Time lapse - Driving

Today, I try my luck at Bukit Hijau, a reserved forest near my 'old' hometown to look for mushroom for photographing. But couldn't find any.

While returning home, a thought crosses my mind, "why not trying to fix my camera on the left sit and make a time lapse along my journey?"

So here is the result, a driving time lapse covering the journey from Bakai (the village where Bukit Hijau is located) to Kulim (my new hometown as my parents have moved out recently).

The journey is about 30 min, and I intent to shoot at 1 sec interval between frames. Hence, 30 min x 60 frames per sec = 1,800 frames!! So I insert a 16G flash memory into the camera, and set the picture quality to medium size Jpeg to avoid memory over flow.

As I don't own any special tools like suction cup etc, to fix the camera, I have to come up with some 'innovative' approach. My ad-hoc setting is as follow:

The timer remote controller from ebay... really cheap and cheerful deal :)

See, I only added a hair band in my gear list :)

By the end of the journey, I ended up shooting 2,285 frames, occupied 6.12 GB!

(start time = 12.55pm, end time= 1.34pm)

I put all the frames together using Window Movie Maker 2011, duration of frame = 0.04 sec (25 frames per second). Then I re-render the finished video in Window Movie Maker 2011 again for the sepia effect and the music.

By the way, at the left where my car stop by at the beginning of the video (00:12) is my old home.

Canon 5D markII, 16-35 mm L

Interval between frames: 1 sec

Picture quality: Medium Jpeg

Exposure: Manual

ISO: 160

F-stop: 11

Photography to Cinematography - a learning curve

These days, I am shooting more and more video than still pictures.

This trend started after I owned a Canon 5D markII. My previous camera (Leica V-Lux1) has video capability too, but the control and video quality... hmm... nothing comparable to the cinematography looks, I mean the shallow Depth of Field (DOF) 5D markII is offering.

Due to full frame sensor, the bokeh of 5D markII video is really attractive when use with fast lenses; it produces very shallow DOF something like the Hollywood film. I only have the chance to try up to 2.8f as that is the largest aperture opening my 16-35mm L and 100mm micro have.

I started getting serious in making motion pictures after learning some tips from Philips Bloom. Your will not be persistence in learning something if you have no clue at all on how to do it right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNNqUm_nSXk this is where I first heard of him and learnt about how to set my 5D markII for shooting video.

I then begin to follow more and more about his sharing in cinematography in vimeo as well as in his blog.

Probably you too (just like my wife) would think that there is his shadow in my works. But this didn't bother me at this stage, as I am still very new in cinematography so some level of imitation is unavoidable until I am ready to create something really original.

My editing software is Sony Vegas, and grading tool is Magic Bullet Looks.

There are so much to learn in cinematography from shooting to editing. In this sense, probably my photography knowledge has shorten my learning curve by 35 percent, as the same composition rules, exposure control, etc are the same in still and motion pictures.

Some considerations involve in motion picture like frame rate, sound recording, camera motion i.e. panning, tracking, etc., and editing are all totally new to me.

Ya, choosing the right music or song for my video is equally important for a success work.

Finally, if I am to pick one of my works that I think the best by far (hard decision), how about this 'Maiko Experience'