Personal watercraft from a boat

D

DCSensui

Well-known member
Shot this for our upcoming show.

It's a couple of personal watercraft shot from an 18-foot boat on the open ocean. Lots of movement -- hope you guys don't get sick watching it. Lots of changing detail.

When shooting at f16 I noticed a terrible drop in sharpness (the sunrise shot). I'll have to test that again to make sure.

There was some color correction done to make it consistently warm but nothing too far from the original.

It's h.264 codec, downsized to 720p. The original was 1080p30.

http://www.hawaiigoesfishing.com/videos/pwc_test.mov
 
It looks good Dean. You have some nice shots.
Hawaii... I'd say you have a LOT of awesome stuff to shoot man!

Yes, f16 will be an issue with defraction. Like most cameras, I'd stay clear of closing down the aperture that amount. I'd rather sacrifice shutter speed. You can always buy extra ND filters if needed.

My JVC HD100 was horrible at f16, very soft.
 
Gotta love "magic hour." Noticed some noise in some of the beginning shots (in the life vests and dark shorts) - did you gain up or underexpose and bring it up in post?

Loved the moving shots! Show that to anyone doubting the strength of the codec.
 
Kenn Christenson said:
Gotta love "magic hour." Noticed some noise in some of the beginning shots (in the life vests and dark shorts) - did you gain up or underexpose and bring it up in post?

Loved the moving shots! Show that to anyone doubting the strength of the codec.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Kenn. I probably had it gained up at 9 dB and brought it down in post. The light was changing fast and I started off at 18 dB in night conditions prior to launch, then turned down the gain as we went along.

I'm still getting used to this camera but in a very short time I'm finding there's less to dislike about it. Every camera has its weaknesses and there's usually a way to overcome most of them.

Right now the only shortcoming is the camera's lack of a pre-record cache. Record time per SxS card, battery life and lens controls are all satisfactory. The codec seems very robust, much better than what I had expected. And the CMOS shutter hasn't exhibited any of the terrible distortions I was led to believe would happen under the conditions I shot.

The card selector button should have a better guard over it to prevent inadvertent card switching, which happened that day. And it would be nice to have some way of interrupting the preview, rather than have to wait for the programmed clip preview time to elapse before being able to shoot.

SteveT...

Thanks for the warning about small aperatures. I'd never seen anything that bad with 35mm cameras -- or any other camera -- so this is a first.

As for the scenics, there were some other things happening around us later in the day. During a brief on-water interview I heard a rather loud "swoosh" sound about a hundred yards away. A humpback whale had surfaced to take a breath right nearby.
 
Thanks for the video Dean, this is some of the nicest footage I've seen from the camera. The first few shots were grainy and put me off slightly but once you were on the water it looked great :thumbsup:
 
Thanks, Booth.

We started off very early in the morning and the gain was set at +9. As we got underway the sky lightened up and I was able to get back to zero gain. I should have set it for -3 later in the day but then I started getting queasy and wasn't thinking all that straight.

This camera has been exceeding many of my expectations so far.
 
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