Articles about "video"

Three weeks ago – on the 23rd February – it was time for this years HALLia VENEZiA, the venetian carnival I already shot two years ago. This year I decided to go and shoot again but without having time for preparing and preplanning due to our short film we shot in the middle of February I just decided to take my 5D and go and shoot some raw impressions from my shoulder. So it was mostly for trying out documentary style 5D raw shooting.

And I made a huge mistake there. Too late, when I saw the material in the editing I realised I hadn’t switched the IS of my 70-200 of, which was active from the last times shooting photos. I mostly used the 70-200 so most shots are a bit screwed up.

The problem is that the stabiliser is optimised for photographing, where the image has to be really stable for parts of a second or so. On video you would want smoothed out camera motions instead, no image pinned on one point. And as you see in the video the images are sharp for a second or so and then there is a fast move to the new center on which the IS then stabilises. I knew this problem and now I learned the lesson to double check your IS setting … This showed me that I’ve not done enough video with my 5D which I bought nearly 8 or 9 months ago. Still not used to have a stabiliser in the lens. In the Sony universe the NEX don’t have stabilisation for Alpha lenses so I didn’t had to worry about it.

Here is the impression video anyway which at least shows how good the FullHD raw from the 5D is. As I’m busy working on some other stuff I also had only a few hours for cutting and color grading this piece. Next year I plan to do a bit more on this day with more preplanning.

I really love the quality of the 5D RAW but I hate to work with it. This is due to the bad screen which is the hell to focus even with the Magic Lantern helpers compared to the small screen with good focus assistant on the NEX 5N. I hope that with Firmware 1.2.3 and the upcoming Magic Lantern for it, it will get easier to get external monitoring to work right with good resolution output etc. Currently with 1.1.3 the output is no good FullHD as on the Sony which makes displaying much easier.

The other thing is, that you have to be aware of frame dropping issues with raw. I filmed in the moderate 24p mode with only 1920*1038 (1,85 DCI aspect ratio) but still had some drops on my Komputerbay 1050x 128GB cards. I ordered two more for this day which I sent back after experiencing many drops on nearly every clip. The old ones (also 1050x 128 GB) I got in August only had a few frame drops over the course of filling the whole card so worked better.

The aperture was at around 8 to make focusing easier, as long as I didn’t actually pushed the aperture control, shutter 1/50. Than I exposed with my Genus Eclipse Fader ND. I tried not to overexpose and used the histogram and it worked fine. Some images looked a bit dark in some parts but the raw offers everything I need. If I had exposed to bright, the often bright and reflective costumes would have overexposed.

Again this project showed me what cool material you can get from your shoulder but how inconvenient working with a DSLR on a not so full blown rig is. I hope that workflow and ergonomics are getting better also in the lower budget camera gear section…

On August 24th, Feuerzauber, a competition between three firework artist, took place in the German city Karlsruhe. I was there to film a bit to show the show and give a feel for it. Here is a first teaser:

Unfortunately there were some problems in the workflow which lead to a much longer editing time then I planed. The material was shot on the 5D Mark III with compressed (ALL-I intraframe compression) shooting for the day shots and RAW for the nights shots. Due to the high contrast between the fire and fireworks and the dark surrounding I knew RAW could really help here. But the interaction between the editing software and the color grading software really slowed me down due to some problems. Soon I plan to cut more material about Feuerzauber directly using DaVinci Resolve 10 this time, which just got it editing functions and seems to have everything needed for most tasks.

I’m not only going to write some more about problems with Resolve and the 5D material conforming but also have some topics for upcoming posts. Some of it will be Behind the Scenes reports of some projects I worked on in my holidays, some may be more software/post workflow stuff and I also have some general thoughts of our film world I’ve started to write about.

To close this post I have another really short clip. This is just a four second excerpt of a clip I recorded in Amsterdam a week ago. I loved the colors and how it came out without any color grading and felt the need to share it before I find the time to edit my Amsterdam stuff. (Btw. this was processed with the fresh of the shelf Resolve 10 Beta. And be sure that there is much more detail in the RAW material then what you see in this clip. So enjoy this nice sunset clip:

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.