Category: Creative

How to create a Slow Motion Wedding Photo Booth

http://vimeo.com/72365593

I watched this wonderful video yesterday and came to wonder how easy it would be to recreate without a huge budget.

The guys who did this had access to a Red Epic which shoots HD up into hundreds of frames/second (This camera was used on Prometheus, Hobbit and the like)
Even they were limited (to 160fps) by a limit in the amount of light available.
These 160 fps videos are then played back at quarter speed.

So, what about that budget – There are going to be two problems.
1. finding an affordable camera with the right specifications
2. dealing with a requirement for serious amounts of light.

1. Finding a camera – Most consumer cameras with high frame rates or fps drop off in resolution as the frame rate climbs.
Interesting cameras to look at include;

Panasonic Lumix FZ200, which can shoot HD (720p) videos at 120fps and VGA-level (640 x 480) movies at 240fps
Nikon 1, which shoots 640 x 240 at 400fps
Sony A77, which shoots 1080 at 60fps for super smooth slow motion
Note, there are tricks employed by manufacturers to give higher frame rates. Lots of reviews should be read and tests performed in selecting your camera.

Make sure to consider file formats, access to bright lenses, high ISO performance, frame rate (fps), resolution etc.

Another thing to consider is the availability of software to interpolate between our frames.
This offers the advantage of increasing the range of cameras to choose from and presumably reducing the need for such high shutter speeds.

vision Effects’ Twixtor, a plug-in for Adobe’s After Effects, is the best-known program for creating slow-motion videos from standard footage. It can produce stunning results with the right sort of input, such as high-quality videos from a Nikon or Canon digital SLR.

Unfortunately, Twixtor costs more than most digital compacts (just over £200) while After Effects costs £911 at Amazon.co.uk. This is not a good option for amateurs.

However, anyone who fancies this sort of thing could try the free, open source slowmoVideo.

Jack Schofield
Friday 11 January 2013

Wanted: a cheap compact camera for shooting slow-motion videos

2. Lighting – We have a couple of ways to ensure we have enough lighting.
Being video we must have a continuous light source which ideally doesn’t run too hot (though our subjects won’t remain under lights for more than a minute or two.
It is difficult to describe what lights will be needed since a Sony A77 will be able to handle low light better than a Nikon 1 or Panasonic Lumix due to it’s clean high ISO

You might choose to spend a few dollars on some halogen work lights, but this is going to generate a ton of heat.
You might opt for LED, but this would prove expensive and you would need a lot of them.
You could go for the large banks of lights commonly used in TV Studios for the last couple of years.
You could even manufacture your own lights from a skip full of fluorescent lights.
Problems to solve here include cost, brightness, running cost, convenience (size/weight), suitability (flouroscent lights may cause flickering on video).
This whole area is a bit of a minefield and since your camera, budget and needs will be different to the next person, you will simply need to experiment until you find a solution.

Luckily, here in Australia, we have copious amounts of continuous daylight.
A large scrim or diffuser (or even a large white outdoor tent) might be all we need to get started.

Choosing a Wedding Photographer you can brag about

The Wedding Photographer, arguably one of the most important investments of the whole event

Unfortunately wedding photography is an area where couples cut corners or
hire
use that friend who loves photography.
This often results in photos that tarnish the memory of this once in a lifetime event.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on wedding photography then spend time researching just what you can get within your budget.
A small investment in time will help you choose a great wedding photographer.

1. Talk to married couples about their photographer.
What sort of result did they get? Were they pleased and are they still pleased weeks, months or years later? Can they remember (or do they care) how much they invested?

2. You would expect a high price to indicate a good wedding photographer, but this is not always the case.
Interview your photographer and ask for testimonials from past clients (if clients are delighted with their wedding photographer at least a few should be happy to write a testimonial).

3. Ask for guarantees.
Will the person you meet with be your photographer?
What will happen in the case of illness, poor weather or equipment failure?
Is he/she a well regarded member of a pro organisation like the AIPP (Australia), BIPP (UK) or RPS (UK)?
Do they carry public liability insurance to protect you and your guests?
Do they provide a written contract of what they will deliver and when?

Unfortunately, most photographers who fulfil these criteria have long since realised that catering to budget conscious clients is unsustainable without cutting corners.

4. Look for your photographer through one of the organisations listed above and view their site or blog (where available) to get a feel for their work?

5. Look at some of the other options such as ‘photo booths’.
‘Photo Booths’ (aka ‘smile booths’ or ‘crazy booths’) are simple studios, often with themed props, that offer social photography for weddings and events.
In some cases the guests simply shoot themselves with a remote control, but the best photo booths have a dedicated photographer and produce high quality images.
These images can be posted to Facebook adding a live social element.
Captured images can even be added to your wedding album or printed for your guests.
An example of this is the recently launched ‘myphotoroom’ in Adelaide
They offer fun, quirky and unforgettable images of your guests instead of the cheesy posed shots which are so typical of many weddings.

6. Consider hiring someone to tutor you in photography so that you are better equipped to understand the pitfalls of shooting a wedding and better qualified to choose a photographer.

Congratulations and hopefully these simple tips will help you find a friendly and experienced wedding photographer.

Snapseed – Nice Photo Editor for iPhone

Having had a quick play you when I first downloaded Snapseed months ago, I finally got around to giving it a proper go over the last couple of days.

It really is quite an amazing little app with a lot of options that I was surprised to find on an iPhone app, including such things as control points and a ’tilt shift’ effect.

Below are a couple of images created in Snapseed with the untouched images included at a lower Resolution for comparison.

20121123-203332.jpg

20121123-203853.jpg

20121123-203347.jpg

20121123-204023.jpg

Easily removing ghost text while scanning

When scanning pages from books and magazines it is common to see a ‘ghost image’ of the text from the back side of the page being scanned.

There is an easy fix for this and it’s so obvious you will kick yourself

During the scan, simply place a sheet of flat matte black paper immediately behind the page you are scanning.
This destroys the contrast of the ‘ghost’ text or images rendering a much better quality scan with little to no visibility of the reversed image from the page behind and no visibility of the next page either (I have seen people use white paper, but this only solves part of the problem)

The one downside is that it reduces the contrast of the scanned image too, but that is easily fixed by adjusting the highlights – for example (if I remember correctly) by dragging the right hand slider to the left in the Photoshop ‘Levels’ tool

Please link to this one if you find it useful

Create like a professional. Pay like a student.

The title of this post is the subject field from an item landing in my inbox a few days ago.

Adobe have announced pricing of just $14.99/month for students or teachers to access their entire library of software.

Join Adobe Creative Cloud™ to get access to every Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 desktop application, plus online services* and other new apps. All this for less than the cost of Adobe Photoshop® CS6 alone!

Make an impression with awesome portfolios and projects across print, web and video. For a limited time, you can have it all with an Adobe Creative Cloud™ Student and Teacher Edition membership at just $14.99 per month for the first year.† Hurry, offer ends November 30, 2012.

Creative Cloud includes;
Photoshop
Photoshop Extended
Photoshop Lightroom
Illustrator
InDesign
Adobe Muse
Acrobat X Pro
Flash Professional
Flash Builder
Dreamweaver
Edge Animate
Fireworks
Adobe Premiere Pro
After Effects
Adobe Audition
SpeedGrade
Adobe Prelude
Encore
Bridge (included with download of other apps)
Media Encoder (included with download of other apps)

Device and PC sync
Cloud storage
Business Catalyst
Typekit
Story Plus

Wow. I think this is a great step for adobe and will stop a lot of students starting off as software pirates.

Until now it has been prohibitively painful for students to setup a licence for adobe products, not to mention expensive.

Learn more at the following links;
Creative Cloud
Buying guide

Not a student?
Click here