The photojournalism of Brian L.Frank

I was browsing through the works of various photographers when I came across this Vimeo video showcasing the works of Brian L. Frank. Brian is a photojournalist whose work in Mexico has been recognized by Photographer of the Year International, The National Press Photographer's Association, Photo District News, and The San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association.

If you are into street photography, be sure to check out Brian's stunning pictures. His sense of timing and composition is simply astounding, and it's interesting that he said he'll sit and wait for an hour or two for things to fall into place, once he finds the suitable location and lighting.

"It's almost like fishing," he said.

A day in the life of New York City

Check out this amazing video of New York City by Sam O'Hare. Sam did the entire project shooting on a Nikon D3, and that's all you need to know for now. So please watch the video before you continue reading!

Done viewing the video?

How did you think Sam shot the sequence? Most people would imagine that Sam fitted tilt-shift lens to the Nikon D3 and set it to record video, and then speeding up the video clips in post-production to achieve the effect in the video. But that would not be special, would it?

Sam O'Hare actually used a Nikon D3 for this project, shooting 35,000 NEFs at 4 frames per second! He then painstakingly combined them in post production and output the files as 1080p video set to music. If that wasn't crazy enough, he wasn't shooting with a tilt-shift lens. Sam actually shot with a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of the shots. The tilt-shift effect was all done in post frame by frame!

This is madness!
Madness? This is NEW YORK!

DSLR video used to film 'House' season finale

The status of DSLR video quality has been elevated to the next level with the breaking news that the entire episode of the season finale of the primetime medical drama series “House” was filmed with a DSLR. In an interview, director of FOX broadcasting Greg Yaitanes said that they used the Canon EOS 5D Mk II with 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses to film the season finale to achieve a “richer look”.

Greg loves the shallow depth of field of the EOS 5D Mk II, and felt that such a way of shooting is “the future”. The crew was shooting on 24p format and found the compactness of the DSLR ideal for filming in tight spaces. Most of the shots were done handheld or on a small format, instead of the traditional video stabilizers. Watch for it!

And the Oscar goes to.... Pentax!

As mentioned in my previous post, I think Pentax is full of crazy ideas (think colourful DSLRs and launching a digital medium format camera). I'm not sure I can agree with their off-tangent thinking, but they sure caught me off-guard with this one. You see - Pentax launched the K-7 DSLR last year boasting HD movie recording, but everyone's eyes were on Canon's 5D Mk II and Vincent Laforet's movies.

So Pentax said enough is enough, and they commissioned filmmaker Jamin Winans and Futuristic Films to shoot a movie with the K-7 DSLR and Pentax lenses. While the quality of the HD movie is good, I'm more impressed by the crazy script and the great execution of a wild idea. Seriously, anyone who has worked in a corporation would be impressed with the guts of the executive who approved this movie. Drugs, gun battle, wild car chases... not the typical kind of stuff a Japanese company would normally endorse.

Check out this movie made by the Pentax K-7... a lovely combination of wild ideas, great imagination and fantastic dose of fuzzy love!

The video DSLR race is on!

Dan Chung (www.dslrnewsshooter.com) spent a night shooting at the Singapore Turf club using a pre-production Canon Eos1D Mk 4. The footage was all shot at 720p/60 and then slowed to 23.98 fps in post, with colours left ungraded and editing done in Final Cut Pro. Pretty impressive stuff with the 60fps and clean footage!

Making of Fantastic Mr Fox with fantastic DSLRs

The new animation movie Fantastic Mr Fox was made in the classic stop-motion manner by capturing stills and combining all the 621,450 still-images to achieve the animated effect! The crew used a variety of DSLRs to capture the frames, and painstakingly moved each character bit by bit to create the movements. A similar technique was used in the creation of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Check out the video below by Wired to see how it was done!