Time Lapse on a Bicycle

[Bluelemmy]

Cycling round the park today, I thought I'd try a time lapse sequence to bring a half hour or so ride down to 1 minute or thereabouts. Using my GH3 Panasonic and a home made body mount bracket, I used 1920x1080 jpg stills, one fps, half a second shutter speed.

I find the video quite entertaining (!). I want to keep fluid motion as I find speeded up results at higher shutter speeds too 'jittery' looking. The result I have is a little too fluid, however!

I use the body racket because if the camera is mounted on the bike it is simply subjected to shattering vibration but also because it is hard to get the handlebars in frame, without which there is nothing to say 'shot from a cycle'. I also find that without a still component in the frame, movement has no context and the video lacks perspective and 'involvement'.

Does anyone have experience of this? The bars are moving side to side and shaking, the scenery is streaking past - anything is bound to be a compromise but where might the best balance be?

http://www.dthorpe.net/viewing/park.mp4

[jagabo]

Bellybutton cam?

Try shorter exposures, more frequent snapshots, and blending in software. Maybe with deshaking based on the handlebars.

[Bluelemmy]

Right. So maybe 5 fps and blend them. I haven't come across de-shaking software so i'll look it up. Thanks!

[jagabo]

You might even just shoot full video at 30 fps. Similar issues are discussed in this thread:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344508-Smooth-accelerated-video?highlight=motion+blur

[budwzr]

Yeah, just shoot regular 30 0r 60 frames a sec., then undercrank it down to like 5fps, or whatever you think looks good.

[jagabo]

By the way, when deshaking (aka image stabilization) be sure to use software that lets you specify what to use as the stabilization point. Otherwise it may try to deshake based on something in the background rather than on the handlebars.

[Cornucopia]

I agree with the above suggestions, but also want to add: how do you have your body stabilizer/rig set up? There might be ways of improving that so there is less overall shaking to begin with. Also, I'd start with a wider-angle lens - the wider the angle, the less shake. Also, slightly lower perspective angled higher, as was suggested ("bellybuttoncam"), to get the horizon at more midpoint.

Scott

[Bluelemmy]

Yes, the thread pointed to was from me too but it wasn't a case of me being lazy. Here in Europe, the idiot EU put a 29m 59s limit on video shooting in one sequence on a stills camera. My GH2, which I had on my post jagabo recursively pointed me at (quite humorously deadpan, I thought ) was hacked and I could record for as long as I wished.

Unfortunately there is no hack as yet for GH3 which now have, so if I wish to record an unbroken sequence for the 35 odd minutes a circuit of the park takes, I can't use the video mode at all and must try to do it with the GH3's time lapse facility. This has a lowest sequence rate of 1 frame per second.

I either have to make the best of 1fps or do a circuit in less than 29.59. The park is hilly and the road rough. The former option is the more attractive of the two!

As an aside, I really appreciate your suggestions.

[budwzr]

Then set your shutter faster. Start at maybe 125, and go up as needed, depending on lighting. I shoot birds in flight at 1000, and it's very sharp.

What's the purpose of the GOV over there to limit filming time? That could never happen in the US. They tried to tighten gun laws here recently, and it never even made it for a vote.

[Richard_G]

Or if you want to shoot video, use a video camera.........

[poisondeathray]

Agree with faster shutter.

You can add motion blur and stabilize or other techniques like averaging in post to smooth the "jitteryness" , but blur during acquisition will limit just about everything you can do , including stabilization

[jagabo]

What's the purpose of the GOV over there to limit filming time?

Probably different taxes on video vs. still cameras.

[Bluelemmy]

It's different taxes on cameras as jagabo says. I don't make the rules so anything else is irrelevant. Remember, for years the US government restricted US citizens from going to Cuba. The freedom of a passport holder to visit any country cannot be restricted in Europe. We all have different freedoms and different idiot rules to bear. C'est la vie.

Since I have earned my living by stills photography for my life, I prefer not to use video cameras. The ones I have used have poor low light performance and I cannot get the DoF effects I enjoy on stills. My personal peccadilloes. I earn money with stills, I do videos for enjoyment.

But poisondeathray's suggestion has force. As a stills man, all quality is with the initial exposure. With video, post processing seems to be both normal and necessary. Another world.

[jagabo]

Post processing is done with stills too. Ask Ansel Adams.

[Bluelemmy]

Sorry jagabo but I have earned my living as a photographer from the age of 17, more than 50 years. I have studied photography and the history of photography all that time. And, in fact, have met some of the figures of photo history. And lectured on it occasionally.

Ansel Adams was the pioneer of the zone system. In the days of plate photography, pre-processing was what you did. Hollywood did post processing in the form of retouching but that is very different from the technical work necessary for movie.

I can't attach any moral meaning to that but I can tell you that the images in my library that my agent sends me the biggest cheques for month after month are the ones where the subject is right and nothing to do with technique at all.

Movie is inherently more technical than stills. That's part of its interest to me personally.

[Richard_G]

Bluelemmy, you've got about 10 years on me but I started with stills many years ago and migrated to video. I agree with you, but an understanding of the technicalities of photography reduce the necessity for post processing. In fact, most of my video requires no processing because of the standard of equipment I'm using allows me full control over the settings. Consumer level camcorders don't have this control and are the moving equivalent to the pocket compact camera. From what I've seen, stills cameras that can be persuaded to shoot video seem to be roughly similar.

[Cornucopia]

With DSLRs, you are often shooting RAW and using P-shop's CameraRAW import tool to debayer, adjust exposure LUT, etc, and then continuing using PIE to maintain quality & adaptability on down the line anyway, so it's (post-processing) not out of the realm of photogs, either.

Scott

Check out the MoVi!!

[budwzr]

Didn't Alfred Stieglitz use various tricks in the dark room to produce art from regular photos? Didn't Ansel Adams learn from him?

[Bluelemmy]

Richard_g, yes I agree, I'm using a gh3 stills camera and probably expecting too much. The majority of video I do is for my Youtube channel where I earn a bit of a living by just setting avchd and letting it roll. I'm not a video man, it's just a way of marrying my words to some visuals, no art involved.

I understand what you are saying Scott but I don't these days use PS, I use Lightroom and just export as necessary. i don't sharpen or adjust levels and all that because that simply means I remove those choices from buyers. Yes, some things are done under the hood but I'd never expect to do much if any processing on what what comes out of the camera. I have made the choices before I shoot.

Video requires editing, sequences must match colour, sound, all sorts of things make it a much more technical process. a RAW file simply gives me no choices, Raw is Raw. But video gives me on the gh3 alone choices of avchd, mov or mp4 with bitrates from 8 to 70 mbs.

Jpeg is a different matter I suppose but I don't have any experience of shooting that in camera.

[budwzr]

The most expensive photograph ever sold is of a "99 cents Store" here in the US. I think it sold for 4 million. However, I think anyone with a cheap Kodak could have taken it.

I'm sure the photographer thinks it's a masterpiece too.

[poisondeathray]

I either have to make the best of 1fps or do a circuit in less than 29.59. The park is hilly and the road rough. The former option is the more attractive of the two!

Well, it looks to me you got passed a few times in that video sample by fellow cyclists! Time to pick up the pace!

Video requires editing, sequences must match colour, sound, all sorts of things make it a much more technical process. a RAW file simply gives me no choices, Raw is Raw. But video gives me on the gh3 alone choices of avchd, mov or mp4 with bitrates from 8 to 70 mbs.

Jpeg is a different matter I suppose but I don't have any experience of shooting that in camera.

It's about giving you maximum flexibility over the creative process . By using those shutter settings, everything is blurred too much and the control is taken out of your hands . You want control, not to yield control to the bumps on the road .

It's similar to shooting RAW vs JPEG. Raw gives you much more control over the look you can achieve . JPEG is pretty much "baked in". Sure, if conditions, exposure, lighting, the phase of the moon etc.. were perfect, you would never need to do much post processing adjustments at all, for video or stills. But challenging conditions require you to have maximum flexibility in post. ( And I would say this is a challenging condition for the equipment you have)

In your specific case, look at your individual photos, or go frame by frame in the video, you will see distortions captured by the sensor from the natural motion of the bicycling, bumps in the road are emphasized by the slow shutter. Look at the head/ tail lights of some of the cars, there are squiggly up & down lines, not in a single direction or vector. While it's an interesting "light streaks" effect in it's own right - it's probably going against the "look" you want to achieve . You probably want the blur vectors travelling in the direction the bike and cars are going, not up & down. Even the handlebars are all over the place with "ghosting" and multiple blurred images. At least you can hope reduce these distortions with a faster shutter , and have more control over post processing when you have more clear images to start with . When stabilizing video, it's more difficult to get accurate results with blurry , ill defined edges. The software can't "lock" in on objects properly .

[budwzr]

I did my own bike ride to see how hard it is. The cam should be mounted to the frame, not the handlebars. Unfortunately my clamp wasn't wide enough. But it came out OK.

I got some jello effect, after stabilization, and I think that's because the handlebars move too much. I'm not as steady on a bike anymore, too old. I was riding quite slow too.

[Bluelemmy]

Ride faster? I'm 69 years old and the park ride is very hilly (it was used in the London Olympics) and is a round trip of 15 miles from my home. No, camera technique will have to substitute

Budwzr, on bumpy roads as in Richmond Park, mounting to the cross bar will shake the lens and camera to bits - violent vibration requiring a 500th sec expsoure to quell it Anti-shake is overwhelmed by it. Mounting on the bars, ditto. But also, with mounting on the bars you lose the bars themselves in frame. Taking your shot, is it from a car? A bike? Motorbike? There's no way of telling and no sense of depth. Hence, mounting on the body is the only way and gives maximum choice of viewpoint.

I think I may have to go back to shooting normal video and speeding up as I did (and as people here instructed me, thanks!) with my French motorway stuff and overcome the necessary video gap by stopping and going back on a short part of the ride so as to blend one take sequence with the next. If I make sure to ride in the same position in the road and give myself a decent overlap to work with I should be able to do it reasonably well.

There'll maybe be a hack for the GH3 soon to eliminate the stupid EU restriction.

[jagabo]

Here in Europe, the idiot EU put a 29m 59s limit on video shooting in one sequence on a stills camera.

So shoot as two videos.

[Bluelemmy]

So shoot as two videos.

Yes but cyclists, for example, want to see a video without breaks or joins. No matter what anyone says about shooting 2 or more sequences, that is what they want. A US spec GH3 will do it straight out of the box. In Europe, you must wait until it is hacked. The EU regulation achieves nothing.

[poisondeathray]

Ride faster? I'm 69 years old and the park ride is very hilly (it was used in the London Olympics) and is a round trip of 15 miles from my home. No, camera technique will have to substitute

Yes, I was just giving you a hard time .

But budwzr's video reflects the other problem you're going to have when you shoot video on a bike - rolling shutter artifacts, jello, skew. The GH3 isn't much better than the GH2 in this regard . Even mounted on a welded rig, with absolutely no extraneous movement - vibrations will still cause rolling shutter issues

[budwzr]

Bluelemmy, as a 50+ year photographer, and more importantly, one that gets royalty checks, can you give us budding photographers some tips? Were you a Paparazzi?

I understand that being in the right place, at the right time, is paramount to success. Did you carry a camera at all times?

[Bluelemmy]

Yes, I was just giving you a hard time

That's not fair! So upset was I that I went right out and rode the 7 mile circuit in 12 minutes. Actually, I wrote that as a joke and then realised that that is probably not too far off the time done by the hard men going round there

No, I wasn't a pap, though I knew all the London guys like Richard Young and Alan Davidson. They finished up so that if some personality threw a party and one or the other wasn't there, the party was considered a dud. The pap business is harder and cruder and even more competitive these days.

I started out as a trainee on a local newspaper and just kept upgrading jobs from there. I finished up on a London paper covering show business and music but by arrangement, not hiding in bushes! Eventually, I left my job to freelance and I'd shoot for the record company or in Paul MCartney's case for him and Linda directly, that sort of thing.

Gradually, slowly you get people's trust and they ask you to do stuff. Then TV companies start ringing you to do things and you find yourself in demand. All that time, you're shooting stuff and giving it to your agent, making a library. It's all about grafting and trust, really. Photo ability at that level is taken for granted.

My library income has slowed down a bit these days - newspapers and mags pay less now than they did 30 years ago. I do some stuff for Alamy and make a few quid but more because I still enjoy photography so much and it gives me a reason to do it. I have a Youtube channel too with photo related topics and that is doing nicely. Hence my new found interest in video and leeching off people here for guidance!

The business was highly competitive always but there was room for good middle ranking people. Now, it seems you either make a fortune ( a very, very few people) or you just about earn enough to live on. I'm glad I was in the business when I was when ordinary working class people like me could get a look in.

[poisondeathray]

Yes, I was just giving you a hard time

That's not fair! So upset was I that I went right out and rode the 7 mile circuit in 12 minutes. Actually, I wrote that as a joke and then realised that that is probably not too far off the time done by the hard men going round there

That's fantastic!.... But don't overexert yourself on some internet stranger's words . I don't want you to have a heart attack!

I'm more of a mountain biker myself, but if I can remain 1/2 as active as you at that age I'd be happy. Very impressive


Times are changing - Sort of related (old news) - by the Chicago Sun Times fired all their full time photographers to restructure towards more video and internet presence.

I think you worked in the "golden age" of photography . The "cost of entry" for amateur photographers and videographers had dropped exponentially in the last few years. I bet the gear , lenses that you started out with cost an arm and a leg and could only be obtained in specialty shops. Now we are seeing decent DSLR's , HD video camera at your local corner store. Everyone and their dog can make videos and take reasonable photos at "affordable" prices . Yes there is a lot of "crap" out there, but it's commoditization of the industry. I fully expect 4K video in the hands of typical consumers within a few years

[Bluelemmy]

I think you worked in the "golden age" of photography

I think so too. I'm in complete agreement with your analysis and yes, the gear was bought in Pro shops, highly specialist, expensive and out of reach of most amateurs.

I was sad to see that about the Chicago Sun Times. It has happened in London too. Papers just exist on freelances having got rid of all staff photographers.