The Kowa 40mm 35-BE Anamorphic Cine Lens & the Start of a Journey

2021 May 19 By answer 2 comment

https://youtu.be/UkB-e27dxfQ Luckily for me, I have yet to catch Covid. However, I have spent the latter part of the past two years in and out of clinics and hospitals for other reasons. It has been hard to get any projects done in a reasonable time and even harder to shoot anything for myself. When I felt well, I usually worked for others. I did what I could. That aside, I have been very lucky over the past two years. A lot has happened. I’m thankful that I continue to improve and hope that I can feel normal for more than…

JSD LABS: Panasonic GH5 VFR 180fps ver. 2.2 Test – Maihama Skate Park

2017 Dec 19 By answer 0 comment

When the newest GH5 Firmware update came out, it claimed to improve the stability of the VFR. To me, in hope, that was fixing some of the issues that I had earlier with the high speed modes beyond 120fps. We did do a few 120fps shots in Tokyo Dreams and I really didn’t see what everybody was complaining about. I had a few editors not even know it was shot in HD next to the 4K footage. So, with firmware version 2.2 in hand, I set out to Maihama Skate Park in Tokyo to practice skate filming and see…

JERHELL – KINGDOM HEARTS Music Video, Directed by JSD

2017 Dec 19 By answer 0 comment

My first real music video in awhile, and my first music video as JSD. Pretty excited to get it out there and the reception has been great! Jerell wanted something quick and gritty, and he was thrilled with the result. After he told me what he wanted, I knew the perfect setting: Minato Mirai in Yokohama. We filmed half the video in Shinjuku and half at Minato Mirai. I had planned to try and film more in the Cosmo World amusement park, but they closed on days we needed to film and closed early the day we were there….

Filming the Eupholks Live at the Basement Bar in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo

2017 Oct 24 By answer 0 comment

I have know the singer of the band Eupholks, Koike, for a few years now. He asked me to film some of his live shows, so I decided to give it a shot. The first time I tried to do a 2 camera shoot by myself… and it didn’t go well. More people showed up than expected and my b-camera was blocked partially or fully for most of the show. So, I acquired some help for the next one and figured… why not do it in anamorphic? At first I was going to try some kind of 2x/1.33 hybrid,…

JSD Labs: Zhiyun Smooth II, iPhone 7 Plus, and Mavis in Yoyogi Park

2017 Feb 05 By answer 0 comment

A few weeks ago I got a deal on a new Zhiyun Smooth II, the updated version. I had read, though I forget where, that it has really strong motors that let you use clip-on lenses on big phones. While the DJI phone gimbal seems to have good features, I had also heard that people had issues adding extras on their phone. I jumped on this one while I had the chance. That said, the Smooth II does not lack in features at all. In fact, in this video I only used a small fraction of them, the main…

Hello Yokohama.

2016 Sep 15 By answer 0 comment

Wasn’t planning for this to be my first upload, but all my main projects are taking more time than I planned for various reasons. I never get tired of city visuals in Japan. This was mainly practice using the 1080p 120 fps feature on my Sony RX100IV. I wandered into main areas of Yokohama with the camera on my Beholder DS1 and just filmed whatever. It has no post stabilization and no additional time warping or remapping. Just re-interpolate the 120 fps to 24 fps and this is what you get. Aside some issues with color correcting (something I…