Phuket Hotel Shoots

[Nick Hope]

Further to this thread about lighting we've done 5 hotels so far and the first 2 of them are now online:

http://www.tvtrip.com/phuket-hotels/...-villas-phuket

http://www.tvtrip.com/phuket-hotels/...-resort-phuket

We did loads of arty medium and tight shots and they haven't used any of them. Rack focus and stuff like that. But we learnt a lot doing them.

In my opinion the videos look a little dark. I tended to let the Z1 do an auto iris, then go fully manual and stop it down a little. But having seen the result I dont think I'll stop down as often in the future.

Also you get a good idea of how the Bolex Aspheron looks. It makes those bathrooms look much bigger than they really are, and all lines around the edges stay nice and straight. Pics of it with my home made adaptor are here.

Frank comments and feedback would be more than welcome!

[Tom Hardwick]

Hey, your TVTrip is a lot sharper than my blip:
http://tomhardwick.blip.tv/#622512

so how do you do that? I upload a wmv file, but mine's soft, yours pin sharp (though slightly smaller).

tom.

[Nick Hope]

I have no idea Tom. I just sent the tape off to the producer (oh how I love those jobs!).

I expect they made the Flash movie with something like On2 Flix Pro 2-pass.

Try to send a high bitrate Xvid file to BlipTV.

If you want some super sharp HD stuff online then don't mess about, get it on Stage6. My step-by-step instructions are here and much of it applies to non-Vegas PC users.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Vimeo is another HD option, they use a Flash viewer and it works great with h.264. But it is currently limited to a 500 mb weekly upload. Here's an h.264 test clip - 5000 kbits/sec, 1280x720, 24p. Make sure to check out the full screen option!

[Michael Wisniewski]

Oh man Nick, your videos made me so antsy. I'll be in Phuket then Boracay in March, but right now I'm stuck in NYC for February.

[Michael Wisniewski]

I do agree the Phuket videos seem a little dark, maybe they forgot to color correct for computer monitors? That was my first thought.

[Tom Hardwick]

Not dark this end. But then I was revelling in that super-wide look as the camera pans and objects decelerate towards and then accelerate away from the central point of the screen.

The sharpness does fall away a little towards the edges Nick - so have you tried locling the focus at about a metre to see if this improves things a smidge? Or tried filming zoomed up a bit?

tom.

[Nick Hope]

To be quite honest I left it in auto-focus when the Aspheron was on as it seemed to be going just fine like that. But I will try both your suggestions next time. Thanks Tom.

[Nick Hope]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

The sharpness does fall away a little towards the edges Nick - so have you tried locling the focus at about a metre to see if this improves things a smidge? Or tried filming zoomed up a bit?

Tried locking on 1 metre yesterday but it was out of focus. 0.1m is the only setting that was in focus but throughout the first 45 degrees of turning the focus ring the focus changed a lot but the display was still showing 0.1m. So "0.1m" covers a big range. I left it on auto again all day. I never noticed it "hunting".