Banff/Jasper Wildlife

tflak

tflak

Veteran
Had always wanted to visit the Canadian Rockies and had heard the drive from Banff to Jasper was spectacularly awesome. And it truly is. Got lots of great scenery footage, but decided to do a short video focusing on the wildlife first. Also shot some fantastic, up-close footage of a black bear coming toward me up a gully (to within 15 ft) which isn't included, but that's another story.

Shot with GH1 and the kit lens in 1080. Had considered installing the hack prior to this trip, but decided I really didn't know enough about it at that point.

The tough decision not to take a tripod along really ended up biting me on the fully zoomed-in shots -- included some of those shaky, jello shots only because I really liked the content. Otherwise, am fairly happy with the footage. Hope you like it.

 
"For more information on the Mountain Goat. Please
contact Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa."

Great footage. You're right that a tripod would have been great, but consider a monopod walking staff. It's really compact, and dual purpose. This one is great

http://tinyurl.com/38rq8w2

Looking forward to your bear footage :)

P.
 
WOWWWWWWW is it just me or does those elk look so clear and detailed WOWWW, I dont believe you when you say you didn't use the hack on this footage, this is some of the clearest most detailed footage I have seen on this forum lord Almighty!!!
 
Peter Reynolds said:
Great footage. You're right that a tripod would have been great, but consider a monopod walking staff. It's really compact, and dual purpose. This one is great

http://tinyurl.com/38rq8w2

Looking forward to your bear footage :)

P.
Click to expand...

Hi Peter - Thanks for the link on that monopod.

As for the bear footage...it's a sad story -- short version is there won't be any bear footage due to a a card error. Read on for the long version:

Spotted a black bear maybe 40 yards away working his way slowly down a gully leading right toward me. So I sat down to help stabilize the cam and started shooting.

This was by far the best wildlife footage I'd ever gotten as I just sat there totally still as the bear came slowly toward me. All I could think about was how great this was going to be as he got closer and his head filled the frame. He was about fifteen to twenty feet away when it happened...card write-speed ERROR! Holy crap! I was cussing up a storm (under my breath because the bear was still coming towards me) trying to figure out what to do. This was the first card error I'd ever experienced. Tried just starting another clip, but that didn't work. So I'm fumbling with the camera trying to figure this out while half-aware that I'm way too close to the bear as he slowly passes by me in the gully just 10 feet away. Finally realized I needed to restart the camera, but by this time the bear was just showing me his butt as he lumbered away into the brush.

I was pretty confident in my cards since I was using Sandisk Class 6 Extreme III (from Adorama) and they had always been rock solid. Not sure what caused the error, but I didn't use that card again for the rest of the trip. And after filling 3 more 8GB cards with 1080 footage, that shot remains the only card error I've ever experienced. Go figure. Why not during some mundane scenery shot instead?

If I learned anything from this experience it was that I can get totally lost in the process of getting a great shot; giving little thought to any danger I may be in at the moment. That said, had it been a grizzly I probably would have been a little more cautious from the start.
 
tackleqb said:
WOWWWWWWW is it just me or does those elk look so clear and detailed WOWWW, I dont believe you when you say you didn't use the hack on this footage, this is some of the clearest most detailed footage I have seen on this forum lord Almighty!!!
Click to expand...

It's a great camera even without the hack. I think maybe the somewhat limited DOF on the elk helps create the illusion of more sharpness than might actually be there. Had considered applying some unsharp mask, but actually forgot to even try it.

In the meantime, I've done the hack and will be posting some macro slo-mo of a hummingbird that looks pretty cool using the "C" settings. Hope to have that up in a couple of days.
 
tflak said:
Had always wanted to visit the Canadian Rockies and had heard the drive from Banff to Jasper was spectacularly awesome. And it truly is.
Click to expand...

It's nice to see how a tourist views this area... you start to take it for granted after living here for a while.
 
I'd move to that area in a heartbeat. Used to live in Steamboat Springs, CO and really miss it.
 
Not sure what your editing setup is like, but with Premiere and AE in CS5 you can do some really nice quick stabilizes on. I've done this quite a bit with GH1 footage and while you are still left with some tiny micro-jitters or rolling shutter it certainly has saved some very zoomed shots and makes for an easier viewing experience. My wife and I shot mostly handheld in Africa for a month and it was a great way to get shots steadied in hours rather than days.
 
haakor said:
Not sure what your editing setup is like, but with Premiere and AE in CS5 you can do some really nice quick stabilizes on. I've done this quite a bit with GH1 footage and while you are still left with some tiny micro-jitters or rolling shutter it certainly has saved some very zoomed shots and makes for an easier viewing experience. My wife and I shot mostly handheld in Africa for a month and it was a great way to get shots steadied in hours rather than days.
Click to expand...

Hmm...I'm using Final Cut which has a feature called SmoothCam that I've used on some shots in the past with fairly good results. However, when I tried it with these it stabilized it very nicely, but to my eyes really accentuated the jello and left me with very soft looking footage. So I made the choice of shaky but sharp. Maybe that wasn't the best choice. After you've stared at footage for awhile you can get kind of used to the shaking and it almost starts looking normal. However, to someone looking at it for the first time I'm sure it could be pretty annoying.

I also have After Effects (CS4) and Apple Motion 4 so will take it in those to see if I can get some better results. Thanks for the suggestion.

Have a link to your Africa footage? I'd be interested in seeing it - not just to see the stabilized footage, but I'm sure it would be interesting otherwise.
 
Certainly wasn't complaining about the motion in your footage, just saying that I've had reasonably good luck with minor stabilizing the past with shakey footage :) I have been typically going from 1080 to 720 at the same time so things don't get too soft but do lose some resolution.

The best of our Africa footage is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyY32ajMErI
and if you're into it there are several other regional highlight videos you can get to by clicking on the youtube poster name.

I found the dynamic link features for connecting Premier and AE in CS5 were really fast and flexible for what I wanted so I always heap praise on that feature. All those videos are a mix of my GH1 and my wifes Sony camcorder, so they're a bit of a hardware mix but I'm pretty pleased with how they worked out.
 
haakor said:
Certainly wasn't complaining about the motion in your footage, just saying that I've had reasonably good luck with minor stabilizing the past with shakey footage :) I have been typically going from 1080 to 720 at the same time so things don't get too soft but do lose some resolution.

The best of our Africa footage is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyY32ajMErI
and if you're into it there are several other regional highlight videos you can get to by clicking on the youtube poster name.

I found the dynamic link features for connecting Premier and AE in CS5 were really fast and flexible for what I wanted so I always heap praise on that feature. All those videos are a mix of my GH1 and my wifes Sony camcorder, so they're a bit of a hardware mix but I'm pretty pleased with how they worked out.
Click to expand...

WOW! Great shots, and one right after another. I laughed out loud at the ending on the video you linked to. Will have to watch the others a little later. Nice stuff.

I didn't take your comments about the motion in my footage as complaining. I took it as your trying to be helpful and making suggestions. My reference to "someone" getting annoyed was strictly meant as a generic thing. My kids had even mentioned that the shaky motion was distracting for them.

I actually finally abandoned Premiere and went back to Final Cut due to constant experiences with instability between Premiere and AE using dynamic linking in CS4. Hopefully that has been fixed in CS5 and apparently has since you seem satisfied with it. I have a real soft spot for Premiere because it was the first digital editing app I used starting with Premiere version 1.0. So I was disappointed to have to finally ditch it in order be able to work without feeling like I was walking on egg shells the whole time. And I had a top end system with 16 GB of RAM so it wasn't a matter of not having the juice to run it properly. It was just flaky. Then again, I was doing a lot of green screen keying and heavy compositing with dynamic linking which really put it to the test.
 
tflak said:
He was about fifteen to twenty feet away when it happened...card write-speed ERROR! Holy crap!
Click to expand...

I guess sometimes Mother Nature doesn't want to be recorded. Luckily however,
you also had the the most reliable recording medium available - your memory.
And that will last a lifetime.

Thanks again for your great shots. It was a real visual treat.

Peter.
 
Peter Reynolds said:
I guess sometimes Mother Nature doesn't want to be recorded. Luckily however,
you also had the the most reliable recording medium available - your memory.
And that will last a lifetime.

Thanks again for your great shots. It was a real visual treat.
Click to expand...

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for putting it in that perspective, Peter. How right you are.
 
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