Wedding: Ava & Geoffrey at the Oceano Hotel

Ava and Geoff are the sweetest couple! They celebrated their wedding at the Oceano Hotel in Half Moon Bay. They included a very intimate tea ceremony with their close family, and wrote their own vows for their ceremony with Geoff's uncle officiating. Ava a talented wedding & event caterer herself of Le's Kitchen Catering did her own catering for their wedding, a very personal touch that we love. We had the opportunity to work with some of our friends and talented vendors Maria Chang of Professional Makeup Artistry, photography by Augie Chang, Nicole Ha who did the gorgeous flowers, and Sweet Lauren Cakes who did the cute dessert bar.

Wedding: Mona and Farshid at the Fairmont

Mona and Farshid were married at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It could not have been a better day for a wedding, with clear sunny skies to enjoy one of the best views of San Francisco. Mona and Farshid have known each other since they were kids, and to see their beautiful Persian wedding ceremony bringing both of their close families together was something special! We worked alongside  Catherine Hall, with Maurice Ramirez two awesome San Francisco photographers.

Wedding: Michelle and Sebastien at Carmel Valley Ranch

Michelle and Sebastien were married at Carmel Valley Ranch. It could not have been a more beautiful day for a wedding. Sebastien who is from France, surprised Michelle during their vows with a song in French! They rode off to the reception in a horse drawn carriage (how romantic is that). Michelle and Sebastien incorporated many French themed elements into their celebration such as their patisserie dessert bar, a french circus mural, stilt walkers, and a variety of circus performers, even a Parisian sketch artist. A beautiful love filled night and a lovely couple! Coordinated by Colette Cuccia and her team who did an amazing job! Also thanks to Richard Grover from Grover Films for shooting with us.

First 5d Mark III Film.

Jessica Fisher and I spent Sunday afternoon and part of Monday this morning shooting a test film on the new Canon 5d Mark III camera.

I'm in love with coffee. I started roasting my own coffee about six months ago, and I haven't bought pre-roasted coffee since. We shot a bit of the roasting process on my Behmor 1600. I purchase all my green beans, the roaster and supplies at Sweet Marias based in Oakland. They are a phenomenal supplier of beans and the knowledge and expertise to get you started in roasting.

The espresso machine is the Miss Silvia from Rancillio, with a custom PID (Temperature control) installed by Dave's High-Tech Espresso. Another amazing company.

A few technical notes:

• The ISO's we used were 160, 320, 640, 1250 and even 2500 for a few shots. The shutter ranged from 1/160th to 1/30th.

• Our goal wasn't to try to fault the camera, we just wanted to shoot something with it. This isn't meant to be a resolution test, moire test, or a rolling shutter test. We did find both moire and rolling shutter are significantly reduced (however, take a good look at the pine table shots in the end: if this was the 5d, this part would be painful to look at).

• This is all shot on "Standard" picture style with only two clips getting a basic curves/levels adjustment. We underexposed a few shots more than we meant to. I will be color grading this, but for the sake of sharing I thought it best to show you what it does out of the camera. This is a quick edit, and I do plan to edit a tighter version soon. When I have the color timed version I'll add it to this post.

The video file is my sequence setting: full 1080p MPEG. I've made it available for download, I suggest you watch it this way for critical viewing.

Canon 5d Mark III arrives!

I received my pre-order of the Canon 5d Mark III, the second in the 5d series to shoot video. When the Mark II came out, I purchased two the instant they were available. I raced to do the same again this time, and the day after release I've had the chance to play with the camera a bit. *UPDATE: At the bottom are some new notes after more time with the camera.

So far, I'm blown away by what It does when taking PHOTOS. The camera has a phenomenal autofocus, which was always my largest complaint about the previous camera.

The video functions however haven't got me that excited. The main "upgrades" Canon has added to the new camera:

-Manual audio levels and headphone monitoring DURING recording!
-Incredible new auto-focus system (doesn't apply as we only shoot photos for fun!)
*UPDATE: I'm not a photographer anymore, but I have photographed around 150 weddings. I want to reiterate how amazing the new auto-focus is. Photographers will be VERY happy with this camera!

-Reduced Moire and Rolling shutter (this was a big one for me)
-New file format with less compression (I have yet to test this, though the bitrate is VERY high!) This compression is IPB, where every frame is compressed separately
-Incredible high ISO performance and low light performance (See the short video below)
            Note: you can download this 1080p original file on my vimeo.
-60 frames per second at 720p (the 60d, t2i, t3i and 7d ALL had this feature too)
-more rugged body and a deeper grip which my large fingers love *UPDATE: I like this more and more. It feels extremely solid compared to the 5dII.
-dual card slots (which won't auto-switch in video)
-29:29 run time (due to a lousy Europe regulation and tax on video cameras)

Now, here's what I HOPED FOR and a few of my complaints:

-More resolution: It's very clear to me that this camera does not resolve any more than the previous 5d II. This may sound somewhat confusing as it's a "1080p" camera. It does give you a 1080p file, however this file really only holds roughly 800 lines of resolution (and not 1080). This is sad Canon. You should have fixed this.

-Cost: From a video standpoint, this camera is $3500, which makes it at least $1500 more than a 5dII, especially if you're willing to pick up a used one (photographers are going to be dumping the old 5dII's like a barista with a bad shot of espresso).

Pamela and I have learned to deal without the audio levels while recording, and I'm not that into slow motion. What's left? The excellent low light performance is great- but is it worth selling and upgrading all of our cameras? We shall see.

-Buttons changed: I can't tell you why, but canon has changed the zoom button for checking focus. This is driving me crazy! You can map it to the "set" button, but it's really not as convenient.

Bottom Line: It's a camera. It's an amazing camera regardless. Is it worth the extra $$$? Time will tell, as will more testing but my gut is saying no (for the videographer). It's been three years Canon, I own nine of your lenses, and a ton of other accessories. You're going to have to try harder than this to get me to jump on two more of them. It's been three and a half years, these improvements are so minimal in my opinion, when they ought to have been revolutionary. Canon has a 4k cinema camera coming out next, perhaps it will have the bells and whistles I'm asking for.

I'll update with more thoughts as I learn more about the new camera.

*UPDATE:
A few more notes:
1. I'm in love with the "silent" touch capacitance (think the old iPods and how they worked) while recording. You can adjust aperture, shutter, ISO and audio levels without disturbing the sound! It's incredibly useful for events like weddings.

2. There is a MAJOR glaring audio issue. The preamp in the camera ads a large amount of hiss when you go below what I would call the %52 mark. To simplify, it at %53 it sounds fairly clean, when you drop it one notch to around %52 it gets VERY noisy. Something to keep in mind. It happens with both external microphones and the built in mic.

3. Time limit: Canon has really helped us here. You can now record just shy of 30 minutes. Not only this, but it blinks at you for two minutes BEFORE it turns off. When it does finally turn itself off a message in large letters displays on the screen "Recording has stopped automatically." If you're anything like me, you've probably recorded on the 5dII before and not realized that your recording had stopped! This can be very problamatic. These are little things, but they can make a huge difference while shooting.

4. External monitoring: This camera does not switch resolutions or black out while recording. You can monitor, get focus and hit record and instantly see what you're doing. This is a huge perk for many such as myself. I have a Small HD monitor, which will pair very well with this camera.

5. Bit rate and Record times: The data rates aren't what canon has been saying. I need to do further testing, but my first test was to fill a 32GB card recording a tv show (camera pointed at the screen). This simulates a wide variety of situations (I think). The data rate for ALL-I (the least compressed format) at 24/1080p seems to hover around 45Mbps (Mega bits per second). This translates to under 6MB/second. This leaves me very confused. I was able to record 1 hour and 40 minutes on a 32GB card. This is completely off from what Canon says in the manual (44 minutes for a 32GB card). How can this be so off?

*Update: I think Canon must be erring on the high side. I looked through the data rates of all my files, and I do have some that are as high as 98Mbps. It seems that the compressor is good at saving data when there are repeat frames.

*UPDATE: New test for noise comparison here: http://vimeo.com/39499056 (download entire file for best viewing)