work
alles in obi
10/06/2010 16:05
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso100 - f/16 1/100 sec - Michael Grobe
Recently joined the shooting of the 40th anniversary commercial for OBI as vfx supervisor on the set in Slovenia. Always love helicopter shoots. The image above shows the difficulties of shooting a helicopter properly. To get the desired motionblur on the rotor blades, a shutter speed of 1/100 sec was used, but that means tracking the helicopter with the camera to achieve sharpness of the hull. So the camera goes into AF servo mode for focus tracking and you shoot continous bursts of images to capture the peak moment. Aperture was set to f/16 to be able to shoot a bright target in full sunlight with that slow shutter speed, for a wider aperture a Neutral Density (ND) filter would be needed but wasn't handy at the moment.
Shooting the helicopter wasn't the main task obviously, the usual set photography on a commercial or movie set to collect data for the vfx post production is mostly of technical nature and not to achieve creative results. You bring home hundreds or sometimes even thousands of images for texturing, digital environments and mattepaintings together with HDR 360° panoramas for lighting the computer graphics.
The commercial can be found here.
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just a shoe
21/07/2009 13:40
2012 - almost done
21/07/2009 00:08
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 16-35mm 1:2.8L II USM - iso6400 - f/2.8 1/10 sec
- Michael Grobe
This Saturday we celebrated the exclusive Uncharted Territory wrap party for Roland Emmerich´s next blockbuster “2012”. Roland invited the in-house unit generously to his house for a really extraordinary festivity at an extraordinary and beautiful place. Our effects work for the movie is almost done, the last shots are to be finaled, soon...
I am wrapping up to go back to Germany for holidays... Munich beer-gardens, Schnitzel, Weisswuerste, Brezen and Radler are waiting...
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso6400 - f/2.8 1/50 sec
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso6400 - f/2.8 1/8 sec
runway beauty and the plane
03/04/2009 01:38
hollywood moon
03/04/2009 00:10
Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM
19/01/2009 00:29
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM - iso1600 - f/4.5 1/25 sec - Michael Grobe
Due to some late hours and pressing deadlines I have neglected this blog for a while. But I have been shooting...
In this case I had the opportunity to shoot my new Canon EOS 5D Mark II with the amazing Canon EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM, one of the worlds finest super-tele lenses. Since the 5DM2 arrived right before Christmas, I have been using it extensively and comparing it to my Canon EOS 1DS Mark III. My conclusion: the Canon EOS 5D Mark II delivers image quality on par with the Canon EOS 1DS Mark III and adds the long awaited low light capabilities up to usable ISO 6400 (12800 and 25600 are for emergencies only, when you need to get a photo at all). So both cameras make up a great team for all occasions, I still will grab the 1DS Mark III first for a shoot, as it has all the additional features of Canon`s Pro series bodies: weather sealing, superior autofocus (a real difference to the autofocus of the 5D Mark II), 7 brackets for HDR shooting (only 3 with the 5D Mark II, which is a deal breaker for professional use on a movie set), faster frame rate and a lot of other advantages.
But... when the last sun-rays hit the lens, the 5D Mark II starts to shine. While it can´t beat the Nikon D3 and D700 with its low light sensitivity, it comes close.
I was shooting the EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM at one of the photo shootings for a soon to come Hollywood movie together with colleagues (equipped with two Nikon D3´s). That lens is simply amazing. While you hate the weight and bulkiness (5.36 kg), you fall in love with the image quality it delivers. The shot below shows the beautiful bokeh and the incredible detail you can capture, when the lens is connected to a 21 MP 5D Mark II. The crop is at 50% magnification (1200x800 pixels at 100% scaled down to 600x400). Obviously a lens of that focal length requires a sturdy tripod and careful shooting technique: mirror lock up, remote release and either spot on autofocus or manually adjusted focus via live-view.
And what about the video capture....
of course we shot some video footage with the EF 600mm f/4 L and the 5D Mark II in HD video mode. More to come here, once I had the chance to edit the material. First impressions: I have a laughing and a crying eye (we say that in German, I guess it doesn´t translate properly to English). Why? Stay tuned...
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/500 sec
Photo by Greg Strasz
Canon EOS-5D Mark II - EF 600mm f/4 L IS USM - iso100 - f/5 1/500 sec
50% magnification (1200x800 pixels at 100% scaled down to 600x400)
Photo by Greg Strasz
bollywood sleeps
14/08/2008 17:41
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM - iso100 - f8 - 30sec - Michael Grobe
Film City - a large studio complex in the hub of the indian film industry: Bollywood in Mumbai. The state government has built Film City at the outskirts of the National Park, Goregaon, where leopards, tigers and snakes call the shots. I took the shot from the rooftop of a 22-story apartment building, just before dawn. Luckily the guard at the entrance was sleeping, when I entered around 4 am, so no questions, what I would want on the roof in the middle of the night. It was a great experience to witness dawn over Mumbai from that height. Just had to stay in the middle of the roof, as there were no railings to keep me from a final flight...
The next image is a HDR (high dynamic range) composition of 3 single shots. I used Photomatix for the exposure blending to get all the fine detail in the shadows as well as in the highlights and the sky. The exposures were taken at -1.3ev, 0ev, +1.3ev. Sometimes a range like -2,0,+2 or even wider is better, that depends on the dynamic range, that a given scenery presents to your camera. For professional work on a movie set, I normally shoot 5 exposures from -4,-2,0,+2,+4 ev, or even 7 from -6 to +6 ev, that gives enough dynamic range in most situations for real HDR image based lighting in 3D computer graphics. For pure artistic photography, that dynamic range is in most cases over the top and produces a lot of data (the 21mp raw files of the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III are around 25 mb each). If the scenery presents an extreme range from shadows to highlights, one should measure the dynamic range using a spotmeter, then bracket the exposures accordingly. It doesn´t hurt too much, to have more exposures than necessary, but it definitely hurts, if you didn´t capture the necessary range and find that out back home after the shoot...
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III - EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM - iso200 - f8 - 2,5sec -
HDR exposure blending of 3 shots
