Some of my super 8 footage online for the first time

[Patrick]

As the title suggests, this is the first time Ive uploaded super 8 footage on to the internet. This is very much an experimental short. There is no theme or plot or logic. It's basically a collection of random subjects put together for a one minute duration. All footage was shot with a Canon 1014E and the transfer was done by a facility in Adelaide.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KcXbfWRv0ZA

[StoneBuilder]

The time lapse autumn shadows are great (I'm going to copy that!)

[Patrick]

Ha copy cat! Well I admit....I copied that myself from a nature doco I saw on TV..... :mrgreen:

[TheCircus]

I liked it! Very nice and creative.
What did you expose for, when you shot the sunset? Did you lock the f-stop?
Im going to do a timelapse using super-8, soon. Any special advice?

/Tony

[Raz B]

I'm glad to finally see your footage =]
The timelapses are beautiful! I specially liked the last one .
You should put some music in video next time. It will be nicer to see these timelapses with music in the background.

Good job anyway!
Raz.

[Patrick]

Thanks Circus!

I locked the f stop with all of the shots in the montage. With regards to the sunset at the end, I took a light reading from an area of sky beside the sun (but excluding the sun from the lens' angle of view) when the sun was fairly high in the sky near the beginning of the shooting. I would also open up the aperture about two thirds of a stop or so from whatever reading you get. Obviously, the beginning will be a little overexposed but this will be very brief as can be seen in the youtube video. As the sun descends lower in the sky, the scene will quickly become correctly exposed. Then, when the sun nears the horizon, the scene will start to become underexposed which will really saturate the colours.

I zoomed in all the way to the 70mm setting and if I recall correctly, my interval times were about 5 or 6 seconds or so, focus set to infinity.

Hope that helps!

Hey Raz! Thanks for your help in getting this footage online in the first place, and thankyou for your good words! Yes, music would be a nice touch though I didn't have access to any that was free of copyright issues. Incidentally, I notice a large portion of people on youtube don't give a stuff about copyright.

[TheCircus]

Thank you for the very useful description of your time-lapse, Patrick!
Appreciate it.

/Tony

[Raz B]

You welcome Patrick =]
And yes, many people on YouTube don't give a sh*t about copyrights. However, I think if it is only for personal use and it doesn't include full tracks, then it's not too bad. So one minute of a song in your video won't kill anyone

[Patrick]

Hmmmm...I suppose! Though I'd still like to play it on the safe side. Ive been trying to search for websites where you can download music that is free of copyright restrictions but so far I can't find anything like that. Do such sites exist? If not, I wonder about these type of CDs that when you buy them, you pay for the copyright and I assume you can then do whatever you want with the music on them.

[VideoFred]

Nice timelapse Patrick!

The shadows are very nice.. What stock did you used? I see a red cast.... But I blame this on the transfer.

For the music:
http://www.magix.com/us/music-maker/

With Music Maker you can make your own absolutely copyright free songs.
The sound of Magix is very professional.

Fred.

[Patrick]

Thanks Fred!

Everything you see there was shot on good ol' K40. Yes, the transfer may not be perfect but it's much, much better than another transfer of the same footage that I had done at another local place. The difference was like night and day between the two.

However, with this transfer, it is not the most stable. There is a distinct jerk in the verandah shot with the sweeping shadows near the end which was not there in the original footage. Elsewhere, you see a little shaking now and again. The original footage is very stable, and I asked the operator why is there this slight shakiness and he blamed it on my camera lol.

I might add that there was a lot of time lapse of clouds that this transfer did not handle well. On the monitor, I could see what looked like a ghostly flare taking up much of the screen. The clouds shot that is visible in the youtube video is one of the few that turned out well. Surprisingly, the other transfer that the other place did handled the clouds much better but did a terrible job with the rest of the footage.

Previously, I had made a Divx file but this didn't seem to play back 100% smoothly. I then made a WMV file and this was very smooth upon playback. However, when I uploaded it to youtube, the movement in the clouds shot does not look quite as fluid as the original WMV version. I assume that's youtube's doing so it's out of my hands to deal with that problem.

The footage was transferred to vhs tape as that was the only video format that I had at the time.

Thanks for the link to the music program. I'll have to see what my composing skills are like.

[sprocket64]

Impressive! I liked the sunset best.

sprocket64
Fort Wayne, Indiana USA

[Patrick]

Thanks Sprocket! I'm happy with how the sunset turned out.