Creativity to Spare is a Video Podcast designed to instruct, showcase, and inspire creativity. Our purpose, is to honor the DIY spirit and to encourage others in their creative pursuits. Projects, helpful tips, and interviews will be featured in the fields of digital filmmaking, photography, and music. With this podcast and this companion website we will help you get the most out of your creative pursuits.
This is a short movie I did for a competition. It features stop motion animation using istopmotion for Macintosh OSX ($49). This entire movie was done in 48 hours from idea to final edit, including sound effects and foley, voiceover, and an elaborate title sequence done with a still camera and quicktime pro in a technique similar to the time lapse episode. The lighting is right out of episode 2, all work lights and diffusion. So here is an example of my ideas at work.
There are several ways to do Time Lapse Photography, my favorite involves using a Digital Still Camera and a controller. Once the photos are taken, I demonstrate how to to stitch the photos together into a finished movie. You could also use a Digital Video Camera with controlling software to do Time Lapse.
You will need a digital still camera, a Tripod or other alternative, And it will help if you have software within the camera menus or as a separate program in a computer to control the timing/interval. I use a Nikon D-100 (I just realized I said the wrong thing in the video / I was talking into a Canon doing a handheld self interview, oops). I purchased for my camera a Controller called the MC-36 also from Nikon. It will let me set an interval and also set delays and how many pictures up to 999 or until I stop it. This is a much better solution than I used to use. You can manually control this by pressing the shutter button or use some other remote cable, but it will be long and difficult to keep the timing even. My friend Victor has done this method and I have seen some other stop motion animations which are similar to time lapse.
My previous rig was a Laptop with Nikon Capture Control software. It had it’s benefits, like being able to see how the shots were turning out as they went and also remote control of all the camera functions such as Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO and when should it focus. But it had a few big problems, one was hauling around a laptop and leaving it attached during the whole shoot. The battery life of the laptop could also be problematic. The other major problem was in that the camera had to download each photo down slow old USB 1.1 to the computer. This would add a lag in the sequence.
The advantages of the new rig is portability, battery life, and no lag in the sequence, it will store right to the memory card and as long as the camera buffer can keep up with the rate. I’ve tested it down to 1-fps(the quickest rate on the controller) and it did fine with fully charged batteries at Normal quality and Small picture size. If I increase the quality I would have to slow the rate.
There are many new cameras that have Time Lapse built in. The Nikon D-200 and several of the smaller Point and Shoot Nikon Cool Pix cameras and Canons. I would prefer having all the individual frames instead of having the camera stitch the movie into a .MPG for me, which is something a few new cameras might do. What the feature might be called is just Interval. Having the individual frames will allow you to choose the size of the output movie up to a very High Definition size depending on the Megapixels of the camera. Also you can select the Frame Rate: Movies are shot at 24 Frames Per Second and Video is at 29.97 FPS.
Once you transfer the images into your computer into a separate folder, you will need QuickTime Pro. Which is $29.99 for Mac OSX. Once in there you will go to file and open image sequence. Select the first image in the sequence, and the FPS. You might not be able to play back the resulting file smoothly depending on it’s size and how fast your hard drive is. Don’t worry, you now will select export quicktime movie and select the Codec. The selection will depend on what you want to do with the footage, if you are bringing it into another editor than you may want to match the quality and codec of any other footage. Now you can open and play the finished exported file.
Another route to go is with a Digital Video Camera and controlling software. I tested out Boinx Software’s iStopMotion for Mac OSX. You can try the program out with a free 1 week license on their site. It worked fairly well. I’m disappointed at the huge price jump for High Definition output. It goes from $49 for Standard Definition to $499 for HD. And the quality of the sensor in most Video camera’s can’t match a Digital SLR. But in good lighting it is fine. The program really shines for Stop Motion animation which is something I’m going to explore sometime in the future.
For Windows you could try Stop Motion Pro which is also available with a free trial.
To take pictures of lightning you need two main things. A tripod (or some alternative – see episode 1) and a long exposure time of about 10-15 seconds. This is will allow enough time for you to catch a bolt or maybe two. The problem with leaving the exposure open that long is that a great deal of noise will be generated by your digital camera’s sensor, this is one nice thing about film photography, no long exposure noise. This problem is slowly getting better with digital, especially is you are using the right settings on your digital camera. The setting you need to use is called Noise Reduction it might even refer to it as Long Exposure NR. This will allow the camera’s built in software to analyze the photo to find and remove any noise generated by the long exposure. What creates the noise? Some of it is dust on the sensor, some of it is guesswork, some of it could be created by the rounding error from low light exposure. So the Noise Reduction will look for suspect pixels and remove them. It works surprisingly well.
The method for turning this feature on will vary depending on your camera. On my small Sony digital point and shoot camera it is automatically turned on when manual exposure times get above 1 second. For my Nikon Digital SLR it is a feature that has to be turned on in a menu.
If you forgot to turn NR on all hope is not lost. Programs like Adobe Photoshop have a noise removal feature that can work some wonders on the digital noise. The setting I use in Photoshop is called Dust and Scratches and is under the pull down heading of Filters>Noise>. I set this to about 1-2 pixels. And you can preview the results.
Enjoy the stormy season, and stay safe. Keep your camera and yourself under a safe, dry place at a good distance.
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Lighting is the second most important thing to making your independent movies better. The most important thing is sound; more episodes will follow on this. If you want people to take your work seriously or even just look at it, you usually need to have more than just available light when shooting indoors.
Lighting systems for film and video are very expensive. By using lights that are available at a home improvement store, you can get similar results to the expensive kits with just a little bit of work. One note of caution about using these lights or for that matter any lights; be careful! These things will get extremely hot and should not be touched with out leather gloves on. Follow all the safety warnings on the lights about their handling. These lights are halogen lights and when aimed directly at a subject produce very harsh shadows.
One technique is to bounce the harsh direct light off a wall or ceiling. This will spread the source of illumination. The larger the light source the nicer the light will look.
The other technique is to use something to diffuse the light source. It’s basically the difference of a bare light bulb and using a lamp shade. The light from a light bulb without a shade is very harsh and direct, the lamp shade will soften the light and also spread out the size of illumination. So how can this be done with these large halogen work lights. I’m a photographer so I have some tools from portraiture. I sometimes use a white portraiture umbrella. The light will shine through the white material of the umbrella creating an effect similar to a soft-box. Attaching the umbrella to the stand can be done with a clamp. Another diffuser to try is a chinese lantern. I keep mine flat and clamp it to another stand in front of the light. The least expensive option is to use parchment paper. This is the same stuff used for baking, and is therefore designed to handle the type of extreme temperature these lights put off. Pull off a piece of this paper and use a clothes pin to attach it to the light. Make a curved shape to allow for a larger surface. Again think lampshade.
I’ve been using these lights for a couple of years now and have produced several movies with them. Most recently a commercial submitted for the Heinz Ketchup contest.
Sure most people in the movie and lighting industry might look down on this, but now you have saved some money for something really important, like a 3 chip camera.
This episode shows 3 alternatives to Tripods for better Digital Photos and Digital Video.
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Traveling with a Tripod is very difficult. Not only is the bulk and weight of the tripod annoying, but with airplane travel it is even more difficult to get through security. So here are 3 possible solutions.
The first is to use a small bag of some product, such as rice or beans from the grocery store. This can be placed on just about any surface regardless of how uneven it is. Then place the camera on top of the bag and press it into material. You can modify this design with a fabric bag with your choice of filler that might look nicer. They also make nice gifts to the creative in your life.
The second is to use a water bottle. The Tripod connection on the bottom of most cameras is a standard 1/4″ #20 thread. So you need to find a short bolt to go through the cap of the water bottle. I have seen this design around on the internet for a while, I’ve made a modification by using 1/4″ neoprene coated washers. Use one washer on each side of the cap and place the bolt up through the top of the cap, with the neoprene of the washer facing the bottom of the camera. Screw this into the bottom of the camera. This can also be used handheld with a small digital video camera to allow a bit more stabilization.
The third is to use string and a 1/4″ #20 eye bolt. Attach the bolt to the camera with the string attached to the ring of the eyebolt. Stand on the string and pull the string upward to create a more stable image than with handheld. Keeping the camera’s own electronic or optical stabilization on will help this even more.
Creativity to Spare is a Video Podcast designed to instruct, showcase, and inspire creativity. Our purpose, is to honor the DIY spirit and to encourage others in their creative pursuits. Projects, helpful tips, and interviews will be featured in the fields of digital filmmaking, photography, and music. With this podcast and this companion website we will help you get the most out of your creative pursuits.
