We added Canon Digital SLR’s to our gear locker over two years ago and many of our clients have seen the benefits they offer over our regular Sony EX HD video cameras. The Large sensors in these cameras allows very shallow depth of field and for some subjects they produce amazing film like results. The reality however is that D-SLR’s were not designed to shoot video, and as such they have some limitations.  The worst of these limitations is moire which appears as  swirly patterns on fabrics and walls due to the image being down sampled in the camera, this is ultimately a side-effect of using a sensor designed for stills rather than video.

We’ve been a bit torn over which camera system to use on many of our projects, we love the filmic look of the DSLR’s but we really don’t want to risk the project being effected by the problems that DSLR’s can introduce with certain subjects.

When it comes to HD camera quality there’s no better judge than the BBC who have very strict rules about which cameras they will allow their programmes to be shot with. DSLR’s certainly didn’t pass muster, but then neither did the Sony EX cameras that we’ve also been shooting on unless they were used with external recorders.

It’s fair to say that the BBC are extremely picky about HD quality and the fact that they have fully approved the use of the Canon C300 for the production of their HD broadcast material is big praise indeed to the new camera.

The C300 creates breathtakingly detailed images with it’s 4K sensor which makes Digital SLR footage pale in comparison, it doesn’t suffer from moire and it’s also a lot more efficient to work with so we decided the time was right to step up our offerings and invest in one.

If you’d like your next video to be shot by us on the C300 then please get in touch, we can’t wait to show you what we can do with it.

Watch this space for examples very soon!

After shooting Harley-Davidsons events throughout Europe this year we were really excited to be asked to fly out to Rio de Janeiro and shoot the first ever Rio Harley Days.

Rio was an amazing place to visit, we had to get some tourist based material as well as the event footage itself so were forced to spend a couple of days seeing the sights, no complaints on that front!

Part of the shoot involved getting aerial footage so we spent an hour with an excellent Helicopter pilot. Flying around the coast and then over Rio and Christ the Redeemer was absolutely stunning.

The rumble of thousands of Harley-Davidsons descended on the southern coast of France for the 5th Euro Festival. A record-breaking 10,000 Harley fans gathered for yet another fantastic Harley-Davidson Euro Festival in Grimaud, Golfe de St-Tropez during weekend 13-15 May. This year the weather was perfect, with the sun beating down on the chic party atmosphere synonymous with this event.

The French Riviera is Harley heaven for bikers, with picturesque mountain roads snaking their way down to the southern French coastal road. Combined with the chic cities of Marseille to the west and Nice to the east make this is one destination certainly worth adding to your list of places to ride.

Once again we filmed the event for Harley-Davidson and produced the highlight video above as well as a ten minute showcase from the Custom Bike Show held during the event.

The Brand Awareness MSc at the UEA is a unique collaboration between senior brand professionals and business experts. The course is led by Robert Jones, author of The Big Idea and head of new thinking at Wolff Olins, the firm behind Orange, Tate, GE and Unilever. Robert works closely with a teaching team from the highly innovative Norwich Business School at UEA. Other participants include AMV.BBDO, Britain’s biggest advertising agency, and Faber & Faber, the publisher.

Here’s one example of the videos we’ve produced as part of the project.

“Videotrader produced a great video for our recent product launch. There is no doubt it is a piece of quality content and played a key role in converting customer interest in our new product to more sales.”

Alastair Brown, Glidetrack.com

Adrift is a short film written and produced by myself and director Peter Naylor. We wanted to experiment with dreams and leading the viewer in to confusion based upon the their assumption of a dream state. We shot the film at the nearby beach in Old Hunstanton, North Norfolk. The film was shot using videotrader’s 35mm HD-DSLR rigs combined with our Steadicam system and various other items from our equipment store. We also had some help from a group of media students from the College of West Anglia.

Adrift recently made it to a shortlist of only nine entries at Canon’s Open Shutter Awards in London. We attended the awards ceremony and although Adrift didn’t make it all the way to the final spot a great time was had by all and we were still extremely pleased that we’d made the shortlist.

More recently I’ve been involved in another short with Peter Naylor entitled “Endeavour”. It’s always nice to get involved in a project where there’s a lot of room for creativity and input into the whole process from storyline to post production. When I heard about Endeavour I thought it was a very heart warming, yet simple story and as it was being shot in a single day I was more than happy to offer up my services as Director of Photography for the project.

Endeavour was shot using the videotrader’s 35mm rig which does a wonderful job of creating a film like image. Again I used our Steadicam system to provide some dynamic shots as the young boy is walking through the woods with his newly found toy.

As with most businesses we can’t always pick and choose the kind of work that we’re taking on as commercial projects at videotrader so creating these self funded personal projects give us total freedom to experiment and develop skills that can hopefully be passed on to our commercial work and benefit our clients.

Paul Joy (Owner / Director – Videotrader Ltd)