What to do in these pandemic times, you ask? Well, British Director of Photography Ben Sherlock decided to unveil an unseen world in the back of his garden. He took a Panasonic Lumix DC-S1H, a Venus Optics Laowa 24mm macro probe lens and off he went. As a keen reader, you might have heard the name before. We met up with Ben a couple of times (you can read about it here) and in these special times our very own Johnnie Behiri caught up with him to follow up on a recent short doc piece Ben did: A microscopic journey into the back of his garden! image credit: Ben Sherlock Filming Bugs with Ben Sherlock Ben restricted himself by limiting his gear: A camera body, one lens and a slider, that’s all he needed in terms of equipment. The Panasonic LUMIX DC-S1H was his weapon of choice because of its superb 4k 10-bit (@ 25p) mode. For higher frame rates he would need to drop to 1080p 8bit modes which still are quite nice but since the Laowa 24mm macro probe has a (very) slow aperture, the needed high ISO setting would introduce noise rather quickly. That wasn’t an issue in bright sunlight but once Ben got deeper into the soil, shooting became tricky with such a slow lens. image credit: Ben Sherlock The Venus Optics Laowa 24mm f/14 (that’s not a typo) macro probe lens is pretty special piece of gear (see our in-depth review here). It combines classic...
Published By: CineD - Tuesday, 25 August, 2020