Intervalometry: The Beginning

I love time lapse photography. For several months now I have had the ability to create high quality time lapse footage due to my CHDK hacked Canon G9. For some reason, I have not been taking full advantage of this. That is why I am starting this semi-regular series called Intervalometry, where I will post time lapse video -- semi-regularly. Without further ado, here is some footage shot out of the window at Image Engineers:

Here are a couple of timelapses I did previously: Zürich Timlapse and Infrared Timelapse

Legacy of the Great Aletsch Premiere

On Friday I will be hopping on a plane and flying on over to Washington D.C. My new documentary, Legacy of the Great Aletsch, which I co-directed with Nick Brandestini, is premiering at the DC Environmental Film Festival.

The Great Aletsch GlacierThe Great Aletsch GlacierThis film started shooting back in October 2007 quite suddenly. We were doing some research around the area when we met one of the film's main characters, Art Furrer, by accident. We were eating lunch in Rieder Furka when a man in a cowboy hat began introducing himself to all the diners. We recognized his face from the tourism newspaper sitting on our table. We struck up a conversation with him and the next weekend we were shooting with him in the area around the Great Aletsch Glacier. Scenes from that shoot are peppered throughout the film.

Steve and Nick shooting on the Glacier.Steve and Nick shooting on the Glacier.After that, we returned to the Valais many times to shoot interviews and film footage of the area. The bulk of the story was shot in June 2008 when we hiked from the Jungfraujoch to the Märjelen See. If you haven't hiked with 1000 meters of ice below your feet -- its a breath taking experience.

This film encompasses what I love about making documentaries: spontaneity, education, and new experiences. When we began this project, I knew nothing about the Great Aletsch Glacier. Now, the area feels like home to me. It is the same with Gruyères and the H.R. Giger Museum.

If you happen to be in the DC Area on March 16th, come check out the film. The entry is only three dollars. You can reserve your seat by following the instructions on this page.

(by the way, if you enjoyed the trailer, feel free to pass it around to friends. It is on Youtube and Vimeo.)

From the Archive: Alpine Pastures

This is a very short, verité doc that I made during my first year living in Switzerland. I was shooting web videos for the site geobeats.com at the time. While shooting at the Berggasthaus Aescher, we observed an event that happens once a year:

I am still amazed by how you can feel transported back through time in this country.

"Understanding the Financial Crisis" or "This is Why We're Screwed"

The EconomyThe Economy: Like Flamingos in the SnowThis is one of my rare non-visual-media related posts. It is going to verge on a rant, but ultimately it is more about sharing educational sources with as many people as possible. This is not intended to be blog spam, but a way to share several sources in one place.

I just finished listening to the latest episode of This American Life called "Bad Bank." This episode explains, in regular language, the mess our banking system is in right now. I think what it elucidates is how complex and unstable the situation is. As much as I would like all those banks that made terrible decisions to go out of business, this podcast has shown me how unfeasible that is -- and how there is no miracle solution. 

This latest "This American Life" was a cooperation between them and NPR. It is hosted by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson who have created similarly educational audio about the economy in the past.

Here is a list of podcasts by this group. If you listen to these in order, you can at least have some understanding of why we're screwed. 

Subscribe to This American Life via iTunes1. The Giant Pool of Money

2. Another Frightening Hour About the Economy

3. Bad Bank

Tie these together with a daily listening of:

4. The Planet Money Podcast

What I like about these shows is the excellence of their reporting. They present every side of the argument with a rational approach, they explain the issues clearly, and most importantly, they leave it open for you to form your own opinion. This is brilliant radio.

Subscribe to Planet Money via iTunesIf you learned as much as I did, please think about donating to these public services:

Donate to This American Life

Donate to NPR

Do you know any other great sources for understanding this mess? Leave a comment below.

Why I Make Films.

A room full of rodent bones.There are many reasons why I decided to become a filmmaker. Many of the reasons are fairly normal; The thrill of creating something new, the joy of collaboration, the allure of fame, etc. However, one of my primary motivations is quite different, I think. I make films because of the strange and random situations I get to experience in the pursuit of making a film project. When I am in a unique situation, I always think that I would never have had this experience if I wasn't in this business.

The following is a list of things I have done with the end goal being some kind of motion picture project(in no particular order).

  • Saved Matt Czurchy's pants, so he could go home.
  • Met someone in a parking lot because they had a russian accent.
  • Shoveled Mud until 5am
  • Met friend in London for two hours just to shoot a music video.
  • Sat behind Morgan Spurlock at a swank Hollywood awards show.
  • Went on a very long quest for enourmous wings.
  • Been Backstage at a fashion show.
  • Hiked the longest glacier in the alps with the father of trick skiing.
  • Watched goats walk through a restaurant terrace.
  • Been at a long-out-of-business 50's diner at dawn.
  • Sped through downtown LA, shining a strobelight out of the window.
  • Went to SF to meet the EFF.
  • Drove an hour and a half to give someone pants.
  • Cleaned a room full of rodent bones.
  • Video production with a still camera.
  • Attended a World's Strongest Man competition.
  • Had Sushi with a web startup that eventually went belly up.
  • Had Free champagne and free reign of a hip dance club.
  • Ate Spaghetti with H.R. Giger.

And countless more.

From what I can tell, filmmaking is one of the only jobs that can give such unique experiences while still being the same job. Does that make any sense? 

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About Frame Rates or Why 29.97?

I recently remembered this popular post from my old blog. Since that blog no longer exists, I thought I would repost it here.

Since I wrote this post about a decade ago, many others of done a much better job describing this in detail. I highly recommend the following two videos by Alec Watson from Technology Connections on youtube. The rest of his videos are also great, consider donating to his Patreon

Watch: Compatible Color: The Ultimate Three-For-One Special
Watch: Analog Color TV Wrap-Up--Some extra info

Source: Wikimedia CommonsIt is fairly common knowledge that the video on your TV is playing at 30 frames per second (fps) — unless you live in europe where it is 25fps. However, have you ever thought about why these are the frame rates? Why not 50 or 100? You probably haven’t, but since I think about moving pictures all day I actually know the answer to this.

The main thing I would like to point out, which some of the geekier of you might already know, is that 30fps is just an approximation of the actual frame rate of video in the US. The real framerate is 29.97fps. Why this incredibly strange number you say? Well, i’ll tell you.

In order to make video play back at a fixed rate there needs to be some kind of timing circuit. When television was first beginning, there weren’t any of the high tech silcon-based chips that we used for this task today. So the brilliant engineers back then used the oscillation of AC electricty as the basis for their timing circuit. In the US, electricity cycles at 60 times per second (60hz.) So using half of that gives us the frame rate of 30fps. (In Europe, electricity flows at 50hz. 50/2 = 25fps)

So the frame rate of television was actually exactly 30 frames per second at one point in time. However that all changed when color television was introduced. When a signal for color information was added to the television transmission there was a big problem. The color carrier signal was phasing with with the sound carrier signal because they were very close in the spectrum. This made the picture look un-watchable. The quick fix they came up with was to reduce the framerate by .03fps which moved the two signals out of phase.

We have been stuck with this frame rate ever since.

So I hope you found that educational. If you really want to read about this on a more technical level read the link at the bottom of this story. I checked here to refresh my memory on some of the details.

Technical Description: http://artistoftheyear.broadcastengineering.com/ar/broadcasting_format_conversion/

Also more info on the Wikipedia Page

The Ultimate Flip Mino HD Review

I have shot with the entire range of HD cameras -- from HDV all the way up to Genesis and RED. The first thing that people should know is that the FLIP MinoHD does not compete with these cameras in any way. You can't get professional quality(or even prosumer quality) for 200 bucks. The MinoHD is basically a toy. However, there is something very charming and unique about having a HD camera that will fit in just about any pocket you have. This blog called the FLIP MinoHD the Holga of video cameras. I can agree with that. I have spent several weeks playing with this camera. Here are my impressions:

The Lens
Rear View of Flip Mino HDA camera's lens is one of the most important factors for image quality. If you take into account the cameras cost and that the lens is made of plastic, you can feel free to be impressed by this lens -- but it is still a plastic lens. The most impressing thing about this lens is it's speed. Flip says it is an f2.4 which is quite fast for what is basically a pin hole lens. The lens has a fixed focal length and fixed focus. Flip's specification page says nothing about focal length, but I have compared it to having the equivalent field of view of a 50mm lens on the 35mm format. The focus range is from one meter to infinity. Although, I have noticed that objects slightly closer than 1 meter are acceptably sharp due to the very deep depth of field of the camera.

The Sensor
From the specs page: The sensor is a 1/4.5" sensor with 2.2µm pixels. Compared to ther Standard Def Mino(5.6µm), these pixels are tiny. However, they claim that the HD has lower light sensitivity than the SD version. I am not the kind of guy to do technical tests, but I have been impressed by the low light response of the camera. However, a small pixel size will increase the signal-to-noise ratio of any camera. This is probably the main cause of compression artifacting that I will talk about later. The other thing I have notice about the sensor is its skew. CMOS sensors commonly use rolling shutters, meaning they record horizontal lines from the chip in sequence during a frame. If this read-reset time of the chip is too slow, you can get a 'jelly skew' effect on scenes with fast movement or pans. This is because the top part of the frame is recorded slightly before the bottom. The jelly skew effect of the MinoHD is quite noticeable, especially for such a small chip. But if you are careful, you can avoid it. (Hint: use a tripod, or stabilize the camera somehow)

Audio 
Sound is record in Mono at 44.1kHz and encoded in AAC. The microphone is located just to the right of the lens and is fairly tiny. These aren't the best sound specs in the world, however actually listening to the sound is more than acceptable. It has a tendency to be tinny, and sometimes peaks out.

The Screen
Front View of the FlipMinoHDThe LCD screen on the Flip is probable its worst aspect. The 1.5"(diagonal) screen is tiny! It is squint worthy. Also, the screen resolution is 528 x 132, which is less than half of the recording resolution. The means you can't see all that you are recording. When filming a far off flock of birds, I was just guessing where they were. Also the viewing angle is pretty bad -- If you are not looking straight at it, its difficult to see what is happening.

Ergonomics
The MinoHD is the size of a small cell phone. This is great for portability, concealablity and camera mobility. However, holding the camera is a little bit challenging for adult hands. You hold it by the bottom vertically like you would with a standard 'candy-bar' camera phone. The small size, low-weight and vertical format makes it difficult to keep steady while hand holding. The sensor skew can be noticeable with these little hand held shakes. A pocket tripod of some sort is very helpful.

Controls
The controls on the Flip MinoHD are minimal. They consist of 1 big red record button, 6 multi-purpose capacitive touch buttons, and the power button. The center button is solely for record and stop. There are 4 buttons around the center button. They are left and right arrows(used for navigating the playback menu) and plus and minus buttons(for volume control during playback and digital zoom during recording). The two buttons above the others are a play/pause button(used to play and pause playback and also as an "enter" button for some functions) and a trash button(used to delete individual clips, all clips and by holding it down for 2 seconds, locking and unlocking the ability to delete.) The power button is on the right-hand side of the device. A well designed feature of the touch sensitive buttons is they are back lit. The back lighting turns off for buttons that cannot be used at that time. For instance, while recording, the only the plus and minus buttons are lit because the other buttons have no function during recording.

On-Screen Menu
The flip MinoHD has 3 modes. Record mode, Playback and setup. You will probably only use setup once. It is accessed by holding the record button when he device is starting up. Here you can set the date, time and whether you want the device to make any sounds. Once the device boots up, it starts in record mode. You can do two things in record mode. First, record and pause a recording. While recording you can use the 2x digital zoom. You cannot use the zoom while the device is not recording however, which I find kind of lame. The second thing you can do in record mode is delete the last clip by pressing the trash button. You can enter play back mode by pressing the play/pause button. While in playback mode you can watch clips, navigate between them, delete particular clips, change the volume(with plus/minus buttons), and fast forward and rewind(by holding down left/right buttons). You re-enter record mode by pressing the record button.

Battery 
The camera is powered by an internal lithium-ion battery. You cannot remove it. The Flip specifications page says that the battery lasts two hours of continuous use. I haven't done any scientific tests of this, but have found that you will probably fill the devices memory before the battery runs out. The device is charged via USB either by connecting it to a computer or by purchasing the optional AC adaptor. It charges in 3 or 2 hours depending if it is connected to a computer or to wall power respectively.

Computer Connection
The 'Flip' in the MinoHDI imagine the name "Flip" comes from the action of releasing its hidden USB connector. A switch on the left-hand side of the device causes a full-size USB connector to flip out of the top like a switch blade. The allows you to plug the camera directly into a computer -- no worrying about forgetting cables. When the device is plugged in, it will appear on your computer like any USB storage device. The Flip MinoHD comes with some basic editing software on its memory which you can install. This software is very basic and easy, I won't say much more about it as I don't find it very useful for my needs. For a absolute beginner to video however, it should work fine. The clips are stored in the DCIM folder which means that many software like iPhoto or Aperture will recognize them for importing. I prefer to manage the files manually though. The clips are named VID00001.MP4 in sequence as they are shot. I have found these clips are easily editable in iMovie, FCP 6 and FCP 5(with a little trick). In FCP 5, however, you will have to render the audio.

Video Format
Quicktime calls the flipvideo codec "AVC Coding", which I imagine is a version of Mpeg4 that has been modified by flip to work specifically with the camera. The bit rate is a healthy 10mbits/s. The pixel size is truly 1280x720 square pixels. Despite the decent bit rate, the video doesn't look that good when viewed in its full size. I think this has to do with a combintion of factors. The small pixels, the lens, and some in-camera sharpening all lead to a less than ideal image.

Conclusion

The FlipMinoHD is an awesome little toy video camera. The key word there is toy. If you are expecting to do professional work with it, prepare to be disappointed. If you just want to catch moments of your life in HD, or experiment with video -- it is an awesome gadget. That said, I can envision some professional implementations of it. It would be great for undercover journalism, shooting 'amateur video' for storytelling purposes, or getting a camera in a space that is not possible with a larger camera. I have also recently used to quicly pre-visualize an upcoming short film. I am sure there are more.  Am I happy with my purchase? In one word, Yes.

From the Archive: Freddie Goodtime

This music video was the last project I directed at Brooks Institute of Photography. The song is Freddie Goodtime by my friend Jane Lui. If you haven't heard her music, you should definitely check it out. Freddie Goodtime is a song about an angel who is tired of his angelic life. He wants to shead his wings and enjoy more lascivious human pursuits. Freddie has sent a letter to a friend explaining all of this, but the letter is sent to Jane by mistake. The song is Jane's response to his letter.

The scenes with Jane were shot at Lestat's in San Diego. Freddie's scenes were shot in Ventura. Just like the characters in the song; they have never met. The cinematography was by William Eubank.

One More Thing...

I forgot to mention something else I did recently. In the three weeks since I return from the states, I completely redesigned www.image-engineers.com. Looking for europe based photography, video and multimedia production in the industrial or corporate realms? Check us out.

Especially check out the portfolios page. It uses slideshowpro, which I think is an awesome product.

Holiday Downtime

It's a common phenomenon for blogs to go silent during the Holidays. The cold weather, combined with holiday events and 'beginning of the year malaise', cause the blogosphere to settle in for a long winter's nap. Ok, I have no evidence for this. It's just an excuse for my laziness.

So here is what has happend since my last blog post in list form.

Phew! All caught up!

From The Archive: Need a Screwdriver?

This is a spec commercial I made back in my Brooks days with Crystal Abeel. While experimenting with different in-camera effects, we stumbled upon one of the most fascinating properties of depth of field. If a foreground object is made to go sufficiently out of focus it actually dissappears. This is caused by the circles of confusion being larger than the image plane -- meaning that the object is so spread out optically, that it can't be seen anymore. Anyway, we put together this spec commercial based on this effect. This spot is all one take. The entire effect is in-camera. Shot on a Panasonic SDX-900.