How to Choose Your Best Shot & Competition Update

I'm here again!

   The reason I posted this today rather than next monday is because I wanted to go over my process of picking my best photo.

   First thing I did was look through my portfolio. Your portfolio should be made of your best images, nothing else. I have had people ask me how many images are in a portfolio. I tell them, "If you only have one good image, then your portfolio is one image. If you have two solid images, you have a slightly larger portfolio." So it just depends, you can click on my portfolio up in one of the tabs to see how many I have.

   After I looked at my portfolio, I narrowed it down to two pictures (Click here to see them). Then what I did was I printed out some 4"x 6" pictures at home and showed them to some people. Some strangers, some friends, and some family. I took a tally of what they all liked and then chose the best one. Now remember, your choosing your best image. They're not choosing it for you, they're just giving you something to think about. Keep that in mind, you make the final decision.

Update on the Competition:

   Unfortunately I didn't make it into the contest. Better try again next time! Take a look at the video below:


   That's all for now. Until next time, George out!

Photo of the Month "Your Best Shot"

Hey! George here!

   So I haven't been able to get the post about the 135mm w/ the adapter up. But to make up for it, I have something to show you:

   I entered into the FroPhotoContest. This months theme is, "Your Best Photo." After looking through my images, I was tempted to use this one:

   But I printed some 4"x 6" images to show around to people, and this was their favorite:

   You can check out the forum with the link below:

http://forums.froknowsphoto.com/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=194562&start=560

   Art is very subjective, so I guess that is why they liked this one. Anyways... once the results are in, and I (hopefully) get into the finals, please take a minute to vote for my image. I'll post whether I did/didn't get up onto the finals.

   That is all for now, George out!

Lens Adapters Part 1

George Here!

   Just as promised, I'm going to review the adapters I use The Fotodiox FD - EOS Adapter and, next week I'll talk about the Rainbow Imaging AF Confirm M42 Screw Mount Lens to Canon EOS EF Mount adapter.

FD - EOS
When I saw it on the website, it looked very flimsy and I was worried about it breaking. But the pictures do no justice to this adapter. It's reasonably sturdy. I wouldn't drive over it with a car, but it's good enough if you don't drop your camera a lot. The mount is very sturdy, on both the FD and the EOS side. The ring to install as you see here has a VERY nice feel when it comes to locking the lens in. When you want to put your lens in, make sure the red dot on top and the install arrow are aligned perfectly. Then once the lens itself is mounted, twist clockwise (from this angle) until the filled white dot on top is as close as it can get. Then once that is done, you use the lens the same way you would as if it was on a film camera. One quick note, don't slide Aperture wheel until it hits the green "A". It will lock up and it very hard to remove if it's there. You can see from the Images below how it looks, mounts, and the white dots I'm talking about.

   The images taken with this adapter are amazingly sharp, considering that you're adding another piece of glass between the lens and the sensor. Here are some sample images from this adapter & the 100mm Macro.

   I love this adapter a lot. One of the few downsides are that you lose a stop of light when using it. To understand what I mean I set up an equation: x = light. x + adapter = 1/2x. So you need to factor that in when you're using this adapter. Another one is that you have to keep it hilariously clean in order to get results like this. But other than part, I really like this adapter. Would I recommend it? Absolutely!

Next week I'll be reviewing the M42. But that's all for now. ¡Adios!

Cassie & Miley Time-Lapse

Hey, George here!

   Unfortunately I didn't get the adapters in time so here is my backup plan. I haven't put up a video on Tem.Teen Productions in a while, so here's the second Time-Lapse:

   Actually, the other day, someone asked me how I did it. Well I can tell you... it wasn't exactly easy. On every mac comes software called Quicktime Player X, what you do is go into file, click new screen recording and it will pop up with a box that looks like this:

   You select the little white triangle pointing down to give you the settings you desire. In my case they were: no microphone, medium, show clicks. Then clicked the screen to start recording. But doing this causes some problems. The first, is that you can't specify the drive you record to. It always records to your internal drive. Which means your whole system suffers in performance. And last, it eats about a quarter of the processor power. If you have a desktop, that might not be a big deal to you. But if you're like me and have a laptop, every clock-cycle counts.

   But it works, and I was able to show this to you guys. :-)

That's all for now, George out!

New Lenses! Part Two

Hey George here!

   There are a lot of things happening over at Tem.Teen Studios right now, and I wasn't able to put up a post earlier in the day. But I'm here now for part two of my new lenses series. If you haven't read part one, you can do that by clicking this sentence. So here is the rest of the review.

   Canon FD 50mm f/1.4

   For starters, 50mm is THE standard lens focal length. I honestly love that I now have a lens that is of a large aperture & a standard focal length. Now since I'm shooting on a crop-sensored camera, it's really about an 80mm. But I'm hoping within the next year or two I'll be shooting Full-Frame or Super 35 (which is only slightly larger than APS-C, but you get what I'm saying):

I LOVE this lens. Super sharp, super crisp, super awesome!

   Canon FD 300mm f/4

   My favorite telephoto lens... HANDS DOWN! Take a look and you'll see why I love it:

   These are amazingly sharp, considering how easy it is to miss manual focus with this lens.

   So looking at these lenses, I have filled out two of the three requirements I wanted from the new glass. Sharpness, and being brighter. The third being autofocus, isn't possible because these are all manual lenses. So I have to control the focus, and aperture on the lens itself like a cine lens before I take a picture or shoot a video. But for free, what can you expect? :-) Now in the future, I hope to get some Rokinon/Sigma or Canon EF lenses to shoot with. But for now, this is what I shoot with. Maybe I'll add some more old lenses to the collection. Who knows...

   When I get the final adapter, I will review it alongside the M42 adapter. But until then, this is George saying, adios.

New Lenses! Part One

George Again!

   I’ve been using just the kit EF-S 18-55mm & EF-S 55-250 kit lenses for photography/videography for quite some time and they have preformed very well (Click Here for Sample Shots). But I kinda hate these lenses for a couple reasons. First, they’re very slow lenses. What that means is that they have a small aperture and intern, you have to crank your ISO up or lower your Shutter Speed. Sometimes this can lead your video/photos into looking like film, but more often than not it makes it WAY harder to color grade certain shots. And at least with the 18-55, it’s not that sharp, it isn’t of the best quality and is a little slow to focus. So with this, I wanted a few things with the new lenses: 

1. Fast autofocus
2. At least a stop or two brighter* 
3. Be sharper

   Now I’ve looked at lenses like the Tamron 24-70 f/2.8, Tamron 17-55 f/2.8, and even the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8. But I don't exactly have $700+ to spend on a lens as of the writing of this post. Now my father used to be into photography back in the days of the Canon F1 (“F” for film) and had a whole host of primes that are now in my possession. Lets take a look at some of the lenses I got.

Canon FD 100mm f/4 Macro

   An unbelievable piece of glass. The ability to focus within a few inches of the subject is really mind boggling. Even at f/4 I get amazingly shallow depth of field. Take a look at some images:



   Nothing but super sharp, crisp images come out of this lens.

M42 135mm f/2.8 & M42 2x Teleconverter

   This lens and teleconverter setup is by far my favorite. It is almost a telephoto lens with a very large aperture for the length. That makes my subject isolated from the background and really focuses your attention onto the in-focus areas. What I also love is how small & light this lens is, almost weighing about as much as a portable hard drive. And at f/2.8, this lens is good enough for most indoor shots. So I can keep this in my camera bag without adding practically any weight. Below is an image that I used the teleconverter, and I just fell in love with:

   Look at how sharp the bird is, I'm just amazed. Even with the Teleconverter, it looks amazing.

Next week, I'll cover the rest of the lenses I got.

   That's it for now, George out!

Editing in Different Software

Disclaimer: Adobe didn't sponsor me to do this, these are just my honest opinions about their software. May involve terms not commonly know by the masses. So if there is any terms you don't know, don't hesitate to ask.

George Here!

   

   So as you guys know, I'm a Final Cut Pro X editor. I've used it since September of 2012, and I fell in love ever since. It's fast, easy to use, and it's relatively snappy with lots of video formats. But I've kinda been mad at FCPX for a while for a couple reasons:

1. Slow Exporting: When I have finished my movie in Final Cut Pro X and go to export it, I will normally be looking at a 6 hour export for a 10 minute movie.
2. Color Correction: I honestly don't like the color correction in the program. It isn't powerful enough for what I do. And it's not the best laid out way for me to edit colors.
3. Poor RAM Managing: On my machine with 8GB of ram, my machine can't handle more than basic cuts without needing to render. Normally it's fine, I would just render what I need then play the rest. But still, I don't want to have to do that every time I make a change.*

   I know I'm editing on a 13" MacBook Pro, which lacks a Graphics Card & a Quad-Core Processor. But the beauty of Final Cut is to have not just the people with the $10,000 computers running it. It's meant for everyone as well as the pro's. So for the next episode of Cassie & Miley, I decided to change things up a little. I decided to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

   My first impression was that the layout is very similar to Final Cut 7, which is what I was used to before X. I imported the footage from Google Drive, and created a new sequence. But every time I hit a key command, it would go to a different thing al together. I realized  that the key commands were different, so I changed them to the ones in Final Cut. Now things were getting interesting.

   After editing the show in it, I can honestly say that I fell in love with it. The speed is amazing, the color correction is fast, and it doesn't eat up all the ram I have. Here's the list of my favorite things about it:

1. Dynamic Link: This is my top favorite thing that I miss from FCP7. In Premiere, I just have to right-click a video or audio file. Then click Dynamic Link, it then loads the video file into after effects, or the audio file into Audition. This is huge for me. I don't have to export, edit, reimport, then re-export if I want to make changes outside of Premiere.
2. Fast Rendering: The rendering in Premiere is amazing. I don't know what it does to make it so fast. But it does it great
3. Color Correction: The color correction is just amazing. Very easy for me, as well as powerful.
4. Amazing RAM Managing: I don't need to render every little change I do.
5. Exporting: Exporting is pretty darn fast.

   Take a look at some screen shots of my editing:

   So overall impressions are great about it. Now the big question, will I replace FCPX with Premiere CC? The answer is... No. I love Final Cut because of what it is. I can create templates much easier in it. Multi-cam is way faster. And the file organization is far better than in Premiere. But I now have another piece of software to add to my arsenal.

   That's about it, talk to you later guys! George out!

*The one thing that I think is faster in FCPX is the Render. I think the reason it is faster is because it takes more advantage of the Mac platform. 

Editing Blues & Tips for Working With/For Others

Hey, George here! 

   I’ve been editing the web series Cassie & Miley for a while now. And I would like to give my personal... opinions about editing for other people.

   The reason I got into Photography is because I love the art of capturing life. The reason I got into Videography, is because I love telling visual stories to people. And the reason I got into Music Making is because I love the process of idea to song. And for each of these topics, I have a certain style in how I work. For video, I like to be as simple as possible. For photos, I like deep blacks and high contrast. For music, I like full sounds with minimal (if any) distortion. 

   When people want you to do work for them (paid or unpaid), 90% of the time it’s because they like your work. And that's a good sign, it means people like your style. But once you land the job with them, they most likely have an idea about what they want and just want you to create it for them... then throw in a LITTLE of your creative flare if any. This can be frustrating to the content creator/editors editing for others because they want to show what they can do. And I know that for a fact because I have dealt with it.

   Here’s a story: When I was editing their latest video Story Time with Cassie & Miley, I was having computer problems. The main drive didn’t have enough space, so I had to delete stuff like crazy. The video needed HEAVY color correction and was on the wrong settings for video compression so I had to render out of Final Cut to After Effects to grade (and even then it was hard). Then I had to reimport the videos and place them onto the timeline. Then I had to create the titles, end screen, and apply some audio corrections. Then I exported a 950 x 540 version so they can see it for approval. That took about 5 hours, because FCPX loves to take its sweet time. She specifically said that she wanted it to be 10 - 15 minutes (closer to ten if possible), and when I uploaded it, and Cassie said it was too short and it didn’t flow right. So I reedited the video, rendered out 1920 x 1080 (taking 12 hours), and she approves it. And the whole time I thought the video needed to go up by Thursday, when she really wanted it up by Tuesday. Anyways, here is the final product:
    

   The video turned out great, but still. Now let me clarify something, this isn't a rant exactly. It's what happens when there isn't great communication between people. But I found out a couple things editing for other people that will make your job easier:

1. Don't Edit in Front of People: I'm serious about this. When I used to edit in front of people, they say, "You make it look so easy... can't you just..." and then make a list longer than the paper can hold. I'm not saying that Cassie & Miley have ever said that, but I have gotten that remark before. Now, take it with a grain of salt. Yes you can edit in front of people to show them what you can do. But don't say, "It's SO easy," or "That takes no time at all," when really it does take effort/time.
2. Effective Communication: Like in the case of schedule mistakes, you can always miss hear or not get the message of what they want you to do. Always keep communication and if questions arise, don't hesitate to ask.
3. Just do What They Ask: This is something that can be applied in every aspect of life. If you do what they ask you to do, and they like it, you're on their good side. And when you're on their good side, you have more leeway with what you can do creatively.

   Before I leave, I found this great speech by a photographer in the Bay Area, Jeff Cable:



   I will be looking forward to hearing what you guys think.

   And as always, thanks for reading. George out!

Photo Contest UPDATE

Hey George here!

   Unfortunately my chances in entering this contest was 1/650, so they were very slim. And that turned out to be the case with this contest. I'm not in the top 11 he picked. But now it's our time to vote. And hey, why not. You can check out this video for more info:


I've picked the nightscape photo. But go and vote for which one you like the best.
   George out!

Photo Contests

Hey everybody, George here!

   It's been a little while since I've updated you guys on what's happening on my side of Tem.Teen Studios, so let me fill you in. I've entered in the August FroKnowsPhoto contest. The theme is "Anything but People" and here are the images I submitted:





   I pulled out a new lens that my dad gave me and I just took some images of the apple leaves in our backyard. You can check out the forum I submitted to here:
http://forums.froknowsphoto.com/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=193655&start=610#p242751

   If you're curious about the lens that I used, I will be posting a whole post about it. As well as other lenses he gave me. But that's it's for now, George out!

CassiexMiley

   Collaboration is an amazing thing. You work on something for others... they work on something for you. You teach others what you know, & they teach you what they know. And in the end, everyone learns something new. That is certainly the case with this new series, CassiexMiley. Now for the previous series AutumnHasWifi, I just did the intro/outro. For this, I did all the editing. It's a challenge to make videos this fast and on this tight of a deadline. But miracles happen and this was the result:


   This is their first video in the series, and I have to say they did a really good job at this. Seriously... it isn't easy sitting in front of a camera and doing this. But they pulled through. Now there is also something I want to show you guys:
   This was even harder to make than the video up top. The reason is that my computer was running QuickTime to record a screen capture while I was editing the video, so it took a lot longer to edit, render, export the video. We actually had a conversation going back and forth ending up as long as a short russian novel*. But patience pays off and the video was uploaded.


*If you know that reference, post it in the comments.

AutumnHasWifi!

          Have you ever heard the phrase, "one-man-band?" And if you have heard of it, in what area of life does it apply to you? Well... that isn't exactly how it works in the video & multimedia world. Today, it's all about collaboration. And that is why I have teamed up with a vlogger in my area:

AutumnHasWifi

Check it out. She is funny & a remarkably entertaining story teller. Here is one of her videos: