The Right Tool For The Job

Canon EOS 7Ds capture the opening credits of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

By Neil Matsumoto

This Article Features Photo Zoom

According to Conlon, the footage looked amazing right out of the camera. “The fact that you can work with all these great lenses on the 7D showed its benefits when reviewing the night’s work,” he reveals. “When we went fully into the post process, we found it quite easy to lay the titles over the shots. Vasco and the Mirror guys were able to deliver so much good footage under our initial guidelines that we ended up producing many different edits, all of which The Tonight Show with Jay Leno uses, depending on the show each night.”

Although HD DSLRs like the Canon EOS 7D and EOS 5D have been generating incredible buzz out of the filmmaking community, Nunes doesn’t believe the cameras are suitable for all projects. “There’s no silver bullet for anything,” he says. “I feel like every camera system has a purpose and some are more flexible than others. From the standpoint for what we were doing, it was a great camera. We could get in and out, and get a great image out of it. If I were going to do something that required more consistency of image, movement, or if I needed more parameters for luminance values, I would have to use a different camera that has more selection. Again, this is another tool with its own set of positives and negatives.”

Smooth Moves

Track your shots with Cinevate’s Atlas 200 LTS
As any moviegoer can attest, a well-timed and well-executed linear tracking shot can bring emotion to a scene. For those of you who want to create your very own “Spielbergesque” push-in shot, Cinevate has released the Atlas 200 LTS, which provides solid movement for rigs weighing up to 200 pounds and can be placed squarely on any solid surface—from an exquisite dining-room table to an extreme rock quarry. The rig, made of 6061 aluminum and supported by one-inch chromed solid steel rails, can be mounted on a tripod or C-stand. The Atlas 200 LTS starts at $1,273, while the DSLR Atlas 200 package, which includes a follow focus, Medusa DSLR Cage and Titan Matte Box, is priced at $4,643. Contact: Cinevate, (807) 344-7153, www.cinevate.com.

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