A couple of months ago I was asked to do the behind-the-scenes of a shoot by Norwich-based visual effects software company FXHome. They were putting together their Batman: Arkham Asylum fan film ‘Knightfall‘ and wanted to document the various factors involved in shooting and organising the film but also the specific ways in which they were shooting with visual effects in mind.
It was the first BTS video I had shot and the resulting video is now up online.
So recently I had the pleasure of working on an excellent short film script written by a friend of mine, Stephan Drury, and as I hadn’t written a post on here in well over a month it seemed a fitting topic to talk about.
The rest of our very talented crew included DoP Teele Killing who I regularly work with as well as David Royse (sound) and Tanya Skinner (makeup). We shot at various locations around Norwich including the University of East Anglia (mine and the lead actor Mark Jackson’s old university), an office inside ITV Anglia and at Stephan’s beautiful rural cottage. Many thanks to ITV, UEA and everyone else who helped out (there were a few runners and lots of extras who must be thanked.)
Needless to say, this was one of the most challenging projects in terms of lighting, not only because we had to work with an unusually sunny forecast but because we started losing light every day around 5pm. Shot mostly on Teele’s 5D Mark II, we managed to shoot in some very low light and difficult-to-reach places (such as Stephan’s rather grotty loft space) which again proved the benefits of using a DSLR. I helped out with lighting and camera and did some B-roll shooting on the 60D.
The film’s fantastic cast were Mark Jackson, Alex Aires and Jacob James Beswick who all excelled in their roles in the film. At this early stage of post-production we can’t let too many cats (or should I say rats) out of the bag but expect to see Peppermint at film festivals and competitions across the UK and beyond!
Also, if you’re looking to hire sound equipment in East Anglia and, like us, have found rental companies are few and far between around here head over to Rookery Productions Facebook page for enquiries; kit includes Rode NTG2 mic/ boom/ dead cat/Edirol R-44 four-input audio recorder/ lav microphones x2 (wired)/Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones: £35/day, £450 deposit +insurance +delivery.
This year I was lucky enough to bag press passes for Bestival and whilst I had the opportunity to take my camera and snap away I decided to go without and just enjoy everything the festival had to offer. Here’s some snippets of my review over at God is in the TV:
This year’s Bestival, Rob Da Bank’s festival on the Isle of Wight, narrowly avoided being hit by the tail end of hurricane Katia. Instead festival-goers were treated to a mostly dry weekend of sporadic sunshine and showers, once they got there of course.
In the interests of getting the negatives out of the way first, it must be reiterated that getting to Bestival is probably the worst thing about the festival. Ferry services from Southampton and Portsmouth are seriously over-stretched leaving thousands of revellers subject to several hours of seemingly endless queuing. Our wait was over four hours, with our booking for 4pm shifting slowly but surely towards gone 8pm. Once you’re off the ferry you find yourself in another queue for a shuttle bus or taxi to actually make the 6/7 mile trip to the festival site. We knew this to be the case and hitched a lift off the ferry with Paul, a security guard from ProTouch Security, working the festival. (He had waited three times as long as we had to catch the ferry!) Huge thanks to him!
The chaos at Southampton's Red Funnel Quay
Two of my highlights of the weekend were SBTRKT who pulled in a huge Big Top crowd to play a blinding set of his ambient, dubstep material. Whilst Sampha’s husky vocals struggled to transmit across the entire crowd it was still a treat to see SBTRKT drum live to recreate his unmistakable sound for the Bestival crowd.
The second highlight started immediately after SBTRKT finished. Approaching the stage to the distinctive sound of sirens were Chuck D, Flavor Flav and DJ Lord, better known as Public Enemy. They played to a huge crowd on the main stage and whilst their age is admittedly starting to show classics like Don’t Believe the Hype, Night of the Living Baseheads and Bring The Noise still sounded fantastic and their stage presence was as entertaining as ever.
After a break to enjoy some of the other Bestival sights and indulge in some fantastic festival food it was time for Magnetic Man to show exactly what a main stage Magnetic Man set should consist of; dazzling visuals (from their uber-expensive lighting rig) and flawless sounds. It proved to be the best set of the night on the main stage as Pendulum (Friday’s ill-chosen headliners) bypassed a lot of their superior Hold Your Colour tracks, instead opting for their over-played, over-hyped modern material.
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Some more surreal moments led us into the evening with The Village People performing on the main stage before Jaguar Skills, Paloma Faith and Grandmaster Flash followed to restore Bestival back to some sort of normality. Of course, this was the rockstars, popstars and divas fancy dress day of the festival, so everywhere you looked was like seeing The Village People.
The Saturday night was the strongest lineup of acts of the weekend and the treat of a main stage medley of PJ Harvey followed The Cure was wonderful. PJ Harvey, still on a high from her Mercury Prize win just a few nights before, had a relatively short but stunning set with tracks from all her albums stunning the audience.
In between PJ Harvey and The Cure we headed across the arena to try and catch some of Ed Sheeran’s set in the tiny Psychadelic Worm tent. However, after squeezing in, literally under the sides of the tent (to the dismay of Bestival security) we cut our losses (along with frustrated parents with children and hundreds of other fans) and headed back for The Cure. That was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the weekend, that the festival organisers had somehow not recognised the huge popularity of Suffolk-born singer-songwriter. It also could have ended horribly as the tent became crammed well over capacity.
Nevertheless, all was quickly forgotten as Robert Smith and co. took to the main stage to belt out a phenomenal main stage performance that lasted a staggering two and a half hours. Personal highlights included Lullaby, Just Like Heaven and A Forest but the whole set was mesmerising and proved they really were the main attraction at this years Bestival.
Saturday felt like an all-nighter as Primal Scream took to the Big Top straight after The Cure before a brilliant Metronomy performance at 2.15am rounded off a stunning and unrelenting 6 hours of music. Their excellent The English Riviera proving as popular and poignant as debut Nights Out.
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So, Bestival suffered from the year-on-year problems of it’s location (please just move it to somewhere in the south!) but proved once again that once you’re there it’s a fantastic festival that really does cater for everything. There’s certainly never a lack of things to do and pulling in acts like The Cure is sure to cement as one of the big-hitters of the festival circuit.
So I’ve had the Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM for around 8 months now, using it with my Canon 60D, and I’ve decided to return to this post (originally published August 26th 2011) because this lens has grown to be my favourite lens in my bag, and proven itself along the way snapping some of my favourite photos – all seriously sharp and all lovely and vivid in colour.
What I Originally Said:
I took it to The Big Chill Festival where I was asked to photograph the event for the weekend and I also did a few bits of video here and there too. I took it with the belief that I’d probably use it when the sun was out and then have to switch over to a shorter focal length, faster lens as the light disappeared. Turns out I barely took it off the camera as it performed brilliantly even in the lowest light. Rodrigo y Gabriela were on at 9.30pm on the final night and the sun has set, but still the Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM managed to snap this:
Before heading off to the other side of the country for the festival I’d also feared that I’d snap away and maybe 10% of my photos would be sharp due to the 200mm focal length becoming 320mm on the 60D’s 1.6x crop sensor and therefore less useful for hand-held shooting. The lack of IS on my bottom-end version of Canon’s 70-200 range would also be an issue given that I couldn’t get a tripod into the arena with me. This also turned out not to be the case, I even used it one-handed to reach around the front of the crowd and snap a lucky shot of Jay Electronica getting up close and personal with the crowd:
Another thing that has to be said for the 70-200 is it’s lightning quick (and silent) autofocus. I rarely missed a shot or focused incorrectly and that’s testament to the lens because I’m typically a “just one more” kind of photographer – Check out my full set of “keepers” on Flickr.
Further thoughts…
It’s now January 2012 and since posting about my bargain-buy lens (£370 second-hand on Gumtree was a steal considering it was like-new anyway) I’ve had a chance to use it in many more situations, including loads of video work – an area where I thought a 70-200 (effectively 112-320mm on the 60D’s 1.6 crop) lens would just be too long. It has continued to impress me whilst also proving that the 2.8 version would be handy in certain specific situations.
I’ve had the pleasure of photographing a few weddings since buying it and for the one I did in August where we had non-stop sunshine, it was just superb. Firstly it’s brilliantly lightweight which allowed me to use a two body set-up, switching back and forth between one camera with a wide lens and the other with the zoom. When hanging off my shoulder or even around my neck, the weight wasn’t overbearing or aching at all -the f/4 IS and f/2.8 versions are between 600 and 800g heavier than the modestly weighted 705g f/4 L USM. So first of all, no need to visit the chiropractor with this one!
More importantly, the images I got on that summer’s day were just excellent. Brilliantly sharp, super-fast and silent autofocus and my own personal favourite feature: the vivid colours that it captures. For a sub-£500 lens when purchased new, it’s a must-have if you’re shopping for a zoom on a budget. The proof is in the pudding… (click to see large version.)
The bokeh of the Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM is also lovely and smooth creating a really dreamy effect, especially at 200mm.
However, on another wedding I shot later in the year (a cold and dull December day in fact) the lens stayed in my bag for the most part. It was of no use to me inside the church as there simply wasn’t enough natural light to shoot at a clean ISO. I ended up switching between a 16-35mm f/2.8 II L USM (a beautiful wide zoom that I now desperately want to own) and an the hefty, mega-bucks 85mm f/1.2 L USM. Both were fast and sharp enough to get what the 70-200 couldn’t. So it has it’s advantages and disadvantages like any other, but realistically, if you shoot outdoors or you want a lightweight high-quality zoom lens for travelling, the f/4 L USM fits the bill.
Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM for Video
Much like the comparison of the wedding scenarios, I’ve found that daytime or studio (well-lit) shoots are great conditions for the 70-200, but shooting with it in the evening or indoors is probably out of the question unless you’re happy to shoot over 1250 ISO (which I never am, I like my video clean and noise-free!)
Don’t let that put you off though as it has been absolutely essential when shooting on certain video projects, particularly a recent studio shoot where it excelled at being pin-sharp and well-suited to focus-pulling. The focus ring, as with many large Canon L lenses, is nice and big and very smooth making focus-pulling in video mode really easy and accurate.
Aesthetically it’s also proven to produce excellent filmic images whereby the shallow depth-of-field twinned with a long, narrow focal length (between 70 and 135 is great) makes excellent movie-like shots. Here’s a still from an upcoming short film I helped shoot which sort of demonstrates my point (watch this space for some video examples when I get time to put them up.)
So that’s my 2 cents on this tried-and-tested (and pleasantly affordable) Canon 70-200 f/4 L USM lens. Feel free to ask questions/comment with your thoughts… If you’ve read this far you’ve done well as I’ve definitely rambled here!
As part of Lucozade’s YES moments campaign I went along to The Big Chill Festival in Herefordshire. My full review of the festival is available over at God is in the TV Zine but for my blog I’ll keep things short with a few snippets of my review:
“As soon as you arrive at The Big Chill you get a sense of a festival that takes pride in its warm and inviting atmosphere and beautiful setting. All the staff are helpful and whilst the mazes of the area’s road network are at times too much even for the stewards to figure out, eventually you find your way to the idyllic and remote Eastnor Castle Deer Park, a setting that gives the Big Chill an instant charm that most other festivals simply don’t have, as well as significantly more space to actually enjoy the camping experience rather than give up all privacy and dignity.
Whilst Friday was all but lost to the time spent travelling and getting set up (we only managed to catch Empire of the Sun, Aloe Blacc and Chemical Brothers) Saturday and Sunday seemed like polar opposites in many ways, the mainstream pop acts dominating the stages on the Saturday whilst living legends like Robert Plant played to an altogether different crowd on the Sunday. Nevertheless both days were full of highlights, another spot-on festival performance from Jessie J (an act I had reservations about even tolerating live) provided a fitting prelude to Mr West whilst on the Revellers Stage Calvin Harris, Example and Katy B impressed a noticeably youthful crowd.
My highlights of the festival, aside from the luxurious camping, included the three headline acts Kanye West, Chemical Brothers and the fantastic Rodrigo y Gabriela as well as a peppering of acts, big and small, across all stages. The Bullitts with their eclectic and diverse mix of inputs (Idris Elba, Lucy Lui, Jay Electronica) were a breath of fresh air on the main stage whilst Metronomy and Warpaint lived up to expectation too. My discoveries of the weekend, including Rodrigo y Gabriela who are now firmly on repeat on my iTunes, were Alexia Coley and the East Park Reggae Collective who both featured on smaller stages early in the day Sunday. Alexia Coley performed on the Reveller’s Stage a couple of days after the brilliant Aloe Blacc and greeted onlookers with the same passionate soul and Motown styles. The East Park Reggae Collective were bursting with energy and sounded fantastic tucked away on the People’s Ear Stage.”
And to tell the rest of the story here are a selection of photos from the weekend. For the full set visit My Flickr
This year I’ve been lucky enough to work on two entries into the 2011 Virgin Media Shorts competition. The first was ‘Click’, a short film written by UEA MA Scriptwriting graduate Drew Castalia. It stars Matt Downton a local up-and-coming actor as a student lost en route to his psychology exam. The test that awaits him is more than he could have ever expected or prepared for. It was shot by myself and James Gorman and the brilliant music is by Dave Bloor and Simon James.
The second entry to the competition I had the pleasure of working on is called ‘The Profit’, a science-fiction short starring a current drama student of UEA Tina Baston and directed by Ross Turner.
After looking at, researching, testing and analysing dozens of telephoto prime and zoom lenses I opted to go for the modestly priced Canon 70-200 f/4 L USM lens. I found a second hand copy being sold on eBay by a hobby photographer who lived locally so I snapped up the opportunity (excuse the pun) to bag a £500 lens for under £380 in mint condition (plus it has the handy tripod mount ring included.)
I’ve used every incarnation of the 70-200 L that Canon produces including the two f/2.8 versions (IS and non-IS) and the IS version of the f/4 and must admit it was only the 70-200 f/2.8 L II that was noticeably better in my experience, and even then only in terms of it’s capabilities with the faster aperture and image stabilisation. The image quality of all of Canon’s 70-200 lenses is superb and seldom differ in terms of sharpness and colour rendition. It’s still the cheapest lens in my kit bag but remains a personal favourite. This shot from one of the first weddings I ever shot is a great example of all of it’s advantages, including it’s fast autofocus:
Exposure – 0.002 sec (1/500) / Aperture – f/4.5 / Focal Length – 200 mm / ISO Speed – 320
The one down-side of this lens is that it will put the rest of your kit to shame. The latest lens I invested in was the 24-70 f/2.8 L and whilst I’ve been very impressed with it, I still don’t think it matches my (considerably cheaper and older) 70-200 f/4. Even wide open at f/4.0 this lens is pin-sharp to the finest detail and every snap I get with it just pops with colour and vibrance. It’s so pleasing to have a lens that you know is capable of capturing the very best detail and for the price you’ll struggle to find another lens that performs this well.
It must also be said that you shouldn’t let the f/4 aperture and lack of IS put you off. It’s the main reasons I hear people going for the twice or quadruple-priced 70-200 alternatives. If used correctly you can get great low-light results out of this lens despite the slower aperture. I’ve been using it with my 60D and have often had ‘wow’ moments where I’m surprised myself how well the photos have come out.
I used the 60D and 70-200 whilst covering The Big Chill Festival for Lucozade last year. I thought I would have to switch to my 50mm 1.4 when the light faded around 8pm each evening but thankfully that wasn’t the case. I was able to keep on shooting late into the night, photographing Kanye West and Rodrigo Y Gabriela with pleasing results:
Exposure – 0.005 sec (1/200) / Aperture – f/4.0 / Focal Length – 200 mm / ISO 1000
Exposure – 0.017 sec (1/60) / Aperture – f/4.0 / Focal Length – 135 mm / ISO 1000
Video Use
I bought this lens with the intention and assumption that it would serve as a stills lens but the moment I started using it for video I realised it was an all-rounder, brilliant at both photos and video. The focal length compression gives a lovely effect when shooting close-ups in short films and music videos at 135mm-200mm, blurring out the background beautifully with excellent bokeh. Even at f/8 this lens produces fantastically shallow depth of field whilst making your subjects pin sharp with great skin tones.
On a decent fluid video head it’s even possible to pan and tilt smoothly at the full 200mm end of the focal length. The IS in the other models of the Canon 70-200 admittedly make doing that much easier, and tracking (either on a slider or on tracks) smoother, but it’s still possible to get great camera movements using it.
Again, low-light performance is stunning on this lens in video mode. I shot this video entirely on the 70-200 at f/4 – f/5.6 and given the large focus ring and decent focus throw, it was relatively easy to follow focus too:
