Archive for the ‘video equipment’ Category

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Do-It-Yourself Camera Slider Project

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 by Jeff Gray, KET

Continuing our test-builds of do-it-yourself photography/video production tools, here’s a camera slider that schools and home users should have a good time building for little money. Using it is fun, it’s very portable, and it adds many possibilities for interesting camera moves for video production projects. Students will notice that the moves are used regularly in films and tv shows. Slideshow pics are swipeable in portable devices.

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Based on the Filmriot crew’s DIY Camera Slider design, our unit was inexpensive (around $20.00, including some used parts) and it helped to produce some nice test video right off the bat. Mods I added were: substitution of a raised metal electrical switch plate; addition of an inexpensive quick-release camera mount I found online; and felt strips to line the tubes for smoother sliding. If I can build this (think Homer Simpson BBQ project) I know you can.

Here’s the first quick video test. Could do better with practice and care, but the dogs, Precious and Bunny, were perfect with no direction at all.

Camera Slider Test Video
Camera Slider Test Video

Shot with iPhone 5; edited in Lumify app (to try); WiFi transfered to iPad w/PhotoSync app (on both); edited in iMovie app to add titles, stills, and music; exported to YouTube over WiFi; inserted into WordPress blog w/Royal Slider plugin.

See the earlier camera stabilizer project.

Coming soon: a camera crane/jib project for more super-silky-fun moves!

If you’ve made something useful for video production and would like to share it please leave a response, below!

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 3:41 pm | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in do-it-yourself equipment, photography, portable devices, projects, video equipment, video production

A Camera Stabilizer from Plumbing Parts: DIY Gear Resources

Friday, June 29th, 2012 by Jeff Gray, KET

Some of us have been interested lately in making some Do-It-Yourself camera gear: stabilizers, cranes and jibs, dollies, etc. There are a lot of plans and how-to videos online. One stabilizer that seemed easy to try and inexpensive to make was the “$14 Camera Stabilizer,” by Johnny Chung Lee. So I got the parts from a local hardware supply store and a couple of hours later I had a camera stabilizer to play with, pictured above being used by our Cynthia Warner as a camcorder support.

The actual project cost for me was about $25 with a new drill bit. I hadn’t made anything like that in a long time and I have Homer Simpson skills, but it went together easily and the stabilzer works pretty well. For today’s light cameras that are hard to keep steady this type of stabilizer basically provides a counterweight for you to lift against, resulting in smoother camera movement.  As you can see in my test using a tripod adapter for recording with an iPad, below, practicing smooth body movements gets smoother shots (best ones were moving around the tree and along the windows). Johnny Lee also says that that’s the big factor in success; his $14 Camera Stabilizer site has some good-looking test videos that show good results.

It seems as though the iPad camera may not do to well processing fast pans either, along with its flickering auto-iris exposure adjustments, so one might want to also move slowly when panning to get better results. Some iPad camera apps have exposure and focus locking to try as well. Another problem in using iPads for video is that bright sunlight can almost totally obscure the screen. We’ll try to make a sun shield to see if that will help.

Here’s a test video using the DIY stabilizer with an iPad tripod adapter:

Here are some other good sites for DIY camera gear and fun project tutorials, demos, and more :

We’ll be making a handmade camera crane-jib next. Teachers, check out these sites for some clever, fun, and useful projects you can do with your students (note: preview before sharing, as there may be some inappropriate language, content).

 

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 5:54 pm | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in camcorder, do-it-yourself equipment, tutorials, video equipment

Apple iPhone 4 Offers New Features for Multimedia Makers

Thursday, June 10th, 2010 by Jeff Gray, KET

Apple is giving it’s popular iPhone another makeover to a slimmer version 4 with a new hi-res screen, also adding some great features for multimedia producers.  Video recording is HD 720p using the Apple h.264 codec, and an iPhone App version of Apple’s iMovie video editing program — available soon for $4.99 — should be of great interest to school and home video producers. Addition of a tripod screw socket would be a handy addition for recording stability.

The new iPhone has two cameras and two microphones, allowing for iPhone-to-iPhone “FaceTime” video calling over Wi-Fi. One camera on the front above the display shoots you at VGA quality; the second camera on the back next to the LED flash shoots HD target video you’d like to share (pressing a button on the screen quickly switches cameras). The second mic, at the top near the headphone jack, is for FaceTime calls when the camera is pointed at you. It’s also supposed to work with the main mic at the bottom of the unit to suppress ambient noise and background sounds. It would also be handy to have an external mic input. Then slap it onto something like a Beachtek audio mixer for two XLR mics on desk stands and you have a basic school news recording setup, with editing. See the online video of FaceTime examples demonstrating the use of both cameras.

The 5-megapixel still camera now has an LED flash to assist it in low light, and there’s a new “tap focus” feature that promises selective focusing of near or distant subjects. Wowza!

The new iPhone 4 is due in retail stores June 24. Pre-order reservations for the new iPhone 4 begin June 15. Apple iPhone 3G and 3GS users can download a free iOS 4 software update that adds over 100 new features.

Update, 6/29/10: Uh-oh, hello!  It seems as though there are lots of people with new iPhones who are complaining about phone dropout when they hold their new iPhones a certain way, like normally. The Gizmodo media info. blog has a nice article all about it, with some amusing “semi-solutions” for dealing with the problem.  Here’s a ZDNet article expressing concerns about early-adopting the model. In looking up the Gizmodo article, I found that I must have been asleep the last few days, because an entertaining mystery around a “lost” Apple iPhone prototype for the current model that ended up in Gizmodo’s hands has been unfolding. If you’ve also been unaware and are interested, here’s Gizmodo’s post, and an Engadget update post about some of the fallout.

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 10:58 am | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in camcorders, mediaphones, video editing, video production, web video

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