Here’s what $40 of lamps and $40 worth of compact fluorescent bulbs can do.
This is Dar’s Uncle Ron taking his turn in front of my camera to tell his veteran’s story. You can go here for a full-rez HDV still of the frame grab. Notice he is lit very soft, with almost no discernible shadows on his face. Sometimes this technique is desirable for interviews and head shots.
Here’s what the setup looked like…
Caden went to his second basketball game last Saturday. Being his first year playing, he’s still learning the ball skills. He’s not doing too bad with passing and dribbling, but still could use some work on his shooting. Unfortunately, his old man never played the game… like, ever. So, I’m not much help.
The boys are in the basketball program and Bria’s in cheerleading this season (she can play b-ball next year). Our church where they play just adopted the Upward program, and it’s pretty cool. Very structured, organized, and well led by the LifeBridge staff and volunteers. Our kids will likely be playing it for a long time now. And their old man will have to get out on the court one of these days… and throw down the glove to pick up the big orange ball sometime.
Naturally, I’ve been shooting video courtside with my new camera. I’m still a bit jerky with some of the controls, esp. the manual focusing… which is the only way to follow the action when 30 people an hour come walking in front of the camera. I’m rigged up with the Tiffen Steady Stick support system that keeps me from having to lug “the sticks” (my mongo tripod) around. It’s basically a body-mounted tripod and shoulder rest… and makes it a breeze during extended shoots.
Anyways, I edited a little snippet of Caden’s game last Saturday. I took a bunch of footage, but just focused on him for this little piece. Below is the very down-rezzed and compressed Flash version. I also made a high-def version… well, higher-def version. It’s a 1280×720 size WMV, so it’s still down-rezzed quite a bit, and has a healthy bit of compression tokeep the file size manageable. For those that know (and/or care), this was shot at 30f (Canon’s 30fps progressive mode)… so there’s a decent amount of motion blur compared to the “video look” of 60i. For those of you crossing your eyes about now, enjoy watching the video!
Of course, Logan’s anxious to see his “music video” now from Saturday’s game. An editor’s job is never done! Yawn.
OK, so you got a brand-new HDV camera… and no way (yet) to deliver all of those glorious hi-rez pixels. Blu-Ray, HD DVD, WM9… bah! Who has any of those players?? And the Internet? Unless you’re talking about projects in terms of seconds, rather than minutes or even hours, file sizes and bandwidth will kill ‘ya. So even if someone has sprung big buck$ on a 720p or 1080i HDTV, usually the only way they watch hi-def content is through the cable box or satillite feed. So what’s a shooter to do??
Deliver in SD. “What!”, you exclaim. “Why did I spend all of this money on an HDV camera if I can only deliver SD?!” Here’s why… pixels are your friend. Just because you edit in SD, doesn’t mean that all of that HDV content has to go to waste. Shoot in HDV, capture the HDV files and then edit in your deliverable resolution.
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Yikes, I spent a lot of money today! For the longest time, most of our free cash has gone into the houses we’ve owned. Consequently, I’ve had to “scrape by” on consumer-grade junk or borrow gear when it came time to shoot any decent video for hire.
So after cashing out our “old house” last week, Dar and I discussed the prospect of infusing some of the gains from that sale into my video production biz. We decided on a budget of $6k for a new camera, tripod, lighting, sound gear, and miscellany. For the first time in my life, now I’m dealing with pro-level gear… and it looks like I’ll have to keep pinching pennies to buy most of the “miscellany”. It’s truly amazing what $6k won’t buy when you run with the big dawgs.
But, let me say this in no uncertain terms: I have the best wife in the world for letting me pursue my passions. Pro gear or not, $6k is still a lot of money for our family.
But thank goodness our real estate ventures required me to push-off my camera purchase long enough that $4,000 will now buy a darn nice hi-def camera for what it cost a year ago to buy a nice Standard-def. camera. No kidding. And after lurking for months on the DV/HDV forums, I set my sights on the Canon XH-A1 HDV unit. She has 3 CCDs with a resolution of 1440×1080 each, and can shoot in 60i, 30p, or 24p modes (interlaced frames and progressive). For a reference, compare this to 720×480 pixels of standard-def DV and you’re looking at over four times the resolution!
Okay, okay, so the million $ question: shoot all you want in HD, but who can actually watch your HD footage? Right now, not that many folks (but more people are buying HD displays every day). And the delivery medium/ format (HD DVDs, Blu-Ray, or ???) is still problematic. But, to me, it makes no sense today to spend our hard-earned cash on yesterday’s technology. And even if I have to deliver in SD for awhile (or any resolution in between), I can still shoot in HD now.
And imagine having those extra pixels “in post” on an SD project… think, “little frame on a big picture” and how you can do pans and zooms within the larger HD frame, adding “camera moves” to the scene that were never shot that way. Kewl!
OK, on to the next piece I bought today… Oh, but you do want to see another angle of the beautiful cam, don’t you?!
Next up is the Libec LS-38 tripod. It’s Japanese-made, rock solid, with a very fluid head. No frills… just good support. I almost bought the de-facto standard mid-price tripod, the Bogen/Manfrotto 503 head coupled with one of their basic legs. But a few members on a few different forums were encouraged by this stouter, more fluid combo from a company that almost has no following here in the States (yet!). I then found a reviewer from the UK that sings its praises… so I was convinced.
Throw in a tripod controller, a few filters (one to protect that sweet Canon glass 24/7), and some tapes… and I’ve already spent $4,600 of my budget. And I haven’t even touched light and sound!
So there ‘ya go. Irony of ironies: my new video cam costs about four times what my vehicle is worth! Priorities, man, priorities…
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