D Mark 2 with a Canon 24-70mm L f/2.8 lens, plus a Canon 7D with a Canon 100-400mm L f/4.5-5.6 telephoto zoom lens. A 1-meter Glidetrack was used for several of the clips, as well as a newly-acquired Marshall 7" monitor. This monitor greatly eased filming in that:

1. It mounted easily on the camera's hotshoe and could be quickly adjusted to face whatever direction needed. This eliminated the need to scrunch around and/or kneel down low to view the camera's built-in LCD display.

2. The 7" Marshall screen was much easier to view the image being filmed as opposed to each camera's built in 3.5" LCD displays.

3. The Marshall monitors peaking and false colour monitors made it much, much easier to adjust and verify focus and exposure.

The music is entitled "Clear Air" by Kevin McLeod at his royalty-free website: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Editing of the clips was done in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. It's new Mercury Playback engine has greatly simplified and speeded up editing the hugely-compressed h.264 video files created by the Canon cameras.

SHOOTING WILDLIFE IN SPLIT SCREEN

This is a further development in video editing from my multi-cam blog below. It's always fascinating to run a split screen with wildlife videos to show the subject up close and simultaneously show the same subject from further back in its environment:

Sparrows in split screen from David Rilstone on Vimeo.

As with everything else I'm finding in Adobe's Premiere Pro CS4, it's easy once you know how.......it's the gettin' to know how that's difficult! For anyone who just wants to run a video camera and get it up on the screen/TV/Internet as quickly as possible, I'd strongly recommend either Sony's Vegas Platinum Studio 9.0c or Adobe's Premiere Elements 7.0: both cost about $100 and can do a ton of things with a lot less fuss. Obviously, there won't be as many features or special effects you will find in the more elaborate (and expensive!!!) Premiere Pro, but I've found these two programs offer a ton of stuff and are TONS more intuitive than Premiere Pro. As a bonus, the techniques you learn in Vegas or Elements give you a better idea of how things work, to a point, with Premiere Pro if you should ever decide to enter The Dark Side.

Once I understood what was involved with split screen editing, the technique itself was really easy. All you're doing is running both videos, together, at the same time. Premiere Pro simply has you place one video clip ("Video 1) on the time line on "Video Track 1", then place Video 2 on the time line's "Video Track 2" immediately above it. Then, using the Premiere Pro's "Video Effects" you simply apply the "Four-Point Garbage Matte" to first Video 1, then Video 2. What you have the Four-Point Garbage Matte do is simply block off (ie using the "matte") one half (or so - you can adjust how much) of Video 1, then do the same with Video 2 and block off the other half. That way when you run the two overlapping videos together you only see the unblocked halves of each video track running.....the split screen!

An important thing to mind is that when shooting the videos to produce a split screen effect is that you have to remember to keep the subject in Camera 1 in the left side of the frame the whole time, and in Camera 2 the subject has to be in right side. This is because this particular technique does not allow you to shrink down the video in any way to "get 'em to fit" on one side or the other. The split screen technique can also be done top/bottom, or even with 4, 6, or even 8 split screens running. Same principle, just a bigger headache!

I spent quite a bit of time in post processing getting everything sync'd up: the two videos and the Zoom H4N audio recorder. Practice makes perfect and I've found that expanding the tracks to absolute maximum helps with dragging each track the tiny little bit needed to get perfectly aligned with the other is so much easier.

Recently I received a query from a photographer friend-and-colleague about what audio recording system/method I use in producing my short nature video clips. Apparently he has a client who is planning to put together a training video on selling real estate. With some minor editing, here is my reply back:


I've done a lot of experimenting with audio while shooting video with my 5Dmk2, with a lot of background research and a fair expenditure on hardware and software. Additionally, I had done a great deal of research, principally at these forums:

1. Cinema 5D: http://www.cinema5d.com/index.php
2. DVInfo: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-5d-mk-ii-hd/
3. Digital Photography Review: http://www.dpreview.com/

The onboard sound of the 5Dmk2 isn't the greatest for several reasons:

1. only records in mono
2. Automatic Gain Control (= a fair amount of hiss in a quiet environment)
3. picks up camera-handling sounds, Image Stabilizing sounds, zoom & focus sounds.

The quick-and-easy fix is:

(Please note that brand names and links are provided for convenience only; I do not work for nor receive commission from anyone.)

1. Rode Videomic shotgun mike. Easily attaches to camera hotshoe and plugs into the 3.5mm input jack of the camera. Only mono sound, but quite a bit better than the onboard sound, plus it tends not to pick up the handling sounds. For additional money Rode makes a stereo mic which is constructed a bit more robustly, also attaches to the camera hotshoe, and gives a better ambient sound (according to actual tests which have been posted to Vimeo).

2. Software: the customer should download Sony's Movie Studio 9.0b Platinum Edition (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope). He can download the free trial (which I did) which gives him a week or two to try it out. It costs in the neighbourhood of $84.95 US. It's very intuitive, has a lot of professional features, and you can even burn a DVD disk (which are cheap) in Blu-ray format which is stunning in 1080p on a large LCD TV.


What I've done:

First, I still use the above for quick-and-easy production. I like Sony Vegas as a software program, plus with the Rode Videomic hooked into the Canon 5Dmk2 there is no sound synching to do afterwards -- a major plus in terms of speed and efficiency.

That said, I am now wading my way through Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 with all the software suites. This is pro-level stuff with a steep learning curve and price tag to match -- not a good idea if results are needed quickly. I still fall back on Sony Vegas when I need to put together a video quickly with good results.

Sound: I now tend to record sound separately on a Samson Zoom H4N audiorecorder which I ordered online from Steve's Music Store on Queen Street in Toronto:

http://www.stevesmusic.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=4722

At $439 CDN this is a highly-portable professional stereo audio recorder that is the best in the business in this price range. It has built in stereo microphones with a very clean pre-amp signal. This little jewel records onto standard SD memory cards and is very highly regarded in pro video circles. Later in post-processing, I synch the H4N recording to the coarser one I got simulaneously with the 5Dmk2's onboard mic, then mute the onboard sound so only the H4N's vastly superior sound quality is heard. All of my more recent nature videos are using the H4N this way. Warning: synching is a pain, although I'm getting better at it as I go. Apple's Final Cut Pro has a plug-in that you can buy called "Plural Eyes" that does this synching automatically, but nothing for Premiere Pro yet. I'll be first in line to get it when it does come out!!

Hope this helps and good luck!

Canon 5D Mark 2 videomaking

The Canon 5D Mark 2 dslr has the ability to shoot videos along with more traditional still photos. To date, this camera's video capability is unique in that it has a large full frame CMOS sensor which gives superior low-noise, low light performance. The large sensor also allows for extremely thin Depth of Field which can isolate the subject from fore- and background objects; an extremely powerful effect. Additionally, by the very nature of a dslr, videos can be shot using a wide variety of lenses.....telephoto, wide angle, macro, etc. etc.

However, frustrations do exist! Canon opted to hamstring the operation of this video aspect by eliminating the ability to manually control ISO, shutter speed, and aperture; these are all controlled automatically by the camera in the order given. There is manual control of white balance, picture style, and exposure compensation which is a good thing. Rumour in the industry has it that Canon is working on adding these manual features (and more!) in a future firmware upgrade. Those-that-know claim the set of Ironman II actually has several Canon 5D Mark 2's on the set with beta copies of this firmware upgrade that is being tested.

Here is an example of some edited clips I put together this afternoon from footage (right term?) I took last Sunday of the little critters that inhabit our backyard. More on the equipment and workflow I used for this Spielberg-worthy production in my next blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpBPdJtFbDE

(don't forget to click on the little "HD" icon at the bottom right of the Youtube screen to get the full resolution)