Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Today in the Machine June 28 2011

Brian Schiavo takes you through the process of creature building. One of the best ideas of this creature is to not try to make the whole creature as a suit. That's going to make life vastly easier. I am, however, very amused at the idea that Brian thinks a PA will be operating the creature and not him. ;-)
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Although it takes five-and-a-half minutes for them to get into it, the new Zacuto Camera Test is interesting. The short answer is that film does not do well in low light and does great with highlights. Of course, we already knew that.
The other short answer is that all the cameras look great. But we already knew that too.
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My studio is a mess and we have to keep a battery of fans going just to keep the temperature reasonable. If my studio becomes clean you'll know that I'm not even trying to do work anymore. I'll be avoiding work by cleaning.
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We have acts one through nine on Earthkiller. Maybe we have a lock of the whole picture? We might open up act 8 for a couple things, I don't know yet.

5 comments:

Chance Shirley said...

Regarding the Zacuto thing, I'm curious to see the rolling shutter test. I know that film is going to be the winner there--I just wonder if any of the CMOS cameras are even in the same ballpark as film.

The more I experiment with CMOS cameras, the more I feel that rolling shutter is their biggest shortcoming. And it makes some shots just flat-out impossible (at least if you want them to look good).

Andrew Bellware said...

The only trouble I've had with rolling shutter is with motion-tracking a composite. I've done a world of handheld, fight scenes, swinging the camera around and nothing about the way the image breaks up annoys me.
Not until we try to motion track.
I think, but am not sure, that what happens is that the rolling shutter artifact slews the picture but unfortunately the giant robot (or whatever we put into the frame) does not slew. And therefore looks weird (and badly tracked).
I like those highlights in film. Gotta admit they're pretty nice. But I like the inky darks of some of the video formats better.

Andrew Bellware said...

Wait, no, I'm a lying sack of lies. We've had another problem with rolling shutter -- using a strobe. The image is freakin' WEIRD when you use a strobe (at least with the GH1).
The top half of the image gets the strobe and the bottom half doesn't. Then the bottom half of the image gets the strobe and the top half doesn't. I should post some examples online.

Chance Shirley said...

I know exactly what you're talking about with the strobe. Strobes are awful shot with rolling shutter.

My problem lately is trying to mount cameras on vehicles. If the road isn't smooth, the picture does a weird skew every time the camera shakes. Maybe most people don't notice it, but it drives me crazy.

Personally, I'd trade the low-light performance for a skew-less image.

Andrew Bellware said...

That sounds stinky!
The optical image stabilization on the GH1 helps with skew a LOT.

But I do like those nice blacks.