First Twoneil Video
It was more than a month ago that I placed an order for my twoneil 35mm adapter. At that stage I didn’t even have a HV30. Now I have both, and I have been waiting till the two of them came together in perfect union before I posted the results.
HV30 with Twoneil Adapter and 90mm Macro Lens
But first, why did I buy the twoneil?
The spend thrift in me so wanted to shell out for the well regarded Letus Mini, but at US$1099 (and factoring in the small hairline crack in my bank account) it was never going to happen. Shopping from Australia meant that in the past few weeks the price of the Letus has almost doubled. In the end I figured why go to the moon when all you want to do is see the earth from space? I went halfway, shelled out about AU$300 for the Twoneil to test the 35mm waters. Let me assure you, the water feels good. Damn good.
Prior to the adapter arriving I bought my HV30 and had practiced with it on the way to and from work. The first thing that struck me in those early days is how optimistic my film making ambitions were prior to purchasing the camera. Other than some brief time with a video camera in uni, I haven’t touched one in more than 10 years. I’ve always been pretty skilled with a still camera, and I guess I assumed that those skills would naturally transform over to the moving image.
Wrong.
There may indeed be natural Steven Spielberg’s out there who pick up their first video camera and start laying down gold instantly, but I’m not one of them.
Aside from the very basics of shot composition, shooting great video is nothing like taking a great photo. For one, subjects in a video shot move, and continue to move into and out of your shot. While that might seem obvious, when you attempt for the first time to capture movement artistically, you’re met with a number of factors you’ve never had to worry about before, including shifting light, movement of the frame, moving focus, shifting exposure levels, not to mention all the intricacies and opportunities that the editing process reveals.
Aside from some post-production time, a single photo stands on its own almost immediately after you capture it. The moving image does not. Most of the time you need to string together 20 or more shots to product even the briefest of vignettes. Taking the shot is only 25% of the work required to produce a finished product.
What I’m getting at is that in the past few weeks I have come to the realisation that capturing the moving image artistically requires a whole new set of skills to be learnt and practiced. I have been taking still photos since I was 11, hence I’ve had a long time to evolve my skills. Sure some of my video skills will build upon the fundamentals of taking a good photo, but it was slightly soul destroying to realise a few weeks ago that the moving images I had been capturing in my head were much harder to capture in real life. My first hour of video (captured over 3 weeks) was pretty much useless when I came to edit it.
But I didn’t give up. By the end of my second tape things were starting to look half salveagable, and then my twoneil 35mm adapter arrived.
This thing is a wonderful contraption and, as I hope you can see from my first scrambled test shots, really lifts the opportunities for artistic home movie endeavours. The movie below was shot hastily on a combination of 50mm and 90mm Macro lenses. Let me know what you think.
Other more recent videos using the Twoneil 35mm adapter:
