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NeoGAF Photography & Camera Gear Community

SpearFist

Member
Shot on pixel4a with night mode.

4fSTIDh.jpg


Same place in the morning.
bKuVUSM.jpg
 

betrayal

Banned
Just finished editing this for like 8 hours:


I think it's a good video overall. Most of the scenes look professionally filmed, but the flickering in the later scenes (probably due to the stadium lighting and framerate) is a bit distracting. Is there anything you can do about it at all?
The music is not my taste, even if the scenes are of course well cut to the music.

Did you only use the 200-600? I miss a little variety and especially scenes with low focal length. The stadium atmosphere and the whole subject, football with all it's people and fans, itself does not completely convey as well as it might.

Since I can not read Arabic, I also do not know what the video is about. Is it about a particular team? Football in general? The atmosphere? Something else? I think such a video should be able to convey its main message with images and music, regardless of the language.

This all may sound somewhat negative, but it is not meant that way. I know there's a lot of work behind the scenes that you can't see from the outside. But I also think that negative criticism brings more than positive. Whether it is always justified is another issue. Much is also personal taste.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I think it's a good video overall. Most of the scenes look professionally filmed, but the flickering in the later scenes (probably due to the stadium lighting and framerate) is a bit distracting. Is there anything you can do about it at all?
The music is not my taste, even if the scenes are of course well cut to the music.

Did you only use the 200-600? I miss a little variety and especially scenes with low focal length. The stadium atmosphere and the whole subject, football with all it's people and fans, itself does not completely convey as well as it might.

Since I can not read Arabic, I also do not know what the video is about. Is it about a particular team? Football in general? The atmosphere? Something else? I think such a video should be able to convey its main message with images and music, regardless of the language.

This all may sound somewhat negative, but it is not meant that way. I know there's a lot of work behind the scenes that you can't see from the outside. But I also think that negative criticism brings more than positive. Whether it is always justified is another issue. Much is also personal taste.

Thanks a lot for your sound input, as always! Yes, it's only 200-600mm, also my whole region population is like 500K and most of them aren't engaged in national football but most of them are into Euro clubs and such. If you open the video and you're using an English browser it should automatically change into English.

The flickering is mostly due to poor quality LED's used in the stadium that are 60Hz. So when you go more than 1/50s shutter speed you start to see weird stuff, and I'm at 1/250s (4K@120fps). Without global shutter it's impossible to counter that, even with software deflicker you usually end up with softer IQ.

The video is semi fancam I would say, another perspective that the one on TV. Despite setting far away I usually end up with a tight view but it's good so fans can see the players up close as it's not meant to cover the whole game ;) This is the uncut, raw footage:




And actually I helped by playing like VAR as these next two incidents weren't clear through Oman TV:





Your input is precious to me, never shy away from any thoughts. Even if there are things that are beyond me (flickering, tight view as exchanging lenses might make me lose some action). That video took me like 8 hours to prepare from 7pm up to 3am! The other videos are much easier though.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
They're changing that terrible, flickering lights now but only one out of 4 so far so you might see uneven lighting. My version of "VAR" made some fuzz on twitter so I might continue making them ;).





 
Took the first 3 last week, the fourth one today. As always, photos are taken on my Galaxy S9.

First picture has bizarre colors because snow is being picked up by fierce winds and it's obscuring the foothills in front of me. That's actually how it looked. Second and third pictures have some editing done to them, and I edited the 4th to remove some smoke from a wildfire in New Mexico and agricultural slashing in Central America.

The third picture is actually sharpened. I hate sharpening photos, especially on nature photos, but for whatever reason it looks better sharpened because it hides the intense light from the background image.

On the 4th picture, I have always loved the combination of blue, white, grey, and gold in pictures. It adds some sort of majestic quality to nature shots.
JNYBa2g.jpg

H9iIwTP.jpg

aJqXJ1S.jpg


Ldoukbd.jpg
 

betrayal

Banned
A new one :)



I think you have a good sense for artistic scenes. The music is not really my thing and maybe it does not quite fit, but probably it is more because I have no (emotional) connection with the people and scenes shown in the video.
But the scenes alone, the quality, the editing and the pacing of the scene look quite professional to me (especially when watching wo sound :messenger_winking_tongue:).

If one considers that it can only get even better, then you will surely have good success in the long run with what you have in mind. Just keep at it. 👍
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I think you have a good sense for artistic scenes. The music is not really my thing and maybe it does not quite fit, but probably it is more because I have no (emotional) connection with the people and scenes shown in the video.
But the scenes alone, the quality, the editing and the pacing of the scene look quite professional to me (especially when watching wo sound :messenger_winking_tongue:).

If one considers that it can only get even better, then you will surely have good success in the long run with what you have in mind. Just keep at it. 👍

Thanks, mate! To get a sense of what happened, this video came right after they lost at the cup semi-finals and before a match in the league. So it's more of trying to make it cheerful for the fans and lift the spirit. Mind you though, they lost that other game as well.:messenger_winking_tongue:

Trying to finish my studio to start posting on youtube more from there about cameras, lenses, etc. With some focus towards lenses for nature and in-field tests instead of studio artificial tests. Some urgent debts are not helping though as I want to finish before our monsoon season that starts in June. Thinking of 1 video per week max or every 2 weeks, 2 versions (Arabic+English) or just Arabic with English subtitles. But using the probe and some lenses in the field for nature is near non-existent on youtube, so maybe English version might get some of these niche searches.

These are 4K frames, you can see the heartbeats of that bee larva!

C0524-114636034.png


Close up of the stinging process, when it gets of half of its stomach gets stock there and keeps pulses in the video:

C0534-11511414.png


When shot in 4K@120fps with audio you can slow down the video like 5x to 24fps and have a better looking at such erratic species with bees around working more like a sound effect.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Took the first 3 last week, the fourth one today. As always, photos are taken on my Galaxy S9.

First picture has bizarre colors because snow is being picked up by fierce winds and it's obscuring the foothills in front of me. That's actually how it looked. Second and third pictures have some editing done to them, and I edited the 4th to remove some smoke from a wildfire in New Mexico and agricultural slashing in Central America.

The third picture is actually sharpened. I hate sharpening photos, especially on nature photos, but for whatever reason it looks better sharpened because it hides the intense light from the background image.

On the 4th picture, I have always loved the combination of blue, white, grey, and gold in pictures. It adds some sort of majestic quality to nature shots.
JNYBa2g.jpg

H9iIwTP.jpg

aJqXJ1S.jpg


Ldoukbd.jpg

Those are some nice shots! Only one photo had like a metal pole in it if you may avoid such obstacles next! Enjoy your hiking!
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
I don't take photos too often, more interested in videography but I really love these three that I took yesterday.

Canon t2i w/ 24mm 2.8 lens. I think ISO was at 100, I always try to keep it as low as possible. No color correction either for the one in color.

Accompanying music.


nD3hgeb.jpg
oSWIEph.jpg
4m869eb.jpg


and then there's Ollie.
WcyFjjt.jpg
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
I don't take photos too often, more interested in videography but I really love these three that I took yesterday.

Canon t2i w/ 24mm 2.8 lens. I think ISO was at 100, I always try to keep it as low as possible. No color correction either for the one in color.

Accompanying music.


nD3hgeb.jpg
oSWIEph.jpg
4m869eb.jpg


and then there's Ollie.
WcyFjjt.jpg


Lovely shots, mate. I liked the first one the most. :messenger_ok:
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Bo_Hazem Bo_Hazem did you study photography formally or pick it up over time?

I'm thinking of pursuing it beyond a hobby, still currently learning but really enjoying it.

Welcome! More like picked it up over time, but taken seriously only very recently. Started photography/videography back in like 2007 with Sony cellphones which were pretty good back in the day, then bought my first compact cam in 2009, the Panasonic Lumix FZ35. Since like 2018 I needed to become independent from Oman TV, which they used to provide me with the crew for short fauna and flora short documentaries in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019. I'm more of a naturalist, and trying to become more professional. Started my production company around a year a go and made like $3,211 back so far but spent way more than $8,000 at the same period. Mostly overspending now because spending big open up new ways of videography/photography. So far I'm close to sign my first major ad contract between 5-10K OMR (~$12,800-25,600 USD) along with potentially another 4,000 OMR (~$10,250 USD). I've spent most of my last year at home spending every possible drop of money on gear. It's a gamble but it might start paying back. But overall my dream and goal is to make nature documentaries that look like high-budget ones in a 1 or 2 crew! A 45min film can be sold for like 17-24K OMR ($43,600-61,400 USD).

Also you need connections, without them you'll need more time to build foundation for your success. But quality is king, so try to learn as much as you can. It's mind blowing how much you can learn from the internet, and I'm aiming next to learn 3D design for Blender or Unreal Engine to complement my production with some CGI!

If you are asking how I'm doing now, I'm extremely broke at this very moment, but that major contract has went through my success story might be around the corner. Most successful people suffered a lot to reach what they reached, and you'll face a lot of stress periods along the road. I'll start to take youtube seriously soon about photography and videography in Arabic and English (2 separate videos for 1 topic).

I'm not pro in terms of experience, but I'm pro even with amateur skills since 2012 as I made some good money. Now trying to up my game which can crush your finances pretty hard.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I was surprised about Nikon Z9 and how it suddenly surpassed Sony and Canon, especially with them struggling financial lately with rumors of their bankruptcy. They've used Sony sensors since 1980's, Fujifilms still do as well iirc.

 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Bo_Hazem Bo_Hazem did you study photography formally or pick it up over time?

I'm thinking of pursuing it beyond a hobby, still currently learning but really enjoying it.
If I may. I'm by no means an expert on anything related to cameras but definitely learn to shoot manually. Avoid the auto setting. Learn what ISO is, aperture, shutter speed and how they affect each other. Get a white balance card so you don't have to rely on defaults. There are color cards too but I don't know too much about that.

You'll find your style shooting on manual.

Get some prime lenses too (non-zoom). Lots of people seem to say that 50mm is the most clutch but I honestly prefer my 24mm. Both are pretty inexpensive (Canon at least). I'd like to get a nice zoom lens for wildlife purposes but they're so damn expensive.

These aren't anything special but there's no way the auto feature would capture the image the same way.


8pqiX2H.jpg
c7yaisQ.jpg


Here's some videography for fun. Be sure to try out that feature on your camera, 24fps gives it a cinematic look. Photography is fun but videography is another beast entirely. It's honestly one of the most difficult hobbies I've ever done. So many things to take into account and a decent shot can turn to shit within milliseconds, lol. Then there's converting the video, sound, etc. It's a great mental exercise.

This is just test footage but it's fun to dabble in. My main goal is to make a short horror film, 15 minutes or so.




edit- great username, love Kool Keith.
 
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fart town usa

Gold Member
Here's another that served as a jib test. A jib is basically a camera crane. It was around Halloween so it seemed like the perfect thing to test, ha. Videography is fun in that you really don't know what you have until after the fact, especially if you're filming yourself, by yourself. I'm literally just standing there and slowly panning up with one hand hoping it's in focus, etc. Ha. I really like the lighting in the video. Michael Myers is only effective if the mask is lit correctly and I feel like my amateur skills and gear pulled it off. My pocket light wasn't meant to look like a strobe, it's supposed to simulate a faulty light bulb.

 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Here's another that served as a jib test. A jib is basically a camera crane. It was around Halloween so it seemed like the perfect thing to test, ha. Videography is fun in that you really don't know what you have until after the fact, especially if you're filming yourself, by yourself. I'm literally just standing there and slowly panning up with one hand hoping it's in focus, etc. Ha. I really like the lighting in the video. Michael Myers is only effective if the mask is lit correctly and I feel like my amateur skills and gear pulled it off. My pocket light wasn't meant to look like a strobe, it's supposed to simulate a faulty light bulb.



You've got some serious potential, mate. Now you need to spend more time watching cinematography-oriented channels. I'll send you some of whom I subscribed to:



You'll enjoy that a lot. And for lighting, nothing better my favorite one here: Rob Ellis


I've watched plenty of videos myself, and planning to do some. But instead of just doing it as a hobby, I'm writing all my ideas down then trying to sell them instead as ads ;) This is a private (unlisted) video when I went to desert with friends few months back :) It's mostly 4K@120fps so I can slow it down anytime, this is just collecting them together and later should be a 1min version ;)

 
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dr_octagon

Banned
Bo_Hazem Bo_Hazem If you are planning to do any courses of videos for photography and videography, I'd definitely pay and support.

There is loads of content but having some structure and guidance is always useful. I find it helps with my learning in general.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Bo_Hazem Bo_Hazem If you are planning to do any courses of videos for photography and videography, I'd definitely pay and support.

There is loads of content but having some structure and guidance is always useful. I find it helps with my learning in general.

Nothing will be behind paywalls. I think youtube ads will compensate for it eventually assuming most people won't use ad blockers. :lollipop_tears_of_joy: I think I will have playlists for each stuff, but it will mostly be video oriented but photography and videography tend to share lots of rules with videos being a bit strict as you don't always have the comfort of cropping in.

I'm about to buy the Sony a1 which will boost both my photography and videography. For videos I would use the 4K@60fps crop mode (downsampled from 5.8K) for that 1.5x extra magnification/telephoto reach for bird filming and macro. Also the 8K@30fps (downsampled from 8.6K) mode then slowed down to 80% speed (20% slower) to 24fps to smooth out the shakes a but will gain me an access to a whooping 2x crop while still maintaining a downsampled 4.2K into 4K which you can crop further to 4x and still have a very sharp 1080p that you can use an AI upscaling program like this:


That will retain a prestine 4K image via AI. Here's Sony a7S III 240fps mode that is advertised as 1080p but it's more like 804p then upscaled to 4K:




You can notice that it cuts noise as well!

Why is that? I'm going to film biting midges which are like 1.5mm in size, too tiny. With a 5x magnification macro lens they can occupy like 10-15% of a 4K image. With 8K cropping 2x (200%) for 4K that number jumps to 10x magnification or 20-30% frame occupation, then going 400% more and you get a very sharp 1080p with 40-60% frame coverage.

From wikipedia:

1200px-CSIRO_ScienceImage_11052_Biting_midge_on_human_skin.jpg


With photos you can crop in easily, videos are challenging.
 
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Few pictures I've recently taken. There is a bear in the third picture, but I just have a camera phone without a physical zoom. Photos with my galaxy s9... The elk and the sunset photo I took last night. The sunset photo was a one snap and back in my car because it was actively lightning outside... and I was the tallest object around.

BMqMzQf.jpg

1VlVz3s.jpg

FPKonxv.jpg

LgN4L5u.jpg
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
I've been heavily learning and testing HDR lately! I've used HLG3, Rec.2020, set black level to wide. I might use HLG instead of HLG3 because it has the widest dynamic range that rivals SLog2 according to what I've seen from Gerald Undone and also checked via my camera. HLG3 looks artistically pleasing out of the camera and I don't think I need much of color correction, maybe only pushing saturation in post by ~20% instead of doing it on camera as to preserve that wide range of color for future proofing as it looks perfect on my a7S III tiny screen and I don't own a proper TV/monitor that could display Rec.2020 nor P3-D65 wide enough (~75%-85% respectively).

I've done a test and shot 5 clips at different exposures, and challenged myself to make them look similar! I was pleasantly shocked of the results and that's near impossible in SLog3+Rec.709, I believe, thanks to Rec.2020 as well: (will delete both videos later, both are HDR if viewed in an HDR-capable screen)

Clips as they are out of the camera:




Made the footage a bit cooler, pushed saturation down, and tried matching all clips using the HDR wheels on DaVinci Resolve Studio 17:




The file above is only 104MB on my PC!!! Using Mainconcept HEVC plugin for DaVinci Resolve that supports up to 8K resolution and 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 (perfect for my planned Sony a1 camera!). I first panicked when saw the bitrate as low as 16-26Mbps, but how they keep the footage identical to the source yet extremely compact is pure sorcery!


It's a one-time purchase and you can migrate it to other device on their website, and subscription is optional but won't recommend it. If you have new Intel CPU/GPU/APU or Apple's M1/M2 processors then you don't need that as you have dedicated hardware-acceleration for H.264 and H.265, and of course ProRes. I'm planning to get Mac Studio next! Current PC: Ryzen 7 2700x, Radeon VII with 16GB HBM2 VRAM, 32GB 3200Mhz RAM (16x2GB), 1TB NVMe m.2 3.5GB/s SSD (Samsung 970 Pro) as main, and 2TB SATA3 SSD (WB) for storage.
 
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Looking for a little feedback on color grading and if you like what I did. This footage was actually dark and moody despite the bluebird conditions. This is old GoPro 4 footage. It was shot in 4:3 and I put it in a 16:9 format using optics compensation. Admittedly, I don't think the optics compensation turned out great on this compared to some of my other videos, but it looked great on my TV, so maybe it's just my ultrawide On my computer - eh. I might need to add a LUT to it with the export, but for the most part I thought it preserved the colors well. This was actually encoded not once, but twice.

 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Looking for a little feedback on color grading and if you like what I did. This footage was actually dark and moody despite the bluebird conditions. This is old GoPro 4 footage. It was shot in 4:3 and I put it in a 16:9 format using optics compensation. Admittedly, I don't think the optics compensation turned out great on this compared to some of my other videos, but it looked great on my TV, so maybe it's just my ultrawide On my computer - eh. I might need to add a LUT to it with the export, but for the most part I thought it preserved the colors well. This was actually encoded not once, but twice.



It all depends on what you're looking for. As it is, the colors look perfectly neutral and great viewing it on a 55" 4K tv 1.5m away. If you have like other footage and wanna color grade the whole thing with a certain mood be sure to nail white balance either before or after shooting it to easily mix it with your other footage. If you have other footage of the same area try to play around with RGB, maybe lower Red/Green/Blue separately until you get close enough to the same color science of your main camera. From there, you can add various LUT's starting with the free ones you get inside the app. Feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can/know.
 
It all depends on what you're looking for. As it is, the colors look perfectly neutral and great viewing it on a 55" 4K tv 1.5m away. If you have like other footage and wanna color grade the whole thing with a certain mood be sure to nail white balance either before or after shooting it to easily mix it with your other footage. If you have other footage of the same area try to play around with RGB, maybe lower Red/Green/Blue separately until you get close enough to the same color science of your main camera. From there, you can add various LUT's starting with the free ones you get inside the app. Feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can/know.
I did a surprising amount of work with that, so going to a neutral was kind of the goal and is a constructive compliment. Thank you. I also did a version with the quicktime LUT, and I didn't like it at all.


It's a bit weird because I did some mountain bike footage earlier this year from my trail that got burned in the fire, it was completely grayed out, and I had to use the quicktime LUT to fix it. I don't understand why in that example.
 
I got incredibly sick for one month, and I'm only a few days into my recovery, so I had to really scale back my fall activities like mountain biking and hiking; I'll try to get a fall hike in this week though if I'm feeling up to it on Wednesday. This was near the end of my walk today, and It almost caught me completely off guard! You really cannot ask for better color combinations than this. As always, just my Galaxy s9 with very minimal photo editing - I turned the exposure up by .05 and then made it slightly brighter on top of that with the highlights.

YzaHJ8P.jpg
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
I did a surprising amount of work with that, so going to a neutral was kind of the goal and is a constructive compliment. Thank you. I also did a version with the quicktime LUT, and I didn't like it at all.


It's a bit weird because I did some mountain bike footage earlier this year from my trail that got burned in the fire, it was completely grayed out, and I had to use the quicktime LUT to fix it. I don't understand why in that example.


For that footage maybe you chose a log footage which is usually gray so it can capture as much dark/bright details as possible then you grade it in post.

LOG_COLORED.jpg


Hope you speedy recovery, mate!
 

sammyys

Banned
Photography is my new hobby, esp I like landscape photos. I edi my photos with Luminar app, look at this site for more info. With its help I can turn any photo into masterpiece. As for me it's a mst have tool for every photographer. There are many presets that are designed by professional photographers.


ueMiKIo.jpg
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Photography is my new hobby, esp I like landscape photos. I edi my photos with Luminar app, look at this site for more info. With its help I can turn any photo into masterpiece. As for me it's a mst have tool for every photographer. There are many presets that are designed by professional photographers.


ueMiKIo.jpg

I use Luminar 4 as well! Might get Neo next.
 
So I went to my first cosplay event. I was just stunned how good some of these cosplayers are especially here in Vietnam. The funny part was later when I wanted to tag these characters, I didnt even know any of their names so I had to do research and realized half of them are Vtubers which is now becoming a big thing. All photos shot with 85mm 1.8G. I have more expensive lenses but damn this is my favourite one by far.

Full gallery:
bVWA1wr.jpg


Q6oZlH4.jpg


iRJZwn3.jpg
 
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Nankatsu

Gold Member
Any videographers out there?

I'm in need of assistance on how to remove flickering from videos. I've google it and tried to replicate some tutorials on Adobe Premiere, but legit no impact can be seen.

Basically I tried the duplication technique with different opacities, but it only increased the motion blur effect on the video. Flickering is still pretty much present.

Are there any other techniques to help me with this issue? I also tried the anti-flicker filter effect from Premiere. It does absolutely nothing too.
 
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