Index for posts concerning photo/video

Is Your Heart a Mess? by invot
6 comments

Youtube Reviews #1: The Amen Break by Distinguished Bean
4 comments

The Future of Professional Digital Video: Why I’m Excited by Bieren Skidels
0 comments

Project HDR-TL #1: My Parent’s Front Yard by Bieren Skidels
8 comments

Is Your Heart a Mess?

Posted on March 10th, 2010 by invot.
Categories: Music, photo/video.

Recently, I stumbled upon Gotye, an Australian ARIA Award-winning singer-songwriter. He is also one-third of the Melbourne-based indie-pop band “The Basics.” Though he has no tour dates at the moment, I do plan on visiting him if/when he ever comes to Denver. Friends of mine testify that he is a sight worth seeing, as well as a sound worth hearing.

Gotye- Hearts A Mess from Gotye on Vimeo.

The crowing jewel from his latest studio album “Like Drawing Blood” would have to be the silky smooth and hypnotic pop ballad “Hearts a Mess.” It’s chillingly universal, sporting a heartbeat-type rhythm, familiar melodies, and lyrics that can resonate with any situation. Thus, the song can mean anything, depending on what the listener wants to hear - it could be a love story, it could be a moral warning or it could be a mere spouting of guilt.

Your heart’s a mess
You won’t admit to it
It makes no sense
But I’m desperate to connect
And you, you can’t live like this

The video is a brilliant Tim Burton-esque CGI creation which sports an uncommon form of uniqueness, while still holding onto a common set of stylistics, which leaves interpretation up to debate. This ambiguity helps compliment the open-ended nature of the song’s lyrics, and how it can apply to mostly any situation. However, the theme of transcendence is undeniable, and the characters you encounter (the victim of war with crutches, the earth-bound bird with a cage, the lonely on an iceberg, the ghost of a memory, and the spider with the veil of oblivion) suggests that there is something specific to be said, somewhere amongst the sea of vague symbolism.

6 comments.

Youtube Reviews #1: The Amen Break

Posted on February 4th, 2009 by Distinguished Bean.
Categories: Political, Film, Reviews, Media, education, Economics, photo/video, Cultural.

Read AFTER watching video:

As defined by Dictionary.com, a market is trade or traffic, esp. as regards a particular commodity or idea. So what does this 6 second drum beat loop have to teach us about markets, you ask? It actually brings great understanding to a system that has been ruined in so many ways by so many people. To some extent, the goal of a market is to bring the quality of an object to the greatest potential it can; really, increasing to some unknown and unreachable infinite value of quality. This drum beat proved that regulation on commodities or ideas is criminal and only hurts the quality of a product or object in the long run. Had the spread of the drum beat been cracked down on and regulated, who knows what would have happened. Now, there is a possibility that the fathers of hip hop and marketers of commercials would have just found another drum beat loop, but how would that have sounded different? Maybe better, maybe worse… Due to the extreme success of how the styles of music and marketing outlets has turned out, I don’t think we really want to know how it would have been without this Amen Break. Sub-consciously, the public has grown to enjoy this rhythm, this timing of sounds, and thus it has been able to transform certain aspects of media, increasing the quality, as judged by consumers, over a period of time. The Amen Break has done great things, even if people do not recognize its depth of influence.

So what does this have to say about regulation in the larger sense? Well, with this example, and countless others, we are able to see that regulation only hurts the quality within a market. Regulation on music, such as harsh copyrights and limits, have only hurt the spread of music and the quality there in. The same can be said of numerous products within our economic system. As Pepsi copied Coke, and Qdoba copied Chipotle, the de-regulation of commodities has only increased competition and thus quality. In art, regulation could have done much damage. What if people had rejected Shakespeare due to his great amount of plagiarism of the time, what would have happened to poetry? What has the spread of certain techniques done for painting and photography? In most all cases, if there has been large amounts of regulation, the product’s quality is weakened, whereas, with no regulation, the quality has increased to an amount we may not even recognize.

So can this idea of the greatness of de-regulation be applied to the much broader economy as a whole? The government, especially now, with stimulus packages and business regulations, seems to encourage the halting of commodity and idea flow. We may not even recognize the damage that is being done. What would a system without harsh regulations really look like? I believe it would be a beautiful thing, that would increase quality and bring glory to our market as a whole. Just look at certain cases where ideas have been able to spread, de-regulated. Wikipedia has become one of the largest sources of information available due to its great freedom. Not just Wikipedia, but the Internet as a whole has shown the greatness of the free spread of ideas. So I have a great hope that people will begin to recognize the destructive nature of regulation, and accept the idea of freedom that our country was largely founded on. May this freedom cause the quality of the market and ideals within the country to sky-rocket in value and increase in worth. The Amen Break is a great symbol that, although seemingly unknown, will hopefully bring greater understanding to how people run markets in the future.

The Amen Break was a 6 second loop that transformed music… What are we stopping from spreading now, that could transform our lives today and into the future?

In the end, the only thing that should be strictly regulated is the New York Yankees…

4 comments.

The Future of Professional Digital Video: Why I’m Excited

Posted on October 17th, 2008 by Bieren Skidels.
Categories: photo/video.

Why am I writing an article about what I think will happen to professional video… well, I’m amateur for one, and a photographer, not a cinematographer as well. However, I think that that makes me the right type of person who should be writing this article considering the changes that are happenning.

note: By “professional” video I mean video with image quality (grain, resolution, DOF, dynamic range) the type you would see in a standard theatre. I also tend to make the assumption that “bigger” is generally “better” - I specifically mean that while an APS-C sized sensor can easily and quickly emulate (through closing aperture and cropping image) a small digital sensor, a small sensor cannot emulate the larger sensor practically.

Background:

I may get this a little wrong, but from what I understand, in professional video you either rent Panovision or go with PL mount system. Both options are incredibly expensive, not to mention the cost of the film and processing it. I mean were talking $100K+, maybe more, depending on the size of the movie… and that’s the cost for just one movie - not necesarilly reusable.

One question would be, why film? Haven’t digital cameras, especially large sensor SLR’s already moved in this direction and achieved amazing results? Yes, however, a video system is rather more complex, with different requirements for the lens sysytem, auto-focusing different, and obviously the data-badnwidth for high-quality digital video is a multiple of the bandwidth needed for a digital still photo.

Second question, aren’t there already cheap digital cameras that take good quality videos? Sony and Canon, along with a few other manufacturers, have a line of semi-pro camera systems. These camera systems sell for a few thousand up to around $10k for a decent canon XL-H1 system with a few accessories. The problem is that these cameras are using sensors the size of that little point and shoot camera that fits in your back pocket (in fact slightly smaller). And while the average public may *think* their point-and-shoot pictures look just fine, they would immidietly identify a movie shot on such sensors as looking cheap and boring. I’m not going to go into why this is, but let’s just assume the following - the sensors in these semi-pro cameras are WAY too small.

So what if you wanted to shoot pro-quality video and didn’t want to pay over $100k to shoot film for one video? Well, until 2007 you would have had to be pretty creative to get the results you wanted for a full movie under $100k. However, Oakley founder Jim Jannerd came out with the Red One Digital System in 2007. This system could record at resolutions of 4096 horizontal by 2034 vertical pixels (For an example of how much larger this is than high-def or espeically your NTSC camcorder, look at this diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UHDV.svg). The system used a Super-35 sized CMOS sensor, which is basically an answer to our prayers earlier. The sensor is the same size as the higher end super-35 film (i.e. film that is shot horizontally to take advantage of most of the film surface - don’t worry if you don’t know exactly what I mean). So how much does this option cost? Well, about $30K for basic setup… and obviosly with accessories this can turn into more - but since I was only really adding up the prices for body and lenses with the film systems, we’ll do the same here. Let’s say $30-50k for body and a few lenses.

When I first learned about Red One it got me thinking:

1. The resolution of the Red One sensor is less than all the new DSLRs. Red One is about 8.3 mega-pixels, and I think a new versions is about 12mp - whereas entry level DLSRs have 10-14mp and higher end DSLR are 12-22mp.

2. The sensor isn’t necesarilly all that large either. The Red One sensor measures 24.4 mm x 13.7 mm, consider this chart of different DSLR sensor sizes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SensorSizes.png. In terms of total area the Red One sensor is just about the same as the APS-C sized sensors, which puts it in the same general ball park as the slightly smaller four-thirds sensor and the Sigma Foveon sensors.

3. The data bandwidth supported by the Red One system uses a wavelet codec to transfer it’s full resolution images at 28MB/sec. or 36 MB/sec. This is interesting because the DSLR I owned supported 35 MB/sec. and high end cameras were supporting over 100 MB/sec. in burst mode. I had always thought that DSLRs just couldln’t support the necessary bandwidth for video.

Finally, at the time I was shooting photos with a four-thirds (4/3) camera, the Olympus E-510. The thinking went… My sensor is about as big and has even higher “resolution” than the Red One system, and the lens resolution tests I’ve seen show that top Zuiko glass outresolves the nyquist frequency for the four-thirds sensors - so I’m not going to be handicapped by lens quality. I figured I should test the idea out - I knew that I could stream NTSC quality video off the live-view of the camera and I had a video capture card - so I tried it out and it worked with some beautiful results. And then a few weeks later the first DSLR with video capability came out, followed by many others in the next months and the first large videos made using these systems: http://vincentlaforet.smugmug.com/gallery/6042742_wZKiA#377930419_dgxvY-A-LB

Vincent Laforet commented that this was one of the best if not the best optical quality video system he had worked with. The video was viewed 1.5 million times in the first 10 days online

Here’s how I see it:

The old system (pre 2007) : To shoot pro quality video you spend $100k+ per video for just lens and camera body

The Red One System (2007 ->): You can now shoot pro quality video spending only $30k on lens and camera body

The DSLR spawned video (2008->): You can now shoot pro quality video spending less than $5k on lens and camera body

Here’s were it gets interesting for me, in the midst of the news of the introduction of video capability to DSLRs, the micro four-thirds system was announced. This system uses the same size of sensor as I used in my DSLR, just a bit smaller than the Red One system - and the system was “designed to support video”. Dispensing with all the details as to why this system will also make fast, small lenses possible - I want to point out that a camera body that already supports Red One level bandwidth costs about $500 for the body. And the standard zoom lens I own is effectively a 28-108mm f/2.8-3.5 lens equivalent on 35mm camera, assuming little light loss in the glass (which I have observed) we can consider this a 28-108 T/2.8-3.5 lens and it weighs 435 grams and costs about $400. Red One has an equivalent standard zoom, it’s 35mm film equivalent zoom is 27-130mm T/2.9, it weighs 4,500 grams and costs $10k. Now I understand that my lens is slightly “slower” on the long end, and is a about a 4x zoom not a 5x zoom, but consider that it costs 25 times less and weighs 11 times less and I bet it achieves over 90% of the resolution of the Red One lens (if not beating it wide-open zoomed out). And guess what!? if it was designed for micro four-thirds and not four-thirds it would be smaller, cheaper, OR faster…

So finally here’s how I see it: If Olympus/Panasonic releases a micro four-thirds video system in the next years (panasonic has already announced an HD capable camera wtihin 2009) - we could be looking at a video system that costs $1-5k for body and great lenses and has the potential to equal or even out resolve Red One and film systems, while maintaining a hand-held size, making large zooms and fast zooms a reality for a reasonable price. And since it’d digital, and you own it… you could make as many movies as possible with the same system… Storage could be put on new 100GB compact flash cards , one of which could hold 45 minutes to an hour of Red One Digital Video depending on the quality… (SD has just announced 1TB and 2TB cards coming)

Conclusion:

The world of video might change significantly in the next years. The accessories and basic methods involved in shooting video will stay the same - lighting is still lighting, acting still acting - also the accessories, sets and general logistics will cost money… In fact the big production companies may not change anything. But with a few thousand dollars and some spare time, joe blow or any cinema student could make a movie with image quality indistinguishable from that of the big screen

0 comments.

Project HDR-TL #1: My Parent’s Front Yard

Posted on September 30th, 2008 by Bieren Skidels.
Categories: photo/video.

I saw some videos online in which many HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos were strung together into a movie, and I thought “hey, I could do this”…

anyhow, I must give some credit to the videos that inspired this: http://abduzeedo.com/video-inspiration-hdr-movie

I guess my goal is to master the process, obviously their process for making these videos is still in development and mine is embryonic. This is my first try at a time-lapse video from many HDR photos.

The photos are shot in my parents front yard. Basically, I couldn’t figure out how to get my camera to continuously shoot photos in autobracket mode, and the sun was getting near to setting so I set a chair up in the front yard, got a beer, and started pushing the remote button every few seconds for three hours. My sister would bring me beers when mine ran out. All-in-all about 4000 photos were shot (3 pics per HDR +/- 1.0 EV), pretty simple.

The shooting however is just one aspect of this process, the post-processing is the more complicated part (especially since I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be).

Here’s the process I used in short, this is NOT canonical because I am 99% sure there is an easier way, this is just how I did it:

1. I used Photomatix3 Pro to HDR “tone map” every three images on the CF card in my camera (didn’t even move the photos to my hard drive)

1.(a). Then I wanted to use Noise Ninja 2 to reduce the noise on some photos, since the noise in the low light photos was off the charts, but ehhhh.. it wasn’t working so I acutally didn’t do this.

2. I imported the photos into Lightroom 2 and auto white-balanced them, then exported them in reverse order to simulate a sunrise from a sunset (just wanted to see if it worked)

3. I needed to turn the photos into a movie, but it seemed tedious to find a program to do this. I found some c code that did the job, but couldn’t get it compiling on my windows machine (minGW) or cygwin, however it works fine on a Linux machine. So then I found a Java program that did the same thing: http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/desktop/media/jmf/2.1.1/solutions/JpegImagesToMovie.html
(it requires the JMF API which I had to download and install)

4. I loaded the movie into Adobe Premier Pro to add audio (and a little random intro before the real video)

5. I used AutoGK (GordianKnot) to compress/encode the video into a reasonable size, from 640mB to 29.9mB

this process taught me a few things:

1. I would set a maximum shutter time so that the dark photos just get darker (they look much better that way, without the noise)

2. I would probably let Photomatix do auto WB, as well as more conservative HDR processing

3. I need to figure out Adobe Premiere Pro or some other video editing software better, A LOT of quality was lost in this process

4. I need to figure how to shoot the photos more efficiently

Finally, the movie, download it here:

download low res: http://straightouttadenver.com/wp-content/videos/cavevideo2_agk.avi

8 comments.