Category Archives: technique

Trump Tower Construction Time Lapse

Every once in a while, I think about something that I was working on before I started blogging and wonder whether it would make a good post or not. Where we live in Chicago, we are very close to the Trump International Hotel and Tower. When we first moved here, it was the Chicago Sun-Times building. They demolished that and built the tower on the same site.

During the construction, I took a lot of pictures, first of the demolition and then the new construction. Building the tower would have made a good blog on its own if I had been blogging then. However, can’t turn back time! One thing I tried to do was take pictures from the same position on a regular basis to maybe make a time lapse. These pictures have languished for a long time. However, since Photoshop is now a lot more useful for making video, I brought all of the files in as layers to make a video. Since the position moved each time I took a picture despite my best efforts, Photoshop allowed me to align the layers and get tings (almost) back in register. Then some transitions and some music and we have a video. Hope you like it.

Web video sizing

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I have been getting more and more interested in video work in the last couple of years. Shooting video at the same time as stills is a regular feature of any shoot I am now on. I am even getting better at planning my shot requirements for the video in order to have some hope of putting together a relatively coherent piece later. The recent ISAP symposium had some good information on that. However, that is not the point of today’s piece. Instead, I am thinking about video size.

I have a YouTube channel on which I upload my content. As s shameless plus, if you want to check it out, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/EdgcumbePhoto and you can see the videos I have previously uploaded. Subscribe if you want and it will let you know about all of the exciting new videos I upload! Okay, we return from that commercial break and resume normal programming. I shoot everything in HD and edit the footage for 1080p output. This can result in some quite large files. YouTube allows you to upload full 1080p so that is what I have been doing.

Unfortunately, our current internet connection is not helpful here. While we have pretty decent download speeds, the upload speeds are very slow. DSL was not designed for upload and consequently, the upload speeds have not kept pace with the download speeds and the needs of users generating more and more content. A recent video I made was about eight minutes long. The 1080p version of this was nearly 2Gb. Uploading this took over a day!!!

Now, when I watch videos on YouTube, what resolution do I watch them at? I certainly like HD footage but I only ever use 720p. This is a combination of avoiding bandwidth issues as well as the size of my monitors. There really is no need to be any larger. I wonder whether this is normal. I started looking at what is available on other videos I was watching and quite a few only go to 720p. I thought a quick experiment was in order. The eight minute video I mentioned before can easily be regenerated at 720p so I did that. The file size came out to just over 300Mb. That is a pretty dramatic reduction in file size and upload time.

I think I have been wasting time and bandwidth creating files too large for anyone to need. I am going to stick with 720p for a while and see how things work out. We might have access to a different net connection before too long and I might check out upload speeds then but, for now, this seems to be a far more sensible approach.

Photoshop CC Shake Reduction

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While a lot of people have been quite vexed by the introduction of a subscription based approach to the Adobe software suite including Photoshop, I decided to get over it and upgrade to Photoshop CC. One of the features introduced in CC is Shake Reduction. This is an effort at dealing with motion blur in images. It isn’t going to rescue a crappy shot but it is potentially able to to take an almost good shot and rescue it. I decided to experiment with it on an image I recently took.

The image above is a combination of the original image without sharpening and the filtered version. (It is recommended that you turn off sharpening before running the filter or it will make things break up more.) The effect actually seems to be quite useful. I should note that I tried it on several shots and they didn’t all respond as well to the filter. However, it did make quite a good upgrade to this image. I shall potentially use this again if there is an image I really like that is not quite as sharp as I would like. Another tool to potentially use but not one I think I can rely on.

Boy, Those Trains Can Move!

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A recent art fair was taking place in Chicago and we wandered over to see what was on display. I like these events because they always have an interesting mix of stuff. A few exhibitors have truly excellent work. A large number have stuff that is okay but not special. Then there are a few that are truly appaling. Some of these can be quite creepy and that is half the fun!

All of this is a distraction from the real point of this post. While we were at this event, I looked back towards the loop and realized that this street rose up and provided a great view straight down the elevated tracks of the L as they come through the loop. This looked like a spot I should probably come back to at a later stage. This I have now done.

The view along the tracks is best accentuated by a long lens. Since it is a street on a sunny day (I went in the morning at a time when the sun was supposed to be almost directly down the street since the high buildings around tend to shade everything), heat haze can be a bit of a problem. A winter visit would be good if that opportunity should ever present itself. Instead I shot a little video but also decided on another time lapse.

Luck was on my side this time. When we were at ISAP, there was a lot of discussion on video techniques. One thing that was mentioned was how much lead in and lead out footage should be shot to provide an editor with something to play with later. When shooting time lapse, that lead in time is long and you don’t know when the trains are going to come along. I just decided to start shooting while there was nothing there and see how things played out.

As it happened, I had a lot of time with nothing to make the lead in footage and then a bunch of trains showed up. They ran through for a while and then nothing for quite a while to provide the lead out. No planning on my part but it worked out perfectly. This is one of those clips that I am keeping for a larger project I might finally do about Chicago (probably long after we are gone!) and it will probably only be a very small part of the larger piece but here you can see all of it in one go.

Skies With Menace

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This time of year can get a bit stormy. We had some interesting skies rolling across the city with cloud layers heading in different directions at different heights. I thought a time lapse might be good for this so had a go at a couple. The sky didn’t turn into anything too dramatic in the end but it is still fun to watch the way the levels were moving. Here is a clip of what there was.

It’s ISAP Time Again

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Once again the annual symposium of ISAP, the International Society of Aviation Photographers is back around. This year it is being held up in Seattle. It is always a good chance to meet up with old friends and spend a few days discussing planes and taking pictures of them. I am looking forward to seeing how it all plays out this year. Hopefully, it will be a great event. We shall see.

No doubt, there will be some pictures from this event that make their way onto the blog. Stay tuned to see what shows up here in the coming weeks! As to the reason for the A-10 picture above, it has nothing to do with ISAP. It’s just a picture of a plane that I like!

Cool Kit If You Are a Video Person

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I shall start by pointing you at a blog that is far better written and far more informative than this one. Not a huge challenge of course. However, the author of this blog is a fantastic photographer and now also a director – Vincent Laforet. Vincent’s blog can be found at blog.vincentlaforet.com and he posts quite frequently on the subject of film making, techniques and equipment. Vincent started out as a photographer and a very good one at that. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and is a Canon Explorer of Light. I first saw him at an ISAP event where he talked about his aerial photography as well as a very moving description of his experiences after Hurricane Katrina.

His life changed dramatically when Canon released the 5D Mk II. Vincent had early access to the camera and made a short called Reverie to demonstrate the video capabilities. This short went viral and suddenly making motion pictures with SLRs was a big deal. Now he has moved geographically and professionally and works in the film business. (As an aside, if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, do go as he has some fascinating experiences to share and may well move you in the process.)

Recently, on his blog, Vincent talked of some new device that he considered a game-changer that he would be announcing. The anticipation got quite a few people interested and, when the announcement came, it did not disappoint. The device is called the MOVI (there is a cool stylized way in which MOVI is written that this blog is not going to do justice to I’m afraid) and it is made by Freefly. It is a stabilized mount that is handheld and provides the ability to get smooth shots with a single hand allowing some very creative approaches to moving the camera.

I am not much of a video guy. However, when I had my first SLR with video capability, I started experimenting with shooting video and this has progressively become more important on the projects I am working on. Video provides a very different way of presenting some subjects and it complements the stills well. My video shooting and editing skills might not complement my stills quite as well but we have to keep learning.

Since I am not investing in a significant amount of video equipment but, instead, I shoot video as part of my stills efforts, I have to be limited in how adventurous I can be. Steady handheld shots without a rig are a challenge but can be achieved. Moving is out of the question without making the viewer feel very uneasy. I recently shot some cockpit video from a jump seat during the takeoff roll and during refueling and the vibration made the majority of the footage unusable. A few small excerpts showed the experience but not long enough to make people uncomfortable.

Getting a stable platform in difficult situations is a great step forward. The MOVI is a very cool piece of gear. It is not cheap but, compared to other pieces of equipment, I think it is very affordable. More importantly, it is the start of something new. People will take this concept and run with it and we are likely to end up with many types and levels of complexity of stabilization that will suit different pockets. This could mean something that works for me. This is why I am so excited. The MOVI is great and I would love one. I don’t have the justification for one for my projects but I feel confident I will see something come from this that will make my work easier in due course.

Cheap Macro

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While the idea of trying macro photography has always been of interest to me, I have never got around to actually doing it aside from an old lens I had in my pre-autofocus days that had a macro setting. The idea of renting a macro lens had occurred to me but the reason to do it hadn’t come up and I didn’t feel like renting the lens without having something to use it on.

Then I remembered reading about reversing a lens to use it for macro. I have a 50mm that I I hand held in reverse to see how well the macro effect would work. It seemed pretty good so I decided to get a mounting ring to reverse the lens on the camera. Amazon came up with a bunch of options and the one I got set me back the enormous total of $8!

The simple answer is that it works. It is a little inflexible to use compared to something designed for the task but it does work. The depth of field is extremely shallow and you get some odd distortion across the edges of the image. Obviously there is no focus or exposure control. I just set the camera to aperture priority mode and dial in the normal f/1.8 of the lens and the exposure seems to work out pretty well. Then it is a case of moving the camera around to get focus. Not something I am going to do a lot but, for $8, I don’t have to worry about getting a lot of use out of it!

32 Bit HDR

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While HDR might be a topic that causes all sorts of heartache for some people (they either love it or loathe it), I find it to be a really useful tool in some situations. I have played around with some really over the top processing in the past just for the fun of it but my main interest has been in getting an image that can cope with the wide range of lighting that sometimes shows up in images. While I have experimented with some of the third party HDR packages, I have ultimately ended up using the HDR Pro functionality of Photoshop.

This has been working okay for me but I was always a little less than satisfied with the results. I have understood that the HDR merging process is only the first part of the technique and then the Develop settings in Lightroom (or ACR) are required to make the whole thing work a lot more effectively. However, the slightly flatter look along with a level of desaturation that it was hard to bring back meant I was almost there but not quite.

A recent change that has been introduced and which it took me a while to get around to playing with was the 32 bit HDR approach. In this, the original files are merged to create a 32 bit TIF file. Getting to this from Lightroom required me to tweak my settings slightly. I always had the file edit settings laid out to make a PSD file. I had to tweak them to make TIF the preferred file. I have to remember this so that I don’t always have TIF output instead of PSD which seems to have a smaller file size.

Once you get into HDR Pro, the choice in the tab at the top covers whether you want 8 biit, 16 bit or 32 bit output. I had previously been using 16 bit. This includes a lot of sliders that give you options as to what you want the output to look like. If you change to 32 bit, there is a single slider. It shows you an effect of changing the white point but I don’t think it actually changes the output file. You decide whether any ghost removal is required as with the 16 bit file and then click to get it on its way. Once the final file is created, I just save it and go back to Lightroom.

Here, the Develop module is changed in its functionality. You can make some pretty aggressive changes with the sliders compared to a normal RAW file. You can work with the exposure, the shadows and highlights and the contract as well as using the Clarity and Vibrance to punch up the image. The nice thing is that the results are a lot more natural looking. You don’t have the really crazy styles and you don’t have the flat look that sometimes is the result with the traditional approach.

HDR is not a huge part of what I do but I am interested in having a better result. I am not interested in investing in new software to achieve this when it is an infrequent issue for me and not usually something that a client cares about. However, the fact I can now do a better job with the software I already have is a great step forward. As for these three examples, the top is the new process, the middle is the old way and the bottom is using Lightroom to try and get detail from a single RAW file.

SF City Hall

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A meeting in the heart of San Francisco meant a bunch of our team were meeting downtown. A few of us got there a little head of the meeting and, with a couple of minutes available, I wanted to check out the City Hall building since it was only a couple of blocks away. As an old City, San Francisco has some classic architecture and this is no exception. For some reason, despite the numerous times I have been to the city, I have never been to City Hall before.

A group of school kids were playing some orchestral music in the main hall and plenty of family members were there. I wandered around taking a look. Since I didn’t have my normal cameras, the phone had to serve duty. Fortunately, that also allowed me to try another one of the 360 panoramas. I suspect I shall be carrying another camera with me when I am next in the area.