[John Wildgoose]

Sorry, it was a cable issue, all resolved.

😉

[John Wildgoose]

Hi Claude
It didn’t occur to me to test it this way, as I can’t see any material benefit. But if it’s a 50p project then I’m assuming shoving a 25p clip in it is going to make the clip stagger horribly due to a 2:1 frame deficiency. Unless you sped the clip up of course, and why would you do that, other than to replicate that old 1960’s trick of making a car chase look faster, but horribly, horribly wrong at the same time?

[John Wildgoose]

ok, I’ve done some tests to see and my conclusion is that you can’t shoot 50p and run it at normal time in a 25p project as it looks too staccato, even shooting it at 80th (compromise!).

Oddly, I did my test of the 25p shot clip at 40th as I like the little bit of extra motion blur it gives, but if you do that with a 50p clip at 80th/s slowed down by 50% it shows a bit too much motion blur, so I went back to 100th/s and… much better! So that doesn’t add up! I’ve added that clip to the test (last one) for you to see what I’m on about.

Anyway, here you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie8PztNSv3o
Interestingly, I just watched this on a 49inch 4K monitor and the 1080p at 10bit from the GH5 almost cuts it!

I’ve avoided adding the ubiquitous heavy metal track to make it appear more exciting than it is!

[John Wildgoose]

thanks Claude,
I have to say given how much I’ve moved on since that shoot, I’d love to have another stab at it, I’m sure I’d get a lot more from it (and the highlights and shadows too!!).

[John Wildgoose]

I think most of this was shot on a 70-200 f2.8 as it’s very adaptable for fast changing subjects that move around without control.

More predictable shots are done on f1.4 and f1.2 primes. This was all shot on 5DIIIs with a SmallHD monitor. I’ve changed a lot of the workflow now and I think I’d get a lot more detail in the shadows and highlights. But for small videos embedded in a web site it worked, the editor was certainly very happy with what I supplied, so that was my benchmark for quality at the time.

I have changed the gear too. I now shoot with a GH5, metabones speed adaptor and primarily a 16-35 f2.8 (giving me an effective open iris of f1.8). This allows me to get closer and still see a lot, and it works nicely with my favoured compositions. On a shoot I’d take the 70-200 f2.8 as well. I have a problem with the faster 24-70 as the zoom telescopes making it impractical to use in my Tilta rig with the matte box. But that might mean giving up a stop (f4 which would make me unhappy).

[John Wildgoose]

For what it’s worth I’ve been shooting stills for a friend’s stock library for a few years now but they have recently got very excited about video. So on my last shoot I split it 50/50 stills/video and the returns have not mirrored the agency’s excitement, coming in at just 20%+/- of sales from that shoot. They syndicate through Getty amongst others.

This is a typical example, and shot in a very similar way to stills, but it generates not enough revenue to warrant the time taken away from shooting more profitable stills.

If you are thinking about Getty, be warned. They currently have the terrible habit of demanding everything we supply is 4K, and then insult us by discounting the 4K to the same price as HD. I am not happy about that. It means the contributors have to up their game and invest in 4K delivery without any payback. Pretty Getty-esque I’d say.

I’m going to look at Pond5. On down days I like heading out and shooting generic, it helps with process/workflow and if I can turn ‘personal work’ into a revenue stream all the better!

John

[John Wildgoose]

Twice as much light! Yes, but to be honest I shoot a lot with fast primes, often wide open, so anything that helps me dump light is a blessing!

Thanks Paul.

And re: your comment about diligently answered tech question. Yes, I have tried hard to make sure people who have contributed to help have had that help acknowledged. It’s a great forum, obviously brimming with good people who not only possess a huge amount of high quality knowledge, but are also happy to impart it for the good of all. Open source knowledge is a wonderful thing.

I will endeavour to ‘put something back’ in whatever way I can. Surely these 30 years have given me something to contribute!

[John Wildgoose]

Hi Paul
That’s a very fair point and I can see why many/most people might scratch their head at such a notion.

Maybe I should have explained why I wanted to do this, but to be fair to myself, the answer is so ingrained in my mind it never occurred to me! So my bad, I should have explained.

I’m a veteran of 30 years shooting stills, video is increasingly (and excitingy) becoming a bigger part of my remit these days and I am trying to get up to speed with all the endless and shifting (not to say expensive) technology.

One of the things that has become apparent is a need for ‘generic’ moving images. I’ve been asked to shoot stock and b-roll/cutaways for clients recently, enough to make me jump on this difficult/rewarding learning curve. For instance, one client has a web site full of interviews with industry experts and they decided their ‘talking heads’ needed spicing up. So they sent me off to Asia to shoot b-roll to cut into their web embedded videos. Sweet gig? Yes, but it did immediately highlight some shortcomings in my process, not to say my skillset.

If you have a few minutes (and a cup of coffee), here’s my cut from that Asia shoot. Please forgive the terrible ‘standards’ short comings. I’m a neophyte remember!

https://vimeo.com/157060331

As you’ll now hopefully appreciate, to be able to shoot all of that at 50p and make a choice in the cut what should stay 100% and what could go half speed would be a major advantage.

cheers
John

[John Wildgoose]

Hi Noah
…and in halving the frame rate it halves the shutter speed? This is crucial as the look of the clip is so clearly affected by the shutter speed.

I’m going out today to do some tests. People, water, foliage, traffic. Plus some varieties of shutter angle/speed at 50p to see exactly what happens when it’s kept at 25p in FCP X. I’ll also shoot 25p of the same scenes at half the shutter speed I shot the 50p at to see if there’s any difference between it and the 50p that doesn’t have the speed change applied.

I guess I am trying to prove the hypothesis that 50p shot at 100th/s but left at 25p in the FCP X timeline will look the same as 25p shot at 50th/s (or 80th/s and 40th/s etc). This will then dictate whether I can shoot everything at 50p and quit agonising!

I’ll be back I guess.

John

[John Wildgoose]

Thanks Noah, I will do that.
I was just interested in what exactly FCP does to the 50p in a 25p project to get it to play at normal speed! I know I maybe should not worry about what is going on under the hood, but I’m of that generation.

I’ll do some more tests. I am not sure if it’s anything to do with anything related, but I recently shot some 50p at 80th/s (at 8bit) and it just seemed a bit more natural. A little bit of softening through motion blur seemed to appeal. The test was dumped here

Thanks for your response, appreciated.

John