JTINSEOUL – Episode O

So finally, after much ado, my first attempt at a vlog is live on my new YouTube channel 😉 It isn’t much, but it is a start. In this post, I’ll go over a bit of the process I went through making this first (obviously not great) video.

The Camera. Leica V-Lux Typ 114, Rode Video Micro, Gorillapod 1K.

There isn’t actually that much to talk about. Although getting a camera to work for me was a bit of an adventure:

I started with the Canon M50 which had been recommended to me many times. While the quality looked great, it was just a bit of a pain to use. I’m surprised that several of the things I found annoying about it never was mentioned in reviews I’d seen or read. First, using 120fps on the camera was a serious pain. It took no less than 4 menu steps to get to the setting necessary to enable 120fps on the camera. Then, when disabling the high-speed video instead of the camera reverting back to the frame rate you had previously set it automatically reverted back to 60fps 1080p. This was infuriating as I’d either forget or just be too annoyed by this to even use 120. With the Leica, I just set one of the Custom spots to 120fps and it is literally just a matter of one dial movement.

Another thing I didn’t like about the Canon was the fact it only really did wide. I had the 11-22mm lens which was fine but in order to shoot B-roll I would have to change lenses. Again, this is a serious annoyance when eating or maybe doing something in the field. With the Leica, I can shoot anywhere from 28mm (when using image stabilization) to 450mm or so without the need to change lenses. The zoom is also far smoother than I was able to do by hand.

There are a couple of things that are less than ideal about the Leica: First, like the Canon it applies a pretty big crop in 4K mode. This makes shooting 4K quite difficult unless the camera is set up on a tripod at home or I have someone else filming me outside. Another kind of annoying this is that it only shoots in 30fps instead of 24fps. A film director friend told me this is a bit of a placebo setting as if you film something with a long lens and shallow depth of field but at 60fps it will look cinematic but if you film something in 24fps on your smart phone it will look like a home video. Maybe he’s just trying to make me feel better.

It is definitely more positive than negative though with the Leica. Another thing I really like about it is it feels much tougher than the Canon. The Vlux is plasticky in the same way the Canon is but certainly feels more like a tool than a toy. Let’s say it is more 80D than Rebel. The first night I had it my cat attacked the mic on top of it and the camera toppled onto the concrete floor from a distance of about a meter. Aside from a small dent in the plastic it was completely fine. I have a feeling the Canon might be in the shop after a similar “disaster.”

I filmed this video all in one day without any actual plan. I have some upcoming videos that I plan to plan. The next couple:

1. Unboxing of the Samsung S10E.
2. Review of the Samsung S10E.
3. Film Talk: Talking about Developing Film
4. Opening Fukase’s Ravens (already filmed)
5. Taking photos in Gunsan
6. Leica Akademie Korea Film Workshop Vlog
7. 28mm Minolta M-Mount

The last of these will serve as the proper Episode one. If there are other topics you’d like to see or hear let me know 😉 Just don’t expect too much, I’m still learning ha.

The last thing I can talk about is editing. In fact, I hate editing. It sucks. I tried both Cyberlink (that I was given a key to) and LumaFusion for iPad. I ended up using LumaFusion for the first video. LumaFusion is a little more my speed. It’s simple and seems more intuitive to me than Cyberlink. I was warned that editing video on the iPad 6 (wife uses iPad Pro, ha) would be slow or laggy but in fact it worked an absolute treat.

Also, new blog post coming soon: Roll 5 2019. Stay tuned!

Roll 5, Gunsan. Leica MP, 28mm Minolta. Ilford HP5 at 1600.

That’s all for now.

Enjoy!