I put this 4K video together mostly just to have a permanent record of a 9-day trip my wife and I took to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National parks last fall. We try to get back there every couple of years, but with Covid and other work interruptions it had been almost four years since our last visit. The trip did not disappoint and I had a great time shooting a ton of stock footage with my FX6 and Sony Z750. This edit is a slow-paced video that some people will find boring, but I like letting the longer shots play out.

Camera 1: Sony FX6
Lenses used: Sony 200-600mm f/5.6 Sony
2x teleconverter (for the 200-600mm)
Sony 35mm f/1.8
Sony 85mm f/1.8
Tripod: Sachtler Aktiv8 head with Flowtech75 legs

Camera 2: Sony PXW-Z750
Lens: Fujinon UA24x7.8
Tripod: OConnor 1040 head with Flowtech100 legs

https://youtu.be/4182VE-D_oU

Very nice. Looks like you did most of your shooting early in the morning and late in the afternoon. You must have been getting up before sunrise to be in position. Out of curiosity, what codec(s) and frame rates did you shoot at? Thanks again for posting this.

Beautiful work Doug.

Fun fact: Doug could place the yellow Nat Geo rectangle in the corner of his video and everyone watching would totally believe it. :-)

Andrew

Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments very much.

Very nice. Looks like you did most of your shooting early in the morning and late in the afternoon. You must have been getting up before sunrise to be in position. Out of curiosity, what codec(s) and frame rates did you shoot at? Thanks again for posting this.

Both cameras were set for 24p XAVC-I 4K

I mostly shot the FX6 @ 120 fps slow-motion and the Z750 was either 24 or 60 fps slow-motion.

The FX6 was set for S-LOG3 and on the Z750 I used a custom scene file that I created last year. That scene file still requires grading, so it's not WYSIWYG, but I prefer it over S-LOG.

Very kind of you to output (as far as YouTube's downloaded file for television playback tells me) at 25 fps. Was there any particular reason for the decision?

Also, we've heard that you only ever shoot at 24 fps if you're intending it to be used in a cinematic projection or product. Why would you shoot at 24 fps when the bulk of stock footage sales would be used at other frame rates?

Andrew

Very kind of you to output (as far as YouTube's downloaded file for television playback tells me) at 25 fps. Was there any particular reason for the decision? Also, we've heard that you only ever shoot at 24 fps if you're intending it to be used in a cinematic projection or product. Why would you shoot at 24 fps when the bulk of stock footage sales would be used at other frame rates?



Hi Andrew, the video I uploaded to YouTube was a 23.98p file. In fact, the video was shot, edited, rendered, and exported as 23.98. So if YouTube is showing you something different, that is being done on their end. Just for the record, I disagree with the advice you have heard about frame rates. The decision is more complicated than that.

While I choose to shoot 29.97 for a lot of my stock footage, in this case, I decided 23.98 was the better choice. Almost all film production, TV drama, high-end wildlife films, etc. are done at 23.98p so that is one reason why I chose that frame rate. The second reason is that I'm working on a long-term project of my own that will be produced in 23.98, so I want my footage for that project to be 23.98. A third reason is that 90% of what I shot on this trip was in slow-motion, and I can achieve slower slow-motion when the base frame rate is 23.98. For example, 120 fps divided by 24 is 5x speed slow-motion. And 60 fps divided by 24 is 2.5x slow-motion. If I had chosen to use 29.97 as the base frame rate, then those numbers would only be 4x and 2x. Not a huge difference, but, as I said, I want the slowest 4K slow-motion I can get out of each camera.

Very nice Doug - something for me to watch later when I've finished this here breakfast.

As always with 4K YouTube on my 5K iMac I have to switch from Apple Safari to Google Chrome.

What is it with Apple, this and no 10 bit with their Quicktime Player?

"A big girl's blouse " as we might say of Apple over here.

Ron

That's an interesting observation about Safari, which I already dislike for a number of reasons.
I use Firefox as my primary browser and I can choose 4K playback from the YouTube player settings.
Same thing with Chrome, 4K is no problem.
But when I try Safari the best option I see is 1080p.
One more reason not to use Safari.

Doug, what can I say, it was a pure pleasure to watch. This may go down as your best video of yours that I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I was interested in reading that you were shooting at 23.98 fps. Will this be a problem with Shutterstock or Pond5? I thought they preferred 29.97 fps. It almost looked like you added a bit of warm color in the video. Was this natural light or did you dial it in? I am heading south to Florida to visit friends and hopefully shoot some video as my trip to Antarctica has been cancelled until next year due to Covid. I may try shooting at 23.98 fps just for fun. Take care and safe travels. Bob

If there is ever an academy award for "best vacation video", it's got Doug's name on it.

Andrew

If there is ever an academy award for "best vacation video", it's got Doug's name on it.
Andrew

Ha, ha, that would be great, but I don't think I'd win.

Doug, what can I say, it was a pure pleasure to watch. This may go down as your best video of yours that I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I was interested in reading that you were shooting at 23.98 fps. Will this be a problem with Shutterstock or Pond5? I thought they preferred 29.97 fps. It almost looked like you added a bit of warm color in the video. Was this natural light or did you dial it in? I am heading south to Florida to visit friends and hopefully shoot some video as my trip to Antarctica has been cancelled until next year due to Covid. I may try shooting at 23.98 fps just for fun. Take care and safe travels. Bob

Thanks Bob, that is high praise indeed. I'm glad you liked it

Pond5, Shutterstock, and Adobe are frame-rate agnostic. They leave it up to the contributors to decide what is best and they don't advocate for any of them. I have had face to face conversations with executives at Shutterstock and Adobe about this very topic.

In general, I think 29.97 is the best choice for stock footage and that is what I shoot most of the time. But in this instance I chose to shoot 23.98 for the reasons I already mentioned in an early post. To be honest, most of this stuff will never sell anyway. There is not a huge demand for wildlife stock footage and there is a ton of it already on the market, so I mostly shot this for the fun of it and for a project of my own that I'm working on right now.

You are correct that a lot of the footage has been warmed up a little because I prefer that look and I believe it is preferred by buyers of stock footage. Every clip has been graded to one degree or another anyway, so dialing in a little more warmth here or there was no big deal.

Too bad about your trip to Antarctica. I'm tempted to say "oh well, it will still be there when Covid is over", but with global warming I don't know if that would be true! I think you are wise to go ASAP.

I wish you luck in Florida. It has been pretty slow this fall and winter with far fewer birds than I have ever seen before. So few in fact, that when I went out looking for eagles last week I got side tracked by airplanes flying overhead and started shooting them instead. A chance to hone my tracking skills, whcih are getting rusty.

CONTRAILS on Vimeo

Very nice the way you can keep the subject reliably at the same point in the frame for the entire clip, regardless of how much frame it takes up. This would be a good exercise "drill" for me to develop some muscle memory coordination, even if I'm not looking to save clips of aircraft. By that I mean aircraft are more likely to offer something close to being repetitive.

Yeah, it is fun to practice tracking a jet moving at a constant speed in a linear direction, but its an entirely different from tracking and anticipating the random motions of birds in flight. I find that if I haven't filmed birds for a few weeks I will get really rusty and it takes a lot of time to get back into the swing of things. I live in an area Florida where there are a usually vultures flying around and I like to practice on them so that when there is an eagle or hawk n the air there is a much higher chance I'll be able to track them and get something worthwhile.

Thanks for the tip about practicing on the buzzards flying around. Plenty of them around here too.

Yeah, if you can follow a vulture smoothly then you'll be ready for any of the big raptors.
BTW, I think the easiest birds to shoot in flight are pelicans. Very big, very smooth flying, and hardly any sudden changes in direction.

Doug, great shots of the plane, what a great idea! I managed to get a couples of hours in at Merritt Island NWR on my way south. I guess I lucked out. I got to video quite a few spoonbills as well as ibis, herons and other waterbirds. Just for fun I shot a lot at 120/29.97. Had fun. That was about it for birding for the rest of my trip. Next week I am heading out to Wheeler NWR in norther Alabama. The sand hill cranes are supposed to be migrating through. Take care and safe travels. Bob

Hi Bob, yes you did lucked out. I noticed a sudden uptick in bird numbers this week, so finally the numbers are starting to rise. I'm sure all the snowy weather farther up the coast is the reason why the birds begrudgingly decided to fly farther south. Nevertheless, the bird numbers have been so low that the internationally known Space Coast Birding and Wildlife festival has been cancelled. Partly for Covid reasons, but I was talking to the director of the festival this week and it's also because there aren't that many birds this year. They fear that if people come for the festival, don't see that many birds, and have to put up with all the Covid related crap on top of that, they might never want to come again.

Don't meniton sand hills cranes. I waited patiently on a trail last night at sunset because I know where is a pair of cranes that fly over almost every evening at sunset on their way back to their roost. Last week they flew over just as I gave up and put the camera away. Last night I waited and waited, but got side tracked by a lousy Ibis splashing in the water . . . as the cranes flew over and I was caught unprepared. Dumb!! I need more footage of an Ibis like I need another hole in my head.
Usually the cranes make a lot of noise so you know they are coming, but they didn't honk this time until they passed. I seriously think they are screwing with me.

Well Doug, I head out this morning. If I see any Sand hill cranes, I'll send them your way. Safe travels, Bob

Hey Bob and Doug, I got pretty close to three Sandhill Cranes this morning while hiking out at Circle Bar B Reserve not far from my house in Lakeland.

https://youtu.be/kl73Pw-qWL8

Nice clean sound with no cars, planes, or people! Hard to get these days.

Thanks! It was pretty early in the morning. Nobody else was around yet. The traffic on the highway was still pretty light. The wind hadn't picked up yet either. It got pretty strong later. Plus, I cheated a little. I used Audacity's Noise Reduction filter to get rid of what traffic noise there was. I'd used that technique to get rid of noisy air conditioning and similar sounds back when I filmed corporate and legal video. Our world has become very noisy.

I've saved the sound file from that clip for future use.

Also, the Wild Hogs are out rooting about early in the mornings there. My last two trips I've gotten some good photos of them.

I lucked out. I got to Wheeler NWR in Decatur, Alabama at the height of the sand hill crane migration. There were thousands of birds there. This is just a short I put together. All clips shot with the Canon XF705, Sennheiser MKE 600 mic and Sachtler flowtech 75 tripod with Ace XL head. Slow motion was at 120/29.97 and max zoom was 765 mm. Unfortunately, a major highway runs right by the refuge so I will have to clean up the audio in my final video. Enjoy! Bob

Wheeler NWR.mov on Vimeo

Very nice. There is something really relaxing about listening to the nat sound of the birds with no music or anything. Nice tracking on the birds in flight and I really like the early shot where there are birds at different distances from the camera and flying in opposite directions. I wonder it it would be possible to take a portable blind out into the middle of that cornfield and shoot close-ups from just a few feet away.

Really good job Bob!

Thank you both for your comments. There were also very large flocks of pelicans, but they were to far out and the boardwalks going across the ponds were closed for repair. Doug, they have the fields roped off to prevent people scaring the birds. The refuge has several permanent blinds set up as well as an observation tower, however the tower has thick tinted glass. I am going to put together a longer version and post it on Vimeo. Stay safe. Bob

Very interesting about the roped off area. I was picturing a wild location with nobody there but you.

The only area that I saw that was roped off was from the main road (HWY 67) to the visitor's center. I believe this was to prevent people from parking on the side of the road and walking into the fields during the crane festival which I believe was this weekend. There are plenty of other fields all around the area, but some are private property. The NWR encompasses property on both sides of the Tennessee river. While I was there I only saw a handful of photographers.

Thanks for the info. Someday I hope to go there myself and see the cranes.

I do not think that you would be disappointed!