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Equipment Review: Jag35 Full Shoulder Rig v2

Posted by Nate Dappen at 5:47 pm on June 10, 2013

Jun 102013

Jag35 FullShoulderRig from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

DSLR cameras have revolutionized many aspects of independent filmmaking, bringing high quality Full HD video into a compact, familiar package and allowing users to take advantage of the huge range of accessories available with established SLR camera systems. Unfortunately, DSLRs aren’t really built for video shooting, and there are a whole range of ergonomic difficulties to be overcome if you want to use them in a serious video production. Two of those difficulties are shooting stable footage without a tripod, and following a moving subject with manual focus.

A whole industry has sprung up to provide accessories for DSLR video shooters, and one of the companies whose products interested us was Jag35. We contacted Jag35 to see whether they would be willing to provide some gear for our documentary about speciation in the Solomon Islands, and they graciously agreed. Now, with three short expeditions under our belt using the Jag35 Full Shoulder Rig v2 and Sidekick Follow Focus v2, we’ve gained enough experience with these products to write a review.

First, the Jag35 Full Shoulder Rig v2. The point of a shoulder rig is to get the camera out of your hands (unstable!) and onto your shoulder (more stable). To make the whole setup as stable as possible, most shoulder rigs have a counterweight behind the shoulder that balances the weight of the camera so that your (shaky) hands don’t need to. After reviewing the plethora of shoulder rig possiblilities, the Jag35 Full Shoulder Rig v2 looked like a great choice for DSLR video shooting on the go, and we were excited to try it out.

We found the Full Shoulder Rig v2 to be comfortable, well balanced, and stable. The rig makes capturing smooth static and moving shots much easier than handheld — a huge improvement over shooting handheld. The ergonomics are also great. All of the adjustment knobs (a snazzy orange color, by the way) are large enough to allow for easy, quick adjustments, but not so large that they get in the way. Most of the rig is aluminum, so the rig is also very durable. Aluminum parts also keep the rig pretty lightweight. Its construction is modular, so you can break it down quickly into very compact, manageable components (excellent for traveling and filming expeditions that requiring trekking).

One of our favorite features of the rigs is how easy it is to reconfigure into a variety of forms. The full shoulder rig is an “offset” configuration, meaning that while the rig sits on your shoulder (the right shoulder in the standard configuration), the DSLR mounting plate is offset to the left, so the DSLR’s LCD screen is right in front of your face. We’ve also used the included components to assemble a compact shoulder rig (without the counterweight behind the shoulder) and a counterbalanced top-handle rig for moving handheld low-angle shots. The rig can be tripod-mounted. Since the rig uses industry-standard 15mm rails, you can attach lots of accessories without modification. If necessary, the supplied rails can be replaced with longer rails to accommodate larger gear. On an upcoming shoot, we’ll be using a new external monitor, and we’ll be able to re-configure the rig — using some longer rails, not included — into a straight (non-offset) form to accommodate this additional accessory. Easy!

Overall, we’ve been really impressed with the build quality and versatility of the Jag35 Full Shoulder Rig. Neither Nate nor I have worked with some of the more expensive options (those made by Zacuto, Redrock Micro, etc.), but based on our experience with the Jag35 rig, we don’t see any reason to spend more!

Finally, just a few minor caveats: when fully assembled, the shoulder rig is not small, and has a slightly awkward shape. We tried carrying it, fully assembled, on some long hikes over rough terrain, and that wasn’t fun. So don’t do that. It’s pretty quick to break down and set up again, so that’s the way to go if you’re moving around a lot.

The only improvement we could think of, and one that would be easy to implement, would be to add a quick-release system on the camera mounting plate. The best option would probably be the standard Arca-style system, perfect for all those photographers who are transitioning into shooting more video.

Overall verdict: This is a solid piece of gear and makes a huge difference when you’re shooting video without a tripod. Definitely recommended.

Stay tunned for our review of the SideKick Follow Focus V2.

Here is their video about the rig:

Equipment review: Think Tank Hydrophobia 70-200 Flash

Posted by Neil Losin at 8:23 am on April 2, 2013

Apr 022013

Day’s Edge Productions just returned from a 2-week filming expedition in the Solomon Islands with Dr. Al Uy of the University of Miami. Knowing that it was the rainy season, and not wanting the rain to cramp our style, we asked Think Tank if they would give us two Hydrophobia® camera rain covers to use on location. They kindly agreed and, as expected, the Solomon Islands gave us plenty of chances to put the Hydrophobias through their paces!

Think Tank Hydrophobia Flash 70-200.

First, what does this rain cover do? Basically, the Think Tank Hydrophobia allows you to operate your DSLR camera in the rain without having to worry about your camera or lens getting wet. It consists of a well-fitted waterproof fabric cover with holes in just the right places for your hands and the front of the camera lens. It’s also got a nice internal attachment loop that goes around the base of the lens and allows you to carry the whole setup by an external strap (rather than using your own camera strap, which is inside the cover). Both Nate and I got the Hydrophobia® Flash 70-200, which has an additional transparent flash cover that allows you to use a large professional flash, like the Canon 580EX flashes that we use most often, attached to the camera’s hot shoe.

Here’s what we liked, based on our use of the Hydrophobia covers in the Solomon Islands:

1) The Hydrophobias did their job, and did it well. We were never worried that our cameras were getting wet, even in the heaviest downpour that we encountered. The waterproof material is sturdy and the seams look like they’ll last a long time. These things look and feel durable, and we expect them to wear well.

2) The openings in the rain cover are well positioned to allow you to manipulate the camera controls — right hand for most of the shooting controls on the Canon 5D Mark II or 5D Mark III, and the left hand for focusing, zooming, and operating miscellaneous controls on the left side of the camera body. There’s enough room to move your hands around inside the cover, but not so much extra room that it feels baggy. The bottom / left hand opening also allows you to mount the camera to a tripod or monopod with the cover attached, which we did while shooting video in the rain.

Neil shooting video in the rain on Frigatebird Island with the Hydrophobia 70-200 Flash on his Canon 5D Mark III and 70-200mm lens.

3) This thing is really well thought out! There are lots of little details that make the Hydrophobia more functional, which we’ve come to expect from Think Tank. There’s a waterproof lens cap that you can quickly slip over the front of your lens hood when you’re done shooting. There’s a transparent flap, secured with Velcro, that you can use to cover the viewfinder when you’re not shooting (or when you’re shooting in Live View mode). The eyepieces (required for use; not included) are specific to each model of camera, and fit the cameras securely. The Hydrophobia mounts to these eyepieces very securely by means of a stretchy neoprene collar that grips the outer rim of the eyepiece. You can even keep an extra eyepiece in a little pocket on the outside of the Hydrophobia.

So overall the Hydrophobias are a pretty slick solution to a common problem: shooting in the rain. In a place like the Solomon Islands, particularly in the wet season, we couldn’t let rain limit our shooting options, and the Hydrophobias let us keep shooting in some pretty camera-unfriendly conditions, from downpours in the forest to rainy sea crossings from island to island in small, bouncing boats.

Nate using the Hydrophobia 70-200 Flash in heavy rain on the beach. The camera inside is a Canon 5D Mark III with an 80-200mm lens.

There were a few things that we found challenging when working with the Hydrophobias. First, as the name suggests, they really are made for 70-200mm lenses, and they’re best used with these larger lenses. We tried using the Hyrdrophobia with smaller lenses, and it can be done, particularly if the smaller lens has a decent-sized lens hood. The material covering the lens bunches up somewhat around shorter lenses, however — it was a bit tricky to access the focus and zoom rings of my 24-105mm f/4L lens with the Hydrophobia on. But it can be done, and having the option of using these smaller lenses definitely came in handy. Second, the Hydrophobia is at its best when you’re using the camera’s optical viewfinder. When shooting video (or stills with Live View enabled), the neoprene eyepiece collar and surrounding Velcro obscure the top edge of the LCD screen, so you won’t see 100% of the frame. That being said, we shot plenty of video with the Hydrophobia covers on, and we quickly learned to adapt. The clear plastic that covers the camera back can also get fogged up in very humid conditions, or with rapid temperature changes, but I was stupid and didn’t apply the (included) anti-fog coating to the plastic before the trip. I’m sure this would have solved the problem. Third, as someone with big hands, I found that there wasn’t quite enough room for me to reach in through the lower/left hole and adjust the zoom of the lens when the camera was attached to a tripod head like the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead or Manfrotto 501 fluid head (a smaller tripod head, or smaller hands, would have been fine). Finally, if you’re not planning on using a flash very often, you’re probably better off with the non-flash version of the cover. The transparent flash “bubble” is a great feature, but stowing it away securely when you’re not using a flash isn’t trivial.

Conclusion: This is definitely a product we’ll be taking with us on our next trip to the Solomon Islands in June (with any luck, we can also try the Hydrophobia® 300-600 model to cover our supertelephoto needs when we’re shooting wildlife in the rain!). It’s a much more ergonomic and mobile solution for shooting in the rain than using an umbrella or rain jacket to cover your camera, both favorite strategies of ours in the past! We would recommend a Hydrophobia rain cover to anyone whose photographic work can’t wait for fair weather.

What are Calories? (or The Snickers Challenge)

Posted by Neil Losin at 6:16 am on March 1, 2013

Mar 012013

Last month, Nate and I returned home after our Dos Equis-funded expedition to the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda. We’ve been editing some photos from the trip, so you can get a taste of what we experienced during our ascent to base camp, while climbing the high peaks, and you can get a closer look at some of the flora and fauna of the Rwenzoris. We’re also producing a short film about the expedition, and we’ll be able to share more details about that soon!

A portrait of our expedition cook, Augustine. Photo by Nate Dappen.

It was a physically demanding expedition – we hiked for several hours every day, often carrying heavy camera gear, and we summited five 16,000-foot peaks in the space of seven days. We expected to lose a few pounds during the trek, but thanks to the excellent (and abundant) food provided by Augustine, the expedition cook, we didn’t end up losing much, if any, weight.

We ate our fair share of snacks on the trail, of course, and that’s how our latest video project began. I stuck with classic fare – granola bars and peanut butter crackers – but Nate had packed some calorie-dense protein bars in his backpack. I said, “If you really want lots of calories in a compact package, you should’ve just gotten a bunch of Snickers.” That’s when the disagreement started. Nate claimed that a standard-sized Snickers bar only had 120 Calories, a figure that I knew must be incorrect. I guessed 300 Calories. To make it interesting, we made a bet. It was a gentleman’s bet – no money involved – but the loser would have to eat five Snickers bars in one sitting… Very gentlemanly.

Unsurprisingly, I was right. Or nearly so… the standard Snickers bar in the U.S. contains 280 Calories (not for long, however – they are downsizing the bar to 250 Calories by the end of 2013… keeping the price the same, naturally). But rather than let Nate serve out his sentence in the privacy of his home, we decided we should parlay his misfortune into something positive… educational, even! So we made a video about Calories – what are they? And what do they do? So here it is! It’s kind of like a double feature; you get to watch Nate eat five Snickers bars AND learn something in the process. Enjoy!

To borrow a John Stewart line, “Are you not horrortained??”

Where have we been?

Posted by Neil Losin at 8:09 pm on December 6, 2012

Dec 062012

It’s been a busy few months for Day’s Edge Productions – we’ve been just about everywhere except our blog, it seems! Luckily, there’s a good reason for our blog silence: there are big things in the works! In the first half of 2013, we’ll be heading to Uganda to climb the Rwenzori Mountains and document their fast-disappearing glaciers, and we’ll travel to the Solomon Islands to make a really exciting film about how new species arise! We’ll do our best to keep the blog up-to-date with news of our adventures. But aside from planning our upcoming expeditions, we have actually been doing some interesting things with tangible results!

In August and October, I spent a few days filming on Colorado’s Yampa River with a crew from National Geographic. We were covering a really interesting story – 2012 was an extremely dry year in the West, and several Colorado conservation groups came together with National Geographic to secure the water rights necessary to keep the Yampa River flowing at a healthy level. Most water leases are made in order to use water from the river; this one was made to keep water in the river. It’s an innovative conservation measure that just might have kept the Yampa River – and its inhabitants, like the native mountain whitefish healthy in a pretty bad draught year. Check out the video that resulted from this shoot, courtesy of the National Geographic Freshwater Initiative:

A male Anolis evermanni in Puerto Rico

Earlier in the year, Nate and I also sold some footage to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for their long-running nature series The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. They needed footage of Anolis evermanni for an episode on animal intelligence, “Mysteries of the Animal Mind,” and – wouldn’t you know it – we had captured some nice footage of this anole species during one of my research trips to Puerto Rico! Anyway, it amounted to a modest footage-licensing deal, but since this is our first broadcast credit, it’s still a bit of a milestone for us! Check out this short excerpt from the program, which features some of our footage in a segment about Dr. Manuel Leal’s research on anole intelligence (our footage was used in a couple of other places, but we couldn’t share the whole program!):

If you’re in Canada, you can probably watch the entire episode here, but if you’re in the United States you’ll have to settle for our excerpt!

Finally, we’ve been working hard on The Symbol, our book about the Ibiza Wall Lizard, and we’re making good progress. We’ve still got some work to do, but we can’t wait to share the fruits of our labor!

Day's Edge on the Radio

Posted by Nate Dappen at 5:31 am on December 4, 2012

Dec 042012

Nate, talking on-air. Click this image to listen to the interview.

A few weeks ago, Neil and I found out that we won the first ever Stay Thirsty Grant. The grant, funded by Dos XX will give us $25K to travel to Uganda to make a film about the disappearing glaciers on top of the Rwenzori Mountains. We’ve been hard at work preparing for this trip. It’s going to be a physical challenge to actually climb the mountains, and perhaps an even bigger challenge to get all of our film gear up there. So, we’re both training hard to get into shape and trying to get our hands on some specialized film equipment that will allow us to make an awesome film in such a remote place.

I recently had a live radio interview about the grant and the upcoming trip. Check it out!

Nathan Dappen Radio Interview Nov 29

The Most Interesting Project in the World

Posted by Neil Losin at 10:17 am on November 16, 2012

Nov 162012

We’ve got big news, and it involves beer and science! Last night, Nate and I found out that we won the first-ever “Stay Thirsty Grant” from Dos Equis. This $25,000 grant is going to support our expedition to Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains to document some of the last tropical glaciers on Earth. (View our “pitch” video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7Rm9WRzwrg)

The official announcement was made by “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” the spokesman of a wildly successful Dos Equis advertising campaign, in a private event in New York, which was followed by a huge masquerade party. You can see us fraternizing with TMIMITW, as we affectionately call him, in the pictures below.

The winner was decided by a popular vote, so we have to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us and encouraged their friends to vote! We couldn’t have done it without your support! To learn more about exactly what we’ll be doing in Uganda, check out this piece we wrote for National Geographic Newswatch last month. We’ll be posting lots more about this project as our plans develop over the next couple of months, and we can’t wait to get to the Rwenzoris and bring back some amazing images to share with all of you! More to come!

The Most Interesting Men on the Moon?

Posted by Nate Dappen at 12:00 pm on October 11, 2012

Oct 112012

The Rwenzori Mountains—also called the Mountains of the Moon—rest between Uganda’s Nile basin and the immense tropical jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo. With their peaks at 5,109m above sea level, the Rwenzori range is one of the rare tropical locations where glaciers occur. But not for long; climate change is altering every environment on the planet, and these ice-covered mountain tops are thawing fast. The glaciers may be gone in less than 20 years.

We need your help to tell the story of this vanishing world. Vote for our project to help us win the Dos Equis Stay Thirty Grant – a $25,000 prize that will fund our expedition to Africa. You can vote once a day, every day, from today, October 9th until October 30th. Please vote for us, and share this link with as many people as you can via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and carrier pigeon… This is an important story about climate change that needs to be told.

To vote for us, click on the above image to go the voting page. Once you put in your age, click the red “grant worthy” button in the bottom right corner of our submission: Men on the Moon: Journey to a Vanishing World.

Please vote! Please share! Then, please do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until October 30th! Thank you for your support!

The Symbol - Final Photo Gallery and Videos!

Posted by Nate Dappen at 1:39 pm on September 14, 2012

Sep 142012

During the summer of 2012, we traveled to Ibiza and Formentera to photograph the Ibiza Wall Lizard and create the first-ever book about this amazing species. Our trip was funded by 290 generous donors, who contributed to our project through the crowd-sourced fundraising website Kickstarter.com. We spent four intense weeks visiting Ibiza, Formentera and about two dozen remote islands and taking tens of thousands of photographs.

Our expedition is over, we’ve reviewed our photographs and we’re thrilled with the results. We feel we’ve successfully captured the amazing diversity of this species’ color variation and behaviors. We’re confident that we have all the photos we need to put together a beautiful photographic book about this species’ natural history, evolution and conservation. We’ve put together a photo gallery with highlights from the expedition. To check out that gallery, click the thumbnail above or here.

We also produced one short film for each week were there about our adventures in the field. Those “Video Updates” are posted in chonological order below.

Video Update 1:

Lizard Expedition in Ibiza and Formentera: Update 1 from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Video Update 2:

Lizard Expedition in Ibiza and Formentera: Update 2 from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Video Update 3:

Es Vedrà Trek (“The Symbol” Video Update #3) from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Video Update 4:

Lizard Expedition in Ibiza and Formentera: “The Symbol” Final Update from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

In addition to those four video updates from 2012, we produced two award-winning films in 2011 about this species’ color evolution and dietary adaptations. You can see those below:

Cold-Blooded Cannibals: Extreme Adaptations to Island Life from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Battle of the Sexes from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Over the next few months, we are going to make the final image selection for our book, design the layout, and complete the text. We should be ready to print in early 2013 and our book will be on the book shelves in the islands before next year’s tourist season!

Thank you Bill Burdette!

Posted by Nate Dappen at 6:14 am on September 14, 2012

Sep 142012

Neil and I spent summer 2012 in the Spanish Mediterranean photographing the Ibiza wall lizard for a book. We funded that project on a crowd-sourced fundraising platform called Kickstarter.com. Here’s how Kickstarter.com works: you propose a project and a minimum budget needed to complete the project. People check out your proposal on the Kickstarter website and can donate any amount to funding your project. If those donations add up to more than your minimum budget, you’re funded. If not, no one who pledged their support has to pay anything.

It’s hard to convince people that they should give you money to spend a summer in an island paradise. From the start, Neil and I knew that raising the money to fund our expedition to Spain would be tough. Incredibly, 290 generous individuals supported our project and helped us raise the $20,000 we needed to fund our expedition and, eventually, to print our book.

The success of our project depended on hundreds of small donations and a few big ones. Every donation counted, but a few big ones were especially helpful. One person, William Burdette, was particularly generous, donating $1000 to two people he had never met. For those who donated to our project, you know that at every different level of monetary contribution, backers receive different incentives or “rewards” for their pledge. For our biggest donors, we promised to send them personalized thank-you videos from the field.

This video is dedicated to Bill Burdette. Thank you Bill, for contributing to the creation of the first-ever book about the Ibiza wall lizard and for helping us have the experience of a lifetime:

Thank you Bill Burdette! from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

“The Symbol” Video update #4: Our last days in the islands

Posted by Nate Dappen at 8:42 am on August 20, 2012

Aug 202012

Our expedition to photograph the Ibiza wall lizard in Spain is over. Neil and I are back in the states. We’re sorting through our images and selecting the very best ones for our book. Soon, we’ll finish the writing and begin the layout process. We can’t wait to show you what we’ll create!

Lizard Expedition in Ibiza and Formentera: “The Symbol” Final Update from Day’s Edge Productions on Vimeo.

Earlier in our expedition, we visited an island called Esparte, where we found a very dark blue, almost black population of lizards. This came as a big surprise to me, because not less than 10m away was the island of Espartar – home to a population of light teal-colored lizards. Lizards on these two islands are incredibly distinct. What accounts for this dramatic difference in color expression? No one knows.

The Ibiza Wall Lizard (Podarcis pityusensis frailensis [top] & kamerianus [bottem])
Even neighboring islands can have strikingly divergent lizard populations. Pictured are two typical male lizards from the islands of Esparte (top) and Espartar (bottom), which are separated by a channel less than 10 meters wide. Why their coloration differs so dramatically, no one yet knows.

As evolutionary biologists, it fascinates us that these lizard populations are so close, yet look so different. The situation on Esparte and Espartar exemplifies the mysteriously high color diversity among island populations of this species, which has some of the highest color diversity observed among all reptiles. Our understanding of how these uniquely color populations evolved to be so different is poor. Nonetheless, one of our goals on this expedition was to capture, photographically, the color diversity of these lizards among island populations. To do this, we used a technique called “Meet Your Neighbours.”

“Meet Your Neighbours (MYN)” is a worldwide photographic initiative created by Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt. The MYN photography style is to photograph organisms on a plain white background. This approach removes the subject from its environment and allows viewers to focus on the organisms details as an individual. I encourage you to check out the MYN website. It has some absolutely stunning images and is making a big splash in the conservation photography scene. For our purposes, we think that this photographic approach really allows us to demonstrate the color differences of these lizards from one island to the next.

Lizards photographed “Meet Your Neighbours” style.

On the last few days of our trip, we realized that we were missing an important image that we needed to complete our book. During the last month, we photographed lizards on the majority of small islands surrounding Ibiza and Formentera, but we still didn’t have a single photo of Ibiza wall lizards on the island of Ibiza! So, we spent the last day of our expedition photographing the Ibiza wall lizard on the island where it got its name.

An Ibiza wall lizard basking on a stone wall on the island of Ibiza.

Our work is far from done. We still have to select and edit the best images for our book. We also have to finish writing the text. Finally, we’ll need to layout the text and images for printing. Shortly, we’ll publish a master photo gallery with many imaged from our expedition. If you were one of our backers who donated $50 or more, you’ll be able to select one of these images to be printed and signed by Neil and I. We’ll keep you posted.

Thank you again to everyone who contributed to this project. We couldn’t have done it without you!

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