"The New" -- An Island Adventure in Dominica -- FS700+7Q

jshbckr

Veteran
So a few months back I had the opportunity to travel to an island in the Caribbean with Trent Hilborn, a friend and director. We were told to simply do one thing--to capture and tell whatever story we wanted.

We hiked miles of mountains to a boiling lake, we floated through a gorge on a kayak, sought out wildlife, and became friends with many amazing people on the island. It was the experience of a lifetime.

From the technical side of things, I was happy that Convergent Design released the 4K/ProRes update for the 7Q a mere three days before we took off.

Equipped with the FS700+7Q, GH3, and a few GoPro Hero3's, we created this:

https://vimeo.com/95371894

Most of the "grand vistas" are 4K, obviously the major slomo is 2K 240, and there are some 4KtoHD shots in there. There are two GH3 shots, and a couple GoPro shots (underwater, of course).

Honestly, after working with the 4KtoHD footage, I think prefer it over the RAW. It's so sharp, grades so well, and just looks incredible overall. 2K RAW has great range and the high FPS is great, but from a quality standpoint you sacrifice the alias/moire-free image that you get from the 4K and 4KtoHD. The shot of the smashed bus in the beginning has some bad aliasing in it, as a result of the line-skipping on the FS700.

Here are some behind the scenes pics... I felt very Luke Skywalker with the camera strapped on like this. But I'll be damned if I was carrying that thing out in front/side of me. Roughly 50 lbs of gear on my for the hike. I am not an intelligent man.
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The director surveying the scene after hiking 8 miles one-way out to the boiling lake:
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The gear. Certainly the first time the boiling lake had ever been captured in 4K.
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Me with the camera, our hiking guide holding the 7Q in the foreground. I somehow found it necessary to bring, and use, all of my lenses on the hike.
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Hopping into the kayak to float through the gorge. In the video, the shots of the front flip off the waterfall, the swimmers (above water) followed by the shafts of light/mist were all shot in 4K 24 w/ Nikon speedbooster on Rokinon 35mm T1.5. The gorge is incredibly dark with bright shafts of light coming into it. I was pretty amazed with what we were able to capture in there.
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Let me know what you guys think of our finished piece. If you feel so inclined, keep an eye on my website/blog, where I'll definitely be posting more work and gear talk in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out!
 
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Beautiful shots, Josh.

Enjoyed the time lapse with the boats too!

Thanks. I guess I forgot we had a 5DmkII along for the ride. The boat shot was taken using an Astro. Fun little device made here in Minnesota. Wish I would have used it more on the island, but we were constantly on the move, it was hard to set up timelapses unless they were at night.

Looks great Josh! I dug it.

Hiking for 8 miles and going under water? You are a BEAST!

haha thanks Gene! And to clarify, it was 8 miles one way... getting back was another 8! And we read in a Dominica hiking guide that it's the most difficult hike in all of the Caribbean... oops!
 
could you please add the URL of the video? Unfortunately embedded videos are not displayed on the iPad. Thanks for sharing your work and your experience
 
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seems like I missed that post josh! great work! could you tell us more about that lens gears and the lens on the first picture? is that the 28-70 f2.8 lens?
 
seems like I missed that post josh! great work! could you tell us more about that lens gears and the lens on the first picture? is that the 28-70 f2.8 lens?
Thanks, Stefan!

The lens is actually the 17-55 2.8 Nikon, but the lens gear is made by this guy on eBay. He 3D prints seamless lens gears and they aren't too badly priced considering other lens gears (Zacuto, etc) are $50+ each (granted, those are universal). The gears are usually around $30 each, you can see some of his listings are custom combos of about 5 gears for $140, so that's less than $30/ea. So he is willing to do a discount if you buy multiple at once. He has a lot of lenses pre-sized but I was able to use my digital calipers to measure some of the lenses I have and he custom fit some gears for me. In the shot with the 80-200mm, you can see a gear on the lens that was a 2-part gear that slides together. In the end you get a really snug, seamless gear that can still be removed if you wanted to sell the lens or something. I'm really happy with them.

I'm actually planning on shooting some little gear hands-on/review videos in the near future and those gears were going to be one of the things I wanted to show. I don't think a lot of people know that affordable 3D-printed seamless gears are an option.
 
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