Cinevate Franken Medusa Video Rig

Now, THERE'S a blog title! Actually, it just describes the frankenstein-esque character of this rig, however it works. Since I'm a one-man-band out in the wilds when I do my nature video shooting, I need a setup that can do everything at once.

In a nutshell, this rig enables me to shoot and record with two dslr cameras at the same time. A Canon 7D is shooting extreme closeups with its 100-400mm telephoto lens and a Canon 5D Mark 2 is capturing the overall scene with a 24-70mm wide angle lens. Later on I can combine the footage of these two cameras while editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. To sync it all together I now turn to Singular Software's Plural Eyes program which saves me many hours of painstaking toil aligning the various camera tracks.

Here's an example of the dual footage that I shot out my living room window today (with a few cats watching intently) -- a squirrel raiding our birdfeeder and nearby a Downie woodpecker munching on some suet.

Shooting with the Cinevate Franken Medusa from David Rilstone on Vimeo.

Cinevate is the company that manufactures the components found in this rig. Located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, I found the staff and even the president himself, Dennis Woods, extremely helpful and involved in helping me put this camera setup together.

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)