Today’s Video by Joe Farace
Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you’re always zapped in the end.—Anonymous
In a previous Film Friday videos I talked about and offered a few tips about buying 35mm SLRs from Japan and the USA using eBay. Today I take a look at the growing popularity of medium format film cameras and talked about the pro’s and con’s of finding, buying and shooting this film format, while exploding a myth—or urban legend—or two along the way. And it’s in color!
A note about the video: I am often asked how I shoot these videos, so here’s how:
As I may have mentioned before, I’m a one man band. Unlike the Cars & Coffee videos that are made with Cliff Lawson, I am responsible for everything on these Film Friday videos from set-up, to shooting and finally editing and posting on my YouTube channel. I don’t have a permanent set with lighting and a microphone set up that I can sit behind and pontificate like Ron Burgundy and usually shoot the videos around my home, lately in my living room. Consequently, I am constantly having to “reinvent the wheel” for these setups and have to do lots of testing before I can shoot the actual video. All of this takes time…
The camera I’ve been using lately for these videos is the mostly unloved, except by me, Canon EOS M6 Mark II with EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens set at 45mm (72mm equivalent) instead of the wide-angle focal lengths beloved by so many photo vloggers. Because I’m not a video expert, the footage was shot in the camera’s default video mode; I just push the red button. The microphone used is an inexpensive ($39) and corded Deity V.Lav Lavalier Lapel Microphone that has a 15-foot long cord that’s pretty easy to hide. Like my previous Film Friday videos, most of the lighting was provided by daylight coming through two large windows in the living room but this time I added a NEO 2 LED Camera Light for supplemental lighting although I don’t know how much it really helped. The footage is edited with a seven year-old copy of iMovie and then uploaded to YouTube.
Why was it shot in color: when the last two were in black and white? I shot it in color instead of the in-camera black and white mode used previously because this video had my Christmas tree in the background. The intro footage of me cranking my Seagull medium format TLR was shot by Mary (vertically!) with her iPhone and was cropped into a horizontal format and converted to monochrome using iMovie’s black and white effects library. If this color video gets more likes, views and picks up a few new YouTube subscribers, I may shoot all future videos in color; if not, it’s back to black and white.
What’s Next?: Today’s video ran a bit long so I never answered one of the questions I posed at the beginning: Is the XPan a Medium Format camera? That why the topic of my next video is Panoramic Cameras and the first order of business will be to answer that question, although there are some hints of my answer early in today’s video. The next one will also offer some (relatively) affordable alternatives to purchasing an expensive Panoramic Camera. I hope to have it shot, edited and ready before Christmas but either way it will be real soon now…
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