how do I add photographs?

dregenthal

dregenthal

Veteran
I'm kind of wondering if anyone has any experience using old photographs in their production, ala Ken Burns style . . . I've done this before by using hi-rez scans. I've also shot well lit photos with the video cam and achieved a good result.

I'm soon to begin a longer term project that will require a lot of old photographs being included into the piece. Is there any guidance on this or a "preferred method" that anyone is aware of? I'd appreciate any constructive input.

Thanks. David
 
Hi dregenthal, you can use any scanner thats built in the last three or four years. For this purpose there all good enough. I happen to like Epson the best but hp is fine as well. If this is for dv (720x480) then its all math depending on what you want to do with the photos. For Ken burns you need to scan at a resolution that will allow the picture to be big enough so you can move the camera across the frame or zoom in. Thats the camera inside of the nle software. In FCP you bring in a picture and double clik on it to open it in the viewer and then drag it into the timeline and double click on that picture and then in the viewer window open the motion tab and you can set with key frames to move across or zoom in on the picture. It doesn't take much movement to create an nice effect. There are also filters that you can apply to the picture that will help smooth out jaggies if the picture as a lot of sharp edges like a roof line. Go to Effects and then video filters and go down to the flicker filter and apply it. You can open it up and adjust it as needed under filters in the viewer window.

If you have a picture thats only 720x480 and you want to move across it in a certain amount of time and you want to double the time you can double the size or the resolution to get the size you need. Video is at 72dpi so if you doulble the rez it will double the size on screen. Its different than print. Chris and Trish Myere has a couple of good books that show you how to treat photos for video. Creating Motion Graphics or After Effects in Production.

Good Luck
 
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A photographer friend of mine actually made a little setup where he could mount photos and just took pictures of them with his camera, b/c he got a lot more pixels to work with that way.

He also created a little thing using a cup and backlit it with a lamp and placed negatives inside and took pictures of them, and then "exposed" them in photoshop with pretty decent results.

I've not experience with this, but my inclination would be to lean towards taking pictures of them with a decent digital still camera. One, b/c once you have the setup the process will be a lot faster than scanning a bunch of photos in with a scanner. And, also b/c it seems you would end up with a much larger image that you can then have room to work with. vs. a probably lesser pixel count image from a scanner that you may actually have to zoom into beyond 100% in some cases depending on how big the photograph is.

Later,
Jason
 
I like scans into after effects. I have more handles with this workflow than with any other and always wind up treating the stills where I could not have if I had just shot them.
 
Taking pictures of pictures is quick and easy, especially if you have the setup for it so there's no glare off the photographs.

But I wouldn't say it has a higher pixel rate. If anything, scanners will give you more pixels to work with. Any modern scanner can scan upwards of 600 dpi. If you have a 3x5 photo, that translates to 1800x3000, more enough to work with in HD. And if you really wanted to, there are scanners that can do 1200 dpi, which would translate to 3600x6000, which is a staggering resolution. Obviously, picture physical photographs will give you more to work with.

Another good thing about scanners is you can gang them up. Put 4-6 on the bed (depending on the size of the photos) and scan them all at once. You most likely have to rotate them anyways, so it doesn't add too much to your workflow.
 
...to add to Ninja's posted last line, if you have photoshop, the program will take those 4 to 6 ganged-up scans and automatically separate them into individual images saving further time.
 
MovingPic

MovingPic

I have used MovingPic by Stagetools as standalone and as FCP plug-in. Easy to use and perfectly smooth pans and zooms. The easiest way to obtain the "Ken Burns efect".

www.stagetools.com
 
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Scanners do that to. Just load up as many photos as will fit in the scanner and the scanner can perform one scan and automatically separate them into individual images. I use my Epson Perfection 3200 in this way to prepare images for large Ken Burns style slideshows. I use Sony Vegas with the UltimateS plugin to build these - takes seconds to create a beautifully animated 100 shot KB slideshow. From the start of scanning 100 photos to finished product - probably an hour to hour and a half.

Jerry
jvieceli said:
...to add to Ninja's posted last line, if you have photoshop, the program will take those 4 to 6 ganged-up scans and automatically separate them into individual images saving further time.
Click to expand...
 
I recently did a montage of newspaper headlines I had snapped with my digital still cam. I used Microsoft Photostory (free download) to do the "Burns style" montage with transitions and movement. Then I just imported it into Vegas. I like Photostory because you can really work fast with it and can easily modify your 'faux' camera movement on your photo.

I once had planned to shoot some video of a charitable bike rally, found out my Panasonic camera's battery was dead and used my Nikon still to shoot photos instead. I got home and whipped up some opening and closing titles, added some music and it really turned out pretty cool. More importantly, the bikers dug it.
 
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