PHOTOFLEX LiteDome xs Review by Weekly Photo Tips Shot on a Canon 7D and Panasonic GH1

This is a quick product review video shot for Scott Eccleston of the Weekly Photo Tips blog. The product being reviewed is a very nice little portable softbox that is designed specifically for use with dedicated flash units such as the Canon 580EX or Nikon SB800 or SB900.

The video is shot using both a Canon 7D shooting in 1080p at 30 FPS and a Panasonic GH1 shooting at 720p at 30 FPS. The canon is the primary camera and fixed on a tripod in the front of Scott. I used the Panasonic handheld to do the product close-ups as Scott demonstrated its use.




The Canon 7D footage was then run through Cineforms Neoscene to convert it to an AVI file for dramatically easier editing within Sony Vegas. Vegas works with the 720p footage from the GH1 without any additional conversion steps. All footage was laid onto a 30FPS timeline and rendered at 30FPS.

The 7D footage looks a little more grainy than the Panasonic because I wanted a fairly large DOF on the Scott such the both he and the product remained in relative good focus. As a result I had the 7D running at 2500 ISO as we used no additional lighting aside from window light. Since I was using the Panasonic hand held I was able to focus it manually and thus keep the aperture open further and subsequently use a lower ISO setting.

I actually had accedentally left the color balance on the 7D set to a custom setting from a previous still photo session but I was able to get the two camera reasonably close in post using the color correction tool in Vegas.

Mark,

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Product
• Review
• Photoflex
• LiteDome
• xs
• weekly
• photo
• tips
• Scott
• Eccleston
• Mark
• Hensley
• video
• Canon
• 7D
• Panasonic
• GH1
• Sony
• Vegas
• Cineform
• Neoscene

[markinmaine2]

Hi Danny,

Thank you for the kind words.

The fixed camera was the 7D. I used the Rode videomic on the 7D and the Azden smx 10 on the Panasonic GH1. I completely agree, the sound was tinny due to the room echo and distance to Scott. I will defintely look into a lav mic. Do you have any recommendations?

Mark,

[djdannyray]

Thanks for the review. WOA next time use a lav mic and your video production will jump into the pro league.

Look forward to more.

BTW which cam was the 7D ?