Wedding Video Shot with FX1/Z1

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Douglas Villalba

Now, tell me if you saw the video, How many watts do you think that the church had coming down from the ceiling coming straight down? A simple guess is about 20 150 watts lights. That is 3K watts. What would a 20 watts light do?

Ah, sounds like you're talking about fill light at the ceremony as opposed to lighting a dark scene at the reception -- which as you said can be uncomfortable for guests with as little as 20 watts. So you're saying you shot the main ceremony footage without any additional lighting at 1/30 shutter speed and 0 db gain, and only used the extra lighting as people were exiting down the aisle? That makes more sense now.

As far as the shutter speed is concerned, I don't see signs of that in the footage even going back and looking closely for it -- which surprises me based on my own results. Did you shoot all the footage in the CF modes?

[Douglas Villalba]

Originally Posted by Dave Wagner

Hi Douglas,

Very nice footage. Clear and sharp. Do you always use lights when video taping inside? Have you found this to be necessary whenever using your HD cams?

Thanks!
Dave

Thanks Dave,

My background is in photography since I was 14 and I am now 48. In photography little flaws are more noticeable since they are still. Even in bright sunlight you use a flash to fill the unwanted shadows.

With video it is a little bit harder to fill in sun light but you can use reflectors. I am talking video in general. I wouldn't take a reflector to a wedding, but I could for a love story.

I guess the simple answer is Yes, I love rich colors the film like look of contrasty scenes.

[Douglas Villalba]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

Did you shoot all the footage in the CF modes?

Not all of it, but if you look at when the the Maid of Honor & MOB are seating you can see a subreal effect. I didn't take notes but I think it was CF30. I use CF 24 for the dancing (not shown). Just by using 1/30th sec. on a tripod you get nice subreal effect wihout getting stroby. (Is that an english word?)LOL.

[Chris Sabold]

I viewed your video on my Dell 24" display connected to my G5 2.7 through a cable modem. It was viewable immediately with no pauses whatsoever, and it is by far the best looking video I've ever seen on my computer screen. I can't come close with my VX2100.
Your video quality is an eye opener. Excellent work !
Chris Sabold..

[Ben Lynn]

Doug,

Nice work. You did great on the production end of it. The lights you used were an absolute must. Image quality is the bottom line and the lighting you had was just what you needed. It looked the way it's supposed to look.

Nice encoding as well. That was really good.

Ben Lynn

[Douglas Villalba]

Originally Posted by Chris Sabold

I viewed your video on my Dell 24" display connected to my G5 2.7 through a cable modem. It was viewable immediately with no pauses whatsoever, and it is by far the best looking video I've ever seen on my computer screen. I can't come close with my VX2100.
Your video quality is an eye opener. Excellent work !
Chris Sabold..

I am glad you enjoy it Chris.

Imagine what it looks like at full res. It is not even manipulated in post except for a slow motion when she is looking right into the camera.
HDV with my old computer is really slow, but on yours it probably flies.

Have played with HDV on your computer? If you have, what was your opinion?

[Douglas Villalba]

Originally Posted by Ben Lynn

Doug,

Nice work. You did great on the production end of it. The lights you used were an absolute must. Image quality is the bottom line and the lighting you had was just what you needed. It looked the way it's supposed to look.

Nice encoding as well. That was really good.

Ben Lynn

Hello Ben,

I wish I could take credit for the lights, but all I used was a 50 watts on camera at the isle. That is my favorite church to shoot becuse the lighting is usually good. The only time a year that is bad is during summer and only when the sun comes in directly through the stain glass window. You can't really get a good skin color during that time.
Encoding is another thing that I can't take credit for. In the past I have tryed to make files smaller, WMP, etc. Now I just use Sorenson 3. I only make adjustment to image size, the rest is up to Sorenson 3.

[Ben Lynn]

Whatever works!

A major point on the lighting is that you used it almost extensively. Everything about the day looked dark since it was a winter time wedding. Had you not had the on-camera light going then you would have had grainy, dull video rather than sharp, crisp video. It made a huge difference on the processional. Using the lights gets you the image quality your expected to have.

In order to keep the file size down you could always shorten the length of the clip. It only took a few minutes to download however and I didn't find that bad.

Ben Lynn

[Douglas Villalba]

Yes, that is usually the way that DV videos without lights would look. I must tell you tho that these HDV cameras with the gain at 12db you can't see grain and the color are still good.
For my customers I usualy give them a short version about the same length of that demo (about 10-15 mins.) that includes everything. This demo I made in about 15 minutes of cutting. I am so behind editing (5 month) that I don't have time to make a demo. I havent update my demo for the last 2 years. I show custmers other B&G actual wedding videos.
With so many huricanes and the holidays I don't think that I'll ever catch up.

By the way is anyone here coming down to Florida for the 4ever group convention? I am thinking about it.

[Sean Seah]

Hi,wat NLE did u use? Could u share a little on the workflow?

[Douglas Villalba]

I used FCP 5.0.4 capture FW HDV 1080i. The rest is being cover at the begining of the thread.

[Sean Seah]

Got it. Thanks!

[Mike F Smith]

Plays good on my PC. It does look sharp, to the point of looking brash or harsh. Kind of like one of my 2 1/4" cameras that are so sharp you really can't use the images without a soft focus filter in a beauty portrait setting like a wedding. With the added resolution comes the problems of being able to see everything.

Mike

[Douglas Villalba]

Originally Posted by Mike F Smith

Plays good on my PC. It does look sharp, to the point of looking brash or harsh. Kind of like one of my 2 1/4" cameras that are so sharp you really can't use the images without a soft focus filter in a beauty portrait setting like a wedding. With the added resolution comes the problems of being able to see everything.

Mike

I agree with you, the idea of the video is to show the capabilities of HD. The bride has such good skin that it looks retouched but on the guys you can see more than you would actually want in most cases. Remember that the footage has gone through a couple of compresion in order to be showed here(HDV 1080 60i cut then transfered to DVCPRO HD 720 60i titles added and the Sorenson 3 for internet compression)
For now I just record full resolution and soften in post as needed. I have seen some internet demos that people said it was to soft, but I like the natural look of soft but focused images. In the future I would lower the resolution in camera specially for TV commercial to give it that film look.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Mike F Smith

With the added resolution comes the problems of being able to see everything.

It's interesting that no one thinks twice about having their photograph taken with an 8 megapixel digital camera, but many folks are worried about what video will look like at 1-2 megapixels. Of course it's easier to touch up a single photograph than a bunch of video footage, but it's not like you can't modify video to mitigate this issue.