ateady airplane shoots

[Mark Suszko]

Gerard:

Can you describe in more detail what kind of shots are your goal?

Shooting inside the plane thru a window?

Facing forward or to the side?

Looking down or out?

Ground, or another airplane?

Generally, if you keep the lens wide angle, and use a little bit of shutter, you get something pretty good, even just hand-held.

If you are shooting thru the window, you may need to block reflections from the glass by keeping the lens close to the glass and using the lens hood and maybe some black tape to seal out edge light.

[Todd Terry]

Well, I’ll let others address the “steadiness”… but just a couple of points…

If you are shooting stuff on the ground or on the horizon (not including any part of the airplane, passengers, pilot, etc. in the frame), you won’t have to worry about focusing. Everything will be far enough away that you can focus your lens on infinity and not have to worry about it.

Nextly, why shoot at a higher shutter speed? That’s just going to make your video look choppy and more jittery. The rule of thumb is that a “normal” shutter speed will be “one over twice the frame rate.” That is, if you are shooting 24p, a normal shutter speed would be 1/48th of a second. If you were shooting 30fps, it would be 1/60th. That speed gives you the motion blur that your eyes and brain need to interpret it as smooth motion. A higher shutter speed should only be used for certain effects, when you want that “narrow shutter look.” See Saving Private Ryan to see it used well. See Gladiator to see it waaaay overused.

Lastly, the wider your lens, the steadier your shot will appear. 50mm isn’t wide at all, it’s right in the middle. Something like a 35mm, 28mm, or even 18mm lens will give you a much steadier shot. Of course, it will be a much wider field of view, which might not be what you want.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Gerardo Flores]

[Todd Terry] “Nextly, why shoot at a higher shutter speed? That’s just going to make your video look choppy and more jittery. The rule of thumb is that a “normal” shutter speed will be “one over twice the frame rate.” That is, if you are shooting 24p, a normal shutter speed would be 1/48th of a second. If you were shooting 30fps, it would be 1/60th. That speed gives you the motion blur that your eyes and brain need to interpret it as smooth motion. A higher shutter speed should only be used for certain effects, when you want that “narrow shutter look.” See Saving Private Ryan to see it used well. See Gladiator to see it waaaay overused.”

this knowledge is like gold for me Todd thank you a lot for that and I will try to work whit a 28mm lens.
Todd exist any literature where I can find information like this to read and learn by myself?

[Mark Suszko] “If you are shooting thru the window, you may need to block reflections from the glass by keeping the lens close to the glass and using the lens hood and maybe some black tape to seal out edge light.”
thank you Mark (btw where are you from your lastname is from Czech rep.)
and Im gonna make the video from our side of the airplane mounted in a special base that the have.
the idea is to fly next to a car and follow it some seconds then show the landscape in front of the car
and finish with a fly over a lake.

Best regards guys
and thank you a lot

learning after effects

[Mark Suszko]

Well maybe my experience is outdated, but I always had a little bit of shutter going which made the slow-mo playbacks of our footage smoother and clearer. If you’re not shooting interlaced, maybe you don’t need it.

Not Check, I’m from Chicago.

[Gerardo Flores]

Mark please I don’t understand this ” If you’re not shooting interlaced “…

I though that a high speed make a smoother footage my mistake.

learning after effects

[Mark Suszko]

If you are shooting progressive frame format, slow motion playback should look cleaner than when I was shooting betaSP format, which is interlaced.

[Gerardo Flores]

guys If im using just a wide angel….
how I can make some close ups

learning after effects

[Mark Suszko]

The best way is to keep your lens wide and physically have the airplane or copter move closer to what needs a close-up.
It’s the difference between a dolly and a zoom in. But more important, any zooming with telephoto is going to magnify every bump and twitch and vibration. If the end product is SD resolution, you get a smoother closeup effect IMO by scaling up HD footage in post production, than by physically zooming the lens. If you need to stay HD all the way and the plane will not/cannot get closer physically to the subject, then you may need to look into using gyroscopic motion stabilizers, or resigning yourself to trying to fix the wobbly, blurry closeup footage with a motion tracker in post production.

[Todd Terry]

[Gerardo Flores] “If im using just a wide angel….
how I can make some close ups”

Well… you can’t really, not if you are just using a wide angle lens, unless, as suggested you shoot HD and do “fake” zooms for a standard definition project. I think that would be fairly inferior to what you’re looking for if you are expecting pretty slick results.

DSLRs plus fixed-wing airplanes just aren’t make for steady closeup aerial shooting. That’s what helicopters and Tyler mounts are for. I’m both a long-time DP and long-time pilot myself, and would never try that combo because the results just wouldn’t be good enough. I’m all for pushing the limits of all my gadgets, but I think this is one of those cases where your needs pretty far exceed the capabilities of the particular hardware.

Though the suggestions that have been made, you can do it with the hardware you have… just don’t expect those perfect silky aerial closeups that you see in feature films.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Gerardo Flores]

Whats your opinion about this toy Todd???
https://www.helicamsolutions.com/Products/Tazor-3X/tazor-3x.html

Thank you for your comments guys.

Gerard.

learning after effects