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Land of Awe: Dinosaur Provincial Park

John Novotny — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 07:42:09 +0000

I shot this last year and was able to finally get to it this spring. The night time lapses took a while to capture, many a long night spent getting attacked by hords of mosquitos.

Alberta Parks link here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lww6Y4hlQR4

FilmTools 3025 Triangulation Kit Triple Test: Highway, Speed Bumps and Gravel Road

John Novotny — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:31:30 +0000

I was out with Brad Tucker last summer shooting at Dinosaur Provincial Park. We were getting some driving footage. I had tried to use other vehicle mount rigs but the results were usually pretty poor plagued by too much vibration. FilmTools 3025 kit is by far the best kit with almost no vibration. When we went on the gravel back road in the preserve at Dinosaur Provincial Park Alberta, Brad decided to gun it which increased vibration. I had couldn't believe the shoots on the gravel road were actually usable. I believe the using the wide angle Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 was key in reducing percieved vibration. If you know you're going to be shooting on a rough road try to shoot as wide as possible. We also had Go Pro cameras mounted but the vibration was horrible in most of the footage.

The FilmTools 3025 kit performed incredibly well as you can see from the video even on the rough road.

http://www.filmtools.com/

NAB 2011 Report by Bunko

John Novotny — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:14:44 +0000

The Red Camera & Sunglass Company. Now, all the camera makers were in Central Hall, all of them. Except for Red, which ended up in the South Hall - Lower Level, right amongst the post production vendors, sandwiched in-between a film scanner outfit and one peddling a color correction plug-in. Weird, eh? Also, all the other camera makers had open, inviting stands where you could walk up to the cameras and handle them yourself. Both Sony and Panasonic must have had over 100 camera exhibited and turned on this way. Not so with Red, however. You could not enter their display area at all -- they did not have any!!!! Instead, there was a small area cordoned around where a guy had his back tattooed and a chick had her backside tattooed. That is all anyone could see, there were a couple of black cameras hanging from the ceiling, a good 12 feet away, so nobody could make out what they were and what they did. So, if you had wanted to see some tattooing of backsides, you could hang around the Red stand, otherwise you did not see anything, let alone any "Red camera." Typical Red Camera, in other words.

Shooting the Winter Badlands with the Canon 7D, T2i, Glidetrack and Steadicam Merlin

John Novotny — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:57:27 +0000

I had the opportunity to shoot in the Canadian Badlands last December out at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. We had a meeting out the Dinosaur Field Station and I had the chance to stay overnight at the base camp facility for lack of a better term. They have a coference facilities as well as small trailer complex for housing reserchers and other special visitors to the park who are staying for longer periods of time.

Canon 7D vs the Canon Rebel T2i

John Novotny — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:27:46 +0000

A look at the Canon 7D vs the Canon Rebel T2i based on hands on experience over the course of a year. This is a sampler of mostly still photo time lapses I shot over the summer I had some opportunities to shoot some amazing vistas.

Climate Change Intro Shot on 7D

John Novotny — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:32:02 +0000

Climate Change Intro from John Novotny on Vimeo.

Here is a climate change intro I shot on 7D. All the shoots are from the Crown of the Continent region.

http://www.crownofthecontinent.net/

I cut this footage together for a Climate change conference I covered last March as an intro to each video in the series. The talks were cut into individual segments and will be made available online.

http://www.crownmanagers.org/

Life and Death

John Novotny — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 05:52:48 +0000

Freeze Thaw was shot just after I received the Canon 7D last November. It was the first test footage I did with the camera shot at a local nature perserve, the Gault Nature Trail. My infant son had passed away not long before this was shot, so I dedicated the test footage to his memory. It seemed fitting with the onset of winter as the season is also a symbol death.

Wait for Me

John Novotny — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:39:04 +0000

Shot on Canon 7D for Moby's "Wait for Me". For this shoot I also used the GlideTrack to achieve the tracking shots. The time lapse was shot over a week useing the Canon time lapse controler. I stuck with prime lenses for the day time shoots using the Canon 50mm f/1.8 and Sigma f/1.4.

Winter Survivors

John Novotny — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:33:48 +0000

My latest work, Winter Survivors shot for Alberta Parks was shot in mid March just before the last snow melted away. There was quite a bit of wind but most of the dialogue was recorded with the H4n Handy Recorder with a Red Head wind sock. Amazingly the audio turned out incredibly well.

Battle of the Large Sensor Video Cameras

John Novotny — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:33:22 +0000

The battle of large format sensor camera's is about to heat up. Pansonic announced a new video camera based on the Four Thirds system which can achieve a high level of DOF control. Pansonic and Sony are the first to announce such a camera based on a sensor which initially started out as a still camera sensor. Canon not to be out done will surely announce it's own version of a large sensor video camera as well. Canon of course dominates the low cost large sensor video market right now with with their line up of HDSLRs. The only problem is the camera's don't zoom don't have native XLR support, etc. Now all these problems are currently addressed with after market products but that will soon be a thing of the past.