Tales of wonders and woes - UC25

[David Elkins]

Glad to see everyone's wheels turning on this one. After noodling on it for a few days I have my concept down. Now for the execution...

Per Johan, I have that 14mm also. Fun lens, but be sure to check your edge sharpness. Mine has a soft lower left corner. I've seen others comment about this problem as well.

Good luck everyone!!

[Per Johan Naesje]

David, thanks for your head up about the Samyang.
Received the lens yesterday, have only looked at it briefly. Yiiik it´s very wide even on a full format house. Looking forward to experiment with it next weekend!
I also heard about some edge softness. The good thing is that I need to crop a bit into the raw picture to get 16:9 footage, so maybe I can avoid some of the problem?

Last week I was visiting Røros, one of unesco world heritage sites we got in Norway. Attached some sample footage below. Even if the footage is crisp and nice, I feel I am missing the real close perspective with the 24-70mm lens. Particularly in the sequence of "the bell and church" and the "close-up night shot of the church", I was not able to get more wide view because of obstacles behind. I think the 14mm will help me out in situations like this?

Røros Norway - UNESCO world heritage site on Vimeo

Looking forward to try out my new lens, weather forcast looking good :)
and good luck to you all!

[Markus Nord]

Originally Posted by Per Johan Naesje

David, thanks for your head up about the Samyang.
Received the lens yesterday, have only looked at it briefly. Yiiik it´s very wide even on a full format house. Looking forward to experiment with it next weekend!
I also heard about some edge softness. The good thing is that I need to crop a bit into the raw picture to get 16:9 footage, so maybe I can avoid some of the problem?

Last week I was visiting Røros, one of unesco world heritage sites we got in Norway. Attached some sample footage below. Even if the footage is crisp and nice, I feel I am missing the real close perspective with the 24-70mm lens. Particularly in the sequence of "the bell and church" and the "close-up night shot of the church", I was not able to get more wide view because of obstacles behind. I think the 14mm will help me out in situations like this?
Røros Norway - UNESCO world heritage site on Vimeo

Looking forward to try out my new lens, weather forcast looking good :)
and good luck to you all!

Nice time lapse film PJ. I love the last sequence, did you know/plan the moon to pass right behind the tower?

I got the Samyang 14 and used it on a shot last week, if you are shooting around houses, walls will not be straight. They will lean, on the side of the pictures.
I have modified my lens a bit, I have cut the sun hood of to make it fit in my UW housing and also declicked it. The video version was not on sale at the time I got mine.

[Trond Saetre]

Nice video of Røros, Per Johan!
Like Markus said, the timelapse is really cool!

[Simon Wood]

A question for those of you that do timelapse sequences with DSLR's; do you use RAW or JPEG photos? Do RAW photos cause a lot of delays with editing?

[Per Johan Naesje]

Hi Simon!
Here´s my workflow about doing DSLR time lapsing.
I always shot in RAW. Found that it´s essential to have max quality when starting the post process!

I´m on mac so I use Aperture for the initial tweaks to the raw photos. After adjusting one of the photos (adjusting levels, add some sharpness etc.) in the sequence, Aperture have a function called Lift Adjustment which I use to add the adjustment to the rest of photos in the sequence. This can take from half to one hour regarding how many photos in the sequence.
I shoot mostly from 600 to 800 photos in one time lapse sequence.
After the sequence is adjusted I do a export. Here I always use the tiff format in 16 bit, which I think is better than jpeg. This process is quite time consuming at least on my computer, often 2+ hours for 800 photos.

After exporting, I then import the tiff sequence into Quick Time Pro (v7) as Image Sequence. Choose a suitable frame rate (25p, 30p etc) and then export it as a quick time file, compression Apple ProRes 422, dimensions 5760x3840(original raw image format). Which end up in a huge mov file of some GB in size!
This process often take 30min to 1 hour to process.

Then finally I import the quick time file into Final Cut for for final adjustment to 16:9 format in a timeline. When having a 5760x3840 video you are able to crop (recompose), zoom or du a pan without any quality loss to the finished 1920x1080 video.

This is my workflow. I´m aware and tried other, but I found that this workflow give me the best result for quality to the finished video.

It is time-consuming as the process of post processing one sequence (20 seconds) will take you 4-5 hours + the shooting time on location which could be another 3 - 6 hours. I don´t think I have managed to finish more than 2 sequence in one day.

One other thing is that time lapsing require much more hdd space than regular footage. One raw photo from Canon 5d Mk3 is about 28Mb in size add 800 photo and you end up with 22GB. Then add 130Mb for each tiff (yes the 16 bit tiff are huge in size!) added by 800 = 100GB
And finally the exported mov file from Quick Time Pro which are 3-5 GB in size.
You end up with about 130GB of files for every single 20 second time lapse sequence!
Note that you don´t really need to save the tiffs after finished the Quick Time Pro exporting which free up quite much disk space.

Hope this helps you out!

[David Elkins]

Originally Posted by Per Johan Naesje

The good thing is that I need to crop a bit into the raw picture to get 16:9 footage, so maybe I can avoid some of the problem?

Yes, that is why I live with the bit of edge softness in my lens. Only problem is if I want to add a vertical move in post. In terms of the distortion mentioned, using the lens correction tool in Photoshop Raw or Lightroom solves the problem pretty well. Yes, you do loose some resolution by having to crop in, but when you are starting with a 5K image I don't think that's too big a deal. Just remember to compose your shot a bit looser keeping in mind you will loose about 5-10% from the edges of your frame depending on how much correction you use.

It is not a lens I use everyday, but is definitely handy to have in the bag especially if I find myself with just my less than full frame 60D with me. On the 5D it is huge!

[Kevin Railsback]

Well, still no clue as to what I'm doing yet. No story idea has come over the horizon.
But, I am totally gob smacked as Mat would say that I licensed a track from Helen Jane Long!
It's the most I've ever spent on licensing music but it just mesmerizes me.

So I've certainly stayed true to form and picked my music first. Now I have to see if I can pair it with something.

Looking forward to all the timelapse sequences. Should be one hell of a challenge if everyone finishes!

[Markus Nord]

In this weekend I'll do a test run with the new housing to my 5D3. I've done some tweaking on the housing and transformed a menual focus gear from another housing I got for my 7D. It will be a test in the pool with my son. Next week the expedition starts... expeditionbjuralven.se

[Simon Wood]

Thanks Per! Interesting workflow that; though I think it might be too process heavy for my laptop. Are you using FCP7 or FCPX? It looks like Quicktime Pro is no longer available for purchase; I wonder are there any other options for assembling the pictures into a movie?

Anyhow, I had two good ideas that would suit the theme, but it looks like they have both fallen through as one potential subject was not interested in taking part, and the other subject is too difficult to pin down due to scheduling problems and the timeframe involved....

[David Elkins]

Originally Posted by Simon Wood

It looks like Quicktime Pro is no longer available for purchase;

Simon,
You can download previous versions of Quicktime here: Apple - Support - Downloads

You need QT7 which has the "Open Image Sequence" function. They eliminated that with QT 10.

[Bob Thieda]

Ugh....cloudy and rainy yesterday and it looks like today, also...hopefully we'll get some decent weather next weekend, or I'll have to go to plan "B"...

'course I'll need to come up with a plan "B"

[Mike Sims]

Uggh. The weather has prevented me from getting the shot that I have been thinking about for months. It looks as if I may have missed my window. The storm last night brought down two of my trees and I will have to deal with them just as soon as I recover from the late season flu. Right now I’m as sick as a dog and just trying not to think about UC19 where I got sick and couldn’t finish. There is very little Rule 11 around here at the moment. Phooie! There is still plenty of time left and I am determined to finish something. I hope you are all well and making great video. I’m going back to bed…

[Bob Thieda]

Ouch...take care, Mike. My wife has been down with a late season flue for the last four days....she is suffering...

[Kevin Railsback]

Hope you're feeling better soon Mike!
Bad part about the flu is that you feel so crummy you can't even think about ideas for a film while you're laying in bed.

Bob you're getting the leftovers after it passes my house on the way to you. :)
Luckily we're only looking at 3-5 inches of snow if the current storm doesn't change it's track.