[sjwaldron]

I attend anime/scifi conventions and usually take clips and splice them together to make compilation video. On Saturday I set out to improve the quality over my previous attempts at a small local convention. I tried to improve my hand holding and movement techniques. I also made a point to get proper exposure and locking it down with the AE-L button before recording each clip.

You Tube

You Tube

The wide angle shots:
K-5 with DA 14mm f2.8

Telephoto clips with bokeh:
K-7 with FA* 85mm f1.4

Edit: I had both cameras set to take 720p video at 30 FPS.

I ran all of the clips through Deshaker for VirtualDub. I didn't try to make the clips perfect, but there was quite an improvement just from running them through the plugin. I ended up doing a batch process with some basic settings because I had 57 clips.

The clips were pieced together in a NLE program called Kdenlive for Linux. The music was bought from premiumbeat.com because I didn't want any legal hassles with that.

Let me know if you guys like it.

[VisualDarkness]

Nice one! You really caught the energy, feeling and last but not least the craziness you find when going to a Con.

[sjwaldron]

Nice one! You really caught the energy, feeling and last but not least the craziness you find when going to a Con.

Thanks. Sounds like you are a fellow convention goer?

Since making the video, I wrote a few articles on what techniques I used:
Improvements to my convention videos, a process… | photographybanzai.com
Pentax DSLR Movie Video Setting Techniques | photographybanzai.com

The K-5 and K-7 aren't as bad as people let on with video. Using aperture, exposure compensation, and AE-L allow for a decent amount of control. It isn't full manual control because we can't change shutter speed and ISO, but good enough for most situations.

[VisualDarkness]

Nah, I've gone to a couple with my con-frenzy friends but I've (almost) lost contact with most of them when people started to move and I haven't gone to a convention since then.
I'll check your guides!

[liukaitc]

yes, pretty good..kind stable when u walk..did u use stabilizer?

[sjwaldron]

yes, pretty good..kind stable when u walk..did u use stabilizer?

Nope, I used DeShaker for VirtualDub in post processing. It would be even better if I let the clips run at normal 100% or even slow motion speeds, but for that video I wanted faster movement.

I did try to keep my camera straps tight because that does seem to help though.

[TechGuru]

Holding the cam with outreached arms helps.

[stringbox]

Nice work!

[sjwaldron]

Just made something else.

A Pentax commercial... In Japanese.

The content isn't very serious, but the effort to make it was. Those 24 seconds took around two days. Besides the quirkiness of tools available in Linux, it's starting to become a decent solution for video.

Pentax Parody Commercial in Japanese | photographybanzai.com

You Tube

You Tube

[VisualDarkness]

Hahaha, humour!

[CharltonChars]

Nice Sjwaldron! this is really a nice post.