I just got back from a month in Europe and spent the last weekend in London, England. I had a room on the 9th floor of the the Hilton on Park Lane in London which had some pretty amazing views, especially from the bar on the 25th floor. I shot this out of my window on the 9th floor using a Canon 60D and two GoPro HD cameras.

Cameras: Canon 60D and (2) GoProHD
Edit: Premiere Pro CS5
Grading: Magic Bullet Looks

First time shooting with the Technicolor CineStyle setting/ Pretty interesting setting. It really brings out the detail in low light, especially in the shadows.  This was the first time I had used it. I was in Charlotte, NC on business and downloaded it and installed it in my Canon 60D.  The one thing I did not understand at first was that there are actually two parts to this setting: the actual setting that goes in the camera and the S-Curve/LUT plugin for your editing program.  You don’t have to use the LUT plugin offered by CineStyle but you will need to do some color grading to make it look good.  The setting in the camera by itself looks rather flat.  The easiest way to think of it is the setting in the camera (CineStyle) is optimized to give you the most leeway in color grading.  If you don’t want to do any color grading at all then I would probably not use this setting.

Quick edit from a night drive through downtown Charlotte, NC. Camera mounted on tripod inside vehicle shooting through sunroof straight up.

Camera: Canon 60D
ISO: 800
1/30th at 2.8
1920X1080/30
Lens: Tokina 11-16
Edit: Premiere Pro CS5

Had the opportunity to attend the Canon Filmmakers Live event in Atlanta starring the one and only Philip Bloom.  The event was on March 16, 2011 from 10:00am until about 6:00pm.  I left the house at 4:00am to drive there.  Atlanta is about a 5 hour drive for me from where I live in Mount Pleasant (Charleston), South Carolina.  A little over an hour into my journey the right-rear tire blew out on my car which normally would not have been too much of a problem.  I pull over on the side of the interstate in the middle of nowhere to change the tire.  I get out the jack and have the car about 2/3 of the way up when the handle on the jack breaks off.  Lovely. Just lovely.  After trying for about 30 minutes of trying to flag someone over waving at traffic passing by using only the light from my cell phone I gave in and called my roadside assistance people.  I hesitated on calling them in the beginning because I thought they would take forever to get there.  About 15 minutes after getting off the phone with them a South Carolina State Trooper pulls up behind me and lets me use his jack.  Within 4 minutes I had the old tire off, the new tire on and was back on my way.  Great way to start the day. I still managed to get there by the 10:00am.

Just wanted to pass along something that happened to my 60D tonight as well as how to fix it.

I was shooting some pictures at a fundraiser and could not get my internal flash to pop up.  Tried everything.  In the menu, I went to Menu>First Camera Tab (the first tab on the left)>Flash Control>Built-in Flash Func. setting – it gave me a message saying something like “This option not available when external flash connected”.  The issue is I don’t own an external flash for this camera and nothing was connected.

I have, however, been using the hotshoe to hold other camera accessories, such as a Zoom H4n, a shotgun mic, a wireless Sennheiser receiver, etc.  I am wondering if we are all overloading what these hotshoes and how much they were really designed to hold???

After getting home and in bright light I figured out what the issue is and it is a “small” one.  Underneath the right rail on the cameras hotshoe there is a flexible piece of metal that pushes a tiny, and I mean TINY, little black plastic pin switch down when something is slid into the hot shoe.

SOLUTION:  Take a tiny little flat head screwdriver or pick and GENTLY lift up the flexible piece of metal a bit so it takes pressure of the tiny black pin switch.

Had the chance to shoot some video the other day of some guys who were passing through Charleston on their year-long adventure that just started. Leon Griffin, owner of WVO Designs.com, called and said “Hey, I’m going to be pulling up in front of your house in a few minutes with some guys in a bus that runs on veggie oil and want to shoot some video.” So, I was like, “Ummm, Okay!”

Cameras: 60D and T2i
Lenses: Sigma 30mm f1.4 on the 60D / Tokina 11-16 f2.8 on the T2i.

Audio: Audio Technica AT897 into a Zoom H4n into the 60D.