Sometimes it feels lonely for myself and “Avene” Glenn being amongst the very few who suggest small Canon digicams over dSLRs or full camcorders. These small HD digicams, usually priced from $100 to $350, are more capable than most people think of them. But cheaper/smaller usually mean hardware and software compromises, and as such, they require more filmmaking skill than camcorders. But if price and mobility are important to you, there is a way to get a professional-enough look out of them for use with artistic videos (for family/travel/sports/random videos, get a camcorder). Here’s how:

1. Acquire the hardware mentioned here. At the very least you should buy an SDHC Class 6 card, a second battery, and a tripod. Also a filter tube (lens adapter), and a 37mm 0.9 ND filter if your camera is NOT the Canon S100. The filter tube I suggest on the link works with most Canon digicams, but not the SX-series (their big super-zoom lenses don’t fit in it). As for more camera suggestions, check here.

2. When you get the camera, press FUNC, and go to “Custom Colors” and then press the DISPLAY button. There, bring all the way down (towards the left) contrast, saturation, and sharpness (essentially achieving “flat colors”). Shooting flat helps with color grading in post processing, and achieves more dynamic range and detail. Leave the rest of the color settings as-is. In the main video menu, disable “digital zoom”, and enable the “Grid Lines” that will help you shoot straight.

3. Strap the camera to the filter/lens adapter/tube. If shooting outdoors during the day, or under very strong lights, use the ND filter. If shooting indoors, don’t use the ND filter. These small-sensor digicams usually shoot in unnaturally high shutter speeds outdoors, resulting in the footage feeling “choppy”, so the ND filter helps us control this effect. Alternatively to buying the suggested above 0.9 strength ND filter, you can buy a “variable strength” 37mm ND filter, that has many different strengths all-in-one, which will help you control the shutter speed easier (it’s more expensive though). The Canon S100 (2011 model) has its own built-in ND filter, so use that instead of a third party adapter/filter.

4. Set the camera on a tripod, and make sure the tripod is “leveled”. Don’t shoot handheld, it never comes out great, since the Canon digicams only have “dynamic IS” in video mode, not true image stabilization. Plus, the newest models use CMOS, so there’s gonna be rolling shutter artifacts if you don’t use any stabilization method. Here’s a nice tip on how to pan smoothly, as long as your tripod head is sold as “fluid”.

Canon SD780 IS with the Zeikos filter addon, Tiffen ND 0.9 filter, and GorillaPod

5. Zoom-in all the way for digicams that have up to 5x zoom, or as much as your movie set allows you to. Don’t zoom fully with super-zoom cameras. The zooming will create some background blur, to make your picture more pleasing. With the help of the ND filter, which will force the aperture open, you might be able to achieve some nice shallow DoF, even with such small cams. Finally, setup the lighting (if outdoors, make sure the sun is on your back), and frame your subject at its final position.

6. Go to the camera’s “P” mode. This is important: press the RIGHT button and turn the camera’s flash OFF. Then press the UP button to go to the exposure compensation screen. IF outdoors or under strong lighting, move the exposure compensation one or two notches to the left, until you feel the camera stops over-exposing. If indoors, leave it as is (Canon digicams tend to over-expose only under strong lighting, their algorithm is better indoors). Half-press the shutter button. The shutter speed information will be on screen momentarily. If you’re shooting at 24p, make sure the shutter speed shows as 1/48th or 1/50th. If you’re shooting 30p, make sure the shutter speed is at 1/60th. Adjust ND filter strengths (you can buy strengths that measure 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9 etc and then stack them, or you can buy a single one that has variable strengths all-in-one), or adjust lighting conditions, until you get the desired shutter speed. If these values are not possible, a bit higher shutter speed is acceptable, but less is not (video will look like a soap opera at lower values). Please note that the above trick approximating shutter speed works ok-enough under a lot of light, but under low light the P mode and video mode are not in agreement.

7. Now go to movie mode. Half-press the shutter button, keep it half-pressed, and then with your other hand press the LEFT button until you get the AFL indication on your screen. Now your focus is locked, you can take your fingers away from the various buttons. If the camera focused on the wrong subject, unlock focus, then slightly turn your camera so that it frames the subject in the middle of the screen, and then attempt to lock focus again. When this is done, and with the focus locked, turn the camera again to re-frame the exact same way you did at the end of step #5.

8. Then press UP and set exposure compensation the same way as above. Make sure you leave the exposure compensation screen ON while shooting, because that’s how you “lock” exposure (if you press the UP button a second time it unlocks exposure, and it goes back to AUTO). For the SX-, S- or any other series that features a “wheel”, you can lock focus and exposure compensation independently from each other by going to “manual focus” mode.

9. Now press the shutter button to record your video! Don’t move or pan too fast. Make sure you don’t zoom-in and -out while recording. Not only this would screw up your exposure and focusing, but it will make your video look amateurish — or at best it would look like a ’70s B-movie.

10. When you’re done shooting all your clips, bring the footage on your video editor, set the right project properties (your project properties must match the properties of the source footage), edit (remember, as a rule of thumb, only 1/10 of what’s shot is good-enough to be used, so don’t be afraid to throw away lots of your footage), color grade (so the “flat” colors are not as flat anymore, but don’t over-do it with contrast), and export like this (at the right frame rate). FYI, Vimeo has better quality than YouTube in HD.

What to expect

Here’s a sample from Canon SX200 IS: 720/30p slow’ed down to 24p. Color graded.

And here’s a short clip, directly out of the small SD780 IS camera (no color grading, or re-encoding of the video). Best watched on TV, using a PS3, XBoX360 or a Roku XD|S. Right click to download it, 14 MB.

Finally, for comparison’s sake, here’s what you get instead when you’re shooting in full AUTO, handheld, with these small cams: Sample one, and sample two.

Notes:
– If you’re shooting music videos, you can either shoot in 24p, or shoot in 30p and then slow them down to 24p like this.
– If shooting art videos, like these ones, then you can get by with higher shutter speeds than the ones suggested above, if desired.
– Because of the small sensors in these cams, tell your actors to not wear all-white or all-black clothes. Dark/light gray, and all other colors are fine. Use the same logic for your background imagery too, unless specifically you’re after the “burned” look.
– Only shoot videos in full AUTO mode if you’re shooting a concert/gig, since lights change rapidly in such a set.
– More info: How to achieve the movie look, and general filmmaking tutorials.

Since it became available on Netflix Instant, a lot of people ask on Twitter, “is Dogtooth how most Greek movies look like?”. The Oscar-nominated Greek movie “Dogtooth” has lots of fans, but also many haters — it’s a controversial movie. I personally love it.

So here’s another Greek movie, to clear the muddy water. It’s a short film, shot with a Canon HV40 and a 35mm adapter. One of the best Canon HV films in my opinion.

Disclaimer: Nobody is sponsoring this article in any way. I suggest Canons just because they offer the most control and features in terms of video than any other manufacturer.

These are my suggestions about artistic videos (experimental video art, music videos, short films). Not about random family/travel/sports videos.

– Price scale 1, $110: Canon A1200. 720/24p, 21 mbps, AA battery-powered. Get this if you can’t afford another camera. Video sample.

– Price scale 2, $200: Canon ELPH 100 HS. 1080/24p, 720/30p, 38 mbps, small cam. Get this if you’re after a tiny camera. Update 3: Avoid the 100 HS or 300 HS, they apparently don’t have lock exposure in video mode! Get the SX220 or SX230 instead for $300.

– Price scale 3, $300: Canon ELPH 500 HS. 1080/24p, 720/30p, 38 mbps, large display, fast lens. While its sensor is not as big as the S95’s, overall it’s a better camera for video. Update 4: Avoid the 500 HS, it apparently doesn’t lock exposure in video mode! Get the S100 instead for $400.

– Price scale 4, $800: Canon T3i dSLR. 1080/24p/30p, 720/60p, 48 mbps, swivel display, audio levels. If you can, get this one. But don’t forget the cost of lenses too.

I did not include any camcorder between scale 3 and 4 because none of them at that price range shoots in true 24p, but in PF24, which is a hassle to deal with. If you don’t mind spending hours removing pulldown, then there are plenty of camcorders to choose from, but personally I wouldn’t mess with PF24 again even if my life was dependent on it.

Update: Here’s a video off of the ELPH 300 HS (beware, it’s without any exposure compensation/locking, or “flat” colors taken into account, so most of it is over-exposed). If you pay close attention, you will see the rolling shutter on these new CMOS Canon sensors. Still, if you’re careful how you shoot, you can get great results out of these small cams.

Update 2: This and this are the best Canon S95 videos I’ve seen so far. Too bad that more people don’t use their small HD digicams in the same way — vast majority of digicam videos out there are just handheld crap.

Today Canon announced 6 new HD cameras: four P&S digicams, and two dSLRs. These are the dSLR T3i (upgrade from the popular T2i), a new low-end dSLR called T3, the ELPH 500 HS, the SX230 HS (upgrade from the SX210 IS), the ELPH 100 HS (upgrade from the SD1400 IS), and the ELPH 300 HS (upgrade for the much-reported in this blog, SD780 IS).

Canon shows more initiative on their new digicam lines than they do on their dSLR ones regarding video. All four new digicams now support 1080/24p, and 720/30p. And the bitrates are great for a digicam, compared to any other digicam or digirecorder manufacturer: 38 mbps for 1080p, and 26 mbps for 720p (all VBR it seems). Only major hardware change compared to the previous lineup of these Canon models is that they now use CMOS instead of CCD (same 1/2.3″ sensor size though). Lens-wise, the ELPH 500 HS is the most interesting, with a fast f2.0 lens, which will probably offer the most background blur from the bunch. The ELPH SX230 HS has the most zoom, at 14x.

All four models come with a miniature mode in 720p (a popular look on Vimeo these days), and ultra-slow motion up to 240 fps at VGA/QVGA low resolutions. The SX230 HS and the ELPH 500 HS come with an additional mode, the Apple-mandated iFrame, which is 720/30p at 40 mbps. While the iFrame bitrate is higher than the 26 mbps found on the “standard” mode of 720p, the encoder is not as well tuned, so overall expect the same quality as in the standard 720p mode. The iFrame h.264 format is easier to decode, so it helps out with Quicktime-based video editors (e.g. iMovie, FCE), but it consumes more storage. It’s a give and take thing.

All the other features expected in these Canon digicams (exposure compensation and lock, film-like custom flat color settings, focus lock, custom white balance) are there. Only feature really missing is 25p support for our PAL friends. [Update: Avoid the 500 HS, it doesn’t lock exposure in video mode!] Also, one thing I would have liked to see is slow-motion 480p support. Right now they offer 120 fps at 640×480. These cameras are capable of 848×480 at 60 fps without a problem though (1280*720px * 30fps = 27648000, which needs more computation than 848*480px * 60fps = 24422400). It would be nice to have that, it feels kind of unnaturally left out.

Hmm…

Well, I’m not as happy with the dSLRs… The T3i only has a single “honest” new video feature compared to the T2i: the swivel screen. The “video burst” thingie and the digital zoom are a joke for any serious videographer. Insulting if I may say so. Still no full HDMI-out while recording, and still no audio levels (Update: it seems there are audio levels in T3i, and a 3.5mm input mini-jack). Instead of adding serious features they added toys. Basically, if you already own a T2i, don’t consider an upgrade. It doesn’t worth it. The T3i is only worth it for people who don’t have an HDSLR yet, and were on the edge of buying a T2i but they were still not sure if their wife would approve. For these people the T3i is the extra push they needed to buy an HDSLR. But for the rest of us, existing costumers, it should be seen more like a marketing ploy rather than a solid evolutionary step in the video dSLR universe.

I have even fewer good things to say about the T3 model, which is the bare bones version of the T3i. It only does 720 at 30p and 25p (no 24p), and it has NO manual control whatsoever (I hope it supports exposure compensation and locking though). I mean, look. You wouldn’t want them to give away all the video features to a low-end model either, so it doesn’t eat up their higher range of products. I understand that. But not offering some shutter speed control at least, not offering 24p, AND only go up to 720p (when even a $180 Canon point & shoot digicam now does 1080p), makes it a BIG, FAT, JOKE.

Stay the hell away from the T3. It doesn’t worth it even if you’re shooting video “just a little”. Unless Canon offers a firmware upgrade with 1080/24p support (or at the very least 720/24p), and maybe shutter speed control, don’t touch it.

The first time I watched Babylon 5 was in the ’90s. I didn’t particularly like it back then. The first season was so bad, that I didn’t really bother myself seriously with most of its episodes. This last month I decided to actually re-watch it on streaming Netflix, and this time to actually pay attention, to try and figure out what the hype is all about.

So, the first season is as terrible as I remember it. Even more terrible than I remember it, I’d say. It has aged really bad tech-wise, the dialog is horrendous (its creator, JMS, was its only writer too, he wouldn’t let anyone else help with dialog), the audio feels like it was recorded by a kid on its karaoke machine, and the episodic premise is boring. There are a few “setup” scenes, but overall, the first season and part of the second season are without salvation. The fans usually blame the show’s low budget, but for me it’s the horrendous monologues & dialog.

The show only picks up at the end of the second season. It has a mostly tremendous third season, and an “good enough” fourth season. It’s fifth season was completely unnecessary, since all the major plots are resolved at the end of the 4th season. Make no mistake, the dialog, audio, and technology remain pretty bad throughout the series. But the CGI get better with each season, and the plot becomes highly serialized, with the highest point in the series being exactly in the middle: Season 3, Episode 10.

What makes Babylon 5 great is its serialized plotting and themes: the coming of age of entire species, the political games played, how media and public opinion is manipulated, how information is king, citizen privacy, how dictatorships rise, etc. These themes appear throughout the series, and shine in some episodes so much that make Babylon 5 one of the best sci-fi TV shows of all time. It’s social commentary at its best. The show is definitely better than its nemesis, Deep Space 9, but in my opinion the technical/filmmaking details stop the show short from making it timeless. Unfortunately, they matter too.

Personally I would like to see a remake/re-imagining of Babylon 5. Just three seasons, 18 episodes each (Feb-May). Make the aliens more alien, rather than humans in weird costumes. Inter-weave the various plots: Shadows, alliance, dictatorship, telepaths, Mars, plus new ones, like the military angle, and the role of corporations. Get to the point: first season starts with the various conspiracies and setup, second season sees the first battles, dictatorship rising and taking hold, declaration of independence, Centauri occupying Narn, and third season sees the Shadow war won in the first 1/3 of the season, with the rest of the items resolving by the end of that season. No episodes about Babylon 5 twenty years in the future, no humans 1 million years in the future bullshit, no Lorien and “coming back from the dead” crap, not so much religion and excellency on Minbari. Instead, make the alien worlds more believable, more brutal, and don’t make everyone so hard-cut good or bad. Make technology more believable too: we see people in Babylon 5 reading normal newspapers, while even today we know this isn’t going to be for much longer. Bring in some robots and paper/implant/holo displays too. I mean, that’s 2261 we’re talking about, make it look like it.

And for God’s sake, let someone else read the script before you give it out to your actors.

A few months ago I touched on the matter of what to do in order to save TV. Today, I’d like to expand on point #3 of that article.

I had no plans to write a new article about it, but today the biggest Greek TV channel, MEGA Channel, enforced IP-based blocking on its otherwise free episodes of their hit series “The Island”. This is the only Greek TV show worth seeing in the 45 years that Greek television exists. The rest are trash. The online streaming of the show on MEGA’s own web site was the only way for the Greeks abroad to watch the show legally. Yes, the show has been sold in some other countries too, but chances are that most Greeks abroad won’t be able to get a hold of it, or if they do, it will be many months/years later. And Netflix doesn’t carry Greek titles either.

What these TV channels don’t realize is that IP-based blocking is bad for business. When TV network “A” sells the rights of a show to another, TV channel “B”, they should not sign the contract if there is a prerequisite to block the free streaming to all other countries. The assumption here is that if people of country “B” watch the show online for free, they won’t watch it when they will broadcast it on that country a few months down the road. So TV channel “A” fears that their show won’t get picked up in international syndication, or that its value will drop, so they block the IP addresses of all other countries — including those who are not interested in licensing the show in the first place.

And that’s the crucial point: this assumption is wrong.

The viewers who watch a show online, are the ones who don’t watch regular TV. They either DVR/TiVO shows, or they watch Hulu/Netflix, or they simply, pirate them on Bittorrent. This group of people will try to do anything to get its hands on the show they want to watch. Waiting 3, 6, 12 months for a show to get shown on their countries via the traditional method is not acceptable. In the age of the Internet, things are expected to be instant. Hence, pirating is skyrocketing. I don’t believe that most of these viewers want to pirate, but they are offered no alternative.

The other kinds of viewers, the older demographic who watches TV before they go to bed, these viewers will still watch a certain show on a traditional TV, no matter if everyone and their dog in the same neighborhood have already watched the same show 6 months ago online. Essentially, TV Channel “B” doesn’t lose money. The amount of viewers they would have had, they will still have no matter the free international stream or not.

If other countries don’t want to pay for such content, that’s their problem. They should produce their own content instead anyway. THEN they will get off their butt and produce good shows, instead of utter trash. Competition is good.

And why is it that there should be an international market for TV shows? I don’t think there should be one — at least not for countries where almost everyone has internet. For developed countries, there’s absolutely no reason why US should sell their content to them, when they could stream it to viewers directly, and have 100 million viewers per episode worldwide, rather than 10 million in the US only.

Of course, not all shows are suited for such large streaming exposure. Shows like “The Mentalist” that have million of viewers per episode, but only in the aging population, are better suited in the old model of syndication. But shows like “LOST” are pirated to death because no one wants to wait not even a second after they broadcast in the US!

So why aren’t they do all this, you ask. The missing piece, and the part that’s lagging behind in the whole story, is the advertisement industry. This is what is holding us back. Today, there is no international ad agency that is able to deliver targeted video ads, at least not for viewers outside the big US cities. Therefore, ad revenue from online ads remains way smaller than that of live TV.

In the text/banner market, there is such an international ad agency that has a good record. It’s called Google.

But on the video side, there’s nothing yet. Even Hulu, offers us some nice-looking 480p video, and then it cuts on irrelevant commercials that are served to us in QVGA 4:3 format, with horrible pixelation. Not only I’m not going to buy the advertised product, but I want to throw up on my screen when I see these commercials. It’s like no one at Hulu knows anything about video to ask these people to export their ads properly from their video editor?!?

So until this problem is fixed, with ad agencies growing up and seeing the big picture (and learn how to use a video editor), I think we will be prisoners of our own IP addresses.

A GorillaPod and a Tiffen 37mm 0.9 ND filter arrived today in the mail. They were both on a big sale on Amazon, so I thought I buy them for my small digicams — which are the main kinds of cameras I use nowdays. The 5D MkII is mostly used by my husband these days. Instead, I’m in a kind of a crusade to prove that good video can also be shot with small, cheap digicams, if the right skills are in place. I don’t believe that all video enthusiasts should buy expensive dSLRs and camcorders, for some of them, an HD digicam is more than enough, if used correctly.

Canon SD780 IS with the Zeikos filter addon, Tiffen ND 0.9 filter, and GorillaPod

I might get the new Canon A1200, the one that shoots in 24p and costs just $110. I believe it’s possible to shoot close to 180 degree shutter, even without full manual control. If you set the camera to P mode, and half-press the shutter button, you will get the information about the shutter speed. Adjust the lights/scene or ND filter(s) until you get 1/50th or 1/48th shutter speed. Switch to video mode, lock exposure, start shooting. As long as the video mode uses the same exposure algorithm as the P mode, we’re in business.

BTW, the other day I found the manual for the A1200 (PDF), and it has all the video features I expected it to have (manual white balance, manual color control, exposure compensation+lock, focus lock), plus one that I didn’t: a miniature mode, like the one found on the S95.

UPDATE: With and without an ND filter, and some stabilization. With the ND filter there is some actual motion blur, since the shutter speed is more natural.

I never had anything good to say about GoogleTV 1.0. The UI sucks, the content is lacking, and it’s throughout inconsistent. But I think that my biggest peeve of all is its various remote control incarnations. I mean, look at this mess: 1, 2, 3, 4. They’re over the top, with many more buttons that I would personally like shoved in 5 remotes, let alone 1.

My biggest problem in these remotes is the TWO d-pads. They let you move with the one or the other, but they also allow you to confirm with them, only that it won’t carry through your action, because the focusing of that d-pad was at different position in the screen than the other d-pad, resulting in clicking the WRONG thing. Sure, sure, Google TV is still a 1.0 product. But THIS specific UI problem should have been fixed with a firmware update within the first few weeks. All it requires is to synchronize the two d-pad positions on the screen, so they focus on the same widget when one or the other is moved. Maybe there are some edge cases where the current behavior is needed in Chrome/Flash, but for everything else, this creates a major usability issue — especially for users who are accustomed to gaming controls (where you move your character with the left thumb, but you confirm/fire with the right). This is the No1 reason why I don’t even turn ON our GoogleTV anymore: I keep pressing the wrong controls!

What I need instead is a simple, elegant design. I do hope that GoogleTV redesigns their whole UI, but along with it creates a new Bluetooth remote like in my mockup below:

Until then, I will continue using the Roku, although I would certainly move to my Apple TV (which we currently use only for music), if Apple was to allow content providers to create their own “channels”, like Roku does. Preferably with the same UI for every channel, for consistency. But so far, the Roku, despite its simpler and dumber software, delivers a better overall experience than Google’s or Apple’s TV devices.

Vimeo for example, has a real, full-featured application on the Roku, while the web-based versions of Vimeo CouchMode/Youtube Leanback on GoogleTV suck goats because of the unnatural usability created by the web browser that’s used to deliver them (instead of having a binary app to fit perfectly in the usability of your device’s overall UI and remote control) — while AppleTV does not even allow third party apps/channels. For example, when I hit the “Menu” button, I want to see the menu for Vimeo or Youtube, not Chrome’s menu. Jeez. I guess you can say that I absolutely hate web apps on my TV. Every web app I’ve seen so far on GoogleTV (MSNBC, HBO, Blip, etc etc), is terrible UI-wise, does not fit with the overall UI and remote control buttons, does not correspond to its own “menu”, they’re all inconsistent with each other, and some are very difficult to use (parts of the HBO web app are almost impossible to use without a *real* mouse).

We cut off cable TV from our home 1.5 months ago, and as you may know, we’re very happy that we have done so. We get all the programming we need via on-demand services, and occasionally we get our regular programming via an interior TV antenna.

However, according to this documentary, where a few families were tasked to spend a week with one of these little geek media devices (Boxee, AppleTV, Roku, GoogleTV etc), cord cutting was not as easy for them as it was for us.

The problems they encountered mainly were, in order:
1. No live TV.
2. Most reality/kids/news/talk/etc programs aren’t available on-demand.
3. Confusing user interfaces.
4. Long buffering times.
5. Hardware setup & configuration issues.

These are legitimate issues. None of these devices has live TV, they don’t even feature the “free” network channels. None of these devices shows live news, or has non-primetime shows on demand. Except the AppleTV, it’s true that the rest of the user interfaces suck. And most of the US has slow DSL internet, making HD content too hot to handle.

Now, if you go point by point, you will always find ways to rebut these issues (e.g. get an antenna, Hulu Plus, etc.), but in reality, yours and my solutions won’t matter to these families. What these people ultimately want is easy, passive TV. They don’t want to think for themselves. They don’t want to watch something only if it’s truly good. They just want to turn ON the TV, and just watch almost whatever is on it at the time. As long as the program is easily digested, no one would change the channel. Viewers just don’t want to have to choose, they want one less thing to decide and research about.

Of course, there are ways for Apple/Roku/Google to bring a true TV revolution, but their offerings must look and feel more like traditional TV. Currently, they feel more like a computer, wearing fake clothes to look more like a TV product. But in reality, these products are still designed too much like a computer. I explained this here before.

To be honest, I don’t quite expect older people to like active TV, since they are used to this lazy kind of TV-watching in all their years. But I was infuriated when I saw the teenage kid saying that he would just watch whatever movie the cable channels would currently show. I indeed expected more critical thinking from a youngster. You see, eventually, apathetic behavior by some, comes back and bites all the rest of us in the ass — at many levels in our lives.

But hey, as long as we can watch “Sister Wives”, “Kate Plus 8”, or Snooki, all is cool.

Beyond Black Mesa is a short fan film inspired by the Half-Life video game. It was shot with a Canon HV20 camcorder, and it’s set to become one of the most-viewed short films shot with this beloved camera. As much as it looks impresive, it’s not the best HVx0 film, in my opinion. Still, great for a $1200 budget.

Another short film that’s making the rounds today is “Lazy Teenage Superheroes“, shot with a Panasonic HVX200 (according to its cinematographer who emailed me with the details). This one cost $300.