In the Prairie
 

My first day with my new (to me) JVC HD100, I took a walk on the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Arboretum's tallgrass prairie restoration (home of Aldo Leopold). Most of this was shot with a Nikkor 70-200mm lens connected to the HD100 with one of Mike Tapa's adapters. Color settings are Paulo Ciccone's TruColor3.

In the Tallgrass Prairie on Vimeo

Comments welcome.

...and at the zoo.
 

Here's another one shot at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin. (Is shooting animals ...in the video sense, or course... in the zoo "cheating" as far as this forum is concerned?)

This was shot with the stock Fujinon 16x5.5mm lens, all at 1280x720 24p.

At the Zoo on Vimeo

Nothing? No comments, good, bad or indifferent?

Hey Brian
 

good first attempts, I'd say what you need to develop now it timing and pace, and maybe have a sense of relativity, your first nature vid sort of includes all things nature, but they don't seem linked, eg: this is a national park, and here are some images from the national park, where is there's a shot of some birds in a building and it's like ok, how does this connect.
You've got the idea of holding a shot long enough, nothing worst than having too short a clip to use, but I think you held some of your shots a little long, especially the flower (are they daisies?) shot, with some of your subjects , maybe invest in a large beanbag as a cheap form of cinebag, and get down lower (eyelevel if you like) to your subject, rather than looking down at the subject (the rhino's and the butterfly would be a example of this - of course if your in a zoo and don't want to die, it's understandable getting lower with the Rhino's probably isn't a good idea!)
I have a HD251, when I first got the camera I found I was underexposing a lot(turtles), if you haven't calibrated the lcd and evf, make sure you live by your zebras, which you should do anyway, and use Paolo's TC3, and the colour difference will astound you. This camera if you slightly underexpose tends to punish you with loss of colour information, and increased noise quite quickly.
I plugged mine into a large TV and changed the LCD and EVF levels until the brightness I saw on TV is what I saw on the camera, and it's helped immensley with exposure, the zebras let you know when you loose your hilights, but the overall exposure can be done using the EVF/LCD reasonably accurately, of course a proper field monitor is necessary to nail this, but not everybody has the $$ to have one.

Good luck with it and practise practise

Regards

Adam

Hi, Adam

Thanks for the critique. I should say that this was really more of a camera test than anything like a finished nature doc. So, you're right, the editing is completely haphazard.

Your comments about calibrating the viewfinder and LCD are greatly appreciated. I'm finding as I shoot with this camera that I'm never quite as sure where I am with exposure, as I was with my old PD-150. I've been trying to train myself to use zebras, but will take the time to set up the viewfinder and LCD as you suggest.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Really nice!! If I were testing a camera and seen this kind of quality, I'd be very excited.