Well the Adelaide Zombie walk has been and gone. Its one event Ive been Photographing since 2008 so it’s my 5th outing but this time I took a fair bit of video with my DSLR as well as still photography. I was also fortunate enough to be invited to the “Official” Photographers group.
You would be surprised how much preperation goes into photographing the event and even more suprised by the amount of time spent after the walk has finished. For those that aren’t real Zombies you just remove your Zombie outfits, wipe off the makeup and you move on. For people taking photos and even more so for those taking videos, there are many days, weeks ahead going through footage and video and getting it all together.
So first up are the Photos which I managed to get online within about 24 hrs of the walk > Link HERE for the full gallery
Dont forget that unwatermarked digital images facebook size or suitable for small 4×6 prints are available for the low price of $12 with 20% proceeds going to Foodbank. Larger sized prints are available at varying prices
It’s so easy to procrastinate, so when I found out about the International Rode Video competition that was just about to close I made a commitment that I would get an entry in come rain or shine.
Those who found out early about it had 2 months to film and edit. I had one week.
First thing to do was to brainstorm ideas for a short 30 sec-2 min video that contained a Rode Microphone. There were no doubt going to be plenty of band/performer videos being entered so I needed something different. I needed something that could be shot and edited in the short time frame and given other commitments ( lectures, assignment and driving the kids around ) I finally had an idea. With just 2 days to go I set up and shot the animation sequence in the afternoon and then late that evening asked my daughters to assist with playing the acting roles and voices. I did a rough edit that night and the final edit the following day.
It’s got plenty of room for improvement but at least I managed to get it done and submitted. Here’s hoping others like the video.
Always on the lookout for new challenges I started looking at expanding from Still Photography to Video when I got the 5DMk2. I soon realised it is a giant leap and whilst a background in Photography knowing about apertures, framing and lighting is beneficial, video adds a whole new range of issues to overcome and things to learn. It is 30 years ago I was started shooting Video and filmed a few weddings, but in those days it consisted of putting a large unwieldy camera that then hooked into a seperate VHS Tape deck. Cameras were mounted on a tripod and just left there. The footage wasn’t great quality and editing was difficult.
Thirty years later and good quality video production is affordable but you need more than just equipment. In 2011 I decided it would be beneficial to invest some time doing some more formal training. I headed back to life as a Full time student and enrolled at Adelaide College of the Arts in a “Film and television Production” course. A lot has been learnt so far, but this is only the start.
Every day I ask myself and my children
” What did you learn today ? “
If you don’t learn something new every single day you are being lazy.
Well into the Adelaide Fringe now which started late February. I shot some photos of the Fuse Festival which is for up and coming bands giving thme guidance and direction in the Music Industry
For the first weekend in March we start with the Clipsal 500 for Motorsport enthusiasts as well as some great concerts nside the Clipsal event. Thursday saw a Free concert featuring some of Adelaides best local bands. I coultn catch the whole event but I did manage to see 3 of the acts
The Schedule for bands is now out as well as the final additions to the lineup with 20 new groups added so you can plan whether to get a 1 day /3 day /4 day pass.
The best place to find out is the Womad Website where you can sample some of the music/video of the performers.
Seemed like only last month I was at the Gov watching Tex Perkins.. Hold on I was.. with Tex touring in September with his band The Dark Horses.
This time though he was back with the band I’m more familiar with, The Cruel Sea. Being the proud owner of all the Cruel Sea CDs and seeing them a few times whilst living in Melbourne I was pretty stoked to get access to the gig to take photos for Faster Louder. It’s been over 10 years I reckon since I last saw them live, as these days they don’t get together and tour very often, but the way they played no one would have guessed the long breaks between performing. With such a large selection of great tracks to select from the nights set list was pretty sweet. The Full Gallery of images can be found HERE < Clicky
One of the issues with doing timelapse with a DSLR is the wear and tear on the shutter. If your final output is at say 25 frames per second, then you need 100 images to get 4 seconds of footage or to be more sensible 1000 images to get 40 seconds.
Now remember that the shutter on a typical DSLR is rated at between 75,000 and 150,000 actuations depending on model. This is the MTBF ( mean time before failure ) so you might get less, you may get more. To replace a Shutter is in the order of $400 so you can see where I am going hopefully. Using a DSLR for timelapse can be an expensive exercise so unless its essential you may want to consider what equipment you use. For Night timelapses you really don’t have many options as nothing beats a decent DSLR such as a Canon 5D for low noise at long exposures.
But what about daytime shots ? I recently purchased a Canon G12 for just this reason. It has manual Controls and most importantly it shoots RAW format. This high end P&S camera is mirrorless so there is no shutter being worn out.
There is an inbuilt miniature function in the camera itself that does a fake Tilt Shift video similar to that used by time lapse animators such as Keith Loutit but it has limitations and lots of them. You select miniature Video mode, you select a band that will remain in focus and you then select whether to run at 5x, 10x or 20x speedup. It effectively records a video with missing frames and blurs the area above/below the band you select. The resultant file is a MOV file that you can play straight out of the camera. Impressive for what it is, it’s no match for REAL Tilt Shift or even normal timelapse then applying fake Tilt shift in Photoshop however I’m sure its sufficient for some of you that dont want to get too technical.
What I wanted to do is traditional Time lapse with the G12 mounted on my Motion Timelapse Rig ( Dynamic perceptions with an MX2 Dolly Engine ). First issue I had was the G12 has a 2.5mm TRS connection for the remote release and the cable for my DLSR is one of the Canon propietary ones. I have ordered a 2.5mm to 2.5mm TRS cable, but it hasnt arrived yet so what to do ?
I mounted the G12 on the timelapse Rig but there was no communication between the camera and the Dolly so there were times that the camera was taking a shot as the Dolly was moving. Not ideal but since I was shooting at 1/160 of a second it didn’t matter too much.
There is no inbuilt Intervalometer so time to break out into CHDK ( Canon Hack Development Kit ) – Link here which unlocks new functions for quite a few Canon cameras. It is not Canon supported so use it at your own risk – You really need to READ up on this if you intend on using it. CHDK has problems also in that it wont load into memory cards larger than 4 Gig and if shooting RAW a 4 gig card will only hold about 270 images ( about 10 secs worth of footage ). Here’s where it gets technical and Tricky. Ive got a 32 gig SD card so what I needed to do was create 2 partitions. A small 2 Meg FAT partition to load CHDK from and then a 30 gig FAT32 partition for the images. Stereo data maker (SDM ) assists with this ( Link here ) , but it is quite complex. Basically you need to keep changing the active partition on your card and you need to do this via the SDM utility. You load CHDK onto the small 2 Meg partition, then you need to swap active partitions and remove and reinsert the SD card, then put another copy of CHDK into the root folder as well as any Scripts you want to access. I wanted to use the Intervalometer Script – Link here
When you use your SD card if you just turn on your camera it will complain that there is not enough space to save any images as it will have booted off the 2 meg partition. You need to turn the camera on using the PLAY button then select firmware update and run the CHDK firmware and then load the intervalometer Script. For the video I tested this with I set the interval to 1 second. To get maximum battery life I framed the camera Set the script running and then turned off the LCD screen. I managed to get over 1000 shots and the battery was still going although I doubt it would have lasted much longer.
The next problem comes from when you want to use the images. You need to load up SDM again and change the active partition back to the large FAT32 partition to be able to see your images. I imported them into Lightroom, but yet another issue. LRtimelpase doesn’t seem to like RAW files from the G12 so I couldn’t run any Deflickering. Thankfully there wasnt much to start with but hopefully someone will find a way for that to work. I exported the images to a MOV file in Lightroom using the LRtimelapse Video templates at 25FPS TL then combined the 4 seperate movie files along with some still images into WLMM ( Windows Live Movie Maker ). WLMM is fairly basic and cant do half the stuff I can do with Adobe Premiere CS4 which I also have but for quick results it does the job.
I could write a lot about the Grates as they are one of the most Awesome Australian bands that is currently touring. I first caught the Grates at The Gov in 2008, then at HQ in 2009, The Thebby supporting The Hives in 2011 and then this show so you know I like them.
The Lead singer Patience Hodson has to be seen to be believed so rather than me rant on I suggest you check out the Video below.
The Juke Joint is the highlight of the Annual Blues festival held in South Australia each year under various names. This year it was the Backwater Blues and Roots festival which ran for over a week at various venues around Adelaide and some country/regional areas also. I had previously photographed the 2008 and 2009 event which was held in the old Queens Theatre. In 2010 the event moved to light square and I didn’t attend that year. I was looking forward to attending this year and was there shooting for “faster louder”. It was an early start to the evening which started off with Adelaide band the Streamliners. These guys have been around for a while and put in a pretty solid performance. Next up was Old gray Mule which was pretty cut down blues with just guitar and drums. Third act was Chris Wilson who is quite a renowned Harp player from Victoria.Joining Chris on stage were local guys Rob Eyers on Drums and Sweet baby James on Guitar. Being a fellow Harp player I really enjoyed listening to Chris blast out some Boogie Blues.
The Highlight for me though was The Mason Rack band. So much energy from all the band members and they swapped instruments a few times as well – sort of a Round Robin. Gravelly Vocals, Slide Guitar, Manic bass and a Solid beat made for a great show. Even the Beer kegs got a percussive work out at the end of the performance. Highly recommended to see these guys if they are playing locally to you.
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