Wildlife and Landscapes of Yellowstone and Grand Teton - FX6 & Z750

[Doug Jensen]

I put this 4K video together mostly just to have a permanent record of a 9-day trip my wife and I took to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National parks last fall. We try to get back there every couple of years, but with Covid and other work interruptions it had been almost four years since our last visit. The trip did not disappoint and I had a great time shooting a ton of stock footage with my FX6 and Sony Z750. This edit is a slow-paced video that some people will find boring, but I like letting the longer shots play out.

Camera 1: Sony FX6
Lenses used: Sony 200-600mm f/5.6 Sony
2x teleconverter (for the 200-600mm)
Sony 35mm f/1.8
Sony 85mm f/1.8
Tripod: Sachtler Aktiv8 head with Flowtech75 legs

Camera 2: Sony PXW-Z750
Lens: Fujinon UA24x7.8
Tripod: OConnor 1040 head with Flowtech100 legs

YouTube (Short URL)

[W. Bill Magac]

Very nice. Looks like you did most of your shooting early in the morning and late in the afternoon. You must have been getting up before sunrise to be in position. Out of curiosity, what codec(s) and frame rates did you shoot at? Thanks again for posting this.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Beautiful work Doug.

[Andrew Smith]

Fun fact: Doug could place the yellow Nat Geo rectangle in the corner of his video and everyone watching would totally believe it. :-)

Andrew

[Doug Jensen]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments very much.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by W. Bill Magac

Very nice. Looks like you did most of your shooting early in the morning and late in the afternoon. You must have been getting up before sunrise to be in position. Out of curiosity, what codec(s) and frame rates did you shoot at? Thanks again for posting this.

Both cameras were set for 24p XAVC-I 4K

I mostly shot the FX6 @ 120 fps slow-motion and the Z750 was either 24 or 60 fps slow-motion.

The FX6 was set for S-LOG3 and on the Z750 I used a custom scene file that I created last year. That scene file still requires grading, so it's not WYSIWYG, but I prefer it over S-LOG.

[Andrew Smith]

Very kind of you to output (as far as YouTube's downloaded file for television playback tells me) at 25 fps. Was there any particular reason for the decision?

Also, we've heard that you only ever shoot at 24 fps if you're intending it to be used in a cinematic projection or product. Why would you shoot at 24 fps when the bulk of stock footage sales would be used at other frame rates?

Andrew

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

Very kind of you to output (as far as YouTube's downloaded file for television playback tells me) at 25 fps. Was there any particular reason for the decision? Also, we've heard that you only ever shoot at 24 fps if you're intending it to be used in a cinematic projection or product. Why would you shoot at 24 fps when the bulk of stock footage sales would be used at other frame rates?

Hi Andrew, the video I uploaded to YouTube was a 23.98p file. In fact, the video was shot, edited, rendered, and exported as 23.98. So if YouTube is showing you something different, that is being done on their end. Just for the record, I disagree with the advice you have heard about frame rates. The decision is more complicated than that.

While I choose to shoot 29.97 for a lot of my stock footage, in this case, I decided 23.98 was the better choice. Almost all film production, TV drama, high-end wildlife films, etc. are done at 23.98p so that is one reason why I chose that frame rate. The second reason is that I'm working on a long-term project of my own that will be produced in 23.98, so I want my footage for that project to be 23.98. A third reason is that 90% of what I shot on this trip was in slow-motion, and I can achieve slower slow-motion when the base frame rate is 23.98. For example, 120 fps divided by 24 is 5x speed slow-motion. And 60 fps divided by 24 is 2.5x slow-motion. If I had chosen to use 29.97 as the base frame rate, then those numbers would only be 4x and 2x. Not a huge difference, but, as I said, I want the slowest 4K slow-motion I can get out of each camera.

[Ronald Jackson]

Very nice Doug - something for me to watch later when I've finished this here breakfast.

As always with 4K YouTube on my 5K iMac I have to switch from Apple Safari to Google Chrome.

What is it with Apple, this and no 10 bit with their Quicktime Player?

"A big girl's blouse " as we might say of Apple over here.

Ron

[Doug Jensen]

That's an interesting observation about Safari, which I already dislike for a number of reasons.
I use Firefox as my primary browser and I can choose 4K playback from the YouTube player settings.
Same thing with Chrome, 4K is no problem.
But when I try Safari the best option I see is 1080p.
One more reason not to use Safari.

[Bob Safay]

Doug, what can I say, it was a pure pleasure to watch. This may go down as your best video of yours that I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I was interested in reading that you were shooting at 23.98 fps. Will this be a problem with Shutterstock or Pond5? I thought they preferred 29.97 fps. It almost looked like you added a bit of warm color in the video. Was this natural light or did you dial it in? I am heading south to Florida to visit friends and hopefully shoot some video as my trip to Antarctica has been cancelled until next year due to Covid. I may try shooting at 23.98 fps just for fun. Take care and safe travels. Bob

[Andrew Smith]

If there is ever an academy award for "best vacation video", it's got Doug's name on it.

Andrew

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

If there is ever an academy award for "best vacation video", it's got Doug's name on it.
Andrew

Ha, ha, that would be great, but I don't think I'd win.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Bob Safay

Doug, what can I say, it was a pure pleasure to watch. This may go down as your best video of yours that I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I was interested in reading that you were shooting at 23.98 fps. Will this be a problem with Shutterstock or Pond5? I thought they preferred 29.97 fps. It almost looked like you added a bit of warm color in the video. Was this natural light or did you dial it in? I am heading south to Florida to visit friends and hopefully shoot some video as my trip to Antarctica has been cancelled until next year due to Covid. I may try shooting at 23.98 fps just for fun. Take care and safe travels. Bob

Thanks Bob, that is high praise indeed. I'm glad you liked it

Pond5, Shutterstock, and Adobe are frame-rate agnostic. They leave it up to the contributors to decide what is best and they don't advocate for any of them. I have had face to face conversations with executives at Shutterstock and Adobe about this very topic.

In general, I think 29.97 is the best choice for stock footage and that is what I shoot most of the time. But in this instance I chose to shoot 23.98 for the reasons I already mentioned in an early post. To be honest, most of this stuff will never sell anyway. There is not a huge demand for wildlife stock footage and there is a ton of it already on the market, so I mostly shot this for the fun of it and for a project of my own that I'm working on right now.

You are correct that a lot of the footage has been warmed up a little because I prefer that look and I believe it is preferred by buyers of stock footage. Every clip has been graded to one degree or another anyway, so dialing in a little more warmth here or there was no big deal.

Too bad about your trip to Antarctica. I'm tempted to say "oh well, it will still be there when Covid is over", but with global warming I don't know if that would be true! I think you are wise to go ASAP.

I wish you luck in Florida. It has been pretty slow this fall and winter with far fewer birds than I have ever seen before. So few in fact, that when I went out looking for eagles last week I got side tracked by airplanes flying overhead and started shooting them instead. A chance to hone my tracking skills, whcih are getting rusty.

CONTRAILS on Vimeo

[Charlie Ross]

Very nice the way you can keep the subject reliably at the same point in the frame for the entire clip, regardless of how much frame it takes up. This would be a good exercise "drill" for me to develop some muscle memory coordination, even if I'm not looking to save clips of aircraft. By that I mean aircraft are more likely to offer something close to being repetitive.