Can I get feedback on my 500mm Cinematography?

[RedSpectrumPictures]

What do you think of my 500mm cinematography?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oitq9NXQxCk

[jmac698]

The composing is good, colors nice, but I'd have to say it's blurry.

[RedSpectrumPictures]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmac698

The composing is good, colors nice, but I'd have to say it's blurry.

Thanks for the feedback. I think the blurry side of this video is down to me not focusing very well, and also from what others have told me, the mirror lens that I used in this video isn't the best. It's got telescope technology inside which makes it so zoomed, and thats why its not too sharp

[jmac698]

That's ok, you can try some refocussing software to fix it, but usually it only makes it a little sharper.

[kpmedia]

I don't really see a focus issue.

However, the depth of field is probably too shallow for some of the shots. (And I recognize that mirror lenses are very hard to use, since depth of field is extremely limited.)

Is this model of Canon one where you have to use the LCD screen to view the video? On my Nikon D3s, the viewfinder is disabled, and that does make it hard to see focusing and depth issues.

The video was also likely downsized to too small a resolution, which made everything fuzzy (including fine details). Even at 1080p, it has something wrong. Maybe the bitrate is too low? Remember that H.264 include native blurring for low bitrates, which is why H.264 videos don't get blocky.

That said, the shot at 0:20 is definitely out of focus.

The music is too loud. The levels need to be pushed down some.

The content/subject is nice. Most of my SLR video to date has been insects and birds.

Youtube is lousy for watching HD videos, so I've attached the 1080p file here. jmac, download and watch it again, if you were not watching the 1080 on the first viewing. It makes a big difference.

Overall, the quality of the video was very good -- nice stable shots, good use of depth (even if a bit overdone), decent choice of calm music to reflect a serene moment.

Composition is nice in most shots, too.

I didn't much care for the grass shot at 0:33 because the subject was lost, there is distracting junk on the bottom right corner, and because the exposure is off. Same for the green-tinted shot on the water that comes immediately after it.

It's neat that the video loops.

Choice of editing and encoding software also really makes or breaks quality. Same for the quality of your computer monitor, where the editing is done. On a calibrated IPS LCD, I was able to see these flaws. The music was played out through near-reference quality speakers, too.

Youtube videos can be embedded on this site by using the [youtube][/youtube] bbcode. And then the ID of the video (the v=XXXXXXXX) goes between the Youtube tags. For this video, the code was [youtube]Oitq9NXQxCk[/youtube]

[jmac698]

I checked again, the scene with the blue dragonfly had the subject out of focus.
I did some experiments before with Depth of Focus stacking, but that would only apply to a still subject.
Nice music.

But, what DOF does is neat. I used a Canon still camera with a custom firmware called CHDK and wrote a script to change focus across 20mm in steps of 4, then combined these. For a torture test I used an oblique angle of some text. The result could have any DOF I wanted; but I made all the text sharp, which would normally be physically impossible.

Another use is to create a 3d image; by finding the sharp pixels of a picture, you know the distance of those pixels (the current focus distance), and in this case, the shallower the better depth resolution!