Fall Colors on Vancouver Island

[Jim Cameron]

A short video featuring the fall season around Vancouver Island. I am open to critique and suggestions. An interesting scene is of the geese in the water and two of the geese that roll over on their back with only their feet and belly sticking out of the water.

Vimeo tends to wash some of the saturation out compared to the original.

Here is the link: Fall at Vancouver Island on Vimeo

Jim

[Denise Wall]

Hi Jim,

I enjoyed your video very much.

Were you using a specific preset? I'm also disappointed in the saturation I'm getting both pre and post so I'm trying to gather a bit of info. Let's face it - the normal person/client wants to see a little saturation, even if it's a little too much.

[Christopher Drews]

The first two shots are the best (with the falling leaves). Lord of the Rings didn't look that good.
-C

[Jim Cameron]

Hi Denise,

Thanks for the kind words. I used Steven Dempsey's Panalook2 preset. I originally used the vividrgb preset but after reading the forums here, I found the panalook2 preset gives a more natural look and feel. I know that you can adjust in post but I am not an expert with final cut so I try to get the best I can from the original footage, something I learned with shooting DSLR raw photos. I do agree with you that many people love the slightly more saturated and vividi colors.

Jim

[Chris Leffler]

Beautiful shots!!

[Jim Cameron]

Christopher and Chris,

Thanks for the comments on the video. I go out every day for a couple of hours to shoot video of mainly birds and wildlife. I am lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world. Shooting everyday has given me a lot of confidence and learning from my mistakes has been priceless. Also, I have gained so much knowledge from this site and from everyone sharing.

The clips of the leaves falling are taken under oak trees around a marsh. The acorns were falling as hard as the leaves were and I was getting bombarded with acorns. I was worried about my camera getting dents. If you go out and shoot lots, sometimes you get lucky and get that good clip.

Good shooting.

Jim

[Russ Motyko]

I really liked the shots of the leaves falling in the beginning. Overall, a very well made clip. My only suggestion would be to give the footage a bit more punch. I'd crank up the saturation and contrast and see if I can make the video a bit more visually appealing.

[Jim Cameron]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for the comments, I like the falling leaves also. I find the falling leaves to be very peaceful and meditative. Most of the time in the fall we have a hard rain or wind before all the leaves change color and this year we had a beautiful fall and most of the leaves were slowly falling on their own. Thanks for the suggestion regarding saturation and contrast. Vimeo tends to wash out the original footage slightly. I also converted the original video to flash and embedded it in my webpage. You can see that footage here:

Fall 2008

It may take a few minutes to load. The flash download is closer to the original but still not quite accurate. Regardless, I appreciate that you took the time to comment on the video.

Continued success,

Jim

[Denise Wall]

Originally Posted by Jim Cameron

Hi Russ,

I also converted the original video to flash and embedded it in my webpage. You can see that footage here:

Fall 2008

It may take a few minutes to load. The flash download is closer to the original but still not quite accurate.

Jim

I finally had a few minutes to download this and it is much better than the Vimeo one wrt colors. I watched it several times. It's really quite beautiful and peaceful. Do you mind me asking where or how you got rights to that nice music? It really fits the flow of the video.

Thanks,

Denise