Articles about "video"

Short video of the 3rd model truck meeting of the RC model sport club Öhringen. My father ask me to shoot a bit of video. Due to my flu from which I hadn’t yet recovered properly, I only shot a little amount of footage but I think it came out quite ok.

Here is the demonstration video of my Lightroom Timelapse Plugin – the working title is Time Smoother. The purpose of this plugin is to help to smooth timelapses with changing exposure especially like sunrise (night-to-day) and sunset (day-to-night) timelapses.

If you’re interested in timelapsing and this plugin/workflow please give me feedback below this post, on Twitter (@irieger) or in the comments on Vimeo.

On vacation I shot many timelapses, some of them sunrises or sunsets. At this time I only knew one tool to help smoothing RAW timelapses in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom and this wasn’t working as I expected the times I tried it and I always had to manually work around. And the new version is very expensive. So while still on vacation, after getting up at 3:00am to shoot a night-to-day timelapse and setting up the cameras I had plenty of time to think about the problem. A solution of how easy this could be processed came to my mind and I asked a friend experienced in Python to give me a “kickstart” with a little code example of how I could process the XMP data.

He sent me a small example which I used to write an algorithm that fit my needs. The script was really simple but after coming back after the vacation I decided try to make this a Lightroom plugin. The Lightroom Plugin API (Application Programming Interface) is relatively easy to handle but also is missing many features. So I ended making a Lightroom frontend which then executes the script in the background. I’d prefer to have a native plugin handling everything in Lightroom itself but with the current API it’s not possible. So for now we have to write the metadata, run the plugin and then load the metadata from the files as described in the video. But I hope this will change in a coming Lightroom release. I’ve sent a feature request to Adobe.

Currently working

• smooth out the exposure between first and last image
• use keyframes to better specify the brightness curve
• works with XMP sidecar files or photos with integrated XMP data
• works on Mac OS (tested on Mountain Lion) and Windows

Planned next

• tests with files from different cameras
• add white balance smoothing
• handling of exposure bracketing for HDR timelapses
• more depending on my needs and your feedback

Thank you for reading and now please send me your thoughts.

Like I wrote before I visited Photokina now. I was in Cologne from Tuesday to Wednesday and met a friend, David Leuck. On Tuesday we made a photo tour to the historic city of Cologne. We ended with shooting the sunset at one of the photographers meeting points, at the Hohenzollern Bridge where you have a nice view to the Cologne Cathedral, the Rhine and the cityscape of the historic city. We were relatively early for the sunset so I spontaneously decided to timelapse it. This shot may be part of a timelapse collection I plan to cut soon.

On Wednesday we went to the Photokina itself. A big crowd was already in the queue at the entrance but in the big area of the exhibition grounds the crowd dispersed so it was relatively easy to see and test all we wanted without waiting or with only having to wait few minutes. The main problem I experienced is that one day isn’t enough to go to all the nice talks you want to hear at different booths. But I set my priorities before and saw all that was important for me. But to begin I got one of the best shots in my collection. In the outdoor area near the entrance hall of the south entrance there where some falconers with their animals where I got the great shot on the left.

Best things first: The talks I watched were great. The first one was somehow accidently. When I was at the Nikon booth I saw that there was a talk by Sandro Miller and Anthony Arendt about to happen. They talked about how Sandro was asked to make a short for the D800 release – Joy Ride – and how it was shot. After this I was at the Canon booth watching the funny Philip Bloom talking about the C300 and the Cinema EOS line. Later I saw Nino Leitner talking about tripods and Sebastian Wiegärtner talking about DSLRs and large chip camcorders in the movie park. All the talks where cool and I think next time I’ll plan some more time especially for the talks.

Gear-wise I was a bit disappointed from some stuff but happy about some other stuff. Here are some short comments about some stuff I tested:

• The Sony A99 has a better viewfinder than the A77 but it’s still way inferior compared to an OVF. And in contrast to the specifications on the Sony webpage and the brochure I didn’t find 24p and 60p on the A99. Focus magnification is also still not available in video mode. So expect of clean HDMI output and the audio stuff nothing new on the A99 which excited me.
• We were able to test the Nikon D600 at a photo dealer in Cologne so we had done this before but we saw a good thing on the D600. The D600 is capable of bracketing with 3 Frames ±2EV and ±3EV. This is good for HDR timelapsing and the point I’m really disappointed by the D800 which I liked expect of this.
  
  

  BMD camera

• The Cinema EOS line – especially the C300 and C500 – from Canon is really cool and nice to handle. I hope I can try them out on some shoot sometimes.
• At the Zeiss booth I saw the one camera I really hoped to be able to try out. Equiped with the nice CP.2 50mm/T1.5 there was the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera. Handling seems cool. And the footage coming throw the web seems to speak for itself.
• Being used to filming with foto zooms it was really nice to play with the Compact Prime and a Compat Zoom CZ.2 70-200 with an FS100. The wide focus range and fixed focus while Zooming are really nice.
• Trying out a Glidecam with a vest was nice but it also confirmed what I read online often before: You have to pratice if you want to be good with it.

More photos from Photokina and the Cologne trip in my 500px collection “Photokina 2012”.

To end this article here is a sneak peek from my holidays in Oberstdorf. Dislcaimer: Edited and graded in the rush on the last day there to have something to show to my grandparents the next day. I then decided to upload it with this disclaimer. The final pice will get some more attention in editing and grading.

Also coming soon: I developed a little script to help me smooth my timelapses which I will write about later this month.

Again it’s necessary: This is some vital sign which is long overdue …

I’m now studying again and use much of the free time to get some footage so my blog again was a bit out of my attention again. Now here is a little clip I shot on Friday showing a nice sunset. Tripod wasn’t set up properly so I’d have to do some heavy post processing or what I prefer get out again and shoot with better setup to get the best out of it.

I’m currently working on finishing some cuts and will upload some more stuff soon.

It was the sunday 8 days before Rosenmontag again. This day is the day of HALLia VENEZiA (additional Website), a masquerade ball in our wonderfull city of Schwäbisch Hall along the lines of the traditional Venetian one, was celebrated. As the years before there where nice mask, robes and friendly poses. Despite -10°C at 11am many photographer and filmers where at the Globe theater where the masked participants met to pose for the photographers and then went through the streets.

This year of course I decided to film the event and so I followed the goings-on for hours. Beforehand I had done some interviews with people from the club organizing this event and now I’m working on a short documentation about this event. To show some impressions I decided to do the rough cut you see above. The cut of the docu will take some time but then I’ll publish it here of course.

“Technical details”

I was recently asked which camera and lenses I used so here are some information about the gear used. I filmed on the NEX-5n while my father used his A77. The clip mostly contains recordings from the NEX cause my father had problems with the focus so I only used some of his shots. The lenses I used are the Sony SAL-2875 and the SAL-70200.

For shots with my shoulder rig I tried the Sony SEL-1855 (f3.5 to 5.6) which I lent from a friend to test especially the stabilization. After some shots I decided to switch back to my 28-75 cause the handling of the small 18-55 for the NEX is bad. It’s to small for use on the rig I think cause with the follow focus you have problems to use the zoom ring. And I don’t have NDs for this lens and the aperture is a bit bad… So the handheld shots are also mostly SAL-2875 with stabilization in FCPX which surprised me with its picture quality when I first used it.

My father recently bought the A77 so of course I had to play with it and test some stuff. After doing some basic tests and got a feeling for the usage of the cam I decided to focus on a low light comparison with the NEX-5n and some AF testing. But after the video with this two topics and some words about it, I’ll write down some general thoughts about the A77.

Low light and AF test

Download the source file on Vimeo for better image quality. Keep in mind that this test is totally unscientific. All footage without color grading. Only post process are the titles and the tests with the Neat Video noise reduction plugin demo I’m currently playing with.

For the low light test I took my NEX-5n and the A77 with two tripods and shot some scenes in my hometown Schwäbisch Hall. I tried to have both cameras as near as possible. Both the NEX-5n with the LA-EA1 lens adapter and the A77 where equipped with the Sony SAL-2875 with 2.8 constant aperture. Then I tried to get the same field of view so the lens on the NEX needed more zoom due to the additional A77 video crop. Both cameras where rolled at the same time with the same settings to have direct comparison.

For me the NEX-5n seems a bit cleaner even if both have “some” noise especially when shooting at ISO1600. But nice on the A77 is, that you can also use ISO1000, ISO1250 and other steps between common ISO steps, while the NEX only allows an ISO value of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. Another point for the NEX is the lack of the translucent mirror which leads to a brighter image (visible and shown by exposure control in the cameras, difference about -0.3 EV).

The AF test – I shot more footage than I packed into this edit but this shows enough – showed to me that this part, always advertised by Sony, isn’t made for nice focus tracking while filming. And it’s only available in auto mode. The car scene was shot with the SAL-70200 which has a nice and fast AF with its super sonic motor (for photos). The shampoo bottle was filmed handheld (with steady shot on I think) and focus tracking set to the logo on the bottle. I went back and forth to stress the focus. The lens was the SAL-2875 again.
Sorry for the high noise in the car AF scene, I’m used to the A850 which switches back to ISO auto when changing from manual mode with specified ISO to program automatic. And I was a bit in a hurry while shooting this so I missed the ISO setting.

Picture profile for all fotage in the video above was Portrait with Contrast all down to -3, Saturation -1 and Sharpness down on -3 on both cams. White balance was set to auto.

Some general thoughts about the A77

As expected the video quality of the A77 is in general comparable to the NEX-5n. But the handling isn’t. The NEX is a bit fiddly with only the one control dial for aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc. but when you get used to it, it’s no big problem. The A77 has direct dials for shutter speed and aperture + dedicated buttons for ISO and other stuff, but there is one big deal: You have to go to video mode on the program dial to shoot video with manual controlled apterture and shutter speed. And in video mode you can’t shoot pictures even when between some recordings. But the biggest minus of video mode is, that you can’t use the focus magnifier which for me is vital in many situations. So you have to switch to another mode, set an accurate focus with focus magnification and switch back to movie mode.

When hitting the movie record button in other program modes than video on the A77, the recording mode is always auto. The handling of the NEX is much better, because I’m always in manual mode which fits for manual controlled photos or movies(!) and you always have the focus magnifier when the camera isn’t recording. So all in all the NEX is the better Super 35 camcorder – when you’re used to it’s controls.

Expect some more footage from the A77 in the coming days. And here is my one last thing:

Additional crop in Video mode

The crop factor of about 1.86 in video mode is discussed often on the net but many people don’t really know why Sony crops videos. So here is a little explanation:

Sony (or better say Minolta) decided to let the camera do the stabilization when they released their first DSLRs. This was and is done with a piezoelectricity mechanism which compensates the camera movement by moving the sensor. This process works good for photos and was also used when Steady Shot was active while video recording on the A55. On the A55 this speed up the heating of the sensor which even without Steady Shot had only short recording times. So Sony decided to give the A77 a electronic stabilization in video mode. So it needs to have an area which is not regularly used for the video to move the recording area through the sensor to compensate the movement. Therefor it crops. The bad thing is that you can’t record with only the regular 1.5 APS-C crop when not using stabilization.

I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

My last post got a bit old so I planed to post some “I’m alive” post here for some time now but I worked hard the last weeks and “wasted” too much of my free time with nice stuff like filming ;-) So I used many of my free time to improve handling the NEX and experimenting. The video below is a collection of some very nice clips I shot in the zoo in Stuttgart. There’s no story or something but the footage looked to good to be dumped somewhere on my harddisc without been used. (Also viewable on http://vimeo.com/irieger/ein-tag-in-der-wilhemla-stuttgart)

Ein Tag in der Wilhelma Stuttgart – A day in the zoo in Stuttgart

Some people now me very good so no surprise for them: My collection of gear keeps growing. I’m planing to post something about my gear in the next weeks so stay tuned even if here’s a bit silent sometimes.