There's a great new magazine out in the UK called 'Digital FilmMaker Magazine'. The first issue was called DSLR Filmmaker magazine, I guess they don't want to tie themselves down to a specific format too much, so they've renamed it - but looking through the magazine there is a good 90% of the content that is still DSRL Video.
You'll probably guess from the title, the magazine is aimed at people who want to shoot low-budget/indie films and as well as showing technical articles, there is also kit comparisons and movie reviews.
The folks over at Magic Lantern have released a new version of their camera software that they claim moves it along from being a 'hack' and into a reliable extension of the Canon features. There are a bunch of new sound functions as well as new video functions and built-in time lapse as well as bracketing for HDR photos and a semi-experimental method of producing HDR video, so there's a lot to get excited about.
Looking through the documentation and instructions, it's a little overwhelming and scary - with claims that the software is now 'pro' ready, as well as other claims that the software may still damage your camera - so it's a little daunting when you decide you want to install it.
First step for my camera was upgrading the Canon firmware to the latest version, that was very straight forward. Then the next job is to copy Magic Lantern to your memory card via the computer, then pop the card back in the camera and run the firmware upgrade process again. The whole thing was very quick and easy with no hitches.
The next thing you want to do it dive in and look at the menu's, but the documentation makes it seem much more complicated than it really is. On the 550D, in live view mode, simply press the delete button to bring up the ML menu. Once in the menu, use the arrow keys to navigate through the menus, and press 'set' to change values, once you get used to it, it's really easy.
Time-lapse and ramp exposure.
The ML software comes with some intervalometer software, so there's no need to buy external units to fire off your time lapses anymore! But another neat feature is the ramp exposure mode, one of the main problems with time lapse is the flicker that you get when the camera slightly adjusts the exposure for each frame. As clouds move and change the light, the camera adjusts to compensate and the result is a slight flickering. If it's a steady scene, this can be overcome by setting the exposure manually, but if you're doing a time lapse of a sun rise or a sunset then you need the exposure to change as the scene changes... thats where the ramp exposure comes in, you can configure the exposure to only get lighter with the scene, or only get darker with the scene (or auto for it to figure out itself). The result is a constantly changing exposure that only goes one way to eliminate the flicker. I'll be trying the time lapse software out soon so hopefully that will be another blog post to show how I got on.
HDR Video
HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos are hugely popular these days, if you're not aware of them then it's basically combining multiple exposures into a single photograph so that the darks are not too dark and the lights are not too light. Quite often this isn't an option in a single exposure and you can either expose for highlights or for shadows but not for both. ML includes a bracketing feature so that it will automatically shoot multiple exposures specifically for HDR images. But what about video? How could you employ this technique to create HDR video? Well, Magic Lantern's solution is to shoot a strobe effect of two exposures in the video. You then need to process this video to convert the strobe video into two separate video streams that can then be combined. It's a very interesting concept, and another that I'll be experimenting with shortly and will post another blog post with the results.
Jerry Seinfeld has a new web series out, he answered some questions about the series on the Facebook page for the show and one person asked:
Q: Are these filmed with a DSLR?
A: Interior car scenes are shot with mounted Go-Pro cameras; the rest are shot with DSLR cameras.
It's great to see DSLR's becoming a common tool to create high quality videos in the industry, rather than just low budget indie film makers. It would be interesting to find out what was used for the audio.
A couple of years ago I posted about a home-made slider made from Igus parts. It now looks like a commercial slider is available that looks like it uses Igus track and carriage, it's also a very good price - to the point where it no longer makes sense to make your own (unless you want to build something a bit out of the ordinary). It's 60cm so not a bad length, long enough to get some nice slider shots but short enough that it's still portable.
It's available on Amazon for £99, I seriously doubt that you would be able to buy your own Igus track and build your own for that money... There are other cheaper track parts you can use if you're really on a tight budget, but the Igus track and carriage is a nice solid bit of kit to use, so I would think that this is a nice slider. If this was available two years ago, I would have bought this instead of making my own.
This blog was temporarily taken down by Google by one of it's automatic systems, several weeks and several re-instatement requestes later and it's finally back!! I hope to add some more DSLR video posts soon!
Looking at the stats, it looks like time-lapse is a pretty popular subject for users finding this blog - so I thought I'd do another post on the subject.
Here's some time-lapse I did a little while back shot on the 500D.
Essentially it's a combination of sunsets and night time shots, I really wanted to have a go at trying to capture the stars moving across the night sky - I was really pleased with how it turned out.
Shooting timelapse, the main decision you have to make is how long a delay to have between the photos. There's no hard and fast rule that I've ever come across, it's something that kind of just comes with a bit of practice. Sometimes if it's really windy and you can see the clouds moving quickly across the sky anyway then it's too fast for time-lapse, the camera just won't cope with constantly taking photos that quickly. In those instances your best bet is probably just to shoot movie and then speed the movie up a little to create the effect you're after.
For the sunset shot's here, they were two quite still evenings, I set the delay to about 4 or 5 seconds. If you have the time, you can sometimes shoot about 30 frames - then stop and preview on the back of the camera. Holding the play button down will scroll through the frames and give you a rough indication of how smooth it is, if it looks OK then delete the test, reset and shoot your time-lapse.
Shooting the stars is somewhat more difficult and much more time consuming, these shots were typically around 30 second exposures each, which lengthens the shooting considerably. For example, shooting a shot every 5 seconds, at 24 frames per second it's going to take you a couple of minutes to get a second of final footage. Compare this to a 30 second exposure and this jumps up to about 12 minutes.
The other problem with star time-lapse is focussing, it's normally too dark to see anything through the viewfinder or on the back screen, especially if you're not in the ideal conditions such as being in the middle of the desert somewhere with no light pollution. My best results were done by not looking through the camera to focus at all, but looking on the lens itself for the little infinity icon - don't make the mistake of thinking (as I did) that it would simply be a case of turning the focus all the way, it's usually all the way and then back a little bit.
Shoot in RAW format if you can (if your memory card is big enough), especially for the low-light, night time shots. It gives you much more scope for bringing the detail up in post.
If you're lucky enough to have Adobe After Effects, this is a great application for converting your RAW photos into movies as they import directly onto your timeline. If not then you'll have to batch process your photos into Jpegs and then use some other software to convert the stills into movies.
Here's another example of some time-lapse, but a very different subject:
For these shots, I was using a delay of about 30 seconds between each photo. I think compared to other flowers, daffodils open quite quickly - which is what I needed as I don't have a mains adaptor, so I needed to do each scene on a single battery, which it only just did to be honest. If I'd have had a mains adaptor then I would have made each scene a little longer and maybe tried a few other types of flowers.
I hope that this little guide helps you to try your hand at some time-lapse and you have loads of fun with doing it. If you do, post your results in the comments!!
Make sure you have enough space on your memory card:
