Tokina 11-16mm Lens Review

Your always looking for that next beautiful landscape shot, or the perfect astrophotography time lapse, but what the lens do you have by your side to capture these amazing scenes. While there are so many options and each lens have it's perks, there is not one perfect lens for any given scenario. It is up to you as the operator to compose the picture how you see fit. however, I recently picked up the Tokina 11-16mm for landscape and time lapse photography due to the amazing wide angle it provided, because I think in this type of photography this is going to help you gather the most interesting shots available.

(Due to uploading to blogger, the quality is quite poor.)

                 (Captured with the Sony a7s with the Tokina 11-16mm and Glidecam HD 4000)

This past Sunday I took to the football field to gather some B-roll of the stadium, I put together this teaser as a test video of the footage gathered. All material is shot in 60FPS conformed in post.

In the first shot you can see one huge problem right off the bat. The lens flare. While I love a good lens flare, it can be a bit much sometimes. I had no lens hood on while I shot because I was observing the flares and how they compared to my other lenses. But it would be interesting to see how it worked against preventing them. One interesting effect that occurs due to the full frame sensor, is that when completely wide at 11mm a picture will result like this.

The huge vignette is quite unflattering thus making the lens primarily fixed at 16mm. The great
APC-S feature of the camera turns this 11-16mm into a 17-24mm which is a handy trick to get a bit more punch as well as helps with the vignetting.

The football teaser above also demonstrates the issue with the ND filter. Due to the sunny weather we had this past Sunday, the ND was necessary to be able to shoot at an appropriate F-stop. The filter is variable up to 8 stops, but getting close to 6 is when the black streak in the top right corner of the image occurs, in some images it is more noticeable, but is very noticeable in the time lapse below.

While those two issues occurred in the video, the lens overall is very useful. First off the field of view is amazing. Paired with the full frame, even when punched in to the 17-24 APS-C mode, the lens is so wide and if you want that extra wideness, the 16mm is more than useable, however filters do come in to frame so indoors might be the best option for that. But this wide lens is great to make your shot extra smooth with the Glidecam, as well as capturing a a large canvas with time lapse. 

(The vertical capability is also a feature which needs exploring.)

A feature I neglected to touch upon until this point is the speed of this lens. With f2.8, this is amazing for night time photography. I've been meaning to test out the low light monster that is the a7s, combined with this lens, because I think it would have amazing results. Now just to get to somewhere that lacks light pollution. 

The final picture is one testing long exposure with the ND filter. While in the corners, the vignette is present, the ability to do a 30 sec exposure really made the water quite milky. 

Overall, testing new gear is stressful but enjoyable and you learn that ever piece of equipment has its pros and cons. In the end you just have to decide what you want to put up with more and if its worth the resulting image.

Filming complete for final Trailer Park Boys Movie

I recently read that the filming for the final installment of the Canadian comedy series, Trailer Park Boys. For those of you unfamiliar with the series it follows the lives of Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles three loveable low-lives who make their living by committing various petty crimes. It started off as a television series, but grew in popularity to the point of producing three major picture adaptations of the franchise. The series uses a mocumentary-style of directing and often the filming crew becomes involved in the plot of the story. 

Unfortunate news struck the cast when one of the shows main characters, Philadelphia Collins, died just days after shooting his scenes. His character is known for having an enormous gut and short temper. He also possesses many hilarious catchphrases such as: Bam! The character is one of my all time favorite because of how rare of an actor and character he is. I really look forward to seeing his last work.

 

Like many devoted fans of various T.V. and movie series I am skeptical that this installment will not meet the standards of the earlier work. That said, I cannot wait to see this film and if you have not watched the series before you should check it out, it is entirely on Netflix. It is one of the best TV shows on the network.

Final Project in Review

When we started our final projects over a month ago I really did not know what to expect. I latched onto an idea that I found interesting in class and went from there. I was assigned to write the script with two of my classmates Rob and Kofi. Admittedly, we would consider ourselves amateur script writers. After 2 weeks of writing we came up with a 35 page script called the Face Off. Was 35 pages too long for a fiction field final? In retrospect, yes, but I think the theme of this project was that I was learning on the fly. I am proud of the script that the three of us wrote and I think had we were allotted more time than we could of have followed it more closely. Production was also a huge learning experience for me. Finding locations, talent, costumes, and set pieces, was an exciting new venture me. Also, creating the set with proper lighting, audio, and continuity was a challenge. Some scenes went better than others. Most notably our debate scene which we held in the Park auditorium was looking fantastic. However, we ran out of time for our reservation for the room. Being only a handful of days before editing was to take place, we could not re-shoot the scene. Instead, we had to choose a new location, cut a big chunk of our script, and stay up much later than I think anyone in the group planned to finish the production. This served as another valuable lesson: always have a backup plan, and think quickly on your feet. The next part of this experience that I was able to learn from was editing. The editing process was an interesting one. By interesting I mean exhausting, staying up through all hours of the night and into the morning to get our film edited correctly. I tip my hat to Jarred and Breanne for their dedication throughout the editing process. That basically leaves us where we are now, audio mixing our project so it is ready to go for the screening on saturday. As we started the audio mixing process, I was actually terrified to see what all our clips looked like lined up with each other. As we mixed through our entire session on tuesday night, I grew more and more excited to see the final project. The bottom line is this: Our project is not perfect. The plot line didn't go as planned, our locations didn't go as planned, editing didn't go as planned, but the final product resembles countless hours of hard work from each group member. This is by far the hardest I have worked on a single project in my life. With that being said, I am so happy to present The Face Off at the screening on saturday in front of friends and peers. Over a month of work put into one project is finally over. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the Face Off.

Ithaca College's Park School...

and it's lack of classes devoted to how the industry and business works.

I first thought of this when we watched that video in class on Wednesday.  Now, I know Arturo has told us certain things about the industry and how production is the best way to get into the business but it was interesting to watch the video and see the vast number of positions available in just one department on set.  I was really amazed that I had never really thought about that kind of stuff because knowing the business and its positions are extremely important as well as how the hierarchy works on a set.  A lot of times, we only learn production type things in park and I think because of this, we forget that learning about the industry we get into and how many of the different things work is extremely important.  I really wish the school would create a class or two other than the intro media industries class that students could take to learn in depth about how the industry works in different aspects.  Some things they could talk about would be how to get investors for films, going through all the production jobs on set of a movie or television show (field, live, sports, scripted, ect.), all about the different studios and how to get in contact with them, and even the different areas in the country and around the world that are hidden hotbeds for video other than LA and NYC.   I think this would be extremely beneficial for students to really fully understand the business other than only knowing how to produce things.


-Tyler Chadwick

6 days to air- documentary

    So I finally got around to watching a documentary about South Park that someone mentioned to me last month. The documentary is called "6 Days to Air" and is about how each episode of South Park is created start to finish in 6 day increments. They finish the episodes on the day they are supposed to air!! This is INSANE! And Trey and Matt actually look VERY calm for how much pressure is being put on them.


    I want to work in this field, and this is intimidating!  The South Park crew consists of probably 10 members or less that are all magnificently talented. I realize that many shows come close to the deadlines in production, but I didn't know that Trey and Matt go into the writers room with NO solid ideas in their heads! These guys are sleeping at the office to save time while working! I also underestimated how talented Trey and Matt are for doing almost all of the voices of the show.  I thought that by now they were successful enough to pass voice duties on to someone else!
Overall it's a pretty inspiring documentary though!

Here's a link to the documentary, sorry no emmbedding for it.
6 Days to Air

Just Desserts tonight!

Hey guys- Just Desserts is tonight at 7 in Emerson. It's an end of the year awards ceremony/thingamabob for ICTV and WICB/VIC. So if you were involved in ICTV or WICB or if you're just a Parkie who wants free strawberries and chocolate cake, then feel free to come. :)

End of the Year

So, although I wasn't in class today, I am almost done with my ADR project, I think it looks alright, I really do need someone to look at it and give me feedback though. But its the end of the year we've only got one more week till finals, and than its summer.

Also, does anyone else hate registration??????? (and i know that everyone does) but I hate how they only have one, possibly two sections open for required classes. I really think that they need to revamp the system, not the way in which we choose classes but the number of classes that are available to students.
But anyways, thats my rant about registration. Hope everyone's ADR projects are coming together well.