Hi there folkies- here's what's new: so I went out to a place called Wonderland in Acadia on Saturday afternoon to test out the new Magic Lantern v2.3 stable release for the Canon 5D mkII- http://www.magiclantern.fm/ I'd downloaded it the previous day and shot stuff of my golden retriever doggy Grover and the kitty Gus, and the lady Sophie in the garden and all, but I wanted to use it in a format of shooting something from start to finish and decided on a nature vignette out in the park which I used to do a lot more of on a regular basis but have been primarily focussed on photography for the past year and have only done a little vid in that time. Part of the reason that I had been spurning video on my 5d mkII is that I began to find it frustratingly difficult to nail precise focus using only the rear lcd screen, I really wanted to add an evf eyepiece or an outboard 5 or 7 inch monitor to ensure proper focussing- because the whole point of using these cameras to do viddy is the ability to exploit super shallow depth of field and gobs of background bokeh etc and to do that shooting at an wide open aperture makes critical focussing a bitch! Handholding an open aperture can result in soft focus just by breathing. So after finding these focussing challenges when I heard about the focus peaking and real time live view crop features of the Magic Lantern hack for the 5D I signed right up. (a little detail is that you definitely need a card reader to download the firmware, I actually always download straight from cammy so that presented a problem and had to go next door to get the file.) Right then- so what you do is download the firmware to a card then when you insert the card into your camera you run the format camera option off the menu and choose the Magic Lantern firmware and it loads up and spins through the menus and you're good to go. To use it you hit the delete or trashcan button on the back of your camera and that brings up the menus for Magic Lantern and there are a million of them- there are some proper tuts out there on the Youtube and the ML webpage has all the answers and a pdf comes with the file so it's in camera etc. and all the menus and options have a subtitles system like of clearly explaining what it is you are doing. Like I said earlier, I wanted the focus peaking and real time live view crop and the exposure zebras, but it also comes with nifty bits like custom crop ratios, hdr vid which it does by shooting other frames at different iso's, a bunch more auto bracket exposure steps for still's hdr, and a whole fast food menu myriad of other options that you'll never use, that is until you want them. 

Screen Overlay menu

So my biggest mistake was that I downloaded the Magic Lantern firmware v2.3 http://www.magiclantern.fm/download onto a little teeny 4 gig card and when I was out in the field I almost immediately filled up that card with my first few scenes so in order to keep shooting on my 16 gig card I had to shoot with the regular old Canon settings, which was kind of a bummer after getting used to all of the information on screen that the ML ware gives you. Right, so as to that- the interface is almost completely different, but only in a good way, the icons and the fonts and the whole thing looks different because it is- it's running a different program to make the camera work, and with that sometimes depending on what you choose to enable, the screen can become a jumble of confusing and distracting pixels, and if that is throwing you off of capturing good stuff then that is bad. I wanted the focus peaking which is apparently in a bunch of other cams these days but not in a Canon 5D update- it works by showing the edges of where the critical focus lies- and it's totally distracting, but you are a camera operator at that time and the point is to capture the data- you can enjoy watching it later and like I said: if you miss focus- unless it's your style, it's a wicked bummer! The exposure zebras (zebras pronounced like zen if you're a Brit or an Aussie) are sweet just because they are like real time exposure highlight alert when shooting stills (the blinkies) and they really help with setting exposure. And the real-time loupe view mode of ML is super sweet- you can move the loupe box anywhere you want on the screen and where I used to have to guess when shooting 50mm at f2.0 to keep the eyes sharp I can really check to see in the loupe- works a treat! 

I know it's hard to see cause it's a screen shot of the lcd but here's the kitty in the loupe. And along the bottom of the screen is a real time histogram and a vector scope and some other kind of scope that I couldn't tell you the name of-

So as far as this video goes- it's a place called Wonderland in Acadia National Park that has some sweet tide pools and some nice variable features along the shoreline and its only about ten minutes from me and only a 20 minute hike. I've made a bunch of these nature vignettes practicing camera work so I could do better at filming my folks which is the real reason I got the 5D2 in the first place. One way to do these is to previsualize scenes and write down a shot list- this time I just went out and tried to capture a variety of scenes using my 24 ts-e, 17-40 f/4.0 and 100mm 2.8 L IS USM, in the end though in the editing suite you always want more footage, more scenes, more variety- I shot for 2.5 hours and made about 14 gigabytes of footage but there is never enough! Shot it all in Black and White picture style with +2 contrast and red filter and didn't do any grading in post. 

Video editing is great fun because you can make endless changes to the most subtle things like ramping time to accommodate a sloppy pan move or to affect the clouds speed of movement across the sky, or just show so many more visceral details that it would otherwise take a whole set of photographs to explain the sense of place that video as a package can deliver. I ended up spending probably 10 or so hours on this in the editing suite and eventually just wanted to get it behind to move on to photography again but if there were more hours in the day I would crop this to really wide screen 2:3:5-1 and do contrast and exposure adjustments in the 3 way color corrector. 

Final thoughts as to Magic Lantern v2.3 is that although it comes with a disclaimer that it could theoretically break your camera, I only intend to use it for when I want it which is to say when shooting vid that I need to be sure is well focussed, and for that it sure is worth it's weight in bits- the Magic Lantern crew operates by a donations system so for those of you who are willing and able- help them keep up the great work, maybe someday Canon will actually adopt some of these massive features but until then it's up to third party developers to plug the gap.

Oh and the musics is Phoenix "Love Like a Sunset", from the album "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix". Good stuff.

I Love To Watch The World Go By

"I Love To Watch The World Go By" black and white print #93.

Hello mis amigos- so, I was driving to my day-job this morning and listening to the radio when a story came on the "Planet Money" show, or whatever it's called, on the NPR, that was talking about the Panera Restaurant chain using a "pay what you want" monetary exchange system that really got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and I decided that that's what I want to do too: to sell smaller 8x10" prints for whatever you want to pay!- for something of a limited time of course in case it turns out to be a major losing gamble, and it's costing the farm to keep up, but I'm willing to trust that in the long run most people will pay a respectable and reasonable amount. So here's the dealio: you get an 8"x10" or 8"x8" print on excellent quality glycee papers printed on a professional quality printer, signed by me, and made with the same attention to detail as I would approach any of the larger prints that I make- which is to say that they are as perfect as I can make them and I won't send a print out into the world with any defects in quality that my own eyes can't notice, and I can see real good! 

The Backstory. Here's where this is coming from: I work for glassblowers part of the time- http://www.atlanticartglass.com/, and have had some experience selling blown glass at fine-art craft shows and it's a lot of fun- but inevitably I can remember somebody coming up to the booth and looking at some hand-made glass item or other and I could tell that they were at least intrigued by it, if not outright liked the thing, but they would be hesitant to look at it or touch it- essentially they figured that it was too expensive, without even knowing the price; (cause often you had to look underneath the thing to see the price tag). And when I read this kind of body language I would make to pick up whatever it was that they were enamored by and hand it to them so they could have the sensory experience of holding the thing and feeling it, and maybe see that, after turning it over and looking at it and finally finding the price tag, that it wasn't really that expensive after all, but it would usually turn out that they had young kids or something and were only imagining it getting smashed from their mantle or shelves in some kind of kid fun ball gaming giggling ridiculousness or something. There are glass buyers and there are glass admirers and these were the latter, you can't sell an ice-cube to an eskimo. ? Anyways-

So when that customer would leave without getting anything, or somebody else who didn't purchase something perhaps seemingly because of the price- it came to me that I wish we could only have a system whereby people could like fill out a form stating what they could afford or would be willing to afford- because where some people might not be able to afford the premium that often accompany's a fine art item- there could very well conversely be other more well-to-do customers whom may think that "it's not valuable enough" to grace their homes! I mean pricing art is almost completely arbitrary- surely prints have an empirical cost in inks and paper and time in preparation and just the fact of stopping my world to take the cover off the printer and firing up the interface on the Mac and proofing the output- and making another one if there is an aberration, (and this isn't even considering the photographic gear that it takes to make the picture), or the artistic and collectible value, but after that point, when the print is ready to go out into the world it can become hard for me to justify any particular price, especially one of thousands of dollars or the 4.3 million that the Gursky photograph "Rhine II" captured at auction!  

"Rhine II" Andreas Gursky 4.3 mil- hey now!

This is me: I live a most modest life, my clothes are worn, my car is always a little worrying- (but it's a diesel and it will last forever), and I almost never have a full tank because I skimped on the fill-up to get a bag of coffee or something, and there are back bills and the student loan people have me on their hit-list, but I'm happy. And my camera and lenses are awesome. And my lady loves me! And our dogs are healthy, but it would make me even happier to know that somebody wanted a print of an image I made to hang in their home. I can't do this with the big prints as they cost way too much to make and that's my flagship product like. But I want everyone who wants one to have a print that I'll make of your liking! So pick away and I'll send it to ya- you just have to cover the shipping which is under $10 bucks (I'll use USPS) and you can pay me by sending a check or PayPal or on the Square credit card app for the Iphone (which is cool). Just send me an email to make the offer at [email protected]. 

Is this crazy? Is this a bad idea? Does it even matter? Are there any other questions? 

Have a good one and thanks for stopping by, -photographer Nate, from Maine, Usa.

Pondside Roots and Grasses

"Pondside Roots and Grasses" 5d MKII, 24mm f/3.5 ts-e, B+W 110 10 stop ND filter, Lightroom4, Nik Silver Efex, Adobe CS5 for gradient tool.

Right then, so- I'd rather make or look at an ambiguous photo, or I guess even one that I hate- then one that I've seen before or is somehow more typical. And I've been making my fair share of those lately- this one though I feel more strongly about. I stopped at this place along the Upper Hadlock Pond this morning because I saw a clump of moving reeds out in the water that I wanted to explore some long exposures of, and that was all nice and good but after a few minutes of being in that spot I started to see all the other little scenes around me that are really gorgeous and fascinating to look at, it was really an amazing spot, and it made me feel great to be alive to be here, and it would you too- if we only could make the time to. Consider this- would you rather be doing anything else other then sitting on this pond's shore and watching the water grasses move in the ripples of the breeze on a perfectly comfortable, warm summer, bug-free morning, and looking at the texture of this old trees grain that's been weathered and exposed after years of ripping winter ice storms and scorching summer sun, sure there are plenty of things that we'd all rather be doing, but to do this is soul refilling. It can really give you a nice natural armor of sorts against the blare of the rest of the world- I mean what good is imagining a calm place when you can't actually imagine it because you've never experienced it! So from me to you- here is a calm place, I hope it will help you like it's helped me, and of course- have a nice day- Nate from Maine, Usa.