Blog - the automatic filmmaker is Steve Ellington

Entries in Video (8)

Monday

Jun072010

Canon 550d Movie Crop Mode

Monday, June 7, 2010 at 05:00PM

The Canon 550d is an excellent photo camera with its 18MP(5176x3456 pixels) sensor, but the main reason that I purchased one was for its HD video modes. It is capable of shooting 1920x1080p at 24, 25 & 30fps as well as 1280x720p at 60 & 50 fps. In order to produce these frame sizes/rates while still using the full sensor area the camera "cheats" by skipping lines. When shooting 1080p for example, i believe that the camera is skipping every third line. The 550d has another video mode which doesn't use this cheat. It is called Movie Crop Mode which is interesting but in most cases not very useful. Check out this diagram:
The part of the image outline in red represents the entire usable pixel area of the 550d. Outlined in green is the 16x9 part of the sensor used in the HD modes with gray lines in half the frame to illustrate showing the line skipping occurs. The little blue box in the middle is the part of the sensor used in Movie Crop mode. The camera is cropping out the standard definition-sized center of the sensor to make videos of 640x480 resolution. This is essentially the same as taking a photo from the camera and cropping it to 640x480, except that it is 30fps video. What does this mean? The most apparent thing you notice when using this mode is whatever lens you have on is effectively 7 times longer. A 50mm lens becomes a 350mm lens. A 200mm becomes a 1400mm. It also means you have some incredible macro capabilities because the minimum focus distance of the lens doesn't change. Finally, it actually has less aliasing artifacts than the HD modes in the camera. As interesting as all of this is, it is not HD so it's actual applications are very limited. Here are some real examples:

iPhone/iPad compatible Youtube Link

A few notes about this video: The camera has a normal 640x480 mode which is not included in the diagram at the top of the article. It works essentially the same as the HD modes by line-skipping. I included two HD clips at 100% to show that the Movie Crop really does resolve more information than the HD mode. The footage of the green bug was taken with an 80mm lens, which really shows off the macro abilities of Movie Crop. The baby foxes were shot at 3200 ISO, it is amazing that one can film in such lighting conditions even if it is grainy.

Movie Crop is a fun feature to have, but the lack of HD makes it mostly useless. It would have been nice for Canon to include a 1080p Movie Crop function which would give non-line-skipped footage with a crop factor. Maybe this is something that will be included in professional Canon HDSLRs in the future.

Questions? Comments? Contact me.

steve |

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Friday

Jan292010

TNT @ Cafe Henrici

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 05:28PM

On Tuesday, January 12 Cafe Henrici hosted the 2nd Tuesday Night Throwdown -- also know as TNT. TNT is a cappuccino art competition where the barista's only tool is a pitcher of milk. All of the designs are made solely while pouring the milk. It's cool stuff. Here is a video I made for them:

iPhone-friendly Youtube link

steve |

Everything You Wanted to Know About iPhone 3GS Video

Monday, July 6, 2009 at 01:06PM

The iPhone 3GS feature that I was most excited about was video. The very first thing I did when I got my phone was shoot Technologic Overkill, so I could put the video camera through it's paces. In the process I discovered quite a few useful bits information about how the video works. Here is random list of that information:

The video quality is surprisingly good for a cameraphone. In bright daylight the camera performs excellently. Like most small video cameras, it performs worse in low light. The iPhone will automatically lower the framerate in low light to compensate. The Frame rate will not go lower than 15fps
The iPhone shoots 640x480 at 30 frames per second. It records to the h264 codec at about 3700 kilobits per second. This equates to roughly 28 megabytes per minute. That's not too shabby. Audio is recorded in Mono at 44.1 khz using the AAC codec.
Compression artifacting is not very prevalent in good lighting. I think this is where a device like iPhone shines over other small video cameras. It has a very good CPU comparably, which allows for higher quality compression.
You can select your focus point in video mode by tapping, but only when you are not recording. When you begin recording focus is locked to the point you chose. This means you cannot rack focus while recording. This is a small gripe, but if you consider most tiny video cameras are fixed focus, it is still a big improvment.
Close focus is the same as in still mode -- 10cm. This is a great feature. When you are filming at a macro distance you can achieve a pretty decent shallow depth of field look.
Where you tap on the screen also 'guides' the exposure of the video. However, as opposed to focus, exposure remains on 'auto'. If your scene changes enough the exposure will automatically compensate.
The video works very nicely in iMovie, which is expected. One thing I noticed is that you do not have to convert the video to use the slow and fast motion feature. The codec Apple uses is already suitable for that.
The "Jelly" effect that most small video cameras exhibit is prevalent in the 3GS. This is due to a rolling shutter.

Here is a short video illustrating some of these points.

iPhone Friendly Youtube Link.

One thing I keep thinking about is how the iPhone 3GS video compares to my Flip MinoHD. In resolution, the Mino beats iPhone hands down -- the iPhone is not HD. However, the other features of the iPhone 3GS might just compensate for its lack of HD. Let's compare and contrast:

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steve |

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Monday

Apr202009

From the Archive: Zürich, 30 Seconds

Monday, April 20, 2009 at 10:57AM

I made this while bored one day somewhere in the first few months of moving to Zürich. The only thing this video is really missing is the lake.

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Saturday

Apr042009

Pocket Cam: Stand by Me in the Niederdorf

Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 10:27AM

My Photo Blog is the result of having a photo camera with me at all times, but I also always have a video camera with me as well. In this Pocket Cam segment of my blog I will showcase entertaining bits of video I have captured during my day-to-day life.
Last night Karla and I were walking in the Niederdorf when a lively group of men began singing acappella tunes at random moments as they strolled down the street. Eventually I pulled out my Canon G9, switched into video mode, and captured this little gem:

The video from the G9 is obviously not the greatest quality, but there is something very charming about this grainy little video. I really like how the different people walk in and out of the scene, especially when the couple holding hands moves over the camera. I also really like the framing, with the Grossmunster in the background and the one street lamp backlighting the singers. A perfect first entry for Pocket Cam (although this post probably qualifies as well).