Emmanuel Rondeau's Blog

Exceptionally, this post post will be in French only. The SATIS is basically a show in Paris that “gathers the entire professional French community of the images and sound technology industry and the audiovisual production industry“. For those of you who don’t speak french, you can still enjoy the images in the video below

Le SATIS est l’occasion de faire un peu le point sur les nouvelles tendances technos, de prendre en quelques sortes la température. Le salon gagnerait sans doute beaucoup à se rapprocher des usages sous formes de petits ateliers pratiques, workshop, en extérieur ou intérieur. Peut-être qu’on pourrait organiser quelque chose pour l’année prochaine, qui sait ? Ci-dessous une petite vidéo de “best of SATIS 2011″. Un Grand Merci à Jérémy Mathieu au cadrage, Stéphane Déry de Canon, Sébastien Devaud, Pascal Coulombier de BoomAudioVideo.com, Tony Fernandes de L’Aigle, Christopher Sevilla d’AUEV Technology, Jimmy Thirion d’X-tremeVideo.com et d’Hugo d’Images-photo.com.

I have been using the ZEISS spotting scope quite extensively in Costa Rica and in the French Alps for spotting distant wildlife, they’re doing a marvelous job doing so. One thing I never tested though, it how they handle shooting video. You might ask “Why in hell would anybody like to use a spotting scope for shooting?!“, well there are a 100 reasons for this but ours is simple: on some projects we have our whole equipment on our back, so to be able to use a tool for 2 different purposes is saving lot of weight. 1000mm f/11 (specs of the spotting scope) can also be a creative opportunity, something extra that we can do in very specific situations, where we need close-ups or when the subject is just too far away for a classic 500mm. So here is the test video I made with my friend Jérémy Mathieu at the ornithological park of Villars les dombes, France.

The video is available in 1080p for you to judge image quality. Here is some quick feedbacks from this day of testing.

• A spotting scope will always be a spotting scope first. We are considering this setup for extreme situations only.
• Image quality is really good. The 500mm f/4L closed at f/11, even with the addition of the 1.4x is sharper though.
• On a 7D, at 1000mm f/11 and on a subject 50 feet away (15 meters), depth of field is about 3,5 inches (9cm), no needs to say it is quite easy to mess up the focus is you’re not extra careful.
• Following a subject is possible if the distance (and so the focus) doesn’t change too much.
• A good tripod is your best friend on earth when using the scope for video, we used this setup and were pretty happy with it.

We will continue this testing further by comparing the new Canon 500mm f/4 IS L II + Extender 2x III versus the ZEISS Victory 85T* FL spotting scope, and also comparing still images, so stay tuned

Last thing, I would like to thanks ZEISS and particularly Vincent Poirot, head of Zeiss Sport Optics France for providing the equipment.

This blog has been sleeping for a terrible long time, sorry guys, I have been quite busy with other subjects, like Finding Nature, but here I am ^^, delivering a quick-but-not-so-quick-tech-post before going to sleep (it was itching too much).

The digital transition achieved

We’ve seen more (tech)moves in the last 3 years than anytime in film history. The digital age has been speeding up the industry in an amazing way. Pretty much the whole industry, whether it is indy filmmakers or Hollywood feature film DP are nowadays using tools that weren’t existing 3/4 years ago (5D Mark II and its brothers, Red world, Alexa, Sony S35…) and also releasing their work on web platform (Vimeo, Connected TV…) sometime more powerful than 50 years old TV channels. Companies like Panavision are developing new workflows and tools to handle those cameras but basically need to reinvent the wheel every 6 months. From now on, we’re all talking about sensors, ISOs, codecs, comparing cameras like we used to compare computers in the “PC age”. I remember a first sign of this digital age being Michael Mann shooting “Collateral” with a modified Viper camera, everybody was amazed to see how a digital camera could handle high ISO (well, except those that had been using DSLR in the past 10 years . Yesterday, Canon and Red, the two companies leading the revolution have announced their new babies:C300 on one side and Scarlet on the other side. I won’t comment too much these new tools, maybe just sharing a slight disappointment: 1080p only for the C300 is a bit sad (but not lethal as I read here and there on the web) for a camera targeting Cinema, and no high film rate at 2K for the Scarlet is also a bit disappointing.

Marketing VS Innovation

Canon have also announced the development of a kind of “1D Cinema” body, just a after announcing the 1D X. While I’m sure it will be a great tool, I’m afraid this to be a reaction of Canon to re-affirm their two different divisions, one for Photography and one for Cinematography. Indeed, with the 5D II, Canon have been doing a lot of bad to its video department but in the same time, trying to keep the best (or kind of) of both worlds. To put it in a nutshell, I’m afraid having to own a 1DX AND a 1DC to make photography and video, whereas with the 5D II, the company was putting all its efforts and innovations into a single body. We could (like we have many times in the past) see greats innovations not hitting our cameras for pure marketing (and “line consistency”) reasons.

To conclude this geeky post I will invite you to get back to this blog very soon, you’ll discover a test of the latest ZEISS spotting scope in Wildlife HDSLR usage. Sexy as hell

Last week, I took some vacations and headed to Montana toward Glacier National Park, it was a good opportunity to rest and in the same time spotting for future adventures. Naturally, like always in summer, the park was pretty much crowded, but again, as always, when you start a long trail, it’s not very long till you’re alone, 99% of the people don’t like to walk that long, good for us! Even in vacations, I still brought with me a couple of cameras/lenses and a pair of binoculars to bring back some images.

Glacier is a park with a great potentials, it is really full of wildlife, Bears, Mooses, Ospreys, Eagles, Mountain goats, Wolves…pretty much every wildlife you would imaging in North(ern) America. We spent something like 5 days in the park and really 2 days in the wilderness. We took the trail to Cracker Lake, one of the many “amazing and yet not so crowded” trails of Glacier NP, 7 hours roundtrip, but we slept up there for 2 nights.

We did not see any bears (well, except one crossing in front of our car, but this is not really seeing…) but came very close from one one morning at dawn, I think we missed it from 10 or 15 minutes. Who cares?! the goal wasn’t to take pictures, but to enjoy nature’s beauty. Aesthetically, I’d love to get back there in the heart of winter, where all the living is fighting against the elements for surviving.

• #4: Avalanche cascade. Love the mossy rocks, the colors, it’s really a cascade deep in the forest.
• #5: For me picture of the week. I came out of the tent at dusk, it was around 10pm, and a mountain goat was just next to our tent. I completely laid down on the ground, with a 17-40mm and a 5DII. It was so much more than just the animal, it was about everything, the ambiance, the surrounding mountains, the turquoise lake. After a little while, the goat came very close and took the right pose.
• #11: A marmot, they’re curious creatures.
• #12: Well, basically me, scouting for bears. At your service!

My friend Jeremy Mathieu and I spent 3 days in the Alps at an altitude of 2200m (7200ft), looking for one of the rarest bird in France, extinct and yet recently reintroduced, the elusive Lammergeier (also named “Bearded Vulture” or “Gypaéte”). It took us several months to localize this very specific spot and 4 hours to bring everything we needed (including a Canon 500mm f/4) to be ready when (and if) the bird would show up. And it did! the first time we weren’t even ready and it literally flew over us, at only 5 meters away (16 feet), with a wingspan of over 2,85m (9-10 feet), the experience is breathtaking. After that, we just watched, one at west, one at east for the whole day, with binoculars and spotting scopes provided by ZEISS. The bird came to see us at least 15 times during those 3 days, a long wait for a great reward. The only thing we did not get right is the temperature, we were expected a little bit hotter, we just froze, especially at night, at temperatures below 0 and a “summer sleeping bag”.

• #4, an ibex, lost in the immensity.
• #7, a lammergeier fighting against a griffon vulture to protect its nest, we assumed the couple had a baby.
• #8, the lammergeier is bringing a piece of bone (or meat?) to its nest.
• #12, full moon in the Bargy Mountains.

I hadn’t been on the field for about 2 months, enough to get a nature photographers nervous. So I packed my stuff, just enough for a night in the mountain (2200m/7200ft of altitude), 1.5L (1/2 gallon) of water, some bread, a tent, a warm sleeping bag and some photographic toy, including my new Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS.

I was a bit nervous because it had rained for the last 2 days, the weather was threatening for the whole week-end. Usually terrible weather makes great images, but bad weather in the Alps can also be dangerous. Anyway, I really wanted to go, this last minute information couldn’t make me change my mind, and I knew a cave where I could easily sleep in case of rain (and it did).

Those 24 hours where magical. The weather had scared all possible hikers so I was basically alone for 24 hours, I didn’t say a word to a human being for that period. Being out there and facing difficult conditions makes you feel alive, part of something that makes sense. I hope that those images will also evoke feelings/emotions for you.

• #2: now this is a threatening weather.
• #4: a fox lost in the immensity of nature.
• #7: at dawn, I was sitting on the top, and this ibex suddenly came out of nowhere.
• #9: in the Alps, it’s really all about scale.
• #10: a herd of chamois traveling through the mountains.

Please look at those pictures listening to this music.

Also consider looking at the complete Alps Gallery.

Following my last proposition on Point Reyes, here is another coverage review, this time of Point Lobos and Big Sur. The idea is still the same, sharing with you some thoughts and ideas about the place and why I decided to spend time on this subject by using a mix of video, photo, comment and music.

Sorry for my French friends, but this is English only, I’m not sure why we don’t have any way on vimeo to post a second sound track, but if one day this is fixed, then you will have it immediately

During our last expedition to Costa Rica, we had the great opportunity to meet Guaymi Indians. Our guide and partner Neyer B. Campos helped this community some years ago by providing chairs and desks for the school, and so we were allowed to meet the scholars for about an hour. Those children have a big future responsibilities, they are going to make the difference on whether or not the Guaymi culture is going to survive in Costa Rica.

Honestly, it has been of the most intense moment of the trip. The climate was at the beginning very cold, the children were not used to meet weird white sweating people like us, and they had never seen such big cameras, so they were not sure how to react when Enoc S. Gonzalez (the teacher) introduced us to them. “Who wants to be photographed ?” started asking Enoc, of course this wasn’t the way I would have liked to proceed, but anyway it was a start, of course nobody answered.

So basically, in a complete silence, the shooting team and Neyer/Enoc starring at me, I started to walk in the classroom, and showing pictures of animals to the children. Some started to laugh, I wasn’t sure if they were laughing because of the situation (a white guy coming from France to show them a picture of an animal they are seeing everyday) or because the animal’s behavior was funny, but whatever! it was a first step.

Then, using my ridiculous Spanish skills, we started communicating on where we were living, pointing on a map our countries and calculating how far it was and how long it takes to get then walking, swimming, and…flying. It was a good start for taking pictures, one of the little girl designated herself for being my ambassador of the classroom, she’s on most of the pictures I took that day.

Then by showing them the portrait I was taking from them, they all started to warm a little bit, until the point where they all went out in a complete mess, like every child in the world wants to.

Here are some of the pictures from this joyful moment.

For Costa Rica, Canon kindly provided a Canon 1D Mark IV, big thanks to Roch from Canon and Richard from Lyon Photo Numerique. I was used to 1D Mark III so I can compare both cameras pretty easily and judge the gap between the bodies. Weather sealing is not a joke, trust me the Mark IV and I went trough hell in Costa Rica, 100% of humidity every day, the Mark IV has been dripping for hours ! However, every nights, the camera was sleeping in a weatherproof case with tons of silica gel.

Here are my takes on the main changes from the Mark III to Mark IV :

• Obvious but important, the gap from 10MP to 16. It may sounds like something not that important for some but for me it’s a big thing since I like big print (30 inches – 80cm – and above) for exhibition. I think it is a nice number of megapixel for an APS-H sensor size, it give f/9.1 as diffraction limited aperture, so basically, above f9.1, we’re “loosing pixels”.
• The screen (and the menu), like the one of the 5DII of 7D, is a joy to use. OK, this is not the most important thing in the world, but still, when you spend 20 days looking at a 3 inches screen, you want it to be good.
• I couldn’t really test the new AF system, since in the majority of the case with action I used the center point in AI Servo.
• Something I really like ? basically NO changes in the buttons positions, this is very important, especially when you pick up the camera 24 hours before starting your coverage (!).
• ISO sensibility is better but it didn’t blow my mind.
• Battery life is really good on 1D cameras, I could have made the entire coverage with only 4 batteries.

Things I would like to see in the next release :

• Please Canon don’t change the video command on each camera ! the way to record on a 5D II is different from the way you do it on a 7D and different from the way you do it with a 1D IV.
• Couldn’t we think about a new system to change AF mode ? I would like a very fast system with only one button, and also I would like this information to be in the viewfinder, instead of like the battery check or the JPEG icon…
• Something I would love ? a Nikon’s like system where you can change the sensor size on the go, like shooting at full frame at 25MP and then being able to shoot in the APS-H format at 16MP.
• 1.4kg (including the battery) is too much, not sure how to fix that though…
• Better integration of the video feature, for now it really looks like a last minute feature.
• More video features, for a start I would like 1080/60p.

Finally I’m back from Costa Rica ! As anyone would expect, it has been a great experience with amazing moments and meetings. Shooting videos and stills in the same timing was a big challenge for the team but it worked pretty well, and we had no problem at all with the equipment (except a couple of lens caps that decided to stay in the jungle…), who said that the Canon 5D II couldn’t take 100% humidity for 3 weeks ?

So now is going to start a big post production stage to edit our 350 GB of footage and 2000 pictures. We will keep you inform on this blog.

Here are 3 pictures illustrating pretty much what the adventure was all about : the team after a big “rainforest shower” (Robin Safiotti on the right, here recording ambiance sound, and Jeremy on the left, co-directing and shooting the documentary), the wildlife (here a squirrel monkey) and the meetings (Guaymi indian at home).