Snowy slow-mo footage with the HD100
 

Snowy slow-mo footage with the HD100

I went out this weekend to film some of the blizzard that hit West Michigan. I was just out in my neighborhood for maybe 20 minutes but I nearly froze off my fingers... It was around 3 degrees out.

I tried out some overcrank footage upscaled to 720p with the HD100. There's some full-frame 720p24 footage mixed in but the SD60p isn't too bad for resolution IMHO.

The best part of the video for me is seeing the owner of my favorite restaurant close his shop for the day due to a lack of customers and then get blasted by snow & wind. For not having much of a winter here yet, it was a pretty good storm. Enjoy.

http://www.terpstar.com/video/GR-Blizzard2007-720p.mov
3 min / 720p24/ 68MB / H264

Chad,

Most of the footage looks good. It's nice to be reminded of what snow looks like while I'm baking away in the 55 degree weather.

There appear to be some parts where the motion gets jerky. The one that stands out in particular is around 57 seconds, where the gentleman is talking on his cell phone. Perhaps this is just the poor processing power of my computer, or a hiccup in the exporting.

How did the camera perform in those conditions? No condensation issues?

I'm shooting some music videos in the cold soon, so I'm curious.

Looks like extreme shivering to me! It isn't easy operating handheld in those types of conditions.

Looks great!

Btw, I'm in Santa Barbara California. It's 75 degrees and sunny.

Josh, it's overall not the smoothest of footage but nothing about that shot strikes me as excessively jerky so I'm thinking it may be your computer. There was definitely some shivering going on though. At least the slow-mo stuff helps hide that a little... ;-)

I had the camera wrapped up in a Petrol rain cover: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search and had to operate it with gloves on.

I would have used a tripod if this were for anything more than my curiocity and home video footage. And if I didn't mind being out longer (which I did).

Tim, the camera held up just fine when outdoors. However I started with a polarizer which got covered in snow and then I took it off and my wide angle converter got covered in snow, so the best thing to do is carry a clean cloth at all times and shield the lens. Also don't shoot into the wind when it's snowing...

It was only after I came inside that condensation started to happen. Luckily it was only on the the wide angle converter and not inside the lens. Is there a proper precaution to take to avoid getting condensation to form inside a lens? Going from extreme tempuratures I got a bit worried but I guess it was OK this time.

You guys in warm climates just don’t know what you’re missing. :-)

I also shot some footage from this storm in Michigan. Ice was everywhere, on every tree, power line, etc.

I had to get some footage. Some of it turned out great, but I am having a great deal of difficulty focusing when it is very bright outside. Just not enough definition in the viewfinder, esp under harsh conditions. Anyone know of a cheap HD viewfinder or some other trick to improve this?

The cold didn't help either - it was around 8 degrees out. My hands gave out long before the camera did - it performed well, (although I only shot for about 25 minutes), despite the cold.

I'd post footage - but I still have no clue how to do it :)
Very nice stuff... And FYI, it's zero degrees here right now :(

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

I was curious about getting a better viewfinder as well, but most of them are expensive and black & white (not sure why this is other than perhaps it's better for exposure-reading and focus). But with a b/w viewfinder you don't have the HD100's focus assist anymore which I've found to be invaluable and is what I used on this little shoot. But I guess with a better viewfinder you would be able to use the built-in peaking and higher resolution to focus. Anyone have experience with this?

Chad, I feel for your fingers.. Moved from NY three years ago, after the snowiest winter in more than a decade. Enjoy the stuff. I'll take the earth quakes.

Nice work with the camera. Thanks for sharing the footage. The most perplexing part for me was watching it play, instantly, at such a "Large" size. How in the love of compressors did you get that huge, great looking, high res .mov file to be only 66.7mb? If I compressed a web video to those dimensions I'd have to send it to you in the back of a dump truck.

I have so much to learn...

Eric, Snow can be a lot of fun but I usually don't miss it when it's gone...

I used Apple's Compressor to compress it. I set it to be 100% of source size and put the video quality to automatic at just a hair down from "Medium." I find it usually give good results for less space. Key frames are by default every 150 frames, frame reordering is on (whatever it means). It also really helps having 24fps progressive footage as there are less frames to encode and no interlacing to screw up. Also be sure to set the audio bit rate down to at most 96Kbps -even less still sounds good.

To help eliminate the condensation on your camera, put it in a garbage bag (clean preferably ;) ) and tie the end shut. This will prevent the moisture in the air of your house from being able to get to the camera to condense on the camera. Wait til it comes to room temperature and unwrap your perfectly happy camera.

Thank you Chad. My head cocked to the side like a curious looking Beagle when I read your suggestion about 24fps. Makes sense..

That's one more small step, for this man

This is why I love these forums. Thanks, Cole.

I think that info is from my boy scout days...could be wrong, but sounds right.