The trip started out with a free concert in Millennium Park by Ricardo Muti. Other highlights of the trip, besides quality friend time, include hanging out at the Art Institute, meeting Philip Bloom at a meet up, and exploring the city.

Here is a short photo summary of my trip:

Here’s a short video I made of the last visit I had to Chi-town:

I feel very honored to have been allowed to be apart of something so special for this couple. Thanks goes to them for this opportunity.

I started the day covering the bride prep, then headed over to get footage of the groom getting ready. They were both so excited, she could hardly sit still to get her make-up on, and he had to tie his tie about 4 times he was so excited. They were both radiating love for one another even when they were getting ready separately.

I switched between my 28mm and my 70-200mm for the bride prep, mainly the 28mm. The 70-200mm is just money when it comes to getting tight shots without having to be in everybody’s face about it. The focus on that thing is soooo sensitive though with video, it just takes the smallest adjustments on the focus ring to get people in crisp focus or totally ruin a shot, so when people are moving around you really have to be on it.

My monopod was key today, again. I was able to move around during the ceremony and get fairly stable shots with it even all the way in at 200mm. As Yuri explains in this video, the rubber foot can come off easily on that monopod, and I lost mine tonight, oh well.

I am going to download and try Coremelt’s Lock and Load plug-in for Final Cut Pro to help stabilize footage and repair rolling shutter effects even with having that monopod the shots could be a bit more stable with a little plug-in like this.

Overall, I’m surprised more stuff didn’t go wrong or I forgot anything to be completely honest. Typically, at least one thing doesn’t go right, but this time, I might have scrapped by even better than I thought.

The worst fumbles I had were total ‘doh’ moments when I thought I was recording, but I wasn’t. That happened because I was hitting the record button on and off so much that I’d lose track, in the moment, whether I was recording.

I think what contributed was the high temperature warning blinking at me the whole day! I was so nervous the camera was going to just shut down, so I was playing it a little conservative on the record time so I wouldn’t unnecessarily overheat the sensor. The Sennheiser G3 mic worked well, as far as I could tell, I think there may have been a couple of static jumps in the reception, but overall good.

I used my gorillapod to hang my Canon HF100 up in a tree. That way I didn’t need a tripod and it was unobtrusive to the scene, I’ll just have to flip the image 180 in post, but was very happy to have that on hand.

The other trick I did today was to put olive oil on the rubber, shock-absorbing, connectors of my Rode VideoMic. Sounds weird, but it worked! I was having very audible creaking from the rubber pieces when I moved around with the mic, the oil completely got rid of that.

It helped to take a step back several times and really see what was going on around me, instead of looking through my camera all day. I think that helped make me aware of some shots I might have otherwise missed.

At night, I pushed the settings as far as they would go and know I’ll be running some noise reduction on the footage. I was at 1/30 at f/1.8 with ISO at 12,800! I was really impressed my Canon 7D. The image quality isn’t all that great at those settings, as to be expected, but it’s much better than not being able to get a shot at all! So thankful for those ISO settings.

I better wrap this up so I can get up early and get to Chicago tomorrow to see some friends and listen to some free orchestra music in Millenium Park tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll be attending the Philip Bloom HD DSLR meet up on the 21st, not sure what to expect with it, but should be interesting.

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Inspirational

1. Just a very cool little climbing video using a HDSLR, shows what’s possible.

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Funny

Thought you liked the news? Most likely not, so these two videos pin point what sucks about the news (caution – there is foul language):

1. BBC version:

2. The Onion version (aka more cussing)

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Film/Animation

1. Philip Bloom did it again with this great short:

I feel like I have a Transformers toy when I put this thing on my camera

I bought this DSLR viewfinder for several reasons:

• added stabilization while shooting video
• aid in focusing
• eliminate outdoor glare issue on LCD screen

It also just looks cool, I mean why do anything if you’re not going to look cool anyways, right? The Z-Finder basically accomplished those three reasons why I bought it, but there are some caveats. I always think of caviar when I say that.

I swear my hands aren't as small as they look - really!

STABILIZATION | It does help with stabilization, but not as much as I would have liked. This isn’t really a deficiency with the product, but with my lack of experience and realistic expectations with gear. That’s partly why I bought it, “let’s see what this thing can do.” Standing still and moving the camera around my face is fine, but walking with it takes a little practice, and is only slightly more stable than walking without it attached, I think. The Zacuto shoulder mount setups would really help that, but are really expensive so I may just make a home-made one at some point.

FOCUSING | Of those three bullet points, this is the one it helps with the least I think because I still have to use the little zoom button and digitally zoom in on the image 5x or 10x to focus, just like I was doing before anyways. But it does make it a bit nicer to do.

GLARE | Booya! It nails this obviously, I have no issues with glare now and don’t have to guess and hope I’m doing everything right when I’m outside, just slap this baby on and you’re good to go. You kind of feel like a referee in the NFL on a review play, it’s your own private theatre in this thing.

After saying all that, I’m not really sure what advantage the Z-Finder has over the less expensive Hoodman besides the Z-Finder having that sweet little mount on the camera that lets you clip it on and off easily. I’ve read the Z-Finder is a bit brighter too?

Down the rabbit hole

OVERALL IMPRESSION | When I first got it, I was like “wow that thing is freaking huge!” it barely fits in my hand, but then what was I expecting? I was also surprised that it’s basically hollow, I didn’t really research how these things are constructed before I bought it, so I guess I was expecting something a tad more complicated.

Anyways, overall I really like it. The eye-cup is great, very soft rubber, I can even keep my glasses on my face and use it. I was surprised that they don’t have a protective cap on the eye cup end though, I’m worried the magnifying lens will get scratched up in my camera bag. I think the lanyard is pretty crucial since I take the Z-Finder on and off so much. You can’t see all the corners of the LCD screen though, so be prepared to move your face around the eye cup to see the corners, like the guy from Porky’s in the shower scene. It’s only the very last bit of the corner, it’s not a deal breaker at all.

If you have $380 laying around, have issues with stable hand held shots with a DSLR and can’t see your screen during they day, get this.

Philip Bloom has also done a nice review here.

All photos were taken with my iPhone.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of the Z-Finder, less than I thought.

Here’s Zacuto’s promo piece on it:

See some Canon 7D shots I took this morning on a walk below all these videos that I thought people might find interesting:

Found this from Cross Country Magazine‘s facebook page. This guy is like a human Transformer:

Big film news is Fede Alvarez, who got a big movie deal from his awesome short film. Read the story HERE. This is the short that got him noticed:

It’s a similar story to what happened to the District 9 director, Neill Blomkamp, who’s short film that got him noticed by Peter Jackson scored him a big movie too. See his short here:

Cool websites I’ve found:

• DoLectures.com – sample lecture from a graphic artist here: http://www.dolectures.com/speakers/speakers-2009/geoff-mcfetridge
• Motionographer.com – very cool place to find little animated shorts and other film art
• Philip Bloom – very cool photographer to follow