Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

Have a practice run this weekend for some in car video. Can't believe I haven't done in car footage by now with the camera.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

2-3" foam pieces under your tripod feet will take the vibration out. A slight bit of slow motion will also help.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

What are you shooting? Is it going to be hand held or are you trying to mount the camera to something?

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

The best way i have found through a few years of experimenting is hard mounting. this works on cars, motorcycles, aircraft and helis. Look at the rigs Hollywood uses to film in-car scenes. The simple ones are multiple suction cup mounted grip style gear and use bracing to eliminate any play in the camera. The big ones are welded to the frame of the vehicle. Some of my best car footage was a 7D mounted to the windshield with three 6" pump style suction cups. One held the base of the camera and the other two were to triangulate for stability and attached to the hot shoe. Hard mounting utilizes the vehicle's suspension to absorb bumps.
Any play in the mounting will result in repetition of the bumps with a decay.

Check out filmtools.com for some of their rigs. It'll give you an idea of what's involved.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

That is where I was headed depending on what he was going to shot. Getting some good hard mount gear is a must if you are going to do professional looking car shots. I have several filmtools kits combined into one super kit that allows me to mount a camera to just about any smooth surface.

One thing for sure is if the car is going to be in motion make sure you have a lanyard tied to the camera that prevents it from hitting a passenger or driver in the event something unexpected happens. Safety first.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

I will raise my shutter speed a little bit over the standard 180 degree shutter when I know there will be a good bit of motion so that there is less of a motion blur in general when I go to stabilize in AE.

1080p, raise the shutter speed a bit, and some minor AE stabilizing and you can really deliver quality shots with a natural "wiggle" to the camera. Of course I export this in 720p after the stabilization, but this is my method for delivering pretty good handheld shots. When you raise the shutter a bit and do your best to handhold, there is no stationary motion blur for the most part - your mileage depending on application may vary.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

If you have a wider lens, that helps also, plus it gives some wiggle room to stabilize in post.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

If you're using a lens with I.S, then you might want to check it's turned off first. A lot of I.S systems get drunk at high speeds, vibrations and in my experience, the Panasonic system, is no exception.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

@ MIke... can you update everyone here what you ended up doing and how it went?

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

Thanks for all the replies. It actually rained so we postponed till this weekend. I'll let everyone know how it goes and what works and what doesn't work. If I come back with a busted camera you know things didn't go well.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

This thread actually got me thinking earlier so I pulled together my original shot and the fixed shot and put it up on the web - note, if I had an even higher shutter speed it would have been better. This was at 1/80th, not 1/60th. I would go up to 1/100th without any issues next time.

This was basically standing in the car with my back pressed to the ceiling to stabilize myself in a car doing 60+(ahem...) on canadian roads which are horrible. A smooth road without harsh shifting (which was what was being demonstrated), I could see it being borderline perfect. I had the shot 100% vertically and horizontally stable in AE, but added smoothing via camera. I do not own a rolling shutter plugin though... so there's that issue still (CS5).

7D + 24/1.8

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

You would get a much better result by standing a tripod on 2 legs in the floor of the car and strapping it to anything back there that you can.

If there is room in the back seat take a piece of thin wood or plastic across the back seat for the 3rd leg of the tripod to stand on. Put a couple of sand bags on top of the wood/plastic. If the seats are leather and are slick use some of the rubbery shelving liner between the seat surface and the wood/plastic.

Original Easy Liner® non adhesive shelf liners from Duck® brand

I use that stuff all the time to keep things from sliding around.

Be sure to attach a lanyard to the camera and secure the other end of it to something solid like a seatbelt mount. You don't want the camera injuring anyone if something goes wrong.

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

For ad hoc, middle of the day, consumer testimonials, I am not setting up a tripod in a customers car. Gotta do it handheld and small - hence the dslr. Tripod obviously makes it more stable and better, but thats not an option in my case. If you can rig something up... why wouldn't you?

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

For the case you describe (small camera, in car interview setting) something like this would work to shoot a front seat driver or passenger and has a setup time measured in seconds. The step up in quality in my opinion would be worth the cost of the rigging.

Gripper 3025 - The Filmtools 6" Suction / Vacuum Cup Camera Mount - Filmtools

Re: Anyone getting smooth in car footage?
 

Chris, I bought a couple of Harbor Freight suction cup dent pullers for about eight bucks each, bolted a 3 inch bar between them and drilled a quarter inch hole in the bat to mount a ball head. Works fine as long as a window is available.

Mu favorite in (and outside) car mount is a simple window clamp for $45.00.