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My New Review Lighting Setup | How To Improve Yours

13/11/2012

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I finally have created a dedicated studio style setup for my reviews and other videos. If you like the look that I achieved in the above video, you’ll find this blog post very useful. All the links to the products in this guide are marked in red colour and also can all be found together at the bottom of the post.

My goal was to achieve a minimalistic, low-key look with a soft, but interesting lighting that would make me and the objects I have on the table really stand out from the background.  More importantly the task was to achieve the look at the lowest budget possible. Lucky for me I had most of the things I needed already, but I will share some options with you to help you create similar setup.

Disclaimer (could be boring): You can find the items I’ve used both on Amazon and on Ebay and some even in your local hardware store, but for this guide I will use Amazon links. If you will buy anything that I’ve included in this guide through my links, a small percentage of sale will go my way. This way you’ll be able to help me run the website and produce more useful content by buying what you need. It will not cost you a penny more to buy them through my links, in fact I try to find the best deals, so if anything it will cost you less.

So back to this guide:

First of is a monitor, which is not essential, but is very useful. As I mentioned in the video I used an old Liliput monitor. I generally like Liliput Monitors and have 2 myself.

A similar to one I’ve used only costs just under $170. To be honest I’m not a big fan of the particular model, but it more than suitable for this sort of project.

If you don’t have an HDMI monitor yet and want one for everything I would advice going for 5D-II/O/P model, which works great with DSLRs, has peeking, zebras, false color and even a histogram, all for just under $270. Now this is a great deal.

Next up we have a backdrop. There are loads of options for backdrops, starting from under $20. The size that I have costs just under $18. 6x10 works great for me and will work fine for anyone wanting a similar framing.

I’ve already had some light stands, anything up to 6ft high will do the . If you have them already,  then you will  only need to buy an extending cross bar for the stands. The cheapest I found is $20.

If you don’t have any stands yet, then it’s worth buying a complete backdrop support instead. It will work out cheaper than buying the stand and a cross bar separately. The cheapest backdrop support I found is just under $35.

To secure the backdrop well, just get some cheap plastic clamps, which run for under $5 for a set of 6.

Now you need some back lights. There are plenty of options on Amazon. I even found the light I’m using for my setup.  It’s a Smith-Victor KT-500U kit (2x250w lights). There are plenty of other alternatives too (see below), all costing just around $100.

Moving no to the key light. For my setup I’m using a Camtree BeamLite 72 Flood because it’s quite powerful and I have it already.  To achieve similar soft lighting you don’t have to get the same light and a diffuser.  As an alternative would recommend one of many fluorescent softbox lights. The choice for these is massive, but I would recommend going for something more powerful, definitely no less than 1000w.  One of the best deals that I found is ePhoto 2000w light kit, which comes together with 2 heads, 2 stands,  2 saltboxes, 10 bulbs and even a carry case for the stands. All this for under $130 is pretty amazing considering that 3 times less powerful kit for the back light costs nearly the same.  Here is another alternative for just over $100.

This is about all you need to create this complete setup, assuming you already have some soft of table, chair if you like to sit and obviously a camera.

The whole thing should cost you more than $500 and these are the things that you will be able these for you other projects, especially the lights and the monitor. The actual backdrop support and the cloth is no more than $50, so definitely something worth investing into is you are after a similar look.

I hope this guide was useful to you guys. Any questions, feel free to ask.

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Cineroid EVF Review (Not so great with 5D) + Cheap Alternative

27/12/2011

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We all know DSLRs are incredible Filmmaking tools. But lets not forget, it’s a stills camera, that has the video function, not other way round. To get the best out of it people like myself rig it up with different accessories like a shoulder rig to improve the ergonomics, follow focus to help achieve best focus and this clip on viewfinders to help with shooting in bright daylight, since there is no real EVFs on such cameras. 

Relatively recently third party EVFs started appearing on the marked and a lot of well known filmmakers started caling that these are essential tools for DSLRs and Large Chip Camcorders, so I decided to invest into one. I bought my one second hand on eBay. It was sent to me from US, so with customs charges I ended up paying about £450 which is no exactly a bargain, not really the cheapest monitoring option for a budget filmmaker, but on the paper it sounded so good that I couldn’t resist it.  This review is based on Cineroid performance with Canon 5D mark II, so some points will not apply to other cameras due to 5Ds poor HDMI output.

Let me start with the good points, the reason I bought it.

I really hate how most of the budget monitors show the image out of the 5D ones you press record button. The resolution drops and images stretches out, creating an ugly image. This is the main reason why I never invested in a liliput monitor. I’ve worked with one though and I didn’t enjoy the experience.  Cineroid on other hand handles these problems much better. While resolution still drops, cineroid rescales the image back in to proper ration. And while I only get 480p resolution during recoding, the magnifying loupe helps to get the focusing right.

Another nice feature is the HDMI loopthrough. After being forced to use the liliput monitor on one of the shoots because director needed to see the picture clearly I decided that I need something like Cineroid which will give me a proper image while director can view the image looping through it into something like liliput. I’ve used this feature couple of times and it is one of my favorite things in this Cineroid.

Third reason for buying this evf is ability to put it anywhere, in particular on the side of the camera making the whole setup more ergonomic, just like boadcast camera.  It is great way to use the camera on your shoulder. With an EVF I can have the camera virtually on my shoulder because I don’t have to look at the back of its screen making it much less front heavy than the usually DLSR setup where you offset the camera to the side allowing you to view the screen properly.

I like the flip up feature this evf has.  It is really useful when I want to show the image to the director. The magnets hold the loop well in place, so no problems there.

One of the things I really miss in 5D is the peeking function. Due to it’s large sensor and lenses that create really shallow dept of field focusing can be very difficult especially when focusing on a moving subject.  The peeking function seems to be got sent, but this is actually what brings me to the bad points of this evf. While peeking works fine in 5ds preview mode, once I press record and resolution drops to 480p the evf really struggles to deliver any proper peeking, which is obviously caused by low resolution coming from the camera, This is obviously camera specific, but I didn’t know that before I bought it.  The peeking will probably work just fine on other cameras including Canon’s 7D and bigger cameras like Sony F3, FS100 and Panasonics AF101, but if have a 5D like myself or one of the other Canon DSLRs with a poor HDMI out, then don’t expect to get much out of the peeking function.

One of the other problems I get with my 5D is the unstable performance. Almost 50% of time, when I press record screen goes to black and just stays black. I must then stop the recording and start it again. For some reason when I press it quickly second time always seems to work. This inconsistency is very annoying and now I expect the monitor to freeze every time I press record, not good at all.

Before I bought Cineroid, I would read about how it is essential for DSLRS and large chip cameras because their monitors and evfs are really bad quality. Well let me tell you something, Cineroid display is actually very poor quality comparing to my 5D display. It’s not just about the resolution, more importantly, the color reproduction is very poor and judging the exposure accurately from Cineroid's image alone is virtually impossible. When I switch it off and look at the 5D display,  The picture looks very different and the picture out of 5D is so much more accurate. Such quality would be an acceptable for cheap Liliput, but not for a £560 (new) evf. I've tested my Cineroid against a Zacuto EVF on one of the shoots a few months ago and Zacuto has much better screen quality, both color and exposure wise.

Few more bad point I found, are: The display image sort of refreshes when there is a lot of movement in the frame making this weird wave running across the screen.  The menus are quite fiddly and if you try to customize the evf for you particular needs you get  the glitches with software all the time.  It is a shame that there seems to be no way all to upgrade the firmware, so whatever problems are there, they can’t be fixed.

My conclusion to this review is that this evf is really not worth the money you have to pay for it.  If it was half the price, I would give it 4 stars, but at this price it going to be 2 out of 5 and I would not recommend this accessory to a budget filmmaker.
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Cineroid EVF on Ebay

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Just very recently, after I wrote this review I bought a new Liliput monitor. I usually wouldn't look at one, but this little 5" thing actually seems to be a big improvement from their older range. Apparently it rescales the image back into proper ratio during the recording, has HDMI loopthrough and also looks quite cool, button design and layout virtually identical to some Marshall monitors. Best of all it is very cheap. On the paper sounds like a great monitor for a DSLR, should be a much better value for money than Cineroid, but I don't want go speculate until I try it out myself. The model number is 569GL, so if you want check it out yourself, otherwise wait for my review.
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Click to find this item on ebay
Liliput 569GL on Ebay

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