Keys, Synths & Samplers

[Mediterranean]

---

nice keetee wrote:

Hmmm...good stuff here. The forums here for photography and video are lacking.

:thumbsupphil:

---

Hai Keetee,

Here's a fresh shot just for you

[nice keetee]

---

Mediterranean wrote:

---

nice keetee wrote:

Hmmm...good stuff here. The forums here for photography and video are lacking.

:thumbsupphil:

---

Hai Keetee,

Here's a fresh shot just for you

---

I like the time/sand glass. Time to flip it over? Must have been a long experiment, wonder how they finally figured grains/gravity/time? I have the same computer mouse, so sturdy.

I'll be back, I'll bet there's a lot of good info here.

Your pic is clear.

Salute.

[wwwjd]

Thanks for all this feedback, man!  I'm glad you noticed a ton of real issues and comment on them.  That kind of feedback is TRULY treasured!!  And you are right in all of it.  Here's my "excuses":  

The intro walkie talkie was supposed to be from base, not the actor.  Having another's perspective on that is awesome because it seemed right to me over here.  Nothing to sync to really.  His reply was recorded live at the scene, but a/v are both sped up to fit it all in and make it more intense - which causes some sync problems.  Depending on which resolution on youtube you play, it can be off a little.  Not sure why.  My render at 1080 is pretty tight (not perfect)  If this were something pro, I'd take time to dial it in perfect... but...
 and there is a Pitch Change in that first part because I didn't use my action guy deep voice and am too lazy to record the voice over.

"Package Delivered" was live also (hissy T3i mic amp!) and LUCKILY none of the little kids there at the park were screaming at that exact moment.  hahahaha  They were the rest of the time.

All the action visual effects are a train wreck.  Half as good as I would like, but better than I was expecting given I decided to use the supplied effects pack, instead of better effects.  The effects company is running the contest.  Yep - impacts don't show, smoke fades too quick, bullet holes look too big and fake, tracers are just recolored dirt shots, some smoke floats off to a strait edge, sloppy sloppy....   and I wanted camera shake through EVERYTHING, but didn't know how to deal with multiple video tracks.... put identical shake on each? do a parent/child bus thing?  I don't know.  Can't have the ground moving and explosions staying in place.  Was going to render it, and bring it back in and shake - that would be best, but at some point amount of time spent overtakes worth of the prizes:  HITFILM 3 software, and the company's effects DVDs.

Also had a lot of decent audio of movement on ground, most is off sync due to sped up clips,

Smoke floating around not very effective, coloration inconsistant, weak story, explosions not loud enough over music... hahahaha

Overall though, this goofy little projects are excellent training for getting better and better at this junk!

And thanks again for feedback and confirming things.  Compared to the rest, I think I have a shot at winning something.  There is one other that is really good, and a couple of "ok" ones, but many are just kids doing one bad scene.... http://www.youtube.com/video_response_view_all?v=L5WsMTAq5Us

[wwwjd]

That looks great, crisp and clear!  Is that your 600??  Looks like low light... did you push the color?  Red seems really red.  What lens is that?  I'm still experiementing and learning about the relationship tween:

iso - shutter speed - lens speed - aperature - and all that.  tricky but interesting stuff

[Mediterranean]

---

nice keetee wrote:

---

Mediterranean wrote:

---

nice keetee wrote:

Hmmm...good stuff here. The forums here for photography and video are lacking.

:thumbsupphil:

---

Hai Keetee,

Here's a fresh shot just for you

---

I like the time/sand glass. Time to flip it over? Must have been a long experiment, wonder how they finally figured grains/gravity/time? I have the same computer mouse, so sturdy.

I'll be back, I'll bet there's a lot of good info here.

Your pic is clear.

Salute.

---

lol, I wonder also. I'm guessing it's experimentation too. This one is approximately 3 minutes. So theoretically halving the mass of the grains would make it 1.5 minutes and 6 minutes if doubling it, and so on.

Here are some closeups:

I don't know if it's my computer screen (laptop) or this new forum design, but photos don't look the way they should. Look at the jaggies, stair-like artifact (aliasing) on the straight lines such as the 2 synth modules, the top edge of the computer keyboard, the LCD of the synth, the mousepad, etc. Those lines aren't smooth like they should. It's worse, more pronounced when a picture is quoted in a reply like in yours. Posting a pic on here shrinks it without consistency. On my screen, the pic is approximately 7 inches by 4.75 inches. And a significant amount of realestate is lost/unused on both sides.

Can somebody tell me how they see that photo on their screen? does it look bigger and streched consistently on a bigger screen? What are its top & bottom measurements as viewed on your screen?

Portraits (vertical) look better on here. Not so much for landscapes (horizontal) because the horizontal space is very limited due to those ridiculous empty grey spaces on the sides.

[Mediterranean]

Ah wwwjd, my bad. I think you're right. When I played the clip at 720p and 1080p, that walkie-talkie reply at the beginning sounded much better as far as synchro. And I didn't know you used the T3i's mic to record this. It sounds surprisingly good. Now imagine if an external portable recorder was used (hint for future projects).

Yes, I forgot to comment on the audio of the footsteps and running on the ground. They are excellent.

If you still have time, the only thing I would do is a slight camera shake during that zigzag run. I have no idea how you would do it in Vegas (don't know anything about visual effects)  but I know what you're saying: if you do cam shake there, the ground motion must be consistent with the motion of the impacts. I assume those effects are on a seperate video layer, so maybe the same shake you apply to the actual clip, you also apply to the effects layer? (copy/paste).

LOL@ the trauma the kids might have been subject to at the park. It's funny but as a viewer when you watch the clip, you get the impression nobody was there but you and the invisible shooters, lol. And you're lucky the adults there didn't call 911, lol.

Good choice of music too. Used Magic Bullet by any chance, or was it your own color grading? the video quality is superb for this kind of shoot.

I will watch some of the other contestants' submissions when I get a chance. But damn, there are so many of them.

[Mediterranean]

---

wwwjd wrote:

That looks great, crisp and clear!  Is that your 600??  Looks like low light... did you push the color?  Red seems really red.  What lens is that?  I'm still experiementing and learning about the relationship tween:

iso - shutter speed - lens speed - aperature - and all that.  tricky but interesting stuff

---

Thank you. Never use auto my friend, period, lol. Not for things like product photogaphy anyway.

Camera is the 600D plus the kit lens (18-55mm), picture style is the same I use for video: neutral (0,-4,-2,0). But that doesn't mean those parameters are best for photography. There are several other picture styles. Use all of them, one by one, change parameters if you desire to, and see which one looks as close to the real thing as possible. I will try to do a test for you by shooting the same photo using all the picture styles.

The camera was set on a tripod (always always for this kind of shooting) at a distance of about 2.5 feet from the synth. Lens slightly zoomed in. Focus was on the LCD of the keyboard. Used the self timer (always always, even if cam is on tripod). Light source (floor lamp) is right above the synth (about 3 feet higher). Incandescent bulb. So I used "tungsten" for white balance to match the light.

The camera was in manual of course. I set the ISO to its lowest (100). I don't care how long the shutter will be because the cam is on a tripod (zero shake) and because I don't want noise in my pics. When I slightly zoomed in on the synth and composed the shot, the F number jumped from 3.5 (its widest) to about 4.5. So now for metering, all I had to do was play with the shutter speed until I got the perfect exposure ("0" on the meter). To get that "0", the shutter had to be set to 1.3 seconds. The cam was on a 10-second delay. Then I pressed the button.

The mistake I made here was I forgot to turn off the Image Stabilization on the lens since the camera was mounted on a tripod. When you look at the photo at 100% magnification, you can tell the focus is not perfect (very slight blur). That's because the stabilizer works at all times when it's switched on, so there is shake (no matter how subtle) even when the cam is perfectly still on a tripod. This is very important. Always flip the switch off when the camera is already stable (tripod, table, etc).

Here's a good tutorial about the relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter. Love this guy. His vids were the first ones I watched when I started learning about photography.

[wwwjd]

Med, I kinda wanna say you can't worry about this website trashing photos, because it just will.

When I click on VIEW your original pic, then click (+) to make it full size it looks perfectly fine.  All the resizing is causing the jaggies like you said, but we can get to the full pic as uploaded... I believe.

Here's a snap comparison... Not sure how it will look on here after upload  

[wwwjd]

Whoa!  I had NO IDEA that "I.S." still screwed with stable shots!   That is great to know.

Med, your post was very informative for me and I will apply it all!   I did learn about DOF while futzing with my photos, where making the number go bigger (I know you know this part) put more in focus.  And the "DOF button" was also very handy - not sure how that works, but getting to SEE the DOF before the shot is taken really helps.  Great!  Yeat another branch of a new hobby I don't have time for!  hahahahaha  life is rough.

Have you messed with MAG LAN white balance yet?  If so, do you feel it is accurate?  SEEMS okay to me, but I don't know no nothings.  I use it over the color profiles usually, but maybe it's off and I should use the profile things?

Forgot:  did not use MAGIC BULLET on this one, just color grading:  shot in CINESTYLE without a LUT, I use COLOR CORRECTOR gamma and gain as bright and contrast (I know that is wrong but it works for me), and push the saturation, also added a VIGNETTE to it.  I love Magic Bullet Looks though, for movie look or inspiration for coloring.  I may start pushing saturation in camera... I really want popping colors since all movie colors really pop (good or bad, they just do) and can't seem to get popped colors in Vegas.
  I'm experimenting with my final cut, to see how hard it is to add camera shack to those stagnant shots.... wasn't gonna, but you inspired me to push it.  Thanks for that. 

[nice keetee]

yes this site messes with picture quality

i set vivid on a canon

makes colors pop, wrong but i like

[Mediterranean]

lol wwwjd, I was just going to do a crop like that to explain what I was talking about. You did it for me. Thanks a lot Ok, one less thing to worry about, so now I know it's not my tiny laptop screen that's causing those bad artifacts.

Oh yes, the image stabilizer works at *all* times when switched on, regardless of cam shake or no shake.

I haven't use Magic Lantern's white balance yet. I don't understand this Kelvin business (color temperatures). So I have to read on this first.

I usually use custom white balance on this camera when I have plenty of time for planning a shot (take a picture of a white card under the current ambient light). For that shot, it was really quick: I simply chose "tungsten" on my 600D and it matched the ambient light beautifully, but if I did a custom white balance with a white card, the colors would have looked even more realistic (well, in conjunction with the 0,-4,-2,0 parameters). There are so many variables (vast choice of parameters) that it would take months to find the sweet spot as far as matching colors to the real thing. But I think this cam is very good at doing that without excessive photoshopping (I try to avoid photoshop as much as I can). Now if I was offered a job to do product photography, it's a different ball game. RAW + photoshop will be a must.

Your color grading is very nice. I kind of do what you do too (gain, gamma, saturation, sharpness), but I only rely on my eye, nothing scientific. Sony Vegas is a complicated piece of software. So much you can do, so little I know, lol.

Yes: the bigger the F number, the smaller the opening of the aperture, the more focus. And vice versa. If you have a cat, reduce the amount of light in the room and watch his eyes. Or simply look at your own eye very close on a mirror, while playing with a flashlight directed at your eye. Your iris (aperture) will open really wide (F 1.8, lol) to let in more light to compensate for the darkness when the flashlight is directed away from your eye.

Another little trick that helps with cam shake: when the reflex mirror is raised and lowered when taking a shot, it causes mechanical vibrations that cause tiny shakes precisely when the pic is taken. The 600D provides a nifty feature in Custom Functions (C.Fn) that forces the mirror in the raised position just before the shot is taken. The info is at the bottom of page 255 of the manual.

[wwwjd]

I do enjoy this hobby though... but I still have a pile of synths and USED to write music!! hahahaha  The more I use Vegas, the easier it gets.   After TEEN COP 2, Vegas feels like family to me now.  That really forced me to just sit down, jump in and hardcore learn it on the job, so to speak.

try this new edit.  I do like the camera shake.... it's how I always wanted it to do it, just too scared to actually try it. Thanks for the encouragement.

http://youtu.be/uCqsSFR0t_4

actually that whole run shot is a fail to me:  I wanted more of a close up (hard to frame alone up that hill) would have preferred a slow mo run and huge explosions in background, my blast that throws me is weak and I ran like a girl.
Actually now that it is too late, an angled shot running across the frame with explosions behind would have been more epic

[wwwjd]

not coming out of the closet, messing with T3i MANUAL mode

[Bernard]

---

wwwjd wrote:

not coming out of the closet, messing with T3i MANUAL mode

---

If your coming out of that closet.. do it in style with a keytar and spandex... LOL

[Bernard]

Canon turning night into day...!

[wwwjd]

wow!

[wwwjd]

WORLD PREMIER: "Mercenary: Chase Killdare"

20 second video contest. Don't blink! Share with friends and enemies.
Watch in HD, with the volume cranked up, of course.

Canon T3i  1280x720x60p into 24p

[Mediterranean]

I see all the things you added. This one is much more convincing. Major improvement over the first one, mostly the added cam shakes which are great and consistent. Congratulations on doing this on such a short notice. The short sequence when you almost get blown and land on the tree is awesome, lol. I also like the reflection of that white piece of paper (?) even if it's the script (I know this isn't new. I've seen it in the first vid). Best of luck with the contest

[Mediterranean]

The top right corner on your photo is overexposed (yellow part) but I love the variety of the colors. What lens have you used? The lower left corner is distorted a little (it's not necessarily a bad thing). I also wanted to look at the EXIF data of the photo to see what settings were used but it doesn't have any.

That's some great stuff. Why in the closet? stopped making music? not enough room?

lol@ Bernard's comment. You nuts

[Mediterranean]

I know higher ISO is good to see in the dark, but I personally never go over 400 at the most (for what I do). Massive pixelations (noise). It's worth it to catch aliens in total darkness though, lol.

But this new sensor probably means lower ISOs will be even better at handling noise.

Great stuff