Why We Fight from Tyler Ginter on Vimeo.

“Why We Fight” contains never before Released footage of the Afghanistan Special Forces, Strike Force Lion, who describe their own personal reasons why they continue to fight the war against terrorist threats within their country.

All footage was filmed entirely on the Canon 5DMKII by Spc. Matthew Freire during his 9 month combat tour under some of the most dangerous locations and roughest conditions in Afghanistan while supporting the elite United States Special Forces.

Strike Force Lion is a hand selected elite group of Afghan Fighters trained by the United States Special Forces with the purpose of eliminating terrorist threats in the Khowst Province of Afghanistan.

These are strong, brave, and fierce fighters that do everything they can for peace!

Filmed by:
Spc. Matthew Freire

Edited and Color Corrected by:
Spc. Matthew Freire
1st Lt. Tyler Ginter

Tools:
Canon 5DMKII
Canon 24-105mm F4
Canon 50mm F1.4
Final Cut Pro
After Effects
Magic Bullet Looks
Magic Bullet Mojo

All footage has been cleared for Public Release.

55th Combat Camera
“Eyes of the Army – Combat Focused”

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
blog.tylerginter.com
tylerginter@mac.com
twitter.com/tylerginter
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

A Spring-Wound Bolex 16 mm Camera

I’ve received a lot of emails after posting my “How to Setup Your 7D” video tutorial asking what the 180 degree shutter rule is and why it’s so important. To be completely honest, before these Video DSLRs came around I didn’t really understand the principles of the 180 degree shutter rule myself. Video cameras I’ve used in the past always defaulted to a 180 degree shutter automatically so unless I went into the settings to change my shutter speed or frame rate, I was always good to go!  However, this all changes with Video DSLRs hitting the market because they have no preset shutter speeds to rely on and most of the manufacturers of these DSLRs don’t find this rule important enough to make it a primary feature.  Therefore, I figured this would be a great opportunity to consolidate a few articles and resources on the web to answer this question once and for all.

I want to thank Jason Wingrove and Stu Maschwitz for breaking down the 180 degree shutter rule for me. Stu wrote an excellent blog about this topic last year when Reverie first came out describing why it is so critical to shoot at a 180 degree shutter!

I’m also seizing this opportunity to discuss the 360 degree shutter issue, as it’s one that needs airing out. Sure, it may be a creative choice for a filmmaker to use a greater-than-180-degree shutter, but when my mom sees the trailer for Collateral and asks me why it looks like video, we’re talking about a choice that sets back the progress of digital cinema. If you want your 24p HD to look like film, the film we know and love, stick to a 1/48 second shutter speed or faster. -Stu Maschwitz

During RedCentre Episode 25, Jason had a great discussion with Mike Seymour on shutters and keeping the film look.  Check it out, it’s a great resource that dives further into the explanation I am about to give you.

With all that said, lets dive into why the 180 degree shutter rule is so important. With the rise of digital cinema it is critical to maintain the “film look” that we all love so much. We do this with shallow depth of field and low light from large sensors, interchangeable sharp/fast glass, Matte-Boxes, Follow Focus, Stedicam Rigs, Dollies and Jibs, 24P, color correction, vignettes/film grain, and the list goes on and on… However, one thing that is often overlooked and under appreciated is the 180 degree shutter speed rule.

Basic Operation of a Film Camera by Joram van Hartingsveldt

To maintain the “film look,” first we need to examine how a film camera actually works. Take a few minutes to study the animation at the left. As you can see, a physical shutter on a film camera is basically half a circle. The opening defines the shutter angle.  Just like ISO/ASA wasn’t a luxury to instantly adjust on the fly back in the day like it is today, neither was your shutter speed on film cameras. In order to change the shutter speed you had to physically remove the disc and replace it with another disc that had a different sized hole cut out. Likewise, to change the ASA on a film camera you would have to physically remove the film stock and swap it out with another roll. Aren’t we spoiled today?!?

Anyways, let’s quickly review… The physical shutter in a film camera has the shape of a half circle (as you can see in the animation). This is defined as a 180 degree shutter angle, makes perfect sense since a complete circle would be 360 degrees… In order for the film to feed through the gate while properly exposing each frame of film, the disc will have to rotate one complete revolution for every frame. Therefore if you are shooting 1fps, the frame would be exposed to the open part of the disc (allowing light to hit that specific frame of film) for only half of its complete revolution or in other words 1/2 shutter speed. During the other half of the disc revolution (while the closed half of the disc is blocking that frame of film) the next frame of film is being fed into the gate ready for its opportunity to be exposed. So, since we now understand that when shooting at 1fps, the shutter speed would be 1/2, then you basically just carry that math on! 24fps = 1/48, 25fps = 1/50, 30fps = 1/60, 60fps = 1/120, 120fps = 1/240 and so on…

Now very quickly you can see why the 180 degree rule can get dangerous pretty quick once you start filming with higher frame rates. When the 2/3″ Red Scarlet comes out with 120fps (150fps burst) then you will be cutting a HUGE amount of light shooting at shutter speeds up to 1/300th. The same goes for cameras like the Phantom that shoots well over 1000fps. In order to get the proper shutter speed you need to be shooting at least 1/2000 and pouring the light on the subject in order to maintain proper exposure during those extremely high shutter speeds.

So how exactly does the shutter speed affect your image? Well if you come from a photography background you don’t really need to read this explanation. However this is the true magic on the convergence of photo and video today! The same terminology and fundamentals are more important than ever in relation to aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Therefore, what happens when you take a photo at a slow shutter speed – 1 second exposure? You get a lot of motion blur. What happens when you take a photo at a fast shutter speed – 1/8000 shutter speed? You stop motion.

Effect of Different Shutter Speeds (Fast Shutter to Slow Shutter from Left to Right) on Photograph by Nevit Dilmen

Well the difference is when you’re dealing with digital cinema, filming at a greater than 180 degree shutter (which you should NEVER EVER do), allows each frame to contain too much motion blur which results in a “smeary” look… Besides, this is a look that would be mechanically impossible to achieve using a film camera since you need that extra time for the physical shutter to block each frame so the next frame can slide into place… Therefore, a greater than 180 degree rule looks unnatural so PLEASE don’t do it! I know, sometimes breaking this rule is so very tempting when it’s dark out, you have your aperture wide open, and are pushing your ISO to the max… You think to yourself, “I can open up my shutter speed a little more.” Just because the camera lets you do something doesn’t mean you should because before you know it, you’ll be shooting 24fps at 1/24th shutter… Don’t give into the temptation, stay strong because you’ll kick yourself in post when reviewing your footage wondering why your digital cinema looks like nasty smeary video. Yes, all rules are meant to be broken but this is one rule that if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you can really ruin your work.

So when is it alright to break the 180 degree rule? Well, if you are going after a certain effect like they used in “Saving Private Ryan” to get a staccato feeling then breaking the rule is acceptable.  On the cameras they used for this film, they adjusted the standard half open/half closed disc with a disc that had a 90 degree opening for the majority of the film except for the high action combat scenes which were shot at a 45 degree shutter angle (to be more accurate, the shutters in these film cameras are electronically adjusted but the same fundamentals apply). Remember, those are LESS THAN 180 degree shutter angles so it’s alright. A 90 degree shutter angle would equate 1fps to 1/4 shutter speed or at 24fps they were technically shooting at a 1/96 shutter speed. That means they had to use a lot more light in their scenes to make this effect work…

What is an easy way to figure out how to convert from shutter speed to shutter angle and back again? Here is a very handy guide written up by Stuart English. My good friend Matt Jeppsen posted an excellent article titled “Shutter Speed vs. Shutter Angle” about this same topic which you can read about in more detail.

Article by Stuart English via Matt Jeppsen @ FreshDV

Now if you are using a Canon Video DSLR, then you will have to make a few minor modifications when choosing your shutter speed for your desired frame rate. If you are shooting at 24fps, the closest shutter speed you can select is 1/50th and if you are shooting at 60fps, the closest shutter speed you can select is 1/125th.  This minor adjustment won’t affect your footage but it’s the principle that counts so Canon if you’re listening, please fix this in the future…  Thanks!

Yeah I know, this is a very long blog about a very simple topic however if you are anything like me, you don’t just want to be told to do something without understanding why you should do it. This 180 degree shutter rule is something I never learned in college and there are tons of cinematographers out there who either don’t know about this rule or don’t obey it. Moreover, there are a lot of photographers starting to shoot video with these new Video DSLRs that need to start out on the right foot and use good habit and proper fundamentals!

UPDATE: Alain Pilon filmed this awesome visual example of 7 common shutter speeds captured at equivalent exposures and merged together in one clip. You can very easily see and understand the effect shutter speed has on water. The camera used was a 5DMKII which shoots at 30fps. Just look at how “smeary” the water looks at 1/30th (360 degree shutter) on the left hand side. Right next to it at 1/60th or 180 degree shutter the water is flowing naturally and it is pleasing to our eyes. For creative effects on the far right you can see that shutter speed begins to stop the motion of the water which gives a really cool look under certain conditions. Make sure you head over to Vimeo so you can watch it in HD. Thanks Alain for this great example!

Effect of shutter speed on fast moving objects from Alain Pilon on Vimeo.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

Night Combat Equipment Airborne Jump at Fort Pickett, Virginia

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a 1DMKIV from Canon. It arrived just in time for our Night Combat Equipment Airborne Jump! However, I was already scheduled to jump on this mission so I had to train up a few of my high speed Soldiers on how to operate the camera.

Sounds easy enough since they are already trained on the 5DMKII… However, Canon does not play nice with muscle memory and so the live view mode and start/stop record buttons are in completely different places yet again. The 7D took me awhile to get used to as well so now my fingers want to go to three different places on three different cameras to get it right. Not a big deal though, after several minutes of figuring out where all the new buttons are, Spc. Christopher Rosario was set.

We turned the 1DMKIV to manual mode at 1080P 24fps, set the shutter to 1/50th, opened up the aperture to 2.8 on the 16-35mm lens, and then tested out several ISOs to see how far we could push it. Meanwhile I was getting rigged up in my chute while Spc. Rosario was running around gathering shots. We figured we’d play it safe this time around and not push the ISO higher than 3200, especially with our 16-35mm topping off at 2.8. We were tempted to put the 50 1.2 on to get better low light but with the 1.3 crop, the 50 turns into a 65mm and was not wide enough for what we needed. Looking back we probably could have pushed it all the way up to 6400 with minimal noise.

After we got rigged up and Spc. Rosario gathered all his footage inside this awesome warehouse (backlit by a really cool sunset) we headed out into the night. Now the 1DMKIV is an amazing camera but it still can’t adjust in these conditions to see better than your eyes unless you want your footage to look like pure noise.

So instead of risking it on the fly we had Pfc. Phoebe Malkowicz with our new GEM-II Night Vision adapters made by Integrity Data Inc. This is a very expensive piece of equipment but did an outstanding job under the pitch black conditions inside the plane. She rigged up the 50mm 1.4 on the lens and was shooting in pitch black on the FF35mm sensor at only ISO 800 with a 1/60th shutter and aperture wide open at 1.4.

We shot 23.976 on the 1DMKIV and 30 on the 5DMKII (can’t wait until the 5DMKII gets this rumored firmware upgrade to 24P!!!) In cinema tools you can batch conform 30 to 23.976. It will slow down your footage slightly and render your audio unusable but it worked out pretty well for this project.

All in all, I am extremely impressed with the 1DMKIV. I haven’t even touched on how powerful of a photo camera it is. However, the 5DMKII is still a powerhouse and will get even better with a frame rate firmware update. Then you have the 7D which is another amazing option for a very affordable camera that has a lot of great features. Is the 1DMKIV body worth it’s $5,000 price tag? I’ve said this from the very beginning but it all depends on your workflow and what tools you need for your job. For Combat Camera we are still extremely happy with the 5DMKII and will continue to invest in them. The 1DMKIV has some amazing features that appeal to us but the size, weight, and price for the features of the 5DMKII is still an incredible deal and fits perfectly into our workflow and mission.

Filmed By:

Spc. Christopher Rosario
1DMKIV
16-35mm f2.8 lens
23.976fps
1/50th shutter
ISO ≤ 3200

Pfc. Phoebe Malkowicz
5DMKII
50mm f1.4 lens attached to GEM-II Night Vision
30fps conformed (slowed down) in cinema tools to 23.976
1/60th shutter
ISO ≤ 800

Edited By:
1st Lt. Tyler Ginter

55th Combat Camera
United States Army

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
blog.tylerginter.com
tylerginter@mac.com
twitter.com/tylerginter
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

This tutorial is broken up into the following six sections:

00:00 – Introduction
00:33 – Setup Custom Photo Preset
06:50 – Setup Custom 1080P 24FPS Preset
10:03 – Setup Custom 720P 60FPS Preset
12:00 – Edit, Fast Forward, and Rewind
13:28 – Conclusion

I’ve been receiving a lot of questions lately on how to setup the Canon 7D so I put together a quick tutorial on how to create custom photo and video presets.

A lot of thanks goes to Stu Maschwitz for the tips on how to flatten your picture profile in the camera. You can read about his settings in more detail here: Flatten Your 5D.

In addition to the custom picture settings, I cover a few hidden tips on how to setup your multi-controller direct button to quickly achieve auto focus, how to reverse the direction of your shutter and aperture dials, and how to fast forward and rewind video footage in the 7D.

Moreover, I cover the basic fundamental camera settings in the 7D along with the proper way to setup your shutter speed in video mode to obey the 180 degree rule. I hope these tips help out your workflow!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

Now, that being said, please give 100 percent credit to the following people including Stu Maschwitz, Philip Bloom, and Panavision.  Please let me know if I left anyone out who put time and effort into the following diagrams:

CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL PROLOST BLOG POST
CLICK HERE FOR UPDATE TO ORIGINAL PROLOST BLOG POST
CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL PROLOST BLOG POST

I am a visual learner so these diagrams really help me understand the importance of sensor size and its direct impact on depth of field and low light performance.  It’s also important to note that there is a significant difference between FF35mm Motion versus FF35mm Still.  These are all things that will help you make better choices when renting or buying cameras in the future.

Click Here To Download All Charts

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

If we fail to properly and accurately fill in all this metadata, our pictures lose historical record.  As a result, IPTC metadata is worth 50% of our image and usually determines if it will be published or not.  Moreover, it identifies who took the photo along with a detailed description of what was going on so we can track the image over hundreds of years.  If you are not feeling the pain of adding metadata to your images in Lightroom then you are probably not adding metadata to your images in the first place…

So what is Lightroom missing?  Well it’s actually quite simple.  There are 5 things I would LOVE to see in Lightroom so I don’t have to open up Photo Mechanic ever again.

1.  FIND AND REPLACE

Lets say I captioned 200 photos and accidentally typed soldiers instead of Soldiers.  Well instead of going back one by one fixing every last mistake, all I need to do is conduct a simple find and replace on selected or all photos.  Moreover, I can select which IPTC fields I want to find and replace:

2.  STATIONARY PAD

Yes, Lightroom has Metadata Presets that are pretty powerful.  However, these presets are not as user friendly as those seen in Photo Mechanic’s layout.  If Lightroom simply added some buttons to the bottom of their dialogue box that allowed you to apply your Metadata Preset (Stationary Pad) to selected images then their process would be so much easier to use.  Moreover, the ability to customize your metadata presets so only the fields you want to see pop up (exactly like you can do with the Metadata Viewer Preset Builder in the metadata panel as well as renaming your IPTC lists to exactly the way you’d like would greatly enhance Lightroom’s workflow!

Lightroom is limited in its Metadata Preset Features:

Photo Mechanic does a much better job with an easy to use dialogue box called the IPTC Stationary Pad:

3.  SPELL CHECK

So Lightroom on the Mac does in fact have Spell Check (sorry Windows users but honestly you aren’t missing out on much) but it isn’t using its own native Spell Check.  It is using the OS and is extremely unreliable.  Moreover, it has this horrible buggy auto-detect feature that tries to replace entire sentences at a time?  Come on now Lightroom, even Text Edit can do spell check…

Lightroom isn’t detecting any errors in this caption:

Photo Mechanic sees them all and even underlines them.  WOW!!!  This is high tech stuff

4.  POP-UP WINDOW TO ENTER IPTC METADATA

Photo Mechanic has an amazing pop-up window that allows you to FOCUS in on your captions.  Like I said earlier, metadata makes up 50% of our photos.  We all know Lightroom has an AWESOME develop module that allows you to focus in on image editing.  Why doesn’t Lightroom have something similar to their develop module for caption writing that quickly allows you to go through your images with no other distractions using a nice, clean, big pop-up window to see just what you want to edit?

Photo Mechanic allows you to focus on caption writing:

LR Metadata is an afterthought!  It’s hidden off to the side & you can’t even view all the fields at one time…

5.  VARIABLES

Now this is a VERY powerful feature of Photo Mechanic that Lightroom doesn’t support.  Variables allow you to place any code into an IPTC field so it automatically updates based on EXIF, IPTC, and my favorite – FILENAME!  As a result, I can plug our VIRIN (filename) into the VIRIN IPTC field automatically by typing {filenamebase}  This saves lots of time and lets your customize all your metadata exactly like you want!

Hundreds of custom variable can be entered in Photo Mechanic:

CONCLUSION

Lightroom 2 is an incredible tool and it has changed the way photographers process their work!  However, there are too many limitations for Lightroom to completely replace Photo Mechanic in our workflow.  This is such a shame because nothing is more annoying than dragging files from Lightroom into Photo Mechanic to edit the captions then saving the metadata back to the images and finally reading the metadata back into Lightroom…  It’s a horrible experience and often involves errors and lost metadata.  I guess there is a reason why Photo Mechanic is still the industry standard for the majority of Photojournalists…  Hopefully Adobe will listen and fix up these limitations!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

I am honored to be featured on FreshDV’s Podcast. As a long time viewer of their site, FreshDV has had a huge influence on me thanks to their free content and amazing articles. Thanks FreshDV for all your support! You can also subscribe to their podcast as well as this episode through iTunes.

Here at FreshDV we’ve kept pretty close tabs on two DSLR / HD video convergence cameras since they arrived earlier this year. I’m referring of course to the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II. One of the 5D exposure control tutorials that was posted recently was created by Tyler Ginter. Tyler is a US Army 3rd platoon leader in the 55th Combat Camera, responsible for documenting operations with photos and video for internal, news, and historical use.

In this hour-long podcast, Tyler, Kendal and I discuss the tools that Combat Camera is using in the field, the challenges of their unique workflow in Iraq and Afganistan, and specifically why they are looking hard at the Canon 5D MKII as a possible upgrade to their current kit. Along the way we also delve into Red Scarlet, and other convergence cameras. It’s a fascinating discussion, and we think you’ll enjoy the listen if you are interested in this new crop of cameras or just what it is that Combat Camera does. You can see media from Tyler’s group at http://www.dvidshub.net/units/JCCCI.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

So I just got done watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  This film was shot primarliy on the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera.  In case you weren’t aware, the Viper just so happens to have 2/3″ sensor technology, similar to what the proposed Red Scarlet will contain.  Now I don’t like getting caught up in all the hype, and I’m all about using the tools sitting right here in front of my face.  However, I think we all need to take a step back, a deep breathe, and realize what’s about to take place this year.

For the first time in film HISTORY, prosumers will be able to afford a camera that can achieve the same quality seen in big budget feature films at an AFFORDABLE price.  Think about this with me for a second…  First came film, and for many years thousands of dollars needed to be spent on stock to shoot, process, transfer, etc.  Then digital came along and started to change a lot of things.  However one thing that has not dramatically changed within digital cinema is PRICE.  Digital cinema cameras still cost thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The Dalsa Origin, Red One,  Panavision Genesis, Sony F-900, Sony F23, and SI 2K are all amazing cameras (all significantly cheaper to use than film), yet they’re all so far from a prosumers budget.  

The HVX-200 and EX1 (containing 1/3″ and 1/2″ sensors respectively) as well as other prosumer cameras priced within Scarlet’s targeted range are great cameras.  However, these prosumer cameras to date do not contain the dynamic range, depth of field, and compression needed to be taken seriously in a multi-million dollar Hollywood feature film.  As a result, Scarlet will provide the FIRST prosumer camera capable of delivering not only a 2/3″ sensor starting at 2,500 dollars, but also 120fps, 3K resolution, RAW data to control in post (white balance, exposure, etc.), and interchangeable lenses all wrapped up into a modular/upgradeable package.  Most of these additional features aren’t even included in cameras 10 times its price…

So are you beginning to see what is about to happen here?  The camera is the last piece of the puzzle we are missing, yet it is the most critical tool needed inside a budget filmmakers toolkit.  We have professional lights, audio, NLEs, Color Correction/VFX/3D apps all within our budget right now.  Many films have already proven that Final Cut Studio is practically all you need in post to create a feature length film…

Soon enough there will be NO more excuses.  Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was shot on a 2/3″ camera (F-900).  If it’s good enough for Geroge Lucas, I think it’s good enough for me!  Professionals and Prosumers will all be put onto an even playing field, something that has never happened in motion picture history!  To me this is exciting.  Creative minds who don’t have thousands to invest can produce work that is worthy of the big screen.  Most importantly, it’s back to the BASICS.  The Script, Audio, VFX, Color Correcting, Editing, Shooting, etc.  These things never change and will become increasingly significant as expectations skyrocket.  As a result, a camera is nothing more than a tool, and tools only have the potential to create magic when put in the RIGHT hands with the RIGHT experience, knowledge, and training.  Afterall, several amazing films have already been created under a limited budget with prosumer cameras including “Once,” a recommendation given to me by Jason Wingrove.  This just goes to show that every tool is worthless until YOU give it life!

Like I said, I hate to get caught up in all the hype but I think this is something to get excited about.  This year is going to mark a crucial point in the history of our industry.  Nevertheless, don’t wait on it, rely on it, or count on it ever happening.  I have faith in Red but their slogan says it all, “Prices, Specifications, and Delivery Dates are subject to drastic changes.  Count on it and you won’t be disappointed.”  I’ll believe it all when I have one in my hands.  Until then I’ll be using the tools I have right in front of me to produce the best work I possibly can.  

Nevertheless, I think we need to appreciate what Red is doing behind the scenes and instead of asking for more and more, be grateful for what they are planning to give us sometime in 2009.  Sure, having a FF35mm sensor would be nice… but take a look at Zodiac, Star Wars, Slumdog Millionaire, Speed Racer, Miami Vice, and Sin City, just to name a few films shot on 2/3″ sensors…  Remember, you have NO excuses left after Scarlet is released!!! It’s going to be an incredible New Year with some incredible New Toys!!!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

…vs PC vs Mac vs Shake vs Nuke vs Lightroom vs Aperture vs Motion vs After Effects vs Maya vs C4D…

and the list goes on and on!

Sorry, but you can’t get away with learning one application or one piece of equipment and expect to be successful. Yes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to master multiple pieces of equipment and software applications as more products are launched each and every year from a wide variety of manufacturers.

However this is your challenge, otherwise you’ll be left behind by increasingly tech-savy high school and college students who are learning all aspects of the industry at a very young age including shooting, editing, graphics, web design, VFX, producing, and directing.  Moreover, with new cameras like the D90 and 5D MK II, photographers and videographers must begin to learn one another’s crafts.  In other words, you must be a master of all and an expert of few.  One good thing about all this madness is the FUNDAMENTALS never change. A node is a node, a frame is a frame, a timeline is a timeline, and a photo is a photo.

Now I’m not suggesting that you must become an “expert” in every software application and every camera known to man.  You would never get any work done…  What I am recommending is to at least familiarize yourself with a variety of interfaces and buttons.  In those regards, you can’t learn enough.

Here are my top 10 tips in order to stay creatively and technically proficient:

1. Ask multiple questions to multiple professionals
2. Surround yourself with people who are SMARTER than you
3. Watch free online tutorials (Video Copilot, AETUTS, FreshDV, CreativeCow, etc.)
4. Watch Demo Reels and Portfolios for creative and technical inspiration (Motionographer, FXGUIDE, ProLost, Abduzeedo)
4. Invest in online training (Lynda and FXPHD are invaluable and they’re usually a better investment than the actual software/hardware itself)
5. Download free trials of applications and get a whole MONTH to play around
6. Visit your local camera store and get your hands on the latest gear just to see where the buttons are located and what they can do
7. Master one piece of hardware and software within each toolset that you can operate with your eyes closed.  HOWEVER, learn alternative cameras and applications after you master your primary
8. Learn the technical jargon of your craft and how it applies to your equipment
9. Learn your KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS! Not only in your applications but also in your operating system
10. Last but not least, go make a SUBWAY SHORT!!! Stop waiting for the latest and greatest equipment and use whatever it is you have right in front of you!

I think number 10 is something we often tend to overlook… There will always be bigger and better equipment out there but what can you do with the tools sitting right there in front of your face?  There was a big Twitter argument the other day about Final Cut vs Avid and the best line thrown out there came from Director Paul Del Vecchio.  ”Someone could come along that uses Windows Movie Maker and have great content and make us all look stupid.”

With that said, tools are nothing more than an empty canvas.  You are the paint to fill it up with creativity.  Use what canvas you are accustomed to but never get too comfortable and “FEAR” the other parchments out there.  You never know when that additional knowledge is going to save your… 

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine

This is a very important tutorial for those of you who DON’T tag every photo you capture with metadata! Sometimes the caption can be the most compelling part of your photo. Especially 10-20 years from now when another generation wants to find out what really took place in your image. Moreover, your name, website, copyright info, etc. needs to be embedded so you get the credit you deserve for your work. Please get into a good habit of tagging your photos and I hope this tutorial makes it less painful to accomplish!

Thanks to Jeffrey Friedl, you can now customize your metadata fields exactly as you’d like inside of Lightroom. Narrow your metadata interface down to just what you need in order to be efficient throughout your workflow. Check out Jeff’s blog here for great Lightroom tips and presets. He has done the photography community a huge favor with his scripting knowledge so thank you very much Jeff!!!
Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog

For more information on the Metadata-Viewer Preset Builder, visit the following link:
Metadata-Viewer Preset Builder

Moreover, I have provided all of my presets in the following file:
Metadata-Presets.zip

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

-Tyler
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” -Steve Prefontaine