[Weekly Update] Solar Eclipse and Left Over Gears

I saw the eclipse! Here is a timelapse I took with my digital camera. Click the above image to watch the video.

My film rolls are still in the store waiting to be developed. High resolution prints will be available with the script preview for our eclipse video, hopefully finishing it sometime next month.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Today is my last day of rest. Accented Cinema will resume work tomorrow. We have one more video planned for this month: How Maggie Cheung Walks. In this video, we'll be discussing the career of Maggie Cheung, and talk about the fundamentals of acting. It's a surprisingly difficult video to make and it's kicking my butt, mainly because I'm not an actor by trait. Maggie Cheung deserves the best, so I'll be pouring most of my effort for this video.

On the back burner will be our video on solar eclipse and Chinese mythology. It'll be different from our usual style, as there aren't many movies about solar eclipses. Take it as a side project, something that is possible because of your support!

We'll begin May with Part 2 of our Chinese Dynasty series, discussing the history of the Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms period, the Jin dynasty, and the Southern and Northern dynasty.

After that, we continue our bad movie world tour with Ah Girl Go Army. I've seen 5 minutes of it. My heart told me to stop and I did...

As for bonus video, I'm not sure what to talk about yet. I'm tempted to cover something monkey related. Seems appropriate.

MEDIA TALK

In preparation for the eclipse, I bought a vintage camera lens, a teleconverter, a bunch of solar filters, and a bunch of films. Now, they are sitting in my equipment closet collecting dust. It's like a weird hangover after experiencing the solar eclipse. What do I do now?

I'll share my eclipse experience either in a future video or some other time.

I'm tempted to get into astrophotography, since I already have half the equipment needed. All I really need is an equatorial mount to track the stars. But Montreal weather is a nightmare for astrophotographers. A few days before the eclipse, there was a snow storm. Two days after the eclipse was days worth of raining. In fact, it is still raining. It's honestly a miracle we had a somewhat clear sky on the day of the eclipse.

Indeed, snow is a massive hindrance to astrophotography. The cold drains batteries extremely quickly. (In fact, my phone can die in little under 3 hours if stayed in sub-zero temperature.) The relative high moisture also means Montreal snows a lot, clouding up the sky, making stars invisible. The reflective snow layer on the ground also makes light population much worse, and Montreal is already a very light populated city to begin with. But even without the snow, the humidity means water droplets will form on the glasses of the lenses. That means I'll also need some equipment to keep my lens warm throughout the night to keep moisture at bay.

So, do it in the summer, then? Well, unfortunately Canadian winter lasts 5 months a year. Even when summer comes, night is often short. Sunset at around 8:30 to 9:00, which means proper night sky comes around midnight, after public transport had shut down.

This is why my equipment is sitting in the closet. I would love to use them, but I have nothing I can do.

Yet still, I find myself looking to buy more cameras. I'm tempted to dabble into medium format and get a Kinaflex, even thought I currently have no models to work with. I want to buy a half-frame camera, like the Canon Demi EE17, because Kodak is hiking their prices (ugh). I also want a Canon F-1, because my current Canon AE-1 doesn't work without a battery, and the battery it uses are freaking stupidly expensive. And I want an instant camera for travel, but the only good format with manual control is the InstantFlex TL70 Plus, and it cost a thousand bucks Canadian. Yeah, no.

By the way, if you are not a camera person, Google some of these names. They are absolutely beautiful looking.

Anyway, so now I'm sitting here, not sure what to do coming off the high of a successful solar eclipse project. I guess this is why artists just can't retire. We get restless in less than a week of no action.

Well, this is a long shot, but if you are a Montreal based model and want to be a model, and would like to have your pictures taken for free, talk to me lol. Anyway, I'll see you in our next update!