Where the Heck Am I?

Oh my. I'm still very much around folks, just been highly occupied with work. I have by no means forgotten about the variable ND filter / long exposure tutorial episode and one way or another I'll try to finish that up by the end of this month.

In the meantime I've been working on a few other projects. For one, my mother creates these really cool crocheted hats; some even have accessories like neck and wrist bands too. They're all made by hand and each is essentially unique or one-of-a-kind as she doesn't create duplicates. I built a website for her that I also administer, and every time she makes about 10 new hats I whip out the camera gear and take shots of her garments. In fact you can see those photos (and her lovely hats) right here: http://www.shadesofcrochet.com

For these shoots I use a paper-roll background and I have to say that I really love it! There are no wrinkles or seams to worry about in post, so editing the shots pretty much just comes down to a little color correction, cropping, and resizing for the Web. As for lighting setup, I have my Olympus FL-50 flash on the left acting as the main light source, a slave flash behind the styrofoam head illuminating the backdrop, a hot light (my three bulb fluorescent one) adding a little extra shine to the hats on the side-right, and a final slave flash on the far right (closer to the camera's position) to give some ambient lighting. All this is triggered by my E-3's built-in flash, set to 1/64 power; this is just enough to set off the slaves (I'm using a slave trigger for the FL-50). Works quite well overall.

The next project I've been hard at work on is a website for my dad's artwork. I'll post the addy to this later as we're putting the finish touches on that.

Lastly, I've been designing sunglasses that I'll be making out of wood. I think they look awesome and in my humble opinion are eco-friendly; there's enough plastic in our lives already. So why would I take on such a project? Interestingly, this all started because of my new eyeglasses I got a few months ago. I happen to have a huge head, so I often look for wide frames that fit comfortably. Luckily, I managed to find such a frame, but they were so wide that the plastic sunglasses I already had could not fit over top. After searching endlessly from store to store and not being able to find a replacement, I simply got fed up and made these:

Finally, a pair of sunglasses that fit perfectly well. The temples and frame are made from alder and the two wooden hinges on the side are poplar. The only metal in the sunglasses can be found in the hinge pins, and the only plastic bits are of course the lenses, which I took out of a previous pair of plastic sunglasses. Here's another shot:

I have a few more shots on my Flickr Photostream. Hopefully I can make an OK living from producing these unique items. I should be able to keep the costs down and make them affordable enough; perhaps I'll get lucky and some stores will carry them too... I will keep my fingers crossed.

Anyway, a busy life is a good one in my opinion, but it does detract somewhat from a few fun things and can wear you out a little. But I manage to recharge myself with a little gaming and reading at night, not to mention some music too. Do keep your eyes peeled at my Tweets (at least I've been using that more often lately) and my Facebook page for video updates. L8r!

Let's Focus a Little

It's about time I wrote a new blog post! The cool thing is my life was made easier by a wonderful question from a wonderful Facebook fan regarding focusing, specifically on the topic of back-button and continuous or predictive AF. The manual focusing bit toward the bottom of this post is something I've added on my own.

Back-Button Focusing
Back-button focusing can be quite a useful feature to use and is generally found on the majority of DSLR models from almost any manufacturer. The person who asked me about this feature is specifically using an Olympus E-5, so I'll be able to reference some page numbers in the manual --specifically pages 105-106-- but for the rest of you, simply do some digging and I'm sure you'll find it in your respective booklets. In addition, back-button focusing on the E-5 is controlled via the Auto Exposure Lock/Auto Focus Lock (AEL/AFL) button on the upper-mid backside of the camera, so again refer to your specific manual to determine what button is assigned to back-button focusing on your system.

In a nutshell, back-button focusing allows you to use that little button on the back of your camera to lock focus or exposure. But of course the question is why would it be advantageous to perform such a task using the AEL/AFL button versus the shutter button. I mean one can just as easily half-press the shutter button to lock focus and exposure, then you can compose the scene, and finally full-press to take the shot. Well allow me to use an example to explain why.

A commonly used scenario is a photographer shooting a model for some portraits. Everything is fine and dandy if the model is more or less dead center in the frame. Pressing the shutter button will likely result in a sharp picture of the model with a fairly accurate exposure. But often, asymmetrical compositions are more pleasing to the eye so the model tends to be pushed off center. In such a case, the camera might not focus on the model but instead on the background, thus leading to a potentially out of focus and unhappy model.

Enter the back-button focus option... well almost. First off, many DSLRs have several select-able options on how to behave when the shutter button is half-pressed, fully depressed, or when the back-button is used. On page 105 on the E-5's manual, there is a nifty table describing each mode. For example, if your camera is set to single auto-focus (S-AF) and you're setup to use mode 2, then when you half-press the shutter the focus is locked but the exposure isn't, and when you fully press the shutter the exposure is only then calculated and locked; if you use the back-button in this case, then only the exposure is locked, but not the focus. It's not that this very complicated, but there are certainly quite a few setup options to choose from. By the way, check the menu on your Oly camera to change these settings; off the top of my head (since my cam is currently setup for product shots and I'm lazy to go get it), these settings are hiding somewhere in the "gears" icon area and it's either the A or B section (AF/MF or BUTTON/DIAL, respectively).

Let's return to our model example and now that we know about modes, we'll stick to S-AF but in mode 3; to clarify, half-pressing the shutter button will only lock the exposure, full-pressing doesn't do anything, and pressing the back-button (that is the AEL/AFL button) the focus is locked. So let's run through this:

1. Since the distance between the model and the photographer generally won't change much for a few poses and shots, we first point the camera on our subject and we'll press that back-button*. This locks the focus but not the exposure.
2. Now, as the focus is locked to the plane the model is in, we can put him/her off center and start shooting.
3. Every time we half-press the shutter the exposure will be calculated and locked, and upon fully pressing the shutter button the photo will be taken.

Cool hey? So an advantage we're seeing here is that the use of the back-button can make it easier to compose our shots. In mode 2 (as described above) and without using the back-button, one would have lock focus on the model (half-press) then frame the scene while will half-pressing the shutter button, then fully pressing when done... repeat. This takes extra time and if you had a good composition for one shot, you might not be able to exactly go back to that same framing due to all the extra motion required. In addition, since the focus has been locked once, taking shots becomes blazing fast as the lens does not to be refocused for each shot (even if the focus would be in exactly the same spot shot to shot).

In the resources section below I've linked to an article on Canon's website that discusses the many uses of back-button focusing. I strongly recommend reading it as it should provide you with a few more ideas and benefits to employing this method. And for those of your curious, the second link takes you to the PDF version of the Olympus E-5 manual, so even if you don't use the system, you can at least get a good idea of what I'm talking about here.

* Ok, another thing to complicate this. On most cameras, like the Oly E-5, the back-button has a memory option. If the option is set to ON then pressing the AEL/AFL button will keep the focus or exposure locked until the button is pressed again. If the option is set to OFF then the focus or exposure is only locked for as long as you hold down the button. The latter option can be useful in some cases, but as I've mentioned, check out that article from Canon on the topic.

Continuous or Predictive Focusing
Many DSLRs also have the capability to focus continually, depending again on how one's camera has been setup. On the Oly the option for continuous auto-focus is C-AF and in most modes starts working when you half-press the shutter button. So let's say you are shooting at a car race and you see a vehicle rushing at you (well hopefully not completely at you, as that could end poorly). Using C-AF you lock focus on the car by half-pressing the shutter button and as you keep half-pressing the camera continually adjusts the focus of the lens as the car, or whatever other subject in motion, rushes by. To take a photo of course, you simply fully press the shutter button. The back-button can also be used, but you might have to adjust the settings. The idea here is that you should... should have a perfect focus lock on the subject at all times, thus when you take the shot you should... should get that sharp image.

In all honesty, I think I've only used this feature on my camera for fun, merely to try it out. Those shooting action or sports subjects will likely find more use for it, but in most other cases S-AF or manual focus will do the trick. Nonetheless, go for it, try out the feature and see if works for you.

Manual Focusing
Lastly, I wanted to quickly touch upon manual focusing. I can't help but find myself using this method of focusing more and more often these days. Keep in mind, I generally shoot landscapes and things up close, so being a tad slower than the auto-focus system is ok in my case. But if you haven't given manual focusing a chance, I must suggest that you give it a try now and again.

For one, it can really speed up shooting, whether in good or bad lighting, as one of the slowest operations for almost all cameras is focusing. In manual focus mode the camera trusts that you've locked onto whatever you want and simply calculates the exposure before actually taking the photo. Calculating the exposure is extremely fast and virtually unnoticeable for us humans. When I've shot some macro images, I find that I can be much more proficient at selecting where I want the focus to be than trusting the machine to do it, and I've also realized a benefit when framing the scene. And I have to admit I get a little nostalgic about it; kind of feels nice to have more control than the silicon beast. Hopefully you'll find manual focusing as refreshing and frankly, useful, as I have.

That is it for now! L8r!

Web Resources
http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/resources/articles/2011/backbutton_af_article.shtml
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_support_manuals.asp?id=1525
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-autofocus.htm

Time-lapse of Mammatus Clouds - Part 2

Well this blog post is certainly overdue so I'll get right to it!

First off, I never intended to create a time-lapse movie of the thunderstorm that passed by on that warm mid-summer evening. Instead, I just wanted to take a few snapshots of the mammatus clouds which often form on the trailing edge of such storms. But after taking a few pictures it dawned on me that scene would make for an interesting time-lapse movie. The bad part about this situation was that the system was moving quite quickly and by the time I would have lugged out my tripod, placed my camera on it and started shooting, a fairly large portion of this storm would have moved beyond my humble line of sight in my backyard. So to heck with it I figured and I ended up hand-holding the camera for several minutes and ended up with four seconds worth of footage, a total of 120 frames --frames were two seconds apart.

Now if you viewed the video, you might have noticed that it seems quite steady; in other words not much shaky cam going on. Unfortunately that's not due to my incredible ability to stay completely still, but in fact good'ol Adobe After Effects and its stabilizer plug-in. It takes a brief minute or two to "run" the filter and voila, steady playback as if one had used a tripod. Honestly, although I really love that plug-in I would still prefer to use a tripod. For one, the filter would not need to be run which would save a little time and two, even though the video looks quite smooth, I'm certain there would be some minor improvement over the filtered version (looking carefully you can see just a little jittery movement once in a while).

And by now you are probably thinking that the pans in the video were also produced with After Effects. Well you'd be completely wrong! Just kidding. Yes, no big surprises there. Unlike the stabilization filter, I personally wouldn't for a second not consider using digital panning. I not only enjoy how smooth the result is, but also how the motion can be accelerated and decelerated into the pan, along with having the ability to create much more complex motion paths through the scene (that is to say, not just a linear route from point A to B but rather a twisting curve).

If you feel like experimenting with this type of pan, I can recommend a few things before you begin. As with the production of almost any type of movie, plan out what you will be shooting. Let's take for example a time-lapse of a ship harbor with a busy port in the foreground. Once you're at the location frame your scene and consider carefully the motion that may be pleasing. Perhaps you might start up close to capture the action of people docking a ship, then pan upwards and towards a large crane, finally panning to the right and zooming out to reveal the whole scene. Keeping your shot or framing wide will capture a great deal of action at once and resolution is generally not a concern as even an entry-level DSLR will provide more than enough pixels to roam around in, even if you choose not to increase the stills size to 100% during the editing.

In addition, I thought I'd make clear that I'm not against panning with a tripod or even something more sophisticated. I'm a huge fan of digital technologies, but there's just that something you can feel when you detect a hint of human behind the scenes (even if it's a stepper motor controller panning the camera, just feels more "real" in some ways; that unsteadiness in the footage that rears up briefly). Anyway, whichever method you choose I hope you have fun with it and come up with some great material.

I do have another episode in the planning stages on the topic of creating panoramas. I hope to get around to it soon and I have a fantastic idea for presenting it, but you'll have to wait and see what that is! No hints this time! ;) So off I run... I go to bed so late some days that I think I can get away with saying it's very early at 10:30pm. Yikes! L8r!

Time-lapse of Mammatus Clouds

Well I finally uploaded a new video to my YouTube Channel! A quick thunderstorm passed over Calgary and just after it was gone and the rain subsided, I grabbed my Oly E-P2 and snapped away at the sunset lit mammatus cloud formations at the trailing edge of the storm. Old habits die hard and once again it's quite late, so I'll be writing up a second part to this post detailing how I created this video. Enjoy the quick show! L8r!

Yes I'm Still Around!

I know, I know. It's been quite a while since I've produced a new video or written up a blog post for that matter. I've been terribly busy with some work around the house and that's been setting me back from my hobbies. It'll probably be another two to three weeks before I can start up the creative mill again.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I really enjoy being away from the computer. Being online, whether literally on the Web showcasing and marketing my work or just on the computer producing and editing videos, is fun and all but very consuming; a lot of time and effort. But since I've been "away" from this virtual world for most of the time in these last few weeks, I've realized some benefits.

For one, I'm actually getting more physical activity, which is definitely a plus and something I could use even more of (not that I've lost a lot of weight yet though, grrr). In addition, a great deal of my time has been spent on cleaning things, so my environment is better organized. Just the other day I managed to get my MIDI keyboard back in my "digital" room and a few weeks ago my drum kit (a real one; Gigmaker from Yamaha) got some extra space. Perhaps I can start getting back into creating music again; one of these days I do want to finish that second album I've been saying I'd put together.

So it's not all bad news and when I do start up the shows again, I have a lot of interesting topics to cover. I keep getting some wonderful requests and they are certainly noted. Off I run once again, L8r!

Time-lapse Movie Using an iPhone

That time-lapse episode I produced sure clicked something to the "on" position in my head because I can hardly stop thinking about it. Recently I've been tinkering with my iPhone and checking out apps that can accomplish this task; more specifically those that have an intervalometer feature. I also like free stuff and came across two programs, both created by JOBY, called Gorillacam and Frame X Frame.

After playing around with both apps I find myself much more attracted to Gorillacam even if it has been replaced by the newer Frame X Frame. For me the reason is simple, because Gorillacam saves full sized images while Frame X Frame only saves them as puny 512px x 384px files. The iPhone (3GS in my case) may not have a spectacular camera, but using its 3MP images I can create 720P HD videos. Yeay! The quality using those tiny pics was so lacking in my opinion, that I didn't even bother posting that test movie created using Frame By Frame. Boo! :(

Essentially, both apps are more or less identical but I believe there are more sharing options in Frame X Frame versus Gorillacam (like uploading to YouTube, Facebook, etc.). Personally, I like to have flexibility with my work and as such I'd rather have access to the full sized images. As you can see in the video, there's a slow upwards pan done with Premiere which wouldn't have been possible using the smaller files... that is unless I were to resize them which could degrade the video quality or created a movie with dimensions even smaller than those pics. Yuck. But for those individuals who aren't necessarily going for quality but something quick and fun with little hassle, Frame X Frame would suffice I guess.

So my choice will remain Gorillacam and I'm glad the company hasn't taken it down from the iTunes App Store. The interface seems to act a little odd during screen or page transitions, but if it wasn't for my iPhone's depleting battery power, all thousand frames of this movie would have been shot perfectly. Speaking of which, when I tried using Frame X Frame to shoot the time lapse series (saving as images and not directly into a movie file) the app crashed before it reached 300 frames. Not cool if you're shooting time-lapse movies.

I think I'll certainly be creating more time-lapse movies using my iPhone and I'll be more adventurous when selecting the locale. The movie you see below was shot through two glass window panes, hence the slight lack of detail and sharpness, and the view... well that's just looking out towards my backyard, so indeed nothing that spectacular. Although I always find the way the clouds move, evaporate, and appear from seemingly out of clear blue sky quite neat. As for my next Photography with Imre episode, I'm still not too sure what topic I'll be selecting, but there are a few viewer requests I haven't done yet so it's not like I have no choices (but feel free to make a suggestion!). L8r!

Part 2: Time-lapse Photography - Photography with Imre - Episode 36

I couldn't be happier with how the time-lapse episode turned out. There's a lot of information in this show and I also have a few new and expanded details to add in this post. Don't forget to check out the Web Resources section below as well, because there are some really cool and awe inspiring time-lapse flicks to watch, amongst other cool sites to explore on the topic.

Intervalometers
In my video I talked a little about intervalometers and the ability to purchase "devices" that can be hooked up to the camera. More specifically, these are essentially "smart" remote cable releases that can be setup to take shots at particular time intervals. Some manufacturers make their own and there are a variety of third party ones available too; click here to see what's on Amazon for example. Since I haven't used any of these, I cannot recommend any models so be sure to do your own research on them.

Many DSLRs can also be tethered to a computer and controlled via software. Again, some manufacturers have an intervalometer feature in their programs, while in other cases you can purchase third party packages. There is a also a third option for the code savvy DIY-ers out there, which is to download a software development toolkit (SDK) from the manufacturer (if available) and program one yourself. I recently downloaded the Olympus SDK and if time permits, I'll be trying my hand at it.

Choosing a Time Interval
The time interval chosen will essentially set the pace for the time-lapse movie. In addition, depending on how long you planned your movie to be, the time interval might also determine how long a period is required to shoot the series of photographs. For example, if one chooses a slow pace for the movie with time intervals spanning two seconds and a movie length of 10 seconds, then at 30 frames per second (fps) one will need a total of 300 frames, so the time-lapse series will take a mere 10 minutes to shoot. On the other hand, let's say you want a time-lapse movie of the sun crossing the sky from rise to set in 10 seconds playback time. Well already you know that'll take a half of a full day to shoot, but let's do the math. Assuming that on this particular day the sun is "up" for 12 hours, here's what we need to know:

• We already know that a 10 second long movie played back at 30 fps requires 300 frames
• In 12 hours there 720 minutes (12 * 60 = 720)
• We can divide the number of minutes by frames to get time interval needed for this shoot. Thus, 720 / 300 = 2.4 minutes between shoots or 144 seconds (or 2 minutes and 24 seconds); that's 25 photos in an hour

One hopes that if you're shooting something this long you can leave the camera safely alone to do it's work, otherwise you might be in for a busy day! Anyway... I'm sure you get the idea in regard to working out how many frames you need; quite simple math really.

But what isn't that simple to determine necessarily is to get the right look for the subject you're shooting. This is why I deliberately varied the time intervals during the city skyline time-lapse movie seen in the show. By doing so, the apparent speed things move at depending on the interval used became fairly visible. For example, at 15 second intervals the clouds drifted noticeably faster across the sky than at 5 or 2.5 seconds. But in my opinion, the subject alone doesn't solely dictate what time span(s) should be used between exposures, because one also has to consider the audience for the video and in many cases the creative aspect. Maybe a producer wants to use a quick time-lapse clip between action scenes in a short film to denote a hectic, frantic pace or feeling of excitement. On the other hand, a short time interval will result in smoother motion and could present a calming or peaceful effect; can also show more detail since things are moving so quickly in a scene. My ultimate suggestion here is to watch many time-lapse movies made by others and see what it invokes you in and then start shooting various subjects to see what you get and like.

Acceleration and Deceleration
I certainly haven't come across many time-lapse videos that use acceleration or deceleration, in other words, most I have seen use a constant time interval between each exposure throughout the whole movie. But nonetheless, when I have come upon it, the effect is quite cool.

Basically there are two major ways to achieve this, one easy, and the other being a bit more involved. The easy method is simply to shoot a time-lapse series with a constant interval and then speed up or slow down the resulting movie in a video editor. That's it. Or there's the more challenging method of varying the time intervals as time passes. Now a question does pop up. Does it make sense to bother varying the time intervals when you can do this without much fuss in an editor? Well perhaps some producers might feel that varying the time intervals keeps the movie "real", while others might believe that it's more cost/time effective to use software. Whatever the case, here's my view which you might find interesting.

If I were to accelerate a portion of a time-lapse movie then I would use a video editor. But for slowing things down to a crawl I would actually shorten the time intervals during shooting. Here's why. When you accelerate a video clip, the software basically drops frames in order to accomplish the effect. Another way of seeing this is that the visual difference between each consecutive frame becomes greater, thus motion will appear faster. If I was shooting a time-lapse series and making time intervals longer between each exposure to speed up the action, the end result will basically be identical because the difference between each consecutive image will be greater just as if the video were to be sped up using an editor. Essentially, I can save some time and effort by using the editor to get the same result.

On the other hand, if you've ever tried to slow down video using an editor, the motion generally becomes choppy or somewhat unnatural even with frame blending or other filters that are supposed to smooth out motion in such cases. This effect occurs because frames are reproduced multiple times in order to get that slow motion look. So to get natural and gradual decrease in speed, I would instead rely on reducing the time interval during the time-lapse shoot. This way, no frames would need to be doubled, tripled or whatever to get a reduction in speed.

The bad part about this is that it requires some planning before the shoot and potentially manual operation. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know of any intervalometers that can gradually increase or decrease intervals --although for us programming folk, we could tether the cam to a computer and write software to accomplish such a thing. But anyway, this may not be as bad as it sounds and here's a few steps you can follow:

• Consider how long you want the deceleration to last. Let's use 3 seconds as an example; at 30 fps that would equal 90 frames.
• This effect usually looks better if it's more in-your-face than subtle, so hopefully the time intervals you're starting with are fairly long. To continue this example, I'll start with 15 second gaps.
• The next thing to consider is the time interval you are ending with. Let's say... 1 second.
• In this particular example, we're dropping 14 seconds off our time (15 - 1 = 14 easy). I take the total number of frames, 90 and divide it by 14 which equals 6.4 that I will simply round to 6 to make life easier.
• What that means is that every 6 frames there will be a 1 second decrease in the time interval between shots. So the interval between frames 1-6 will be 15 seconds, 7-14 will be 14 sec., 15-22 will be 13 sec. ... and so on until you reach frame 90.

This might keep you a bit occupied for a while, but the end result should be a fairly gradual decrease in speed when the movie played back.

Tracking (Moving the Camera During Shooting)

In the show I briefly discussed tracking, a sidewards motion of the camera, and if you check the Web Resources section below you'll find plenty of links to professional and DIY time-lapse dollies and tracks (along with some pretty wicked videos that were created using them; some cinematography terminology links too). You'll probably notice that the videos tend to look more interesting if there are foreground elements fairly close to the camera, as those objects tend to create a stronger sense of depth and motion in the scene; perhaps keep that in mind if you're creating such footage. Maybe someday when I have more time I'll look into either building one of these units myself or getting one if it's not too expensive. And by the way, I'm not affiliated with any manufacturers mentioned here; their websites are posted for further research and information.

Putting it All Together
You might have noticed that I kept the part about putting a time-lapse movie together quite short in the video. If I was to present my version of how to do it, then I would be using Adobe After Effects or Premiere; those employing other packages would have to figure it out on their own anyway... which in my opinion is not very hard. With After Effects and Premiere, all you basically do is import the photos as an image sequence and then drag the clip to wherever you'd like it in the timeline. Then to add some pizazz to the footage one can start applying various other effects like color grading and vignetting or whatever else. Applying those effects are easy... it's using them wisely and creatively that can be more challenging.

I hope you have a lot of fun creating and watching your time-lapse movies. I certainly found a few surprises which I couldn't see when taking the shots, like those construction elevators running up and down the sides of skyscrapers being built and the motion of the crane on top of the building. I have no clue what to do for the next episode and not because I don't have any ideas, but too many! So perhaps I'll put it out to a vote on Facebook. L8r!

Web Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-lapse

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/an-introduction-to-time-lapse-photography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervalometer

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/movement.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1japIhKU9I - Great video on various filmmaking techniques

http://fstoppers.com/could-this-be-the-longest-slider-video-ever

http://nofilmschool.com/2011/03/adam-anthonys-the-maestro-creative/

http://nofilmschool.com/2010/12/how-to-create-time-lapse-dolly-hdr-shots/
http://www.diyphotography.net/a-timelapse-rail-from-bbq-rotisserie-motor
http://cinematography.wonderhowto.com/corkboard/new-motion-cheap-motion-timelapse-dolly-0116184/
http://ditogear.com/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Time-Lapse-Dolly/
http://www.bmumford.com/photo/dolly/index.html

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/04/07/gorgeous-time-lapse-of-the-space-needle-in-seattle/
http://www.youtube.com/user/canadianentropy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSaBHyH1fTc
http://vimeo.com/23237102

http://thecampsiteblog.com/2011/04/17/time-lapse-photography/

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/04/18/unreal-timelapse-of-the-milky-way/