Blog

Getting RAW with a DSLR – Part 1

November 28, 2014Josh Harmon

When I was first beginning in digital photography, shooting in RAW vastly changed how I not only approached a subject or scene but how I thought about image. The same thing happened last Spring when I had the opportunity to use a Black Magic Cinema Camera. It appears that RAW has an alluring and exciting effect on me.

As with still photography, shooting video in RAW opens up a whole new world of possibilities and control in regards to image fidelity, color, sharpness and grain. With RAW one has the ability to push a scene with lighting and not have to worry about clipped highlights and ugly noisy shadows (I will explain more on this). However these manifold possibilities brings with them many many questions and issues. Questions regarding workflows to get from camera to final render and issues such as storage space and computing power. Keeping these things in mind my hope for this post is to answer and resolve (pun intended) many of the common questions and issues for this workflow. I also hope to provide an easy(er) to follow guide on how to shoot RAW video on a Canon DSLR using MagicLantern.

Before you start you should ask yourself why you are planning to shoot in RAW. That is, does your project need to shot in this format? For this post I'll assume you're using a DSLR, and thus is the compressed HD DSLR video work for your needs? Shooting with RAW on a DSLR is not a guaranteed error free and easy process. Here are some things to consider before you start:
1. How much storage space do you have available?
2. How fast are your memory cards?
3. How fast is your computer? Can it run Davinci Resolve?
4. How protective are you of your camera?

1. A RAW project takes disk space, lots of it. My project last Spring, shot with a BMCC at 2.5k RAW, filled up ~1.5TB of space. That's for about ~2 hours of footage, each frame, CinemaDNG, was 5MB. With my 7D an average frame is about 1-2MB, at a resolution of 1728x724.

2. On this same note, RAW video is all the data that means much more data that needs to be moved from the sensor to your memory card. With DSLR's the main limitation in resolution and shooting times are how fast your memory card is. I use a 60MB/s 32GB SanDisk Extreme CF card, which allows me to shoot for ~30 seconds at 1728x724px. A 1000x card will allow for higher performance.

3. This next one is pretty obvious as well. You don't need to run Resolve but you do need a computer that has lots of memory to be able to wrangle a CinemaDNG sequence. I will be using Resolve Lite, which is free (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve), and am running it on a Mid-2014 MacBook Pro with 16gb RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 750M w/ 2GB.

4. Lastly, Magic Lantern is not warranteed by Canon and most likely will void your warranty so be aware of this before you use it. Check their website for more info, magiclantern.fm.

With those questions asked the first thing needed is to install Magic Lantern on your camera. For me this was very straightforward, I just downloaded the latest nightly build for my Canon 7D, unzipped the file, and drop the contents on the root directory of my CF card. Then I popped the card into the camera, navigated to the firmware update function in the menu, and updated the firmware to accept Magic Lantern. A quick restart later and Magic Lantern is installed.

At this point I would recommend playing around with the different features the "Hacked" firmware adds. For shooting video my most used features are Zebra's, Focus Peaking, and Cinemascope cropmarks. Further, if you aren't shooting RAW then playing with the bitrate control can give you a little bit more quality with compressed video.

To get prepped to actually shoot RAW you actually have to load several modules first. Since I am using a 7D I will be specific for what works with it. In the Magic Lantern go over to the MODULES tab and load file_man, mlv_play, and raw_rec (NOT mlv_rec as I found this module doesn't work on my 7D). Then restart your camera, you are now all set to shoot RAW!

Now go to the VIDEO tab and and enable RAW video and then toggle the advanced option. From this menu you can set the resolution you want. I shoot almost all my projects at around 2.35:1 so I opted to have the aspect ration at 2.39:1. With my CF card the highest horizontal resolution I can get at that ratio is 1728x724. With a faster card I could push that a bit more. I also then turn on Show Buffer Graph, this is helpful for monitoring how full the video buffer is to know how many more frames you can film before the recording stops.

NOTE, Magic Lantern uses the framerate set in the regular Canon menus, so make sure you have that set to the framerate you plan to use. For me I almost always shoot at 30p and then conform to 24p so that my footage has a little bit of a overcranked look.

Now to shoot RAW video just go to movie LiveView and press the REC button. Information related to how many expected frames, the buffer monitors, and other misc information will appear. Also, as another note, the smaller the resolution the smaller the shooting area. Basically, if you select a small resolution, such as 1200x600 or something like that, you are actually only recording a smaller centered portion of the image. As if you record at a higher resolution, like I am, you get almost or the full complete view.

Once you have recorded some RAW video you can play it back by going to the raw_rec module. It loads the mlv_play module which allows you to playback (either slowly in color, or faster in B/W) clips you've shot. You can also delete clips from here too. The raw_rec records your clips as .RAW files. In the following post I will go over how to access these and get CinemaDNG files that you can work with.

So that is it for this first post! Hopefully this should shed some light on the process of RAW video. In the following post I will go over how to take your .RAW files and export CinemaDNG files which I will then incorporate into a Davinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro X workflow. Stay tuned!

Falling Water - Inspiration and Coloring

November 14, 2014Josh Harmon

Ever have a creative idea that you just had to pursue? An idea, or better yet inspiration, that arrives in your head almost at whim, perhaps triggered by a song or other sensory stimuli. This is the sort of inspiration that I thrive on and live for. To me, this inception of concept is what allows me to truly express inner self.

As cliché as it might be, the inspiration for the latest of my swim promos I do for my college team came to me when I first listened to Golden by Parade of Lights. The song, which is a happy and upbeat pop style song, follows the chorus line of "Everybody get golden" which is then followed by an electronic melody and rhythmic pumping bass. Since my college's colors are blue and gold the lyrics resonated well with the idea of being in a promo video.

The other half of my inspiration came from the idea of water moving over skin. Reminiscent of those older Gatorade advertisements as well as classic Aqua Di Gio cologne commercials. Both of which feature stylized black and white footage with the Gatorade advert having athletes sweat the sports drink which is not monochrome. The Aqua Di Gio commercial just focussing on soft lighting and caustics (those refractive light patterns created when the sun travels through water) with water droplets sliding down skin.

Combining these inspirations led me to the visual style of selective desaturation. Where I wanted only the blue of the pool and swim suits to be visible with everything a metallic rustic gold monochrome.

This promo is also surprising by the fact that I filmed, edited, and colored it in three days. The first day of filming I only had a brief window (pun intended) to shoot. The pool was being used for a club team swim meet and by the time everyone had left and the pool cleared the sun had just gone down. Further only three of the athletes on my team could make it to film. However I chose to focus on more of what I call atmospheric or "feels" shots. Shots that are meant to convey a feeling or sense of environment.

The pool my campus is blessed to have is a wonderful indoor pool that posses the rare quality of having large windows on three of its walls. For those who are not familiar with collegiate pools in the midwest, most of them are dungeons without any natural light. These large windows allow for a very natural open feeling. Since the sun was setting the light coming from the windows was absolutely gorgeous. It had that sublime soft directional nature that allowed for deep shadows but also a flattering lightness in the highlights. From this light I got my several of my favorite shots, specifically where the swimmers/divers stare into the lens of the camera and look intimidating while water is dripped down their face.

The next day I filmed the rest of the promo. To get some motion in the short I used a GlideCam with a Canon 5DII and 17-40L. For the diving I liked the idea of following the diver off the board with the camera. Unfortunately this makes them appear very small in the frame once they are in the air but I like the overall dynamic nature of those shots so I kept them. For the swimming I wanted to get several dolly like tracking shots, which I managed to get by adjusting the balance so I could tilt down easier. To compensate for the wide angle the glidecam shots have I mixed some telephoto shots shot on tripod to get closer details.

While my focus that second day of shooting was to get the action shots I still spent some time getting more feels angles. Firstly I needed some detail shots of male swimmers. Since I was filming much earlier than the day before I had the benefit of being to use the caustic lighting of the sun off the water. I absolutely love this light and snagged some really cool details of water on skin with it.

With all the footage filmed I quickly pieced together a simple edit, knowing that the coloring process would be the focus. From the basic edit I went straight into Davinci Resolve. Having become decently experienced with it I already knew how to structure my nodes to get the look I wanted.

Basically, in plain english, my workflow as as follows: Create clean plate (adjust exposure and color to be neutral), select blues and isolate them (using both color selector and power windows), boost blues a little bit to give a more electric blue, desaturate non-blues, boost contrast to get metallic look, give golden shade to metallic b/w, add vignette, add film LUT, and lastly sharpen. Basically here is my node structure from Resolve:

I used mostly serial nodes and a layer node for the selective desaturation. Not visible is the LUT and sharpening node I added to the whole timeline to be consistent.

Here is a progression of a single frame from how it looked out of camera to finished render:

"Raw" from camera

Balanced Plate

Blue mask

Initial desaturation

Contrast boosted

Gold hue added

Final with vignette added

All in all I was finished with the promo, including color, on the third day. I am very excited with how it turned out and absolutely love the look I was able to achieve. It continues to amaze me how productive and efficient I can be when I am truly inspired.

Frew's Bridal 2014 Monster Mannequin Show and Flash Mob

November 10, 2014Josh Harmon

With that long descriptive title one can easily figure out what this post is all about. For Halloween this year I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Erin Frew of Frew's Bridal (frewsbridal.com) and (bestbridalprices.com) to produce a video of their now annual Mannequin and Flash Mob. It was an exciting night and mildly stressful night that was over faster than it started.

Me, Kai, and Vince as we were finishing up

I had actually covered this same event two years ago with my good buddy and film partner Damon Wilgus. At that time we approached the project in a very simple run and gun style. With that experience in mind, when I was hired to work this year I took a more formal approach. Realizing I would need more angles I enlisted the help of Kai Patterson and Vince Lomascolo so that with me on camera I would have three angles to work with. This allowed me to also be more creative by having each camera be either: wide, telephoto, or glidecam.

The event follows to events: the monster mannequins and the flash mob dance. Frew's Bridal in Alton Illinois is a fabulous and gorgeous bridal store with a cozy family "hole-in-the-wall" feeling. The store resides in a classic midwestern brick downtown building with a high ceilinged first floor, much window space, and lots of square footage. For Halloween the city, Alton, traditionally has a parade that travels right in front of the store. To get in the spirit of the holiday, the store replaces the static mannequins with live models in dolled up in monster makeup and costume. These live mannequins then stand in the windows and entertain the huge crowd of parade going spectators.

For the first half, or intro, of the video I wanted to get some solid detail shots of the mannequins and be sure I got all the detail the makeup artists and hair stylists put into each person. Basically I just had each person go and get whatever b-roll they wanted, making sure they felt free to use their creativity.

The second half of the shoot is the most important and real reason for the video, the flash mob. The Principia Dancers and the Alton High Dance Team worked with Jason Wissman to choreograph an exciting flash mob dance that was performed in the street immediately in front of the store. This is where the shoot got very tricky.

Me with the full GildeCam (off brand) rig

With three cameras I was not worried about coverage of the dance so much as getting solid and interesting shots. Further only I had previewed the dance before hand so I had to rely on Kai and Vince to adapt quickly. Luckily I managed to have the dance performed twice. Further, on top of the very live nature of the dance was the poor lighting of the street. I had hoped to be able to get third party lighting which unfortunately didn't happen. Even so, boosting my exposure to be at 180˚ f/4 ISO 1600 on a 5DmkII on glidecam turned out fine with some color correcting work in Davinci Resolve. Kai used my 7D at 180˚ f/~2 ISO 400-800 which was plenty solid. Lastly was Vince using his Black Magic Production 4k camera. Unfortunately his camera, while an awesome cinematic camera, made a poor low light event camera with its limit at ISO 800 which I managed to boost exposure with a 360˚shutter angle. Fortunately recording in ProRes422 at 4K gave tons of room in post to boost color and exposure.

Several of the mannequins/dancers Jason Wissman is the Joker

WIth these technical issues aside, the shoot went very smooth with plenty of footage and coverage. In post I edited everything in FCPX using multicam clips heavily for the dance portion. From FCPX I graded everything in Resolved with which I had a few technical hiccups with mixed frame rates (24fps and 23.976fps) which I managed to iron out by hand in FCPX. Basically the audio unsynced itself from the multicam and I had to go clip by clip resyncing each to the song track.

Overall I am very happy with the final product. It's great experience working live events and this was no exception. Big thanks to Kai and Vince for being able to work it. Another thanks to all the dancers and Jason Wissman for his awesome choreography. Another shoutout to the mannequins and the makeup and hair artists. Finally thanks to Erin Frew and Frew's Bridal for the opportunity to work on such a project.

Contact Me

Josh Harmon Images