SANTORINI

Started by Filipe Samora, June 20, 2015, 11:49:01 AM

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Filipe Samora

My first fully-raw project:



GEAR
5D Mark III with ML 1.2.3
16-35 f4 L, 70-300 f4, Nifty Fifty (f1.4)
Benro tripod + a heck of a slider
Zoom H1 for ambient sound recording
Komputer Bay cards (64 GB). Yes, they work, and extremely well.

ML FEATURES USED
MLV recording (1920x1080p @ 25fps, occasionally 60fps at lower res for slomo). Came back with 450 GB+ of data and not a single glitch.
Focus racking
Intervalometer + Auto ETTR + FRSP for "holy grail" timelapsing. Worked a lot better than I thought. A fair amount of work in post, but doable.
3x Crop (used and abused)

THE KILLER FEATURES
Other than raw recording, the 3x Crop. All of a sudden, my 16-35 becomes a 100mm portrait lens. Magic!

The Intervalometer + Auto ETTR + FRSP combo was also a pleasant surprise. I practised a fair bit before going on location but I didn't expect it to go so well, when there's plenty of scope for things to go south. Get your camera settings right, slap the right ND filter in front of the lens and you're good to go.

POST PROCESSING
Mlrawviewer for MLV to DNG conversion
After Effects for primary colour grading via LUTs and Colorista. Sequences exported as intermediary 10 bit 4:2:2
Premiere for editing and secondary colour grading via FC2.

Magic Lantern duly featured in the credits. Without you, I would still be grappling with the 'mushy' look and terrible DR of Canon's default codec, and actuating my shutter like mad. You guys rock!

lamarosa

Excelent job, love your camera work and the color correction, for sure this has given you a lot of work and thinking to do. I've started shooting raw but on my 6D whcih has some limitations, nevertheless, you've done a great job, I bet you got hooked to shooting raw from now on (I know I did).

Filipe Samora

Thanks a lot Lamarosa. Yes, you're right, once you try RAW there's no going back! This is the typical stuff I do when I go on holidays, so production time is always kept to a minimum, out of respect for those I travel with.

In Santorini, things are made easier by that fact that sea views do not cost a fortune, and you don't have to travel for miles to record vaguely interesting timelapses. Still there is a lot left to be explored.

kgv5

Beautiful, great work!
www.pilotmovies.pl   5D Mark III, 6D, 550D

DeafEyeJedi

Absolutely stunning @Filipe Samora!

Care to share which LUT's you used in AE as well as using the Colorista?

Did you use your own flat log or with others to start with in AE?

Also is there a specific(s) reason why you chose to export DNG's from MLRV as oppose to other decent converters out there with proper forward color matrices (to get the most out of color grading)?

Gotta love the 16-35L especially in crop-mode since its a killer feature combo just like you said!

[emoji106]
5D3.113 | 5D3.123 | EOSM.203 | 7D.203 | 70D.112 | 100D.101 | EOSM2.* | 50D.109

Filipe Samora

Thanks a lot @DeafEyeJedi!

I have used the OSIRIS Cinematic Film Emulations from VisionColor.

No specific reason why I export DNGs. I reckon out of pure laziness, once you find a process that sort of works, you end up sticking to it. What would you recommend (I'm on Windows)?

Filipe


imnothere

Beautiful ! Congratulations and thanks for sharing. :)
5D MKIII
Showreel : [-https://vimeo.com/74019437-]

DeafEyeJedi

For windows it seems raw2cdng may be your best bet other than the Windows version of MLVFS?

I'm purely a mac user here...

So others may chime in as well.
5D3.113 | 5D3.123 | EOSM.203 | 7D.203 | 70D.112 | 100D.101 | EOSM2.* | 50D.109

masc

Haha, cool! When have you been there? I was the last april week there this year, filmed 350GB+ mlv there, had the 5DII+16-35 f2.8 L with me... and for me the most funny... I took the same music behind my scenes without knowing your video! :-D Unfortunately I don't have it online in the web to show you...
You did a great work, specially the timelapses are great! In some scenes the color is to intensive in my opinion... but nothing to worry about. Respect! :-)
5D3.113 | EOSM.202

Filipe Samora

We must have crossed then! I was there precisely between the last week of April and the first week of May.

The soundtrack was a bit of a complicated affair because, when doing my planning and research before going on location, I initially wanted to go ahead with a piece from Ludovico Einaudi's Doctor Zhivago album, but had to give up on it altogether because it had a rather 'andante' pace to it, which demanded a lot more dynamic footage. But I'm glad I gave up, because Tony Anderson's piece fitted my footage like a glove.

There's always a dark side to colour correction/grading. You colour-grade on your own monitor which may or may not be calibrated, but then if you watch your footage on 10 different monitors, including tablets, smartphones and what not, the colours will look (very) different.

Thanks for your feedback and look forward to seeing your video.

Take care!

Filipe

johnwangphoto

I enjoy viewing the film very much. Could you share the Intervalometer + Auto ETTR + FRSP technique for time-lapse shooting ore in detail? Also did you use the 16:9 or 2.35:1 aspect ratio?

Thanks!

John

Filipe Samora

Hi John

I shot mainly in 16:9, except for the slomo scenes (1728x584 @ 60fps).

As for the Intervalometer + Auto ETTR + FRSP technique, I reckon you're aware of the current limitations: the slowest shutter speed is 16" and the fastest 1/15. With this in mind, you will need an ND filter for sure if you want to capture day to night or night to day transitions.

I have used a variable ND filter, but didn't change the intensity during the exposure. Had bad experiences in the past doing so, with weird colour inconsistencies, which are hard to smooth out in post, plus if you dial the filter in the wrong direction, game over.

I set the interval to 20", my aperture to about f11, turned on Expo Override (this is essential), and then in the Auto ETTR menu, there's a very important setting you have to experiment with - Highlight Ignore. If you leave it at 0%, the camera will expose for the brightest parts of the image (say street lamps), which is not necessarily what you want.

During my field tests I found that 0.3% would work well, but when I got to Santorini, I had to adjust this because houses are whitewashed, and that tripped the exposure. I would advise against going over 1%, or else you may run into blown out skies, which you may not be able to pull back in post.

The above settings worked for me if I were to shoot from, say, 7pm to 10 am on a late spring day with a moderate amount of clouds. After 10am-ish, the sky would start getting overexposed. This is because, AFAIK, it's not possible to change the aperture during the exposure. I'm currently looking into a lens with a manual aperture ring. They are relatively inexpensive and should, in theory, make it possible to shoot from sunrise to sunrise.

And, by the way, do not forget to revert the above settings if you're shooting video after a timelapse  ;)

Then brace yourself for a mammoth post-production job, as you will have to compensate the exposure changes manually.

My best advice would be to experiment a lot before going on location. That really saved the day and prevented me from making rookie mistakes when it mattered the most.

I have read a lot of moaning about FRSP, because it doesn't do this and that, but trust me, this is a truly game-changing technology for timelapsing, and I only have words of sympathy and deep appreciation for those who've surely burnt many eyelashes to make this work.

Take care and happy shooting!

Filipe