I’m unhappy with my galleries module for some time now and search for alternatives and test the out. After some time experimenting with different Lightbox solutions I decided to try the easy way and do it like it did with Vimeo and try a (social) picture platform now. After some research I decided to try Flickr and 500px. For now I’m not sure which service is best or what I’ll do in the long run. I like the layout of 500px much more than Flickr, but on Flickr I’m able to create sets without having to pay for it.

Here are the links to both platforms with the first pics I uploaded there:
500px.com/irieger
flickr.com/photos/irieger

Again it’s necessary: This is some vital sign which is long overdue …

I’m now studying again and use much of the free time to get some footage so my blog again was a bit out of my attention again. Now here is a little clip I shot on Friday showing a nice sunset. Tripod wasn’t set up properly so I’d have to do some heavy post processing or what I prefer get out again and shoot with better setup to get the best out of it.

I’m currently working on finishing some cuts and will upload some more stuff soon.

It was the sunday 8 days before Rosenmontag again. This day is the day of HALLia VENEZiA (additional Website), a masquerade ball in our wonderfull city of Schwäbisch Hall along the lines of the traditional Venetian one, was celebrated. As the years before there where nice mask, robes and friendly poses. Despite -10°C at 11am many photographer and filmers where at the Globe theater where the masked participants met to pose for the photographers and then went through the streets.

This year of course I decided to film the event and so I followed the goings-on for hours. Beforehand I had done some interviews with people from the club organizing this event and now I’m working on a short documentation about this event. To show some impressions I decided to do the rough cut you see above. The cut of the docu will take some time but then I’ll publish it here of course.

“Technical details”

I was recently asked which camera and lenses I used so here are some information about the gear used. I filmed on the NEX-5n while my father used his A77. The clip mostly contains recordings from the NEX cause my father had problems with the focus so I only used some of his shots. The lenses I used are the Sony SAL-2875 and the SAL-70200.

For shots with my shoulder rig I tried the Sony SEL-1855 (f3.5 to 5.6) which I lent from a friend to test especially the stabilization. After some shots I decided to switch back to my 28-75 cause the handling of the small 18-55 for the NEX is bad. It’s to small for use on the rig I think cause with the follow focus you have problems to use the zoom ring. And I don’t have NDs for this lens and the aperture is a bit bad… So the handheld shots are also mostly SAL-2875 with stabilization in FCPX which surprised me with its picture quality when I first used it.

My sister and here friend saw a television ad for the 99 Fire Films Award and told me about it. So I decided to register and look what’s the topic this year. The basic task is to concept and realize a short film of exactly 99 seconds excluding the title and the credits.

On the 31st January the topic, “Put a smile on your face!”, was published and two friends and I thought about it. After some hours we had the idea of a board game party ending with a happy smile of the winner of a game. So we planed what to shoot and worked on the “production design” – one of the strange terms where that there have to be the number 500 visible in the film – and designed a bottle label containing the number 500. The next day we filmed and then had two days for the post production which was great so there was many time to select some nice shots, search for music etc.

The video on top is the video we created and we’re mostly happy with the result. Of course it could have been done better but for the short time and our low budget hobby crew I think it’s great. I’m still not the perfect color grader so the skin tones are not perfect but I’m improving my skills from time to time ;-)

My father recently bought the A77 so of course I had to play with it and test some stuff. After doing some basic tests and got a feeling for the usage of the cam I decided to focus on a low light comparison with the NEX-5n and some AF testing. But after the video with this two topics and some words about it, I’ll write down some general thoughts about the A77.

Low light and AF test

Download the source file on Vimeo for better image quality. Keep in mind that this test is totally unscientific. All footage without color grading. Only post process are the titles and the tests with the Neat Video noise reduction plugin demo I’m currently playing with.

For the low light test I took my NEX-5n and the A77 with two tripods and shot some scenes in my hometown Schwäbisch Hall. I tried to have both cameras as near as possible. Both the NEX-5n with the LA-EA1 lens adapter and the A77 where equipped with the Sony SAL-2875 with 2.8 constant aperture. Then I tried to get the same field of view so the lens on the NEX needed more zoom due to the additional A77 video crop. Both cameras where rolled at the same time with the same settings to have direct comparison.

For me the NEX-5n seems a bit cleaner even if both have “some” noise especially when shooting at ISO1600. But nice on the A77 is, that you can also use ISO1000, ISO1250 and other steps between common ISO steps, while the NEX only allows an ISO value of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. Another point for the NEX is the lack of the translucent mirror which leads to a brighter image (visible and shown by exposure control in the cameras, difference about -0.3 EV).

The AF test – I shot more footage than I packed into this edit but this shows enough – showed to me that this part, always advertised by Sony, isn’t made for nice focus tracking while filming. And it’s only available in auto mode. The car scene was shot with the SAL-70200 which has a nice and fast AF with its super sonic motor (for photos). The shampoo bottle was filmed handheld (with steady shot on I think) and focus tracking set to the logo on the bottle. I went back and forth to stress the focus. The lens was the SAL-2875 again.
Sorry for the high noise in the car AF scene, I’m used to the A850 which switches back to ISO auto when changing from manual mode with specified ISO to program automatic. And I was a bit in a hurry while shooting this so I missed the ISO setting.

Picture profile for all fotage in the video above was Portrait with Contrast all down to -3, Saturation -1 and Sharpness down on -3 on both cams. White balance was set to auto.

Some general thoughts about the A77

As expected the video quality of the A77 is in general comparable to the NEX-5n. But the handling isn’t. The NEX is a bit fiddly with only the one control dial for aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc. but when you get used to it, it’s no big problem. The A77 has direct dials for shutter speed and aperture + dedicated buttons for ISO and other stuff, but there is one big deal: You have to go to video mode on the program dial to shoot video with manual controlled apterture and shutter speed. And in video mode you can’t shoot pictures even when between some recordings. But the biggest minus of video mode is, that you can’t use the focus magnifier which for me is vital in many situations. So you have to switch to another mode, set an accurate focus with focus magnification and switch back to movie mode.

When hitting the movie record button in other program modes than video on the A77, the recording mode is always auto. The handling of the NEX is much better, because I’m always in manual mode which fits for manual controlled photos or movies(!) and you always have the focus magnifier when the camera isn’t recording. So all in all the NEX is the better Super 35 camcorder – when you’re used to it’s controls.

Expect some more footage from the A77 in the coming days. And here is my one last thing:

Additional crop in Video mode

The crop factor of about 1.86 in video mode is discussed often on the net but many people don’t really know why Sony crops videos. So here is a little explanation:

Sony (or better say Minolta) decided to let the camera do the stabilization when they released their first DSLRs. This was and is done with a piezoelectricity mechanism which compensates the camera movement by moving the sensor. This process works good for photos and was also used when Steady Shot was active while video recording on the A55. On the A55 this speed up the heating of the sensor which even without Steady Shot had only short recording times. So Sony decided to give the A77 a electronic stabilization in video mode. So it needs to have an area which is not regularly used for the video to move the recording area through the sensor to compensate the movement. Therefor it crops. The bad thing is that you can’t record with only the regular 1.5 APS-C crop when not using stabilization.

After silvester I had a massive SPAM problem in the comments on this blog with more than thousand comments in one week. This forced me to deactivate the comment functionality and to make all comments since silvester invisible. Checking each comments if it was SPAM would have been to time-consuming.

Now I reactivated the comment function, but it’s now required to solve a simple mathematic equation as a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). I really don’t like CAPTCHAs so I didn’t added them from the beginning of this blog. But the huge amount of SPAM now forced me to add them. If you experience any problems or have suggestions for improvements please leave a comment or send me an email.

EDIT: I now switched to the reCAPTCHA service after seeing that my CAPTCHA code was too easy to solve and spaming was continued.

I have Adobe Premiere PRO CS5.5 for MAC (German) on sale. Language seems to be fixed to German via the serial number. Not registered and of course I’ll deactivate the licence activatet on my machine as soon as it’s sold.

I’m selling because I’m using English as the system language and don’t want a German Version of Premiere. And for what I’m doing Final Cut Pro X fits all my needs so I don’t need Premiere at all. I’m thinking about selling it for about 650 Euros.
EDIT: Price

Please contact me via premiere [at] irieger.net if interested.