Mountain bike action video filmed at night

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paul snyder
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Joined: 19 Jun 2013 15:38
Location: Copenhagen

Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by paul snyder »

I didtn't get much time to film with Brett, and that meant deviating from my original idea a bit. The result was still a pretty fun video though, and also a great learning experience for shooting at night. It was also great practice working with sound and cuts behind the pc in the editing "room." Particularly with the sounds of zippers and velcro in the opening sequence. I would certainly enjoy doing more shooting at night!

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Stephan
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Re: Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by Stephan »

Hi,

Nice job! I like the colors a lot, and the exposure is very clean. Did you perform some color correction in post (in order to get the bike headlight look pure white), or instead was the headlight already calibrated to 6500K daylight maybe?
paul snyder
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Joined: 19 Jun 2013 15:38
Location: Copenhagen

Re: Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by paul snyder »

Hi,
First off, thanks. I did do post colour correction but mostly to boost the yellow of his jacket and helmet and the greens in the woods. The lights appeared white in the raw footage as well, but the colour boost probably had an effect on their appearance. I used a preset video enhance in the editing program, which seemed to work quite well for night footage. Normally I would have adjusted saturation, brightness and contrast manually though. The lights weren't calibrated by me. They are 3600 lumins on the helmet and 1800 lumins on the bike, and those are standard out-of-box settings.
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Doughie
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Re: Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by Doughie »

Hi Paul

Nice edit! i liked it a lot. Some careful placement of night light to light up various angles and trees etc.

Am i right inb thinking the bike-light and the helmet light were LED? That probably accounts for the lack of 'yellow' tungesten-esque coloring, as tungsten lights would be around 2800K but LED lights are MUCH bluer, around 5000 to 6500K, so i think thats why the on-bike lights look white or blue-white.

What camera did you shoot it on? I too noticed the apparent lack of noise in the shadow areas so i thought that was impressive and so am curious what camera you shot the video on.
paul snyder
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Joined: 19 Jun 2013 15:38
Location: Copenhagen

Re: Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by paul snyder »

Hi Doughie,

You are totally correct that the lights are LED. Sounds like a good explanation as to why the lights look so white.
We also used bike lights to light up the trees and the big rock, plus the light on the camera. You can see them in a few shots, but I'm okay with that.

The camera is a Sony PJ780VE (the European version with 32G internal memory - I was reading a thread in here comparing the North American version with the European.) It does have a built-in video light, which I found very useful. The camera has quite good low-light sensors, so as long as the video light was on it was able to focus very quickly and captured some impressive footage. Whether 50i or 60p is better, I don't know, but I'm very pleased the camera and all its features (I used the projector when he was watching the video in the woods - looks like a laptop, but it's actually the lid on a cooler being used as the projector screen.) It's also reasonably light and compact and has a decent price tag.
paul snyder
Posts: 5
Joined: 19 Jun 2013 15:38
Location: Copenhagen

Re: Mountain bike action video filmed at night

Post by paul snyder »

Ah, and just saw your post on the Sony Exmor RS sensor. :-)
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