The following video features some interesting equipment featured at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show that was held in Las Vegas 6th to 11th April 2013. If you watch the video you will see a selection of camera stabilisation equipment. In one case instead of the standard steadicam and active computerised stabilisation system is presented that can be easily hand-held. Other featured products include cameras & Jibs.
Vimeo Takes NAB: Tech News from Vimeo Video School on Vimeo.
Yesterdays post contained some photographs taken from the roof of the Round Tower at the Garthdee Campus of Robert Gordon University. This post as the title says includes a number of timelapse videos taken around 06:30 in the morning just as the sun was rising.
A few images of the Round Tower may also be seen below, giving some idea of the location from where the videos were recorded & yesterdays photos were taken.
The following videos demonstrate some interesting setups where as always light plays a hugely important role. The first example below is that of creating the Bokeh Effect. This is achieved using a long lens to set the background out of focus. The background has a dark card / velum lit from behind with a number of holes punched in it to allow light to stream through. Capturing an image of an object good and sharp in the foreground with the Bokeh Effect in the background can create some interesting effects. The addition of gels or coloured acetate sheets can add that extra dimension. Perhaps experimenting with a number of coloured acetates could generate a really nice effect. The addition of a reflective surface adds some really nice reflections into the mix both from the foreground object and the light streaming into the scene from the background.
Another interesting effect can be created with a zoom lens with a slow shutter of a few seconds. Varying the zoom over the time of the exposure to the imaging sensor generates an interesting blurring. You will see that the scene is initially composed with just one side on light, though the resulting exposure is a little dark, hence the addition of some additional lighting to the front of the subject solves this.
A fairly recent previous post looked at light painting, mainly from the perspective of a person creating shapes using a torch or a mobile. The video below is a different view on light painting where objects are illuminated with light. Varying the placement of the light, from back, front or even just from the top down creates quite an array of different shots.
Given that one can use black card in the production of the Bokeh Effect from the first video above another nice composition to try out is to photograph a wine glass making use of a few black cards to control the lighting / reflections of the scene.
If you are perhaps doing a good deal of product photography then you may find something like a Lastolite Cubelite to be of use, so that you can have nicely controlled soft lighting of the product you wish to capture.
Folding up one of these Cubelites can require a bit of practice.
Thalmic Labs have developed a device that can be worn on the forearm that has the potential to controll a myriad of devices using gesture based intereaction techniques. Further details can be seen on their website. https://getmyo.com.
In the previous semester I had a group of students for a module on Audio & Video Production. In the past days a new YouTube Channel was created and a selection of videos were uploaded. A week or so prior to this I had organised a screening of the videos at a Cinema located just a few minutes away from where we’re based. It was really great to spend some time in the projection room and see both a film and digital projection system.
The videos below should give you a sense of what the students produced, I hope you enjoy them. Have written another blog post giving a little more info on this.
If you have recorded some footage making use of a green screen and wish to insert your own background behind the actor/talent then it is well worth while to reduce the overall computation load of the chromakeyer beforehand. The 4/8/16 Point Garbage Matte may be found within the Video Effects option of the Effects panel, within a sub folder called Keying.
Should your actor / talent be moving around quite a bit, you may wish to keyframe the position of the garbage matte over time. The video below give a sense of the keyframing process, once you can do it for one effect you can do it for any effect.
The final step is to go ahead and apply a chromakey effect to the video clip on your timeline. You will note that there are a few different chromakey effects available.
You may find that you can get better keying results with the Ultra Key effect. All in all, it will take a bit of time and tweaking to get the perfect chroma keying result. Probably the most important part in all this process is however the quality of the recorded footage. Light is essential, both on the subject and on the background. The background should be evenly lit right across the frame. If you have the option of recording in interlaced or progressive, then choose progressive as this will capture full frames rather than half frames in the case of interlaced, added to that make sure you record at as high a bit rate as you can. At the end of the day if you have captured footage that is well lit, progressive and at a good resolution then the process of chromakeying should be just a matter of a few clicks and your done.
One of the key elements to photography is of course light. Without light one would simply have a blank image. If you enjoy landscape photography then the magic hour at sunrise and sunset are really the only times of the day for such photography. The reason being that photography is in essence about two key things composition / framing of the subject and the painting of the scene with light.
Light can be described in four different forms, transmitted, reflected, soft and hard light. The sun on a clear day is a good example of hard light as one can see really strong shadows on a summers day. Soft / diffused light is that which you would find on an overcast day with little to no visible shadows to be seen. In the case of taking a photograph of a sunset for example you also have the ability of taking in transmitted light, in the form of being able to see the light source. Should you be located close to the sea or a lake then you can also make use of the reflected light from the water.
One of the classing photographic assignments is of course Portraiture. Often you may hear that you should always shoot with the light (sun) to your back. However by shooting into the light source you can capture some wonderful colour and highlights. A large aperture lens is also great for portraiture, thus allowing for a shallow depth of field to be created and all the emphases being placed on the subject in question.
If you enjoy landscape photography then some of the videos below may be of interest.
The following video includes a number of examples of some interesting landscape shots to the music of Enya!
Its not just light but also composition that is important to any great image. You can perhaps glean a few tips on the subject of composition from the final video.
The video above details some really fun things one can do by freezing motion varying the exposure between 1/100 to 1/1000 of a second. The camera is of course set to manual, as well as continuous capture to grab several frames in quick succession. Water is being poured into a wine glass that has been mounted at an angle whilst the main light source illuminates from behind a defused background (velum). Adding some food colouring to the water creates that additional level of drama and dimension to the shot.
The next video looks at capturing the splash of a water droplet. Again like the previous setup this is done without the use of flash photography techniques, though they both make-use of a continuous light source.
Another fun experiment to do is to capture bubbles as they float down to earth. To really freeze the motion exposures on the order of 1/250 of a second allow for some interesting shots to be captured.
One further interesting video fairly similar to the second last one in which the task is to capture a splash, instead of capturing a water drop, this time the task is focused on capturing the splash caused by the dropping of a spanner into a tray of water.
Gavin Howie also has a nice video demonstrating how to capture water splashes. Initially he uses a white sheet of paper as a background. Towards the end of the video he looks at the addition of colour to the image, firstly by changing the white balance, in this particular case he uses tungsten. The alternative option is to use a coloured background that results in some really interesting colouration on the waters surface.
If you happen to have an aquarium floating around then you can have a go at dropping a selection of fruit and vegetables in and capturing the motion of the impact and splash.
Its always of course useful to take a look at the user manual of your camera to be familiar with the settings. In the case of the Canon 600D one can download the user manual from the support page on canon.co.uk. You will see on page 88 of the manual that the Canon 600D is capable of shooting about 3.7 shots per second in continuous mode. One can find details about the Tv setting on page 94 allowing for motion to frozen or blurred.
Some months ago myself and a collegue assembled a Libec Swift Jib 50 Kit (user manuals and specs are available from this page as pdf files), including the Jib arm, T102B tripod, & DL08 Dolly, along with the REMO30 pan/tilt head, attached to a Sony NX5E video camera. The following video is a timelapse of the assembly process. Earlier today I gave a live demo of the setup process, with the addition of linking the video feed to a SWIT 7 inch monitor at 42 inch TV via HDMI.
The following videos give a sense of the capabilities of the system & some further details on the assembly process.
The video below in particular give a good overview of how the system can work when connected to both a monitor and HD TV.
The next video provides a good overview of the setup processes involved.
One can get a good sense of the type of shots that are capable of being captured from this video.
Another good example is that of a wedding scenario.
A boxing match also provides some interesting potential for various shot types and dynamic movement.
The following video demonstrates how the Jib system can be used for the purposes of making a music video with some really nice smooth motion and a variety of angles being captured.
The following video is a quick demo to a former MSc student of mine on how the system works, as you can see viewing the cameras perspective on a large HD TV is far more entertaining and useful that a small low and fairly low resolution monitor.
The entire topic of light-painting seems to have gathered ever increasing interest in recent years. This tutorial video was created by a former student of mine about a year or so ago.
Light Painting Tutorial from roman on Vimeo.
The essentials of course is to make use of a tripod and manual control. Next its a question of setting to shutter speed to a long enough duration for you to create your work of art using light. One then of course needs to play with aperture to control the amount of light gathered by the lens and depth of field. Keeping your ISO as low as possible will help to keep image quality up. Manual focus is again essential to ensure its constant during the shoot.
The following are a few other videos looking at light painting that you may enjoy.
The video below looks at light painting from a very much different perspective to the ones above, where by it uses light to accentuate objects in the scene making them pop out in the image.
If you have an iPhone/iPod Touch then you may like to tryout the Light Paint app allowing you to have a multicolored torch in operation.
In a recent post I included some videos discussing depth of field and how it can be affected by aperture, focal distance and distance of the object. The question that came to mind however is that of how could I demonstrate elements of photography to a group of about 100 students. Often you may gather a small group of half a dozen crowded around a camera to show them something, however this doesn’t really scale well to a group on the order of 100 or so.
To solve this problem I made use of technology to help them see the live interaction I performed with the settings on the camera itself and remotely using Canon’s EOS Utility. The room in which the students were, contained three projectors, one more or less in the middle of the room with the others at either end. To allow them to see the interaction I made use of the EOS Utility in conjunction with Microsoft’s PixelSense (Samsung SUR40) providing a table top interactive surface with which to interact with the settings of the Canon 600D. In front of the camera I placed two tables covered with some green cloth and a number of objects at different distances to focus on. You will also notice from the images below I also included a tape measure running down the length of the table.
Located next to the Camera and the PixelSense table I added a HD TV so I could readily see the interactions I was performing. Floating a few feet over the PixelSense SUR40 hung a Sony NX5E video camera suspended in space in a under-slung position with the help of a Libec Swift Jib 50 Kit (comprising the arm, T102B tripod and DL08 dolly).
The HDMI video feed from the camera was fed to a splitter box with one input and two outputs. As you can guess one of the HDMI outputs fed directly into the HD TV, the other via the use of a HDMI to VGA adapter went off to feed the three projector screens.
All in all I was quite pleased with the overall result especially as all the students could see what I was doing first hand, moreover there was no need to repeat the processes a dozen times or more to a set of small groups all crowded around the camera. After I demoed the variables affecting the depth of field I let the students to come up and have a go with altering the settings such as f-stop and focal length themselves. They all really seemed to enjoy interacting with the Camera through the use of the surface and whats more all the other students could see what they were doing as well. They also had a good bit of fun just playing with the controls of the Jib and operating the REMO30 pan/tilt head. Concurrently after I had demoed the use of the system I got them to do some multiplicity photographs in our green screen room. The others who were waiting of course to get their chance to interact with this equipment and take some photographs were busy working their way through some photoshop tutorials. So that kept them busy with three distinctive tasks to carry out.
Once they all knuckled down to work, a few 3rd year students dropped by the lab to give me a hand in moving our OptiTrack Flex 13 motion capture system to another room, thereby freeing up our green screen room purely for photographic and video effects work. All it all it was a busy morning, with lots of equipment being moved around. Fortunately I had moved all the equipment you see in the images below into place the night before. You will notice that a shadow is cast by the Sony NX5E video camera and the REMO30 tilt/pan head. I am sure with a bit of shuffling of elements around this can be eliminated for the next time. In the final photograph of the set below, you can see the setup with the projection being displayed on two of the three screens, though the far off screen is quite a distance down the lab. I had hoped to record some video of the system in use, but didn’t get around to it due to the rehousing of the motion capture system, so may give it a go the next time with the elements rearranged is a slightly better manner. I guess the question for the next class is what will I demonstrate next? Some panoramic photography with the use of a Manfrotto QTVR 303Kit was something I had considered as a possibility.
The following videos are very informative in providing a really good explanation how the Depth of Field of works. One very useful tool is the Canon EOS Utility allowing one to control their camera from a desktop computer or laptop. Its an interesting interplay between the focal length of lens, the distance to the subject and the aperture. This webpage may help to give some further information featuring elements such as the circle of confusion and the hyperfocal distance, you will even find a simple DOF calculator at the bottom of the page. The next page on dofmaster.com provides another useful dof calculator and some useful illustrations. You may also enjoy the following DOF equations, providing details on the hyperfocal distance as well as near and far distances of acceptable sharpness.
Storyboards are an essential part of the pre-production process, helping to get the ideas and concepts envisioned in a script fleshed out in a more intuitive and visual way. The following are a few videos highlighting the story-boarding process.
I very much like the use made of storyboards in the video clip below – a behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars Episode I the Phantom Menace. Between roughly 01:00 and 02:00 one can readily get a sense for the shear number of shots required for the film and a very good sense of what elements within the shot will be real and not-so-real. The quick run through by George Lucas with just a few coloured highlighters readily helps to give a sense of the shear scale of the task ahead.
One way perhaps to start thinking about storyboarding is to look at a short clip and storyboard it out, by doing something like this you can quickly get a sense for a number of different shot types that are regularly used, some appreciation for the timing / pace of each shot and some sense of the camera movements involved. The video below is a trailer of Harry Potter and the Half Prince Blood, how many distinct scenes / shot types and camera moves can you count and identify?
If you haven’t sketched or made a storyboard before then some pointers may be useful, the following videos give some hints and tips. The final video below shows some scenes and the corrosponding storyboards from the 1976 film Taxi Driver.
The following are a few videos showing the Rubin’s Tube experiment, where one can readily see the standing waveform of a sound. You will see in the videos below that the Mythbusters have a go at creating this experiment, whilst some others play music from Queen and Europe.
Was delighted to see my YouTube Channel setup just 13 months ago has just gone past 100,000 views. The channel has a little over 600 videos covering anything and everything from Building a PC to Roller Coasters, Aquariums, Dredging and even setting up a Motion Capture system.
Why I don’t know but my most popular video at just under 5,000 views is a POV video of the Blue Flyer Roller Coaster at Nickelodeon Land, Blackpool, Pleasure Beach. Why this is I really don’t know as I have posted several other Roller Coaster videos that are far more exciting. On the best day this video peaked at 57 views.
The next post popular video showed the process of Installing an Intel Core i7 3930K Hexacore CPU on an ASUS Sabertooth X79 Socket 2011 Motherboard. This video was uploaded in July 2012 and has reached 4500 views. The most popular day peaked at 44 views.
At just under 4500 views the third most popular video shows the process of Installing the Corsair H100 Radiator and Pump within a Cosmos 2 Case Sabertooth X79 MB 3930K CPU.
At 3000 views a video showing Hogwarts Castle at Universal Studios Orlando essentially being attacked by Voldemort, hasn’t been as popular as I would have expected it to be. Quite a few of the lightning strikes happen very close (although in the distance) to the Castle, creating some interesting scenes.
A video of a Chinook Helicopter performing at Lecuchar Airshow received 238 views on the evening that it was uploaded. It was amazing to see the maneuverability of the aircraft. I uploaded just over 100 video clips of various aircraft from the airshow amounting to about one hour of footage.
Another interesting playlist coming in at four and a half hours of footage shows the Nordic Giant Dregder working in Aberdeen Harbour. The most popular video in this series shows the Imposing Hulk of the Nordic Giant and the Liebherr P995 Excavator hard at work.
Perhaps a more unusual playlist is that showing a set of blank screens in various colours ranging from White to Black and on the Red, Green and Blue. The most popular of these at roughly 2500 views is that of a Blank White screen and nothing else.
Perhaps the cutest video posted is that of a family of Dwarf Mongoose – a little surprising to see it has received just 79 views, on the other-hand they are not the most active and energetic of creatures.
So what makes for a popular YouTube video – well certainly it seems that people enjoy staring at video containing white and nothing else. Videos with an element of comedy seem to be very popular, and of course PSY Gangnam Style surpasses them all at 1.25 billion views, even Justin Bieber – Baby ft. Ludacris trails behind at almost 830 million. Will we soon give up watching television and go towards online digital content only?
Recently I received a link to a YouTube video demonstrating how to spin a camera around the CN Tower. The video was posted a little over a month ago (17th December 2012) and has received around 125,000 views so far. One can make use of Google maps and street view to find the positions from which you would need to take a set of photographs in a circle around a tall object of interest. Then with a bit of work in Photoshop and your favorite video editor create a nice 360 – QuickTime Object VR like animation.
More recently (11th Jan 2013) a YouTube video was posted of the Space Needle in Seattle using the same technique as the CN tower video. I visited Seattle a few years ago and would have loved to have given this a go after seeing the results of the video below.
Another fun task is that of Multiplicity or essentially cloning yourself multiple times. A nice demo of one technique that could be used for this is demonstrated in the video below. Towards the end of the video the author mentions that he would give a ‘prize’ for somebody who include a hundred clones within an image. How difficult would it be to create an image with a hundred clones, or perhaps more importantly how long do you think this would take to achieve? The following post on PetaPixel breaks the cloning process down into seven steps.
I am quite tempted to give the hundred+ multiplicity challenge a go, using the setting of a good sized computer lab. Could have 50 or so clones sitting to desktop computers, perhaps another 20/30 sitting along a very wide windowsill (reading an interesting selection of books ranging from photography to C and Java!). Then would need to squeeze in another 20 or so clones in the remaining open areas. A tripod set at perhaps seven to eight feet should provide a good perspective allowing the full depth of the room to be observed and the clones to readily be visible throughout the image. The video below is another nice example of multiplicity.
Multiplicity in the Studio – Breakdown
Ensure the camera is on a good heavy tripod.
Camera settings to try as a starting point.
Manual Mode.
Sutter Speed 200, Aperture F8.
While lens set to Auto Focus, focus on an area where the subject will be, then switch over to Manual Focus so it remains the same throughout the photoshoot.
Should have one or two lights setup to illuminate the background.
Subject should be 6/7 feet away from the background to help avoid shadows being formed.
The subject itself should be lit so another light (Key light) should be used, to help fill in & create softer shadows and additional & less powerful light may be used.
Combining the images in Photoshop
File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack.
Browse for and select the images taken & press OK.
Within the Layers Window, select each image (layer) and press the Layer Mask Button.
Select the top layer, then with a black paint brush paint out the subject, making them disappear. Pressing Ctrl + I will invert the mask, hiding everything else bar the area painted out.
Carry out the masking process for all other layers.
Once finished, one may go to Layer > Flatten Image to flatten all the layers into one. A better option of course if you ever wanted to edit it further would be to save the file as a PSD to retain all the layer & masking information. To create a flattened image you could simply save the file as a JPEG.
You may also wish to crop the image to a particular size or aspect ratio (Image > Crop).
Are these fun / Interesting Projects to Try?
Do you think some project tasks along the lines above would be interesting for a group of a hundred or so first year computing students doing a module looking at graphics / photography. Do you know of any other fun and interesting examples be they YouTube demos or online tutorial example walkthroughs?
Some Possibilities for 360 Animations in Aberdeen
The tall chimney stack
The Big Wheel at the Beach
The Obelisk at Duthie Park
The first snow of 2013 in Aberdeen appeared overnight on Sunday 13th Jan and into the early hours of the morning on the 14th. The videos below are looking out towards Rosemount Viaduct and beyond to Union Street during a snow shower in the late evening of Monday the 14th.
On Monday evening at roughly 19:30 or a little later a 007 James Bond Themed Fireworks Display for Guy Fawkes Night took place down at the Beach in Aberdeen. I am sure we are all familiar with the phrase – remember, remember the 5th of November. The videos shown below were recorded from Broad Hill and include footage of the crowds gathering before the event, some ships entering the harbour and also heading out to sea, the fireworks display itself as well as the resultant traffic that ensued directly after the event.
The second of our two Open Day’s at the School of Computing Science and Digital Media took place today (Saturday 3rd Nov 2012). The visitors to the School arrived for 10:00 in the morning at one of our computer labs, following on from this they were presented with a short series of talks introducing them to the school. After the talks they had the chance to look around at some of the demos we had running including a remotely operated camera jib system, a setup for product photography, motion tracking with the kinect, motion capture with a 12 camera optitrack system and an eye tracking system. The day concluded with a set of workshops focused on iPhone Programming and Human Computation.
In the lead-up to the open day I had spent Thursday afternoon setting up a 40″ TV that had just arrived in conjunction with the Libec Swift Jib 50 and REMO30. Friday morning was spent organising the demo rooms and reconfiguring the Jib. Neither the product photography setup with a 4ft lastolite cubelite or the optitrak motion capture system are to be seen in the videos from today. The afternoon was spent re-calibrating the OptiTrack MoCap system and getting various cameras and other bits and pieces sorted out. Between the preparations and editing the videos below I have spent two entire days getting things up and running, some results of which may be seen in the videos below, enjoy.
You will probably note that Nemo features quite heavily in the videos below, I had seen this in a Disney shop the previous weekend and thought it would look good in the office. Nemo is a really nice example of computer graphics and animation, hence quite a suitable decoration for the office.
The video below was recorded during our open day four weeks ago and includes several other scenes that weren’t included in the videos from today (see above).
The following are just a few short videos giving you a small flavor of the myriad of model trains that were available to see during the Aberdeen Model Railway Club Exhibition that took place on the weekend of 27/28th Oct 2012. One can find out further information about the club and exhibition from their website http://www.aberdeenmrc.co.uk.
Is RGU CompSoc a Computer Society or a Hillwalking Club? That’s a question we ask ourselves every time we venture into the wilds of Scotland for a bit of adventure. This time we headed about 60km west of Aberdeen to Loch Muick, just a few miles south west of Ballater. As you can see it was quite an overcast and damp day but everybody really had a great time. In all about twenty students and academics joined in the fun, some took the easy option of just quickly going around the track that located just meters from the loch itself. The other dozen as you can see from this video decided to take a slightly more adventurous up into the cloud covered hills.
I kept on thinking that our journey through the misty and cloud covered hills around the loch were a bit like the journey of the “Fellowship of the Ring” trying to cross the misty mountains. In one scene from our adventures you can probably think of a very similar scene from the Fellowship of the Ring where the Hobbits, Humans,Dwarf, Elf & Wizard make their way in single file across the ridge of a mountain shortly after commencing their quest from the elven outpost of Rivendell. In our case we are in single file, but one of the main differences is that you can just barely see us given the cloud cover. As we all know the depiction of Middle-Earth was recorded in New Zealand, given its wondrous landscapes, I do wonder however that it could also have been shot in Scotland.
One of the students on the hillwalking adventure tracked our route via gps, you can see the route below, as you can see we travelled 17.2km in a time of 5h 10mins.
The following video will give you some small sense of what it was like today during our Open Day at the School of Computing Science and Digital Media, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. It was held from about ten o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. After a half-hour registration period, visitors were treated to a welcome talk and a short series of lectures. Following on from this a number of hour long workshops were held on such topics as iPhone programming, cryptography and wireless networks. Their was also time to have a chat with Academics and see some of the demonstrations we had running throughout the day, most of which may be seen in this video. As you can see in some segments we were piping a video feed of the demonstrations happening in other rooms into one of our PC labs and projecting them for all to see.
Demonstrations included the use of an Eye Tracker to identify the area on screen a person was focusing on. A full body Motion Capture System comprising of a twelve camera Flex 13 system from Optitrack was also available to see in action. In concert with this we also had a motion tracking demo running on a Microsoft Kinect for windows, though the students who were doing the video recording didn’t get any footage of this. Also demonstrated was the Microsoft Surface (Samsung SUR40) which supports up to 52 points of interaction concurrently. If you watch all the video you may see that we certainly came close to this maximum value. All in all everybody seemed to enjoy the day visitors, staff and student helpers alike. Our next open day will be in a months time, at which point we hope to have a far larger and wider set of demonstrations to show the visitors to the school. See my YouTube Channel for further videos of some of the equipment seen here in this video.
Chris Young another member of staff at the School also grabbed hold of a camera and quickly recorded some of footage from of the Motion Capture System in operation. For more videos from Chris take a look at his Vimeo Channel.
Motion Capture System from Chris Young on Vimeo.
Time-lapse video showing the sunrise at the main entrance to Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. This video was recorded at seven in the morning on the 1st October 2012. As the sun rises you can see some nice reflections of the clouds in the library tower. The Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS) Building reflects the light of the rising sun just below roof level. The recently constructed main entrance is also illuminated by the rising sun and towards the end of the video one can see the lettering of the universities name being projected onto the road.
As you can see the exterior work to the library tower is almost complete apart from boxing in the facilities at roof level. Given that the University is hosting an Open Day on Wednesday 3rd Oct 2012 I thought it appropriate to create these videos to help give some sense of what the campus is like, especially as all those in the city centre will be moving to the Garthdee campus during the summer of 2013 in time for the kickoff of the 2013-14 academic year.
During the summer period at sun rise one could see some really nice interactions with the glass of the library tower due to the transmissive light from the sun cutting across the atmosphere, perhaps another time-lapse in about ten months time is called for when all the work has been completed and the sun is in a more northerly position at dawn. For further detail on the progress of the new build you can see my previous post from the 30th Sept.
The seemingly complex and mysterious problem of how to fold up portable green screens has long been something that has perplexed many. The following set of videos demonstrate a few techniques all very similar in method on how to quickly fold up these seemingly tricky items. Most of the examples below are from lastolite products, such as the green/blue screen, photography background and the cubelite. The 5 in 1 reflector is from Interfit. The video series begins with a video showing the process of folding up a 5 in 1 reflector in what is essentially slow motion so you can see the exact process. It is simply a matter of placing your hands in alternative positions and twisting. Additional videos showing this process may be seen at http://bit.ly/PCYIV2. You may often here the steps when folding a green / blue screen referred to as Taco and Tortilla.
