I donated a piece of art to the Cash For Cash event. It raised some money to help a friend with his dog Cash’s vet bills. You can see the event (and me about 1:20 into the video on the right side of the screen) by clicking here:
Bad weather video…
That’s right. I did another video. It covers the recent storm damage that our community had to deal with:
Protection…
I sort of rambled my way through the last post, covering important areas of interest before the actual shoot. I looked at it from the view of a major label album shoot, since that’s what I’m most familiar with. However, I can tell you that it also applies to a big commercial shoot, or almost any production that is worth several thousand dollars or more.
Since I was just going over details off the top of my head, I’m sure I missed a few important things to remember. One thing I forgot to mention is the importance of contracts. You’ll be buried in paperwork that needs to be signed. You’ll send over an estimate and/or invoice, a w-9, a signed contract that was probably bounced back and forth a few times during negotiations, and releases.
You’ll need to get all the models to sign a release. It basically says that you are allowed to use their likeness for commercial and editorial use. You’ll need to get any private location to sign a release. It allows you to use their land and building without fear of being sued for trespassing. You may also have a separate “gag order” contract for everyone on set to sign. In other words, they aren’t allowed to discuss any of the shoot details until after the end product is released.
Hope you planned on printing out a ton of these, getting them signed, scanning them in to save with the digital files, and storing the originals (or sending them along with the client, depending upon your rights agreement). This all takes time, and time is money…
How to handle busy…
I haven’t blogged in a little while, because I’ve been pretty busy. Besides my regular clients, I’ve had a few extra shoots to squeeze into my schedule. Plus, I’ve been dealing with the massive amounts of planning that come with a major record label album cover shoot.
I figured this would be a good topic to discuss. You can find all sorts of great blogs and web tutorials about proper lighting, but rarely do you hear about the before and after parts of a shoot. Let me tell you this: The bigger the shoot, the bigger the pay, and the bigger the amount of pre and post work that has to be done. You NEED to factor this into your budget.
Let me run down the list of things that you will most likely be responsible for during a major label shoot worth thousands to tens of thousands of dollars (depending on the popularity of the artist). Some things you will delegate to other people on your team, but you are still responsible to make sure it happens.
First, you will need to hire a photo assistant. You don’t want to waste time moving lights or messing with little things when you could be discussing details with the band or the art director. You could be visualizing your next shot or looking over images already shot. A photo assistant is there to move things, set up things, watch things, and basically be an extra set of hands, eyes, and ears for you. Labels out of New York expect you to have one and won’t mind seeing the fee on your invoice.
These days, you may also have a digital tech on set. With the added hassle of downloading and backing up images, previewing images, and all the other junk associated with digital photography, this person will be a necessity. The digi tech will be taking all your CF cards and manning the computer, making sure all your precious images are safe.
Next is the make-up artist and/or stylist. I say and/or, because you might only need one or you might need both. For easy-going rock bands, I usually just get a stylist who knows a little about taking shine off skin and fixing up some stray hairs. It saves several hundred dollars that a make-up artist would add into the mix. However, some shoots will keep a stylist so busy with clothing, accessories, and other styling prep work…. some shoots may require specialized or excessive make-up skill. These are the shoots to hire both.
Who is handling catering?!? For all my album shoots, I’ve just had to pack a cooler with some drinks and a basket with some snacks. Every once in a while, you may be working on such a big production that you will hire a separate catering company to deal with this. I’ve done it for a huge multi-day advertising shoot, but most bands just want snacks and drinks on set.
Props?!? Did someone say props? Yes, you will work with your stylist and art director to find and approve all the items you need for the shoot. My shoot coming up next week requires a big sheet birthday cake with a certain phrase written on it. Who is going to order it and pick it up? Most of the time, it will be you. It could also be your assistant or your stylist, depending on the amount you are paying them.
Where are you shooting? The last time I shot this band, I had them come to Dallas and I had some pretty good ideas in my head of where to go. I still had to spend a day driving around and getting images of the places to share with the label in New York, so they could give final approval. This day needs to be factored into your fee, or you are basically working that day for free.
There is another option, and that is to hire a location scout. These people will be extra handy if you are flying into a different city to shoot. You may not arrive with enough time to scout the area, or you may be too busy shooting for other clients to take a day off of shooting to scout. Scouts cost money, but can be useful.
OK, so the what, when, where, and who are all taken care of. Wait a minute… We have the “behind the lens” who figured out, and we know the band will be the who in front of the camera, but what about… extras? Yup, you may be asked to cast any extras for the shoot. That takes time, sometimes a lot of time. Luckily, the band is casting the extras for this upcoming shoot. That saves me hours of calling around and meeting with or auditioning people.
Oh, did we discuss what you are shooting with? No?? Did you discuss it with the label??? No???? Guess what… every client has slightly different needs and expectations from you. This one wants me to shoot RAW, but also give them TIFF conversions. Some may ask for a minimum file size. Some may expect you to be shooting medium format digital. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What about lighting? Do you have everything you need? Are you shooting away from an electrical outlet and need to rent a generator or battery-powered strobes? I’ve rented a Profoto 7B pack in the past so I could have studio quality lighting and still be 100% battery-powered to go anywhere during the shoot. Of course, I have my own Profoto brand kit these days, but what if I needed to rent extra heads or an extra power pack?
You need to factor in the time and money to rent the gear, even considering the time it took to drive down to the photo district and pick up the stuff. If you are shooting over the weekend, you need to go pick up the rental gear on Friday. Are you able to take time out of your schedule to do it? I hope so, or you’ll be paying an assistant to do it for you or an extra day of rental fee to pick it up early.
Think you have all the pre-shoot figured out now? Nope, not even close. Most likely, unless you live in NY or LA, you will do all your planning by phone and email. Heck, even if you are in the same city, you will still probably do 90% of the planning via phone conferences and emails. You know what happens? A bunch of talking that takes even more time. A bunch of emails to read and respond to. And I mean a BUNCH!!! This label is planning to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, off this band. They are going to be bugging you night and day, bombarding you with questions and comments, making sure things are perfect.
For my one day of scheduled shooting next week, I’ve probably already spent a full day of reading emails and making phone calls each week. I have dealt with at least a hundred emails over the last few days from a million different people. Several label execs, the art director, a few of the band members, my stylist, other people I hired, the band’s management, some guy who is making some clothing for the shoot, the location contact, and on and on and on.
I’ll stop there, because this is pretty long now. There is a bunch of post-shoot stuff to deal with, but I’ll save that for another day. The point was to make sure you understand what goes into a shoot that might bill the cost of a new car or more. The photog didn’t just come up with a magical number and grab his point and shoot. That photog earned every penny through a TON of work for a handful of final images.
If you land a big gig like this, you had better start asking what the budget is, what the shoot ideas are, and a million of the questions covered above, so you can accurately figure out the REAL cost of taking the pictures. If they say you will be given five grand for the shoot and all image rights, then expect you to eat four grand in production costs (assistants, location fees, catering, make-up and props, etc), you might be getting ripped off. If they say you will get a five grand creative fee, you retain your copyright, plus get to bill ALL the expenses to them, you might be able to pull something like this off and still feed your family at the end of the day…
A helpful chart…
Wanting to buy new CF cards to feed your hungry Canon 5D mkII, but don’t know which card works best? Look here:
Not all CF cards are alike, and write speed is important when you are trying to stuff those big files onto a card in a timely manner. I just got some new Sandisk Extreme III 8 gig cards, and they seem to be working OK in the camera. I’m going to read over the list and see where they land…
www.cinema5d.com
I just discovered this forum…
Video is not my strong point, so I’m still learning. Actually, I have an absolute TON to learn. I’ve got a basic process down with my camcorder and Final Cut Pro, but I’m not really all that efficient yet. And now that I have awesome video capability on the Canon 5D mkII, I have even more to learn.
Most of the stuff being talked about on the forum goes over my head, but I’m still excited to know that I have a place to discuss 5D mkII video tips, FCP importing and editing suggestions, and other misc video questions.
The beauty of Canon…
So, get this… I got my 5D camera body back from Canon. I sent it off last Friday with a broken shutter (look for my previous post about how I destroyed it). I sent it two day Fedex, so they would’ve received it on Tuesday of this week. Well, I just got it back today – Friday, one week after I sent it – and that includes my slow shipping!
Talk about fast service!!! But, that’s not all. There’s more tale to tell…
So, I’m a member of Canon’s CPS. It stands for Canon Pro Services. You have to actually apply and show proof that you are a pro shooter, with minimum gear purchases and tear sheets proving you shoot for real and aren’t just some weekend warrior or soccer mom. I’ve been a CPS member for years now.
A while back, I got a certificate for $100 off any CPS service. However, I let it expire a good six months ago and never used it. Well, I put it in with my broken camera and crossed my fingers, hoping they would ignore the expiration date. They went ahead and took my certificate, even though they didn’t HAVE to. How nice/cool/awesome is that?!?
It was pretty important that I got the extra $100 off, because it turned out that only the parts were $300. There was still $300 in labor to deal with. I was originally assuming a $300 total bill, after the 20% discount that CPS members get. The total wound up being (with misc shipping, tax, etc) about $650, minus the $120 for my CPS 20% discount, minus the $100 from my certificate.
That extra $100 certificate made the cost a little easier to bear. $430 vs $530 (or $650 if I weren’t a CPS member), I’ll always take the $430 charge! Of course, I’d prefer a zero dollar charge, but that just wasn’t possible here.
Canon is so cool. fast service, really great customer care, and great products to begin with. I needed a company to love, and Canon came to the rescue!!!
It’s official: my computer is old…
I tried to work on some test video from the new Canon 5D mkII today. It shoots some outrageous HD video! Only one problem… my computer just can’t keep up with rendering all that video. In Final Cut Pro, a regular chunk of video would take about ten seconds to render. The same chunk in HD was ten minutes!!!
I’m gonna switch the camera to non-HD for now. If I take normal, non-HD video, the computer can digest it. And all my video stuff appears tiny on the web, so HD isn’t a priority yet. Not to mention that a 4 gig card got filled up in 13 minutes of shooting HD video. I don’t even know where I’d store all the files after a few video shoots. I’d be trying to store about twelve gigs of video per shoot, which adds up to a lot of hard drive space QUICK!!!!!
I’ll get this all figured out soon enough and report back. But I will say this… The initial video I just shot has me thinking the 5D mkII will be a pretty cool piece of equipment in the war on documentary video!
Rhett and I are getting some press…
So, it’s no big shocker that Rhett Miller’s new album is getting critical acclaim. It is great, so why wouldn’t it? Rolling Stone gave it four stars! Can you believe that?!? They are pretty frugal with those stars, so anything above three with them is like gold.
Bu they aren’t the only ones talking about it. Every important local and national publication has had a glowing review of the album so far. The cool thing is that I’m actually getting some press off of this, too! It’s rare for people to interview the photographer of an album, so it’s nice to get some love. Look here:
http://blog.quickdfw.com/archives/2009/06/rhett-millers-new-album-cover.html#more
Also, I’ve been name dropped a couple times. Once in this CD review:
And finally, Rhett name dropped me this morning, during his on air interview Tuesday, June 9, 2009, on The Ticket. It’s Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket, but they talk about a lot more than just sports. They have podcasts up on iTunes, but they run a few days behind the live content. Realistically, this one should be available to download on Friday, I think…
I just think it’s cool that I’m getting some love for my effort on this project. Rhett did such a great job, and I was glad to be a part of it! Now, go out and buy a copy! Or, don’t go out when you can order it online, like here:
Canon 5D mkII and Me: A Love Story…
OK, so I have had the new Canon 5D mkII for half a day so far. I think I am in love!!! I haven’t put it through its paces yet, but I’ll have plenty of time to do that in the near future with my upcoming magazine shoots and my next major label album cover shoot later this month…
This is by no means a very scientific test. It is me taking some images around the house with the new Canon 5D mkII and nothing more. If you want one of those “technical” reviews, there are plenty of them available on other websites. Hopefully, this will give you a good idea of what the 5D mkII can do on an average day of shooting.
The big thing I wanted to test out was its high ISO image quality. I tried to find several scenarios where a higher ISO was needed to see if the images held up or not. On my old 5D (the original, or mkI, I suppose), I could get useable images at 1600 ISO, but mainly you’d want to stay at or below 800 ISO if possible. 1000, 1250, and 1600 ISO were just a bit too noisy for best quality. With the mkII’s ability to shoot at up to 25600 ISO (wow!!!), I needed to see how it REALLY looked at high ISO values…
Of course the first thing I’m going to shoot with my new camera is going to be my boys! The room was kind of dark, so I cranked up the camera to XX ISO and shot a couple frames. Looking at the image at 100% in Photoshop, it holds up well. The mkII’s 6400 ISO looks like the grain from a roll of good quality 800 ISO film. It has a very pleasing digital grain/noise to it in the mids and highlight areas. I’ll have to test it more in the shadows to see how it REALLY holds up. That’s where digital grain/noise can look bad.
I decided to go out to the garden and test the camera out more. I wanted to see how it would do with colors and details… really, I just wanted to shoot anything and everything I could find! This camera is addictive.
I loved the way the water was dripping off this tiny tomato. The garden was shaded at the time, and the macro extension tube means more light loss, so the Canon 5D mkII came in handy. This image was shot at 1000 ISO, but looks more like 400 ISO. The mkII allows you to bump the camera up to 1600 ISO and still shoot beautiful images. Its 1600 ISO looks like the original 5D’s 640 ISO… it’s that good!
This is a section of the above picture at 100% and 10″x10″ at 72 ppi, so you can view the detail.
I loved the color of tiny little cherry tomatoes. Image details were 1/320 sec, 9.0f, 3200 ISO.
This is a section of the above picture at 100% and 10″x10″ at 72 ppi, so you can really see the detail available. Can you believe this was shot at 3200 ISO?!? Not too bad…
I saw these ants walking across a flower, so I thought I’d see just what the Canon 5D mkII, an 85mm 1.8f lens, and an extension tube could do. This is still cropped in from the original image quite a bit, but the huge file size of the mkII makes that less of an issue. There was still enough of a file left to make a good print. Besides being cropped, this image received a bit of sharpening in Photoshop to help bring out some of the details.
Playing around, I decided to take a picture of a cactus. I cropped this image to square in Photoshop, but no sharpening or other manipulation was done.
This image was taken at 1/100 sec, 3.2f, 6400 ISO in a somewhat dark area of the house. I’ll have to say that the 5D mkII seems to be holding its own so far!!!
The image below was taken at 12,800 ISO in a dark living room. I could’ve NEVER taken this image with my old 5D camera… The 5D mkII can do so much more with so much less light. It is amazing! yeah, it is a bit grainy, but what do you expect for 12,800 ISO?!? It looks at good as other camera’s 1600 ISO.
I have never been able to get this cat to sit still in a brightly lit location. Finally, I was able to get a decent image in a softly-lit corner of a room. Enough window light was coming in that the mkII worked fine. This image, when blown up to 100%, looks like 1600 ISO on the original 5D. It has some digital grain, but it’s not the end of the world. Of course, this wasn’t shot at 1600 ISO… nope, it was shot at 6400 ISO on the mkII. Yup, the Canon mkII’s XX ISO looks as good as the 5D’s 1600 ISO! I cropped the image to square and added a bit of sharpening in Photoshop to bring out the fur and whiskers.
The image below was taken at the highest ISO setting possible on the camera. If you go into custom functions, you can turn on high 1 & 2, which goes up to an insane 25,600 ISO!!! Sure, it is super-nasty as far as grain is concerned, but it’s better than getting no image at all. The lack of light in the room when this was taken was nuts! It was too dark to focus. It was movie theater dark. It was just plain dark. But I got something which could be printed… perfect for spot/breaking news stories where an image might be taken in less-than-perfect visual conditions (like the sewer system story I recently did). Details: 1/40 sec, 1.4f, 25,600 ISO. Canon 5D mkII and Canon 50mm 1.4f lens.