Taking the GH1 into a forest.

Ben_B

Ben_B

Veteran
Well my friends, it's finally happened. I was unable to secure an EX-1 for this weekend's shoot in the woods. I have been shooting most of the film on the GH1 but have used the EX-1 for the forest scenes. Now I am forced to bring the GH1 into the woods for the scene...any thoughts from anyone...do you think things will be ok? It's not an action scene but will have some camera movement in it, but nothing too drastic.

For those of you unfamiliar with this, the first rule of not breaking the GH1's codec is "keep out of the woods."

Looking at Nightlight I think I might be ok...anyone know if they shot 720 or 1080?
 
i think it's hard to say unless you have pics of the scene. you should just play safe. either film it in 720p or 720mjpeg. I had done a scene in a park, everything was fine, but when i panned to keep up with an actor, jogging, it went to poop...luckily it was something that most people won't recognize, but i saw it right away.
 
Shoot the ground, nothing else, all macro shots of inanimate bark-- then you're safe!!:thumbsup:

(jk)


I meant to mention the other day - saw your 'through the waves' (cam comparision)
Very nice work-- I love the split-screen timelapse--one of my favorite gags
Gorgeous location- do you call that home?

Z
 
Ben_B said:
Well my friends, it's finally happened. I was unable to secure an EX-1 for this weekend's shoot in the woods. I have been shooting most of the film on the GH1 but have used the EX-1 for the forest scenes. Now I am forced to bring the GH1 into the woods for the scene...any thoughts from anyone...do you think things will be ok? It's not an action scene but will have some camera movement in it, but nothing too drastic.

For those of you unfamiliar with this, the first rule of not breaking the GH1's codec is "keep out of the woods."

Looking at Nightlight I think I might be ok...anyone know if they shot 720 or 1080?
Click to expand...

Unless you are running, jostling the camera up/down/right/left in a rapid and significnat way, my 'whip pan' test would suggest that you should have no problem, unless of course your typical viewer is the kind that likes to single step frame by frame through your movies (like looking for celebrity costume malfunctions...)... then perhaps there could be a problem.

Other wise, if 'motion' is brief, any 'mud' seems to be swept under the persistence of vision carpet that has allowed humans to preceive 'motion' with a sequence of still images.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Unless you are running, jostling the camera up/down/right/left in a rapid and significnat way, my 'whip pan' test would suggest that you should have no problem, unless of course your typical viewer is the kind that likes to single step frame by frame through your movies (like looking for celebrity costume malfunctions...)... then perhaps there could be a problem.

Other wise, if 'motion' is brief, any 'mud' seems to be swept under the persistence of vision carpet that has allowed humans to preceive 'motion' with a sequence of still images.
Click to expand...

I think his concern is less of whip pans and more of trees and the movement of them.
 
I am confident you won't have any problems because you will know exactly what to do and what to avoid. Just don't whip the camera around like you have ants crawling up your pants. Unless of course you do. Good luck with your shoot. I am sure you will prove a lot of people wrong. Try as many takes as you can, from different angles and different panning speeds just in case.
 
John Caballero said:
I am confident you won't have any problems because you will know exactly what to do and what to avoid. Just don't whip the camera around like you have ants crawling up your pants. Unless of course you do. Good luck with your shoot. I am sure you will prove a lot of people wrong. Try as many takes as you can, from different angles and different panning speeds just in case.
Click to expand...

Thanks John.

alignment1 said:
Shoot the ground, nothing else, all macro shots of inanimate bark-- then you're safe!!:thumbsup:

(jk)


I meant to mention the other day - saw your 'through the waves' (cam comparision)
Very nice work-- I love the split-screen timelapse--one of my favorite gags
Gorgeous location- do you call that home?

Z
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah I tried that out mainly because I hate the way water looks in timelapse but if I didn't know till post that I was going to do it or else I would have done it a little longer and on some more interesting clouds. I did it a bit to one other shot but it was maybe a 3 minute lapse instead of a 10 minute one so it was subtle.

That beach is maybe 10 minutes from my house as the maniac drives. :D
 
Buy the Noktor 0.95 and shoot with it wide open. :happy: Seriously, assuming you're not actually shooting the forest, but something (i.e. an actor) in it, you could reduce background detail by thinning out your DoF.

Just a thought - Mark
 
The key is to reduce the amount of detail as much as possible so the codec doesn't get overloaded. So, yes, BitMaestro's suggestion is pretty worthy -- blur as much of the forest through the bokeh, so the codec doesn't have to! Another potential solution would be to shoot at f/22 or f/32 on whatever lens you've got, to bring diffraction into play to lessen the perceived detail. Or you could try a Caprock filter; that's a test I've been meaning to try, actually -- I'm curious if the Caprock, by eliminating all the "false detail", would actually help the codec by stripping out that fake detail and therefore minimizing the burden on the codec.

I'll try that, very soon...
 
I've done it...it's not pretty at times, but if there is focus on the talent it's not the end of the world. I was shooting 1080...shouldn't get the mud if you decide to go lower res, right?
 
Barry_Green said:
Or you could try a Caprock filter; that's a test I've been meaning to try, actually -- I'm curious if the Caprock, by eliminating all the "false detail", would actually help the codec by stripping out that fake detail and therefore minimizing the burden on the codec.

I'll try that, very soon...
Click to expand...

Please do Barry!! Looking forward to that
 
alignment1 said:
I think his concern is less of whip pans and more of trees and the movement of them.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've not tested in an environment where the 'background' detail is in motion, while I and the camera are stationary.

I could also imagine 'tracking' someone in the foreground, and there by relatively, the background will be in motion, for some type of camera motion, which would not affect the foreground subject, but could cause clutter in the background.

The question I would have there is how much 'motion' would produce a generally perceptible effect? (not an effect that is only visible stepping through frame by frame...).

In my 'slow' pan test, yes, when I stepped through the sequence some frames had blocking... but when played at normal speed, it is my belief that any perceptible effect would be completely absent or again only visible under close scrutiny.

Of course one should try to get the best out of a given camera. But at some point, are some of these issues really second, third order effects?

When the Wife first started shooting digital, she would complain about the 'lack of sharpness' in the image. Well, with a very mild use of unsharp mask, the 'haze/unsharpness' 'disappeared'... but she was still up set that she had to 'do' something to clean up the image... She now uses unsharp mask and only worries if her lens focus is 'truly' off the mark... (The other thing she'd do is blow the image up in Photoshop to like 2-300% then yammer about unsharpness... In that case I had to output images at various 'enlargements' to show that what she was seeing in Photoshop, didn't match what the photoprinter output would be...)

She still complains that the digital images aren't as sharp as her Hasselblad on film... but that's life at this point...

The point being, there may be compromises, or techniques that are required to compensate for the device one has at hand.

Learning these is a good thing...
 
Kellar42 said:
I've done it...it's not pretty at times, but if there is focus on the talent it's not the end of the world. I was shooting 1080...shouldn't get the mud if you decide to go lower res, right?
Click to expand...

One would conjecture that if the compressed data rate is constant at 15 Mbs, going to the lower resolution, will result in more of that image data being available, ie 'less compression'.

Where do people find these things out... last year at NAB, the Panasonic people were sort of brushing off my question about the GH-1 as 'oh that's a consumer camera'... Since I don't have the opportunity to go to shows that Panasonic 'consumer' electronics are shown at... where else, like on the web, other than sites like this one?
 
Barry_Green said:
The key is to reduce the amount of detail as much as possible so the codec doesn't get overloaded. So, yes, BitMaestro's suggestion is pretty worthy -- blur as much of the forest through the bokeh, so the codec doesn't have to! Another potential solution would be to shoot at f/22 or f/32 on whatever lens you've got, to bring diffraction into play to lessen the perceived detail. Or you could try a Caprock filter; that's a test I've been meaning to try, actually -- I'm curious if the Caprock, by eliminating all the "false detail", would actually help the codec by stripping out that fake detail and therefore minimizing the burden on the codec. I'll try that, very soon...
Click to expand...

So ... nothing's changed since last June, right? :happy:

(For newbies, an early entry in the GH1 FAQ):
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1661166&postcount=7

And Ben: I know you'll do a great job. I'm a fan of your work. Your CA coast camera comparison video was especially well done. Have fun on your shoot!
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
One would conjecture that if the compressed data rate is constant at 15 Mbs, going to the lower resolution, will result in more of that image data being available, ie 'less compression'.

Where do people find these things out... last year at NAB, the Panasonic people were sort of brushing off my question about the GH-1 as 'oh that's a consumer camera'... Since I don't have the opportunity to go to shows that Panasonic 'consumer' electronics are shown at... where else, like on the web, other than sites like this one?
Click to expand...

Yes but the framerate on the 720p (60p) is double the temporal data of the 60i stream (thank you HVX Book and Barry for explaining this so clearly when I read it those years ago) so it should take the same toll on the codec...although I have seen mud happen less often in 720p...it might just have something to do with the false detail being added by the 1080p mode as Barry said.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Where do people find these things out... last year at NAB, the Panasonic people were sort of brushing off my question about the GH-1 as 'oh that's a consumer camera'...
Click to expand...
Yes, because the consumer division of Panasonic is basically a separate company from the Broadcast division. And NAB is a convention specifically for the broadcast side, so nobody from the consumer side was even there. That said, they did have a prototype GH1 available in the "secret room", but in general, yes, this is what you can expect.

Since I don't have the opportunity to go to shows that Panasonic 'consumer' electronics are shown at...
Click to expand...
I think PMA, WEVA, places like that would be more likely for the consumer stuff.
 
Ben_B said:
Yes but the framerate on the 720p (60p) is double the temporal data of the 60i stream (thank you HVX Book and Barry for explaining this so clearly when I read it those years ago) so it should take the same toll on the codec...although I have seen mud happen less often in 720p...it might just have something to do with the false detail being added by the 1080p mode as Barry said.
Click to expand...

No, Barry has also said that with long GOP codecs, more fps could result in better compression (less mud) because the degree of change between individual frames within a group is smaller.
 
ydgmdlu said:
No, Barry has also said that with long GOP codecs, more fps could result in better compression (less mud) because the degree of change between individual frames within a group is smaller.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have noticed that I was wondering where the truth lies in that cause I have noticed that as well.

Thanks everyone we will probably end up shooting 1080 cause that is what the project had been. The plan is to review each first take over HDMI out playback on a field monitor and see what happened.
 
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