Make one camera do the job of two or three. I’ve been thinking about this possibility for a while. And now I’ve figured some of it out.
In this test i’ve captured a couple of my favorite musicians performing at our local restaurant. It’s the Millers on guitar. Robin Miller the father and Eric Miller the son. You can hear the magic as you can see they ‘get’ each other. Almost as if they can read each others musical mind. This song was written by Robin. I think the title is Change in the Weather. It’s a crowd pleasing winner of a song.
Because we now have the ability to shoot in 4K during capture we have a video that’s four times the size of 1080p. What this enables is moving around inside the frame which means we can create Ken Burns movement effects and zoom in for close-ups in different areas of the frame. It’s like having the look of several cameras from a single camera position.
The video below was captured with the Lumix GX8 and the 12-35mm f2.8 lens in 4K. Please don’t worry too much about the color as I shot this on the spur-of-the-moment hand-held while hanging out. The video was processed in Adobe Premiere Pro 2015.
Robin & Eric Miller live in Sedona, Arizona
Timeline from Adobe Premiere Pro. I copied the video layer two times and used one of the layers as close up of Robin and the second copy as Eric. The bottom layer was the two of them and the overall stage.
If another camera was added with a different lens you could rove the room getting even more angles and tight detail shots for a full production look to the video. This just practice and play to learn new techniques.
By the way, I would also have better sound in a real production. Sound for this video was captured on the fly by the camera with a little tweaking in Premiere… and it ain’t too bad!
Creative possibilities abound in this new 4K world. What are you doing with it?? Let me know…
I got all the way up the hill to the cliff dwellings and realized I left the fisheye from Lens Baby in the car. Gotta tell you I almost didn’t go get it. I also gotta tell you it probably isn’t such a great idea to run 15 minutes up a steep hill at 7500+ feet. I was sucking some serious wind when I got back up to the top.
Annnnyy waayy… I thought I try some different things with the fisheye lens because of the relatively small spaces in the caves. Once I got my breath back I mounted it on the Lumix GX8 and here’s what I started to play with.
Here’s a ‘straight’ Circular Fisheye image from the dwellings. The full fisheye effect is a little cut-off because of the micro 4/3rds format.
Gila cliff dwellings photo captured in a different way with the Lens Baby
Then I thought I’d try to push the envelope a bit further an do a panorama. Here’s the individual captures…
And the stitched image… Don’t try to have Photoshop stitch this for you it locked up on me. I guess the circular edges gave it fits so I did the stitching the old fashioned way… by hand with masks.
I enjoy trying new and different things and was surprised by the final result.
I really enjoy the field of view you can achieve with a panoramic photo. The Lumix GX8 is pretty solid with the in-camera stitching when you need a quick capture of the scene for sharing… And with this version going to print. There are still some occasional stitching errors in areas with lots of confusing crossing details or areas with hardly any detail but I had to look really, really hard to find a small error in one of the tree clumps… Sweet!
This is the view on the way to Cathedral Rock in Sedona, Arizona. Heading down Verde Valley School Road in the Village of Oak Creek (view of the right side of Cathedral Rock)
Here’s a tip that some people don’t think of when creating Panos. Turn the camera to the vertical position as you make your capture. This will give you some more vertical room. You can also capture a next ‘row’ of image and stitch them together in Photoshop or your favorite Pano program.
One more thought to help get smoother stitching… Point your feet toward or slightly past where you would like the pano to end. Then pivot your stomach muscles to the beginning of the captures and use your stomach muscles to move the camera with your elbows tucked in and the camera touching your forehead.
When we are out and about we run across people who have character. People who have lived long and are happy to share about their lives if you only open the dialog. Over the years I have met or seen many people that I would have liked to have photographically captured an image of but was too nervous to ask.
I’m finding that I get more interesting conversations and life stories when I ask and share my wish to capture an image. People who know me might say, “Bob, SHY??! You’ve got to be kidding me?” But I have let situations go by where I just didn’t feel comfortable asking to create an image. usually it was all in my own head and I’m getting better thanks to spending time with Levi Sim. Levi is a wonderful person who connects with people in a great way. I enjoy his techniques for getting to know people and making them comfortable in front of the camera in a nano-second. When I was with Levi in Chicago I watched as he approached a guy on a motorcycle, in traffic, and had him maneuvering his bike in order to get a better background. The guy was happy to do it… Remember this is in traffic, in Chicago.
It was a wonderful conversation my wife and I had with Gary. He shared that he was born and raised in the desert. He loved tramping through the high Sierra Mountains where Ansel Adams created many of his iconic images. This came about because I had my camera (Lumix GX8) and after chatting with him asked if I might make a few exposures. He was flattered and we had a very pleasant time.
I had the 20mm 1.7 lens on and shot wide open. ISO 3200 This is a sweet piece of glass. I added just a bit of blur in the background to render the other people unrecognizable.
Word is eyes are the window to the soul. I find I enjoy seeing the results of the aging process on hands. Love the story I see here in Gary’s hands.
I always enjoy the challenge of photographing musicians live on stage and the additional challenge of turning the images into art for the ‘Wall of Fame’ at Sound Bites Grill. Last Saturday night it was Jeordie and the Mixology Project. Mix together a sweet voice with some fun, and moving, original music, fine musicians and you end up with a great evening’s entertainment.
Heeere’s Jeordie and the band.
Jeordie right there front and center. Doktor Mo on drums. Chad on lead guitar. Philip on flute. Tony on bass.
Each musician was selected from their photo and placed in the frame. Adobe Photoshop was used for the extractions. Drop Shadows, Inner Glow, Textures and Layer Bend Modes were incorporated in creating the art look for the WOF image. Autographs and the message were signed the night of the performance with black marker on white paper. These were scanned then imported and sized. The signature layers were inverted then the Blend Mode of those Layers was changes to Screen to allow the black to disappear and allow just the ‘white ink’ be left for the viewer.
All images were captured with the Lumix GX8 and the 35-100mm f2.8 Lumix Vario lens. (That’s the 70-200 35mm Full Frame equivalent)
A similar treatment in Photoshop of Jeordie by herself.
I also produce ‘straight’ images of the artists for marketing to the press in color with no artwork. I make the conversions to Black and White so there will be good solid contrast and definition. I’ll show you a couple of those tomorrow.
All files were captured with approximately the same settings on two different cameras with the Lumix 35-100mm f2.8 lens. Even though I worked with the Lumix GH4 for most of the captures I had brought the new Lumix GX8 to test in these lighting conditions and both of these were captured with the GX8… HMMMM food for thought.
Camera settings. 1/80th to 1/100th sec. f2.8 ISO 3200 Aperture Priority – 2/3 stop Exposure Compensation. Files then opened in Adobe Camera RAW and shadows opened a bit and highlights pulled down just a bit. The art effect was created using multiple texture images, Blend Modes and Layer Masks in Photoshop a process I call Photo-Synthesis.
For infrared conversion of my cameras I use LifePixel. Infrared allows you to put an older camera to use and opens up a new time time of day for productive image creation.
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Lightning, waterdroplets, sound, time-lapse, HDR sequences, smiles and much more control for your camera!
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