Digital Video - September 2008 - (Page 10)

IN REVIEW EXPOIMAGING EXPODISC WHITER WHITES? THE EXPODISC TAKES WHITE BALANCE TO ANOTHER LEVEL. tom-calibrated white balance and light value measurement. received the 4 x 5.65 “Panavision” The first use, and the primary one I format ExpoDisc and was intrigued experimented with, is custom-calibrated by it. The disc is made of hard plastic white balance. ExpoDisc is designed and with one flat white side, which looks like calibrated to allow a perfectly neutral a piece of milked Plexiglas. The reverse relationship of blue, red and green light side has a pattern of prisms like a bicycle to pass through it. In each ExpoDisc box reflector. A comfortable handle built into is a little business card with the side allowed me to hold the AWARD OF handwritten numbers that are disc up to the camera lens. the specific calibration numbers The ExpoDisc was originally designed for digital still photog- EXCELLENCE for that given ExpoDisc. Although there is no published raphers and came in a circular scale for what these numbers mean, it shape (hence the name) designed to snap was easy to see that Red 1.21, Green onto the DSLR camera lens. The ExpoDisc 1.21 and Blue 1.22 were pretty close to actually accomplishes two things: cusone another. The density rating on my card was .75, and a notation on the card told me that .745 was exactly 18% transmission, but an acceptable range of transmission of one stop, according to ExpoDisc, was .695 to .795. Eighteen percent transmission is an important point because, although this disc is white in color and is used for white balance, it actually works off of middle gray, which was the first aspect of the ExpoDisc that really caught my attention. As a former cinematographer, I understand the importance of middle gray, especially in terms of color balance. A properly exposed middle gray card requires absolute precision in color balance to be properly represented, and I have always preferred, when shooting digital, to white balance to an 18% gray SCORE card as opposed to white; it simply proEXPOIMAGING EXPODISC vides a more precise calibration. The PROS: Compact, precisely calibrated, intuitive, and ExpoDisc handles this by allowing only an can turn camera into an incident meter. CONS: 18% transmission of light through the Not always feasible to move camera to the subject disc so that the flat surface of the to take a color balance. BOTTOM LINE: An ExpoDisc, in effect, becomes a perfectly extremely effective tool. MSRP: $69.95 to calibrated 18% gray card. $169.95 CONTACT: www.expodisc.com Using the ExpoDisc for color balance YOUR NEW FRIDAY ASSISTANT EDITOR FIRST CUTS IS A GREAT HELPING HAND FOR FCP. BY NED SOLTZ BY JAY HOLBEN I H DV ow many times have any of us shot our great masterwork, logged our footage and then sat and stared at a blank timeline as we simply tried to figure out how to get started? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the actual telling of the story were as automated as the computer processes behind nonlinear editing? Assistant Editor First Cuts might just be the answer to those sleepless nights and blank screens. Leveraging the power of XML import and export within Final Cut Pro, Assistant Editor First Cuts can create an entire timeline based upon logging information and keywords that you entered into FCP when logging the original footage. It can then actually find opening styles, templates, lower-thirds and keywords to assist in creating a sequence that could be at least a starting point for finer editing. And it does the task in a matter of seconds. The first and most important phase in invoking Assistant Editor’s magic is careful logging of footage. This really should be a part of any shooter’s routine, but far too often we just find ourselves in too much of a hurry. That is improper filmmaking technique, and too many of us pay for that down the road in the edit (continued on page 34) (continued on page 38) 10 dv september 2008 www.dv.com http://www.expodisc.com http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - September 2008 Contents Discproducer PP-100 Frameforge 3D Studio 2 First Cuts Expodisc Bird's-Eye View Instant Expert Inside Outsource Red in Combat Tools & Technology My Studio DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - September 2008

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