Emlenton, Pennsylvania
Quite a while ago, before digital capture and digital printing with inkjet equipment was capable of "serious" work, I began to use a little Fuji digicam as an accessory to my large format work. When you work with sheet film on location, tracking the pictures and subjects is a problem. Of course the negatives aren't time-stamped. In fact, unless you're absolutely compulsive about it, they aren't even kept in order, like exposures on a roll of film, with the film rolls numbered. Sheet film gets to be pretty much random access. So what I did with the digicam was step back after making a large format exposure and snap the scene, including a corner of the camera. That way I'd have a reference to the subject matter as well as which camera/format I shot it with, and that reference would have a time-stamp. That could then easily be related to my recorded notes as long as I began each notation with the time the shot was made. If there was a street sign, or historical marker nearby, I'd snap that as well. In the notes I'd leave reminders like, "the white screen and the gray sky are exactly the same tone, it will only be the texture of the screen material that differentiates it from the sky."
So, on my recent expedition, I updated this procedure. I used my Lumix G3 with 14mm and 20mm lenses for color digital capture work, along with the 8x10 Deardorff and 7x17 Korona for large format black & white. But the new twist was that I put the kit zoom that came with the G3 on my older Lumix GF1, and set it to shoot video. After each large format setup, instead of taking some digital snaps and recording some notes, I combined the two by "filming" the setup while dictating notes on what the exposure settings were, what my thinking was in making the shot that should be in my mind when scanning or printing the picture, and so forth.
I'm a complete neophyte at video. (I've never been interested in moving pictures, only stills: I don't watch television and only rarely watch movies.) But it looks as though I can easily use iMovie to touch up the sound and cut the extra "footage" from these video clips and upload them directly to YouTube. Would anyone be interested in viewing some of them that way?
13 comments:
It would be fun to see, but you need to consider the amount of time you'll devote to it. That is it might be more time costly to you than valuable to the rest of us.
Dennis, since I've made the clips for my own reference, the only time is whatever it takes to make them available on YouTube. I'll have to see whether it's a nuisance or not.
I believe that such information only diverts the attention of viewers from the image itself. Likewise the listing of equipment, exposure, and other technical details.
There should only be the image. Anything not in the image is superfluous. If it isn't, then it is less successful as a work of visual art.
Cheers.
Can I ask you, Carl, what is your point on doing serious landscape shooting with the m4/3 format? Is it good enough to print 50cm large from 12MP and has it enough dynamic range? I wonder, I have the E-P1 and 20mm.
Frank, I've made a number of 15x20" prints from GF1 captures and the quality certainly surprised me (until I got used to it and am now spoiled). These are from pictures of the kind you usually see on this blog. I don't know if the EP1 would perform "above its pay scale" as the GF1 does, I have not used the camera, but the potential is there.
Landscape photographs that depend on intense depiction of small detail--fields of grass or a forest of a million leaves--might be less successful. But then nothing short of a medium format back, or large format film, would really handle that kind of subject.
On dynamic range, it keeps getting better. The G3 has noticeably more range than the GF1. An 'FX" or 'full frame' sensor will likely have some more dynamic range, but whether it's enough to matter is another question. If dynamic range is the primary requirement, shoot film. The difference between the various popular digital formats (short of backs costing tens of thousands of dollars) is rather small compared to the difference between any digital format and a film negative.
I don't use film anymore and I have never done anything with large format but I would still link to hear (and see) what you are thinking.
I would be interested in seeing the behind the scenes footage... but would prefer for it to be embedded in your blog somehow. I seem to remember seeing Vimeo videos embedded in that way. I don't know what it is about YouTube, but even the name is so ubiquitous now, and the website itself is so busy and itch-inducing. Your photos and text are often minimal and serene... sending a reader into YouTube could detract from the content.
Neil, that's a very interesting thought. I actually hardly ever look at anything on YouTube. Reminds me of TV...
But I don't know anything about embedding a video here at the blog. I suppose a few minutes in Blogger's documentation or tutorials might let me see if it's a simple thing or too much trouble.
On the vimeo website is an faq section: http://vimeo.com/help/faq
It includes a section on embedding. I imagine it is as easy as embedding photos, but haven't tried it.
If you want to make some test posts to see if the embedding works, I'm happy to be a guineapig... just let me know.
Neil,it looks as though placing a video clip on a blog post is really no different from placing a still picture, just will take longer to upload. When I can, I'll see if a clip made from iMovie works OK. iMovie has the virtue of already being there on my Macs.
For versatility you probably want to encode the video as mpeg rather than QuickTime mov ( thinking in terms of what iMovie has to offer and what the vieweing clients can support). Also go small in the size, fewer bytes that way. Also I don't have an issue with linking to YouTube. Seriously, if some one doesn't want to there, then don't go.
I use Vimeo, because it's supposedly more high-class 'n intellectual than YouTube. (And is therefore a perfect match for the Working Pictures cognoscenti.)
The thing with videos, though, even my short ones is that they are fairly time-intensive to put together.
Yes please, videos and spoken words are wonderful.
Post a Comment