Saturday, August 19, 2006

HVX200 Musings: Run and Gun

I couldn't sleep. Even though I knew it would be a cloudy morning, I still wanted to take the camera out and shoot some morning scenes on my day off. My first stop would be the courthouse, where I recalled months ago that a homeless man would spend the night at the front doorsteps, sleeping. Walking along Calvert Street, I saw him. Wrapped in a greenish blanket with empty cups of McDonald's drinks and a water bottle around him, he lay outstretched in the still morning air. His shoes sat on the step beneath him, beside some newspapers folded next to them.

My camera was set on B.Press (deep black gamma), with it on Low, for more tonal range. Shooting 1920x720 (HD, 720p) at 60 FPS (called super slow motion, double the frame rate of film cameras), I set my tripod across the street and waited for some gusts of wind to blow the newsprint up. People walked by as he rested, never checking to see what his condition was. But don't judge; would you check on a stranger when you can't see what's in his hands?

I drove out to south Baltimore, setting up beneath a statue to capture some time lapse, at 1 frame per second. Ran out to Tide Point and did some more time lapse, stoked at the way the clouds floated above.

Then I stopped on Charles Street to capture a traffic light and a street lamp. There weren't enough people to shoot street scenes like I had wanted. I even rolled up to the mirror building to shoot some time lapse there. I had only gotten 2 hours sleep, but I just wanted to shoot some footage as the clouds mingled with the sun and sky. And I resized them to post in the images here.

The shots have no post-production toning to them at all, they are raw frames from the shoots I did. I plan on shooting perhaps everything in 720p, since you can't do time lapse or slow motion in 1080, I think. 720p has the most wide ranging shooting styles one can manage.Soon, I'll have to really fart around with the sharpness.

No comments: