So I have this four wheel pedal powered cart that I got about 9 months or so ago. It’s a pretty nice cart, but the only problem is that it is quite difficult to pedal the cart on anything put absolutely level ground. So my next project may hopefully be adding an electric motor and batteries to the cart so I can easily drive it around. But, instead of just riding, I’m planning on attaching a camera mount to it so I can use it film stuff as well. I should have more details of the plan by tomorrow.
Posted by g1powermac under Construction, Electronics, Filming | Comments Off
Since today has been quite rainy and I need to work outside to build the track of the camera dolly, I decided to come up with a system that will hold the tripod securely to the moving platform. Here’s what I came up with:
I used three 1.5″ “L” brackets per foot of the tripod. Two “L” brackets are positioned on one side of the foot slightly bent so it can cup the tripod foot, while the other bracket is on the opposite side with a bolt drilled through it. I tapped the hole for the bolt in the bracket so it allows you to tighten or loosen it on the tripod foot. The nylon stop nuts are there only as a grip to allow me to twist the bolt. With a few twists, this setup holds the tripod very securely and should prevent any accidents to happen to my expensive camera rig.
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I did some shooting for some commercials the other day with the 35mm DOF adapter. However, I found all of the dolly shots I did, with the dolly that attaches to my tripod, to be very shaky. There seems to be a couple of reasons for this. First, the optical image stabilizer in my Canon GL2 behaves badly with the adapter so I have to turn it off. Second, the adapter adds a considerable amount of weight to the camera rig causing the cheap dolly rig to vibrate even more. So I had enough of that and decided to build myself a real camera dolly with a metal track. Here’s what I got so far:
As you can tell, I’ve built only the dolly platform. The track will be made out of the two aluminum pipes you see below the dolly. Interestingly enough, the dolly will roll very smoothly on the pipes, even with the pipes just on the ground and not attached to each other.
So here’s how I built the platform. The platform itself is 2 feet square made out of three 2 foot long 2″x6″ and four 2 foot long 1″x6″. The outer two 2″x6″ have had 45 degree rip cuts along each edge to allow easy attachment of four “L” brackets that hold each set of wheels at 90 degrees to each other. This allows the wheels to easily roll on a round pipe. The eight wheels are actually skateboard wheels usually used on old school style skateboards. These types of wheels are ideal because they are very soft and cushion the platform. To attach the wheels to the “L” brackets, I first drilled two holes in each bracket and attached the wheels with 5/16″ bolts and nylon lock nuts. I also added skateboard “speed” washers on each side of the wheels so the wheel or skateboard bearings wouldn’t touch the bracket or nut allowing the wheels to rolly freely. All in all, the platform wasn’t all that hard to build, and it rolls very smoothly. I should hopefully be able to build the track this weekend, and I may play with building some form of clamps on the platform to hold the tripod’s feet so it doesn’t fall off.
Posted by g1powermac under Construction, Filming | Comments Off
So today I decided to check out the local book store and picked up this book called “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.“ I read only the first chapter so far, but I must say it’s a great book. It humorously points out the amazingly bad physics in most blockbuster films with some nice technical detail including real mathematics. I hope to maybe leverage the info in this book to make very realistic films in the long run.
Posted by g1powermac under Filming, Interesting Stuff | Comments Off
I was playing around with SoundTrack Pro (part of Apple Final Cut Suite) to record voice overs for commercials. I use a M-Audio MobilePre USB preamp and two nice condensor mics for the recording. The MobilePre also has headphone and stereo line jacks so you can listen to the audio as you record it. So I setup SoundTrack to use the MobilePre as the recording and monitor device, and I pumped the audio through the MobilePre’s outputs. This allows you to listen to your own voice and hear the background music at the same time without the mics picking up the music. However, when I set this up, the voice track coming through the headphones was horrible, like it was peaking very badly. I triple checked all the settings to make sure the audio wasn’t peaking and even made sure the headphones weren’t to blame by sending the finished audio track back through the headphones, which came out fine. So I decided to try out a different software package to see if that helped. And sure enough, Audacity, the open source sound editor, worked considerably better than SoundTrack Pro but still not 100% better. I truly wonder what is causing this issue…
Posted by g1powermac under Filming | Comments Off
Alright, so I decided to do one more test shot of my 35mm depth of field adapter. It is just so nice of a day today that I just had to do one more shot. So here it is:
The clip was shot with the 85mm F/1.8 Canon FD lens. The camcorder’s aperture was set at a high F stop while the Canon FD lens was fully open. In this footage, you can really appreciate the very shallow depth of field achieved with the adapter. Also, the footage just looks ‘creamy’ which lends a real nice film like look to it. These results are so nice it just makes me want to go out and shoot more random stuff in my yard.
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As promised, here’s the explanation on how I built my 35mm depth of field adapter. First, here’s a close up shot of the adapter with all the parts marked:
Everything on that image is fairly self explanatory. Almost all of the parts I purchased on eBay, minus a few things. Besides my camcorder, I also did not purchase on eBay the 55mm to Canon EOS extension tube step up ring and the holder for the Nikon F3 focus screen. I purchased these parts from Daniel’s site.
The build is also fairly self explanatory as everything just screws together. The trickiest part is the ground glass/focus screen installation. I used Daniel’s static focus screen holder which looks like this:
The focus screen goes inside the square cut out in the holder, and the holder is then placed inside the Canon EOS extension tube with two screws on each side of the holder which expands it just enough to hold it in place. There are two caveats with this, however. First, the shiny side of the focus screen must be facing the 35mm SLR lens. Second, you must place the focus screen the exact flange focal distance from the SLR lens. This is alot easier said than done. I basically put the holder and screen in the tube and manipulated it until I got proper infinity focus. I also had to be very careful not to touch the ground glass during this as a finger print would ruin it.
Also, you maybe wondering what the purpose is of the 55mm polarizer filter with the glass removed. This is so you can twist the body of the adapter to allow the ground glass to be in the same horizontal plane of the camcorder. And since I only wanted the mechanical part of the filter, I got rid of the glass.
So there it is. Any questions on the adapter, just leave a comment.
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Alright, so I can’t resist continually testing my DOF adapter under different requirements. This time I decided to keep the focus steady but move the camera using a simple pan. I used a chain link fence in front of my car to show the shallow depth of field. Also, if you notice, the background behind the car is also blurred. I’d never get that kind of shallow DOF using the stock lens on the Canon GL2. The footage was shot using the Canon FD 85mm lens (the footage is heavily compressed which makes it choppy):
Posted by g1powermac under Filming | Comments Off
I got in a Canon FD 85mm f/1.8 lens late last night and decided to test it out on the DOF adapter during this morning’s golden hour. Here’s the results:
Doesn’t that look nice? This was actually shot without using the ND filter setting on the Canon GL2. However, it took quite a bit of tweaking to get a nice looking shot without grain coming from either the ground glass or the camcorder itself. The best way to avoid the grain is to make sure you frame your shot with a minimal contrast range. Like, do not shoot something that is dark with a bright background behind it. The background will be washed out yet the foreground will be dark and grainy caused by the camcorder.
Major rule of thumb: if you see grain on the LCD screen on the camcorder, you’ll really see grain on bigger screens. So when framing the shot, try to get rid of all grain on the LCD screen.
Posted by g1powermac under Filming | Comments Off
I decided to fiddle around with the adapter outside to see if I can get it to work without the hideous grain. I found a nice combination of settings to get a halfway decent shot without resorting to ND filters. I set the 35mm lens aperture all the way open and put the Canon GL2 in ND filter mode. With some fiddling of the GL2’s aperture, I was able to get a nice image. Here’s the shot starring my dog:
This was shot using a Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 lens. As you can see, there’s some issues with this method. Any areas with high contrast get a bit blown out and get some chromatic aberrations (the blue haze). I’m not 100% sure what is causing this, but I suspect it is because there is just way too much light hitting the ground glass. As you can also tell, I shot it holding the camera. This really was not easy as the whole rig must way about 10lb and the center of gravity is totally off which makes any of the handles on the GL2 useless. I definitely recommend using a tripod or other form of stabilizing system with this kind of rig.
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