As one of the moderators of this site, I figure I should post some of my own work. This shoot was a little scary for me, as Jarom works for WETA in New Zealand! What a killer job. I am working on getting a write up from him.

So this was my first outing with the 7D. And I have to say I was terrified. It was an interview session with the couple who was getting married in two days and I hadn’t synced off-camera sound since my 16mm days at the University of Utah. Thank goodness Denver was a phone call away and gave me some fast tips on recording the audio.

For the camerawork, I used the Canon 7D and two lenses. The 28-135, f3.5-5.6 kit lens and the 50mm 1.8. For my CF cards, I use the Sandisk Extreme 16 GB cards (bought on Amazon new for around $105 each). I used only natural light coming through a large set of windows behind me. It worked perfectly. I soon bagged the 50mm and used only the zoom lens. It just made more sense as everything was time sensitive – I had to edit the entire thing that evening and didn’t want to hassle with readjusting my set ups too much to accommodate a prime. Also, I didn’t want super shallow DOF of the interviews, as I wanted their faces to be in full focus. I never went below 5.6 (another Denver tip).

For the audio, I used 2 wireless sennheiser ew100 G2 microphone kits, and recorded everything to the Zoom H4N. In short, I love it. If I could pick my two favorite pieces of gear (other than my camera), it would be my Glidetrack and my Zoom. It’s incredibly compact and the sound quality is far superior to any sound I got using my old XH-A1. To sync the sound in post, I used my trusty little DIY clapper you see in the video. Someone bought me a cheap decorative clapper board from a record store years ago. In a pinch, I glued a dry erase board to the front of it (to mark my shots), and used it to sync the Zoom to 7D. In post, I did the syncing manually in Final Cut (I don’t own Plural Eyes) and it took me about 15 minutes to sync about 10-12 interview shots. A piece of cake. If you plan to sync in post, definitely have some sort of visual syncing tool. Even a hand clap by the subject will work.

In post, I did very little color correction. On the head shots, I did mute the colors a bit to get a fully white background, and pulled down my saturations a bit (I shot everything in the portrait preset).

For the exterior handheld shots, I used a $50 shoulder mount from Adorama. It worked perfectly.

The biggest difficulty for me was not blowing out my whites. The LCD in direct sunlight can be a challenge to view, so an extended viewfinder would have helped immensely. I hope you enjoy it.

Best,

Ryan

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