Aspect Ratio / Video Standards Chart

Here you go all you chart lovers. feast your eyes on this!

Aue! Me tini oku tarau...

Time-lapse / Under-crank

In film & video speak cameras have the ability to over crank (slow motion) and under crank (fast motion). Top of the line film cameras have had this facility for a while while the technology is relatively new to video cameras. The Sony EX1, for example can record anything between 1 and 60 frames per second. The footage is always played back at 25 fps or 30fps depending on which standard your country conforms to (PAL or NTSC). Thus when something is recorded at 1 fps and then played back at 25 fps it will appear sped up. Footage recorded at 60 fps will have the opposite effect and appear much slower than real time.

The 5D can't over crank at his stage although users are optimistic about a firmware upgrade that will allow it in the future. The 7D can record up to 60 fps in 720p. Under cranking however is easy with the addition of an inexpensive shutter remote / timer like this.

I bought mine on trademe for NZ $65. It allows me to take a single exposure every 1 second - 100 hours. You can make it do this infinitely until the battery runs out which is approximately 2 months of constant use.

You can also use it as a Timer Delay which allows you to set the time between when you trigger the remote and when the the camera shoots - up to 10 hours.

You can also set the duration of the exposure when the camera is set to Bulb - up to 10 hours.

Here is an example of a time lapse I shot this morning at the Ports of Auuckland.



How I did it:

Obviously you will need to use a tripod if you want your movie to look steady. Set up your shot as you normally would keeping in mind that we as viewers are used to seeing a bit of motion blur which means keeping the shutter speed down in the 50-100th of a second range. On a bright sunny day this means closing down the iris.. a lot. But if this is giving an undesirable effect to your image then you may like to employ a ND filter to cut down the light coming in to your camera.

Set you remote timer appropriately. The above time lapse was set at one exposure per second. If the action is very slow such as the stars or a flower blooming you will want to make the interval a bit longer.

I usually set my picture quality to large jpeg and then snap away. I usually turn off the Live View mode saving the camera power and effort but in the instance above I left it on so I could review the shots as they came in, though this can also be done through the view finder.

Once completed I ingest my photos via Adobe Lightroom  >  Make any adjustments to one the images in the Develop section  >  Apply a 16:9 crop factor to that same image  >  Control click (right click PC) the image and under Develop Setting select Copy Settings  >  Select all the images of the time lapse  >  Control click and paste settings  >  With all images still selected Control click and select Export  >  Make a new folder and resize the image with a longest edge of 1920 pixels (1080 HD)  > exit Lightroom and open QuickTime Player 7

Note: QuickTime Player 7 is included with Final Cut Studio HD.

In QT7 click File and select Import Image Sequence  >  navigate to the folder containing the images exported from Lightroom and select the first image file hit open. You should see your time lapse. Then export it is any format you choose.

Note: This is the way that I have done it and may be one of many ways to create time lapses.

Blackbird Camera Stabilizer

The Blackbird is a lightweight hand-held steadicam.

I bought my Blackbird Camera Stabilizer Kit off B&H's online store for US$669.95 not including P&P.

I had to import myself as there are no distributors yet in New Zealand. The cost of postage were rather hefty and I had to pay G.S.T. as it came through customs. The package arrived at my doorstep in less than two weeks.

after roughly assembling the small rig I immediately mounted my 5d. It was easy to work out and didn't take long to get it roughly balanced.

As with all camera stabilizers a lot depends on the skill of the user. it took me roughly a week to really get the hang of it.

Whereas previous semi-pro cameras were too heavy on top of hand-held stabilizers the 5d and other DSLRs are perfect for these light weight rigs. Wide angle lenses such as a 24mm on a full frame camera work best with steadicams. Here is a look at my test footage.



The Blackbird is made by CMR - a relatively small American company. The Steadicam Merlin is a more popular unit. It is more compact than the Blackbird. It is also slightly more expensive. The extra length of the Blackbird also restricts how very low to the ground action.

I decided to chance my arm at the blackbird, besides I had gotten the impression from reviews that the Merlin was more difficult to find the equilibrium. So far I have been very happy with the Blackbird. It is a well designed, solid piece of equipment. It is quick and affordable solution to giving movement to your shots.

stranger cole plays galatos

I helped my friend Razzie who drums for the Moisties film a gig they did with Stranger Cole - a legend in Jamaican Ska music. Here is an insert from his interview.




The above was shot on my 5d with a canon 50mm 1.4 and a Shure videomic under house lights. Below I switched to a canon 135mm 2.0 L lens.

New Red Epic

Red's new Epic is out said to cost around US $58 K. Peter Jackson pre-ordered a bunch of them to shoot the up-coming Hobbit.

Potential users are getting excited about the Epic's HDR for video technology. HDR is a technique that is used widely in digital photography where two or more photos with different exposures are fused into one thus expanding the image's dynamic range. Follow this link to a good blog post by Prolost which puts the new camera/technology into context.

Sony release NEX FS100

Having just tested Sony's F3 I was interested to learn today that Sony have introduced a new camera targeting the prosumer market.

The NEX FS100 has the same Super 35 sensor as the F3 and is said to costs around US 6K.

Den Lennie from f-stop academy has made this review

this is great news if you are a sony DSLR owner with sony lenses. The rest of us are still waiting for Canon or Nikon to come out with a full frame equivalent.

One significant point of difference is this cameras ability to capture 1080p at 60fps, something very rare at this stage.

So far comments have criticized the AVCHD capture format and the lack of built in ND filters.

Hands on - the new Sony F3

I am in Rotovegas at the moment helping my friend Mahanga shoot a 30min doco for Te Waka Huia.

We are shooting on sony's latest PMW F3 with an Angenieux 16-44mm zoom and a Zeiss 60mm prime and recording to a NanoFlash external recorder.  Paul from Nutshell also threw in an Oconner matt box and follow focus.

This is the first time we have used an F3 but the menus are external button are very similar to the EX cameras with which we are familiar. There has been some hype about the F3 due to its Super 35mm sensor, its PL lens mount and its comparatively low price. The Super 35mm sensor is significantly larger than those of the  EX series cameras but smaller than those of full frame cameras such as the 5D. This means a crop factor to 35mm lenses so the effective focal length of our 60mm is 83.something mm.

The NanoFlash is a cool little device that allows us to up the bit-rate of our 1080 HD video from 35 to 100 Megabits per second (or higher) allowing 4:2:2 sub-sampling. learn more about the NanoFlash.

The Angenieux and Zeiss lenses are both superb in picture quality and design and the follow focus really does make a difference. Check out these pix.

The doco will consist mainly of interviews and controlled cut aways. We are using my 5d and prime lens kit as a B kit. Also squeezed into our rental car is a Kino Flow Diva, 2 Blondes, 2 Arri 650's, 5 stands plus 2 C stands, a light dolly system, a couple of macbook pro's and some sound gear.

Setting up and Packing down we felt we were short a couple of crew members but all was forgiven when I discovered my motel room had a spa bath. =)