Like, twelve hours later than my typical posting time – I am wracked with guilt. But to play on your sympathies, I haven’t been feeling well the past day or so, and so snuck in a couple of naps when I should have been working on this video. And of course, video editing takes so damn long in the first place, or at least, it does for me…
To add to that, nothing particularly new with this one, mostly experiments with a different video rig for night shooting, showing the refinements that still need to be made.
Further refinements will be along before too long; I said I had two methods to improve things, and the second has shown great promise already – but now we’re all out of Estate Finds, so I guess you won’t see that after all…
A note about these cheap little video mount/stabilizers that you see here, basically a mount for the camera hanging from a handle: the point is that the weight of the camera acts as its own gravity stabilization, something that can also be done with a decent weight extending below the camera itself – you need something well below the fulcrum, which in this case is the handle that the other things are attached to. The problem that I created was that the flashlight weighs as much as the camcorder, almost entirely eradicating the weight below the fulcrum. I am in the process of changing the position of the flashlight – the mic is far too light to figure against this noticeably and can stay where it is.
Another factor, though much less significant, is the location of the controls on the camcorder, the video start/stop button (marked in red) and the zoom control (blue.) The Canon HFS100, like many such little units, is made to be held in the right hand up near your face, with your hand through that strap on the body, so the thumb rests on the start/stop and the forefinger on the zoom control – but of course, dangling low from the left hand on that overhead handle puts those controls in a more awkward position. Not bad, if you’re not in the habit of using your right hand to steady the rig better, until you need to move said hand to operate the controls, which is what caused some of the fumbling seen in the video. With the flashlight moved to the bottom, this may no longer be necessary – we’ll see within a few days.
The absolute best improvement so far has been the Canon HFS100’s ability to maintain focus, meaning I don’t need to be doing it manually like I do with the Canon 7D DSLR, and this helps hugely. It’s not always perfect, especially when tracking, giving priority to its built-in stabilization instead, but it snaps in pretty quickly when the movement reduces enough. Also useful, the camcorder can be used with the external HDMI monitor that we’ve seen before – some of these clips used that, some didn’t. I’m also intending to try using a monopod, provided I can rig it so the tilting of the camera is not restricted, but that will be more modifications, since the handle mount/stabilizer has no attachment point. 3D printer to the rescue…
Now, there were several things that did not get captured on video, since we went down a few times at night to redistribute corn without the rig in hand – isn’t that always the way? I’m hoping to correct this very soon, possibly even tonight after this posts, but the rig won’t be updated yet.
And that wraps up this year’s weekly post topic, since it’ll be next year before Friday rolls around again and we’ll be on a new weekly topic. This is not to say that I won’t sneak in the occasional Estate Find anyway, because c’mon, but it won’t be weekly. And I’ll be back with more video refinements soon enough.