I have opinions

My latest article on Fstop Lounge is a review of a new bag from ThinkTank.

Trifecta 8 from ThinkTankPhoto

I was lucky enough to get my hands on this bag about 3-4 weeks ago, so I’ve had a really nice play with it.

I was after a bag for street photography mostly, but also wanted something I could use to carry my gear for video shoots where I didn’t want to bring in the whole kit and caboodle. I have bigger bags for when I am out on big corporate jobs, but I wanted something relatively small that I could carry one camera with some lenses and accessories or two cameras and well, fewer accessories. I also wanted something that I could carry an iPad.

There’s a lot to like about this bag. To start with, I think it looks really cool. I really love the curves of the bag. I appreciate that’s a very personal thing, but I really like it.

The reason it’s called a Trifecta, or at least, why I think it’s called that, is because there are three ways to get into the main compartment. This gives me options and I really like options.

It has one big door on the back which gives you full access to the main compartment and, while you pretty much have to take the bag off to access this, it also has doors on either side of this compartment so you can access each half from each side. So, one side could have your camera and one lens. While the other side could have two other lenses, microphones or something slightly larger than a memory card.

There are some dividers in here so it’s pretty easy to keep the side separate and then have two things padded from each other on each side. I would have liked it if they provided one more divider, so that one side holds two things and the other side could hold three things separated instead of the two.

Speaking of memory cards and batteries, one of the side doors has built-in pockets for storing these items. This is a great feature because you have really easy access to the accessories you need most often.

On the back of the big back door you have a pouch for an iPad mini, although I’ve found my full-sized iPad Air 2 fits in there as long as it goes in there naked without a case or cover. This brings me to one of my few gripes with the bag: I am not sure why they didn’t make this pouch just a touch larger and make it fit a full size iPad or other tablet. It isn’t anything major, but would have been nice. I know the Think Tank Trifecta 10, which is the DSLR model of this bag, holds a full iPad, but this idea of “they are using a smaller camera therefore they must be carrying a smaller tablet” is a bit silly I think.

This Trifecta of access makes it really easy to just loosen one strap, twist the bag to your front, and grab what you want from it. You just have to remember what side your stuff is on!

On the top, there’s another compartment with plenty of space and two pockets. I use this area for my sound gear normally. I would have liked some compartment divider options here as it is a pretty largish compartment and it would have been nice to be able to have dividers as an option here as things can flop about. This is more a compliment actually because this compartment is almost Tardis like in how surprisingly large it is.

There is also a loose pocket in the front but I haven’t quite worked out what to put in there – maybe you could hold small tripod in it?

The Trifecta 8 is really well padded. Not that I would want to take it into a rugby match, but it would probably be fine in a mosh pit. The straps are super comfy and it also has a centre clasps to hold the straps together across your chest which is a feature I really like on backpacks.

Would I recommend it? Yes. I really like the bag. At first, I thought that only two compartments wouldn’t be enough for me, but I’ve found this bag to be deceptively large in what it can hold and it’s very comfortable to wear. I can easily see myself grabbing the Trifecta 8 for all my smaller jobs and every weekend and I wouldn’t be surprised if you do too.

For a read of the article on the site, you can find it here - https://fstoplounge.com/2015/06/review-of-the-new-thinktankphoto-trifecta-8/

Fun with Sime

I've spent the last few months working on some very exciting corporate work, that I can't show anyone just yet.

Though I thought you might like to see some of the fun stuff I've also been working on with my friend Simon Pollock. Simon does a lot of work for various camera related companies and so we've been going out and shooting things like hard drive reviews and backpack promo videos.

Of course we did try and put in a bit of humour into some of them. I hope you enjoy :)

A fun short I made with my mate Simon Pollock for a review of the ioSafe hard drive. Use this link to read the full review - http://digital-photography-school.com/the-ultimate-on-location-storage-solution-iosafe-rugged-portable-ssd-review/ To learn more about me and my work, check out my site - www.capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

A fun short I made with my mate Simon Pollock for a review of the ioSafe hard drive. Use this link to read the full review - http://digital-photography-school.com/the-ultimate-on-location-storage-solution-iosafe-rugged-portable-ssd-review/ To learn more about me and my work, check out my site - www.capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

A fun short I made with my mate Simon Pollock for a review of the ioSafe hard drive. Use this link to read the full review - http://digital-photography-school.com/the-ultimate-on-location-storage-solution-iosafe-rugged-portable-ssd-review/ To learn more about me and my work, check out my site - www.capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

A short clip I made with my mate Simon Pollock to show off some of the features of the new Mindshift Gear, Rotation180 backpack. Check out more details about the backpack at - http://www.mindshiftgear.com/products/rotation180-horizon To learn more about me go to - www.capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

Atomos Shogun Review

This is my review of the Atomos Shogun. It started out as a short look at it and I just kept talking :) To check out more of my stuff, check out www.capturingpassion.com

I delivered some FCPX training for the folks at Atomos last year and afterwards they asked if I'd like a Shogun to have a play with for a while once it came out. I have used some of their gear in the past and particularly since I had just gotten an A7s, I was very keen to try it out with the Shogun.

I used the Shogun on my shoot for "The Local Framing Studio" and got my mate Micheal DeFlorio from POVMedia to bring along his Movi, so we could try it out with that too.

The shoot was a lot of fun. The review part took me a lot longer than I expected it to. I had a lot of work come up and so this kept getting pushed back and done in the few breaks that I had.

Also it kinda turned into a hybrid Review/Tutorial, I can't help going into educator mode sometimes. :)

I'll have another post to follow up with the process that I went through to shoot the actual review, as it took a bit of experimenting to get a setup that worked for me. 

I hope you find it interesting and educational.

Only I would bring more toys to an Airshow!

A collection of shots taken at the 2015 Australian International AirShow. I was having a play with the Nebula4000 Lite and my GH4. I also had a play of grading it with Color Finale. Check out my posts about how I shot it and what I learnt from shooting it on my website - capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

I got my Nebula delivered about 2 weeks ago, but I’ve been flat out with corporate gigs and so have not really had a chance to take it out and play. I was very lucky to have a day off and get invited by my mate Simon to go to the Australian International Air Show with his mate Kevin. I thought this would be a perfect chance to try out the Nebula.

I haven’t had much experience using “small” stabilisers before and I think it shows in the footage. I’ve used a Movi a few times on set, but I found using the one-handed Nebula a bit more challenging.

First the good. I balanced my GH4 with it’s 12-35 lens at about 8:30am when we arrived and the battery on the Nebula lasted until 5:30pm when we left, and it was still going. I shot 1 hour and 46 minutes of footage, mostly in 4K and about 35 minutes of it at 96fps.

So I am very impressed with the battery life of the Nebula.

As you might expect, the Nebula was a lot lighter than any other stabiliser I’ve used in the past , though having said that, I did have to switch hands from time to time if I was shooting for 5 or more minutes continuously.

Now some of the challenges I faced and what I learnt. To begin with, I learnt that I need to move the camera a lot slower. When I got my footage back on a bigger screen, I saw that there were a lot more jerky actions than I thought. My pans/slides were way too fast to be usable and when I would rotate, I would come to a stop too suddenly. I need to learn to be smoother.

So when shooting with this, think like when you are public speaking, no matter how slow you think you are going… go slower.

Walking shots! I can see I am going to need a lot more practice to get those steady with the one-handed Nebula, or get a Fig Rig and attach it to that for more points of contact and stability as Erik Naso has done.

Another challenge was monitoring. It’s a no-go really. I was talking to a guy earlier in the week who has a Nebula and he showed me how he had velcro’d an iPhone attachment to the back of his Nebula and would mount the iPhone, connect to his camera via wifi and use it to monitor his camera on the Nebula. Great idea and the lag wasn’t too bad. The only place it let me down was when I wanted to use the Nebula held up above my head, so I couldn’t see the phone screen either. Still really good for walking shots.

Because I couldn’t really monitor the camera screen most of the time, I set the GH4 to use autofocus, which is fine when you are just experimenting and don’t have to nail every shot. I was pleasantly surprised how well it did. I only found it hunting for focus a few times. Having said that, I’m not sure I would use the autofocus on a paid gig, unless I had no choice.

You’ll also notice that most of the shots are, at best, a little over-exposed. I’d love to say that this was a style decision, but in truth, I’d had a 12-hour shoot the day before, I got home at about 11pm and I forgot to pack my variable ND. This turned out for the best, as I had to shoot most of the day around an aperture of f11-f13, so even if autofocus wasn’t nailing it, it didn’t have a lot to nail.

I graded it with Color Finale and I’ll upload a second version to show the before and after of the grade. I actually found that some of the shots got really bad banding when I tried to push them too far in FCPX and this is where being able to record 10Bit out of the HDMI port to something like a Shogun instead of the 8Bit that the GH4 captures internally makes all the difference.

Overall, I am pretty happy with my first day out with the Nebula and I can see how I am going to get some great footage out of using it in the future.

Below is a version that shows a bit of before and after for the grade.

These shots start off with the non-graded footage and peals back to reveal the graded version. Check out my posts about how I shot it and what I learnt from shooting it on my website - capturingpassion.com Music by Cinephonix Get 10% off the purchase of any music with the code MAK10 This can be used as many times as you like, so pretty much 10% off forever at cinephonix.com :)

Pacific Belles

I had some serious boy fun yesterday. I went to the Australian International Air Show yesterday with a couple of mates of mine and thought it would a great opportunity to take along my new Nebula4000 and have a play with it. One of the big birds that we really wanted to see at the show was the USAF B-52 bomber. We could walk right up to it and even walk into the bomb bay which was the only part open to the public. While getting some shots around the plane, two WW2-looking jeeps pulled up with people in period costume. Next thing you know, one of the women walks up to us and says “We are the Pacific Belles and our photographer hasn't shown up, could we get you to take some pictures and email them to us?” So we follow them up into the big bird and next thing, I’m shooting an impromptu music video in the cockpit of an active service B-52 bomber. I do love when life gives you these random little treats! Please bear in mind that I’m still getting to grips with the Nebula and realise now that I was moving it way too much and too fast. Still pretty happy with the results. A big thank you to the Pacific Belles, for grabbing some random guys to capture their passion :) It was also my first chance to use Denver Riddle’s new colour correction plugin Color Finale to create the vintage look. I am very happy with the results and can most certainly see myself using this plug A LOT! -http://try.colorgradingcentral.com/colorfinale/ All shot in 4K on the GH4, on the Nebula4000 Lite.

I had some serious boy fun yesterday. I went to the Australian International Air Show yesterday with a couple of mates of mine and thought it would a great opportunity to take along my new Nebula4000 and have a play with it.

One of the big birds that we really wanted to see at the show was the USAF B-52 bomber. We could walk right up to it and even walk into the bomb bay which was the only part open to the public.

While getting some shots around the plane, two WW2-looking jeeps pulled up with people in period costume. Next thing you know, one of the women walks up to us and says “We are the Pacific Belles and our photographer hasn't shown up, could we get you to take some pictures and email them to us?”

So we follow them up into the big bird and next thing, I’m shooting an impromptu music video in the cockpit of an active service B-52 bomber. I do love when life gives you these random little treats!

Please bear in mind that I’m still getting to grips with the Nebula and realise now that I was moving it way too much and too fast. Still pretty happy with the results.

A big thank you to the Pacific Belles, for grabbing some random guys to capture their passion :)

It was also my first chance to use Denver Riddle’s new colour correction plugin Color Finale to create the vintage look. I am very happy with the results and can most certainly see myself using this plug A LOT!

All shot in 4K on the GH4, on the Nebula4000 Lite.