Berwick-upon Tweed // From the air
Here’s a little aerial and fake model shot of the lovely town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Snapped during my first try out of the DJI Phantom 3 Drone (which is fab). Shot taken in DNG and fiddled with in Lightroom. Being able to do this kinda stuff is getting me ever so excited. Plus I never had a RC plane when I was kid – just wind-up train sets.
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Timelapsery and model fakery : It’s Leith docks
As promised, here’s the time-lapse of Leith docks. How was this compiled? Like this:
- 1100 individual photo’s
- Shot on Canon 5DII + 24-105L Lens
- One photo every 15 seconds / Hahnel Giga T Pro remote timer
- File format = sRaw (for smaller size) & neutral colour profile
- Processed in Lightroom 4 (pseudo tilt-shift and colour boost applied)
- Exported as 1080 .jpgs
- Imported into MPEG Streamclip and exported as ProRes 422 LT clip at 25 FPS
- Final editing and titles in FCP-X
- Exported from FCP-X at YT friendly 5000Kbs H.264 Quicktime file
- Slightly cheesy music via Soundtrack Pro royalty free music beds
After all that, I think it turned out quite nice. There’s something compelling about seeing the everyday world in a different way that reveals something otherwise hidden. Look at us all, running around all over the place. Sit back, relax, take it easy with a Cadbury’s Caramel.
Here it is.
B&W ruin / 3
It’s been a little quiet recently. But there is an explanation – we’ve just glimpsed a view of the post-apocalyptic future. Did we run out of water? Heat? Baked Beans? Were there mutants roaming the streets looking for prey to assimilate? Er, no. The internet got cut off and we had to start speaking to people :-). Despite that, there’s been lots going on, some of it involving emulsion, some of it involving glitter and slightly hazardous solvents, but then there was a stormy night and our favourite friendly tower was transformed in to something out of a Hammer Horror film.
Now this was taken with the sharpest lens in the universe : The Canon TS-E 24L. The amount of detail it resolves is terrifying. On the full size pic you can zoom in to the mortar between the bricks and see plaster eating microbes at work. No really. If I was recording video I’m sure you would also be able to see their lime heavy gaseous emissions. Right, enough of that, here’s the pic.
The sheer joy of a Tilt-Shift Lens
Oh, the sheer joy of twiddling about with little knobs, mysterious angles and the heavy metal pleasure of a Canon Tilt-Shift L Lens. You can’t beat it really. Am I gushing? Oh yes. I would take this lens as my luxury item on Desert Island Discs, along with the collected works of Van Der Graaf Generator and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. And no, Kirsty – I would never want to be rescued thanks. Everyone has probably seen the fake model effects that a tilt-shift lens can achieve, but here’s a not too obvious shot. The plane of focus is following the path and I think it creates a strangely fairytale feeling and a sense of enclosure almost. The colours are as-is and demonstrate the other glorious thing about this lens – it’s amazing contrast and colour rendition. It seems to cut through the air, removing all impurities and delivers something compelling and magical. Thing is I hardly use it. So my mission this year is to stick it on my 5DII and leave it there for a month and do all our customer shots on it. Er. Perhaps!
