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Electronic Eye

Sydney Video Makers club newsletter

Dear <<First Name>>, we are so glad that you are reading this :)

LINK to see club calendar.

The Electronic Eye, or EE for short, is the newsletter for the Sydney Video Makers (a.k.a. SVM) Club. You can peruse past edition of the newsletter on our website. We use this newsletter to advise of our upcoming club meetings and provide pertinent news items from our members. We do not wish to be a "me too" video magazine as there are plenty of those already on the web.

The EE is open to both financial members and non-members who are interested. If you wish, you can easily unsubscribe at anytime and if you got this forwarded to you, and want to subscribe you can do so via our club website.

Club Night Tomorrow

We shall be screening and discussing the SIX entries in the Music Video competition.
Doors open at 7:30pm for a prompt start at 8pm

Members and actors in comp entries free
Visitors $10

Through the President's Lens

Sometimes I feel like I am just talking to myself on these pages as I don't seem to get any feedback! So I have created a short and simple survey to find out if there is any point in writing any editorial content here.

Please answer the following SURVEY if you wish to see the Newsletter continue.

KYNO software - discount

I have been in touch with the designer and creator of KYNO from http://lesspain.software, (yes, really!) which is a software package for Windows, Macs and Linux. I have obtained a 20% discount for our club members (you must be a financial member). You can download a 30 day evaluation of Kyno for free, and then if you like it, then email me for the discount code!

The Cinematic Look

If I had a dollar for every time I hear or read about "the cinematic look", I would be well on my way to buying that new Blackmagic 4k Pocket camera! But WHAT IS this mystical creature called the cinematic look, and why should I care? I think this could be another Facebook discussion header.

It seems to me that movie making is very fashion driven. Some years it is fashionable to shoot dolly shots, where every damn (ops, sorry) shot was moving left or right. Then someone discover that if you turn your slider 90 deg, you can have push in/pull out shots, so we got plenty of those. Then came the narrow DOF as larger sensors and faster lenses became more affordable. But this too can be over done, when every facial CU has the ears already out of focus.

Now we have the cinematic look. Is this what you get when you shoot a Red Epic or Arri Alexa kit costing $50k to $200k and then degrade the image with a Kodachrome LUT? (to make it look like it was shot on an iPhone 5?). You tell me. Email me with your thoughts.

Colour Grading

Last meeting at Focus Night, Iulian Demetrescu gave us an introduction to colour grading. I guess this is just one aspect of the cinematic look. Colour grading shouldn't be confused with colour correction.

X-Rite Color Checker Video

The latter aims to correct for incorrect camera white balance, and camera sensor short falls, whereas colour grading is used to convey mood, or change the look of an image. A very useful tool for colour correction is one of the colour checker cards, from X-Rite or Spyder Datacolor.

Primary colour grading effects the entire frame and secondary colour grading usually only effects a region, which could be either a region mask or a colour mask.

Close brother to colour grading is the use of LUTs, which are Look Up Tables for transforming some colours to some other colours.

There is a ton of good training material on this subject on Youtube, so I will refrain from repeating their content. Recommend you do some self training and experiment...

Tech News

ZOOM F6

Exciting audio news is the announcement of the Zoom F6 field recorder, which I believe is the first product to use 32 bit recording. This means that you do NOT have to set input gain level, as the device will never clip. 32 but recording provides over 4 BILLION levels resolution (4,294,967,296 to be precise!). The mic capsule would clip before the recorder. So this is like "raw" recording for audio, as levels can be adjusted in post without any loss in quality.

Zoom F6 32bit Field Recorder

This is a "game changer" as they say! Here is a video overview of the F6.

DJI Osmo Pocket in a Cage

The EXO Cage, the first and only, pro grade cage for the DJI Osmo Pocket, had arrived in Australia. It is made by Italian company, Taipan Cinema Tools. It allows a pint sized setup centred around the Osmo Pocket, which can be mounted in a variety of ways and include external mics and lights, and other stuff.

Technology keeps on getting better and better. I wish that movie content could be doing the same. Ah, well...

Join me on our Facebook page with your discussion and feedback...

Paul Szilard
President

The club has ordered 2 of these, which will be available for free loan to financial members for club related shoots. The mics will be added to our club asset list.

Club Teams

Eddie Hanham - Team Leader and club VP

We currently have 5 team leaders:

Mark Ward's team called ATOMS ("we make up everything")
Ian Scott team called NUTS ("Not Usually Too Serious")
Paul Szilard team called PACKERS
Wednesday Productions led by Eddie Hanham
Mike Black and family called The Black Staff

If you would like change or join a team, please advise Eddie first. Here is Eddie's email.

4 Sale or Wanted

If you have an item to sell, or want to place "Wanted" advert, then contact email the Editor.

Buy and Sell Protocol

Financial members may use this section of the EE to detail information about second hand photographic/video equipment which they wish to dispose of.

This allows other Members to be advised of the opportunity.

The Club is not involved in or have any responsibility for any such sales.

Commercial representation

Direct or indirect commercial representation of new products by members is not permitted in this EE or during Club Activities.

Articles of relevant general interest about new products are allowed in EE.

4Sale

4Sale
La Cie Thunderbolt dual HDD external drive

Contact: Paul Szilard, Tel: 0414 269 404, Email: paul@remektek.com.au
Item: Fitted with 2x 2TB HDDs in RAID 0, giving 4TB of fast storage over a Thunderbolt 1 10Gps connection
Price: $400
Options: includes Thunderbolt cable, can also be sold without HDDs so you can install your own, for only $300
Description: Any details, with photos and links

Assets

Club assets that are available for loan to financial members

Mark Ward is the Asset Manager. He is reachable on the email address of assets@sydneyvideomakers.org.au

Loan Procedures

Club assets can be borrowed by club members that are financial, for club related shooting only.
Contact the Asset Manager (Mark Ward)
The borrowing member is responsible for returning the items in the same condition they were in when borrowed. Damage or loss are the responsibility of the borrower.