ASC member and DP for the long-running 24 series, Rodney Charters, gave a 20+ minute interview, showing off his RED One rig that he used to travel around the world.  Equipped with the Birger Canon mount (about 1.200$), he uses the Canon 16-35mm 2.8 (1.450$), the Canon 24-70mm 2.8 (1.190$) and the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 (1.190$; $1.700 with image stabilisation) lenses. From Sim Video he has a special handle (1.200$) that doubles as EVF and battery holder.

He also had some custom made handle bar system, that does not need any rods – thus shedding off a pound or two, and saving further space (sorry, no link).

The whole set fits into one smart looking bag (the Think Tank Airport Acceleration, about 200$) that can be taken onboard a plane.

The whole interview can be found on the excellent Reel Show.

Busy and exciting times here, thus only irregular updates.

At times you find yourself in a situation where you need to know where the sun will be at a given time. It might be that you need to film a sunrise, simply to know when the light starts in an unknown location, or to calculate shadows.

On a Mac or Windows machine, there is a $87 program called SunPath, which holds information for about 40.000 locations world wide. If you have an internet connection, you can also go to Sunposition.info, which will draw a nice map of the sun’s position,  or use the Sun tools on timeanddate.com, which offers a variety of tools:

• Astronomical Twilight Starts/Ends
• Nautical Twilight Starts/Ends
• Civil Twilight Starts/Ends
• Sunrise and Sunset
• Sunrise and Sunset Azimuth
• Length of day
• Solar noon at time/altitude/distance

Derek Powazek has written a great post on how to work on events. While written for stills cameras, the piece also applies to video shooting. (via) Just replace “flash” with “on-camera light”.Talking of which, I try hard to avoid using them. They just kill the lighting mood, and the light comes from the same angle as the camera, removing any texture. In the past 5 years I have used a on-camera light on 1 occasion, for about 3 seconds.If you have to use on-camera lighting, try to soften it. Either with a gel in front of the lamp, or use a softer fixture, such as a miniKino, or a Litepanel.