Digicam Movie Editing Made Easy

Almost all point-and-shoot digicams capture video footage in addition to still photos. But how do you turn those short snippets into your own personal movie?

If it comes down to a choice between bringing along a camcorder or a digital camera, I'm going to choose the camera. Even though I enjoy shooting video, I like still photos even more. Plus, digital cameras are smaller, and managing pictures is easier than dealing with hours of video.

But there are times when I also want to capture a few snippets of video. Certain special events such as a speech at a wedding, a greeting from an old friend, or a child's first steps are communicated better with moving pictures and sound. Fortunately for us, most digital cameras have a respectable Movie mode, and some even have great ones. The problem is, once you have captured the footage in your camera, what do you do with it? Before I answer that question outright? and I will? let me explain the difference between the video your digicam captures and the footage from a digital camcorder.

These days, most people shoot video with a digital video (DV) camcorder. DV is becoming the format of choice. Once you record your movie clips, you can plug the camcorder into your personal computer and an application on your computer launches, ready to download and edit your footage. On the Windows platform, you might use Microsoft's MovieMaker; on the Mac, you could use Apple's iMovie or Final Cut Express.

But when you plug in your digital still camera, these applications don't seem to recognize it, even when it's full of video. One of the reasons for this is that you're probably plugging your still camera into a USB port, while your camcorder uses the FireWire port. Most video-editing applications look for devices connected via FireWire. But that's not the only difference.

Digital camcorders typically record in the DV format. Your digital still camera is using a completely different format, such as Motion JPEG OpenDML, which is an extension of the AVI file format. You can play these files on your computer by using QuickTime Player; in fact, this format is part of the QuickTime media layer. That's why almost every digicam under the sun provides you with QuickTime on its bundled CD.

Playing the files is one thing, but hooking them together and editing them is another altogether. If you can't use the DV-editing software that came with your computer, then what do you do? The answer is QuickTime? the Pro version, that is. Sure, the free QuickTime Player you download from Apple lets you watch the movies. But the Pro version you buy online lets you edit them too, plus do a lot more. QuickTime Pro is an extremely versatile digital-media application. But for the moment, we'll focus on editing, stitching, and trimming.

The first thing you need to do is transfer the movie files from your camera to your computer. If you don't know how to do this already, you'll have to crack open your owner's manual. Every camera/computer combination is a little different. If you're lucky, your camera has what is referred to as Mass Storage Device connectivity. That means it appears on your computer like a regular hard drive. Nikon, Olympus, and Kyocera cameras usually have this feature. In those cases, you simply open the "hard drive," drag the movie files out, and save them on your computer. In case you don't know which ones are the movie files, they will usually have an .AVI extension.

Now you need to purchase the Pro version of QuickTime. Go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime and click Upgrade to QuickTime Pro. You'll receive a software key that unlocks the Pro features in the Player version of QuickTime. Now you're in business. You need to learn only three commands in QuickTime Pro to edit your movies:

 1.    Trim

This command enables you to snip off the yucky stuff on either end of your movie. Simply move the bottom triangles on the scrubber bar to the endpoints of the content you want to keep, as shown in Figure 5-15. When you then go to the Edit drop-down menu and select Trim, the gray area will be kept and the white area will be trimmed away. You've successfully snipped off the content you didn't want to keep.

 2.    Add

Most digital cameras allow you to shoot only a few minutes of video at a time. So, to construct your movie, you have to combine these short clips into a longer presentation. Use the Add command for this purpose. The procedure is similar to copying and pasting in a text document. First, move the bottom triangles to select the section of the video you want to copy. Then, go to the Edit drop-down menu and select Copy. That will put the snippet on the clipboard.

Now, open the snippet to which you want to add the copied content. Move the top triangle on the scrubber bar to the end of that clip; then, go to the Edit menu and select Add. The video you copied to the clipboard is now added to the second snippet, including the sound that was recorded with it.

 3.    Make Movie Self-Contained

Once you've built your movie from the snippets you captured with your camera, choose the Save As command from the File drop-down menu. Give your movie a name, and be sure to click on the Make Movie Self-Contained button. This will flatten all the layers you've added into one movie, without any dependencies.

Congratulations! You've now made your first feature from short clips captured with your digital still camera. Regardless of the platform on which you created the movie, you can play the movie on both Mac and Windows. If you want, you can even burn it to CD and share with friends.

Source: O'Reilley | Online Portfolio | Portfolio Websites

Name Folders to Organize Your Images

You have many digital-shoebox applications to choose from to help you organize your photos. Or, you could simply use the built-in tools that come with your operating system.

 

Of all the places I've been the most amazing one I've seen remains my grandfather's basement. It was organized. He had, perhaps, an unfair advantage over the rest of us. As a pharmacist in the days when all pills were white, being disorganized could have been fatal.

 

The discipline of being organized was part of his daily routine. But he also enjoyed the advantage of organizing things, which is simply being able to find just what you need without the frustration of looking for it. The screws were on these shelves, the nails there, the adhesives right here, the rubber bands (sorted by size) over there, and on and on. His basement was as neatly organized as Noah's ark. Fortunately, he passed that gene on to me, so when I started collecting digital images, I quickly established a scheme so that I'd never have to look for them or remember where they were on my Portfolio Website.

 

This was long before asset-management programs such as Adobe Photoshop Album (Windows), Canto Cumulus (Mac/Win), Extensis Portfolio (Mac/Win), iPhoto (Mac), iView Media Pro (Mac/Win), Kodak Easy Share (Mac/Win), Picasa (Windows), QPict (Mac), and others were available. I had to rely on the only thing available: the file system.

 

Filenames

 When I was the computer guy at the office, I used to have a standing offer of US$100 to anyone whose problem could not be resolved by a clear understanding of the four parts of a filename. In the days of MS-DOS business systems, I never had to pay out.

 

Here are the four parts of a filename:

 

· The volume name (e.g., C:\ or Macintosh HD)

· The directory and subdirectories, if any (e.g., DOS\ or Documents

· The root name (e.g., AUTOEXEC or Read Me)

· The extension (e.g., .BAT or .txt)

 

As you can see from the examples, this tends to be true for all operating systems. In

Windows, you might see C:\DOS\AUTOEXEC.BAT, and on the Mac you might see Macintosh

HD: Documents: Read Me.txt, but all four parts are there in each filename.

 

Each part does a different job:

 

Volume name

Tells us where the file can be found. The volume can be the internal hard drive (as in our previous example), an external storage device, a CD, or a floppy.

 

Directory and subdirectories

Together with the volume, these give us the pathname of the file. The pathname in our example is C:\DOS\ or Macintosh HD: Documents

Root name

Pretty much what we call a filename, period, it’s the basic name of the file. Without the root name, we don't have anything.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio Website

Bounce Flash for Softer Light

One of the best techniques for using (and reasons for purchasing) an external flash is to bounce its light off the ceiling. This creates softer skin tones and a journalistic look.

 

Photographer Bill Harvey was awarded the lifetime achievement award in 1997 by the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles. He showed me the setup that I still use with unfailingly excellent results, as everyone always agrees.

 

Bill used a Vivitar 283, still available today, mounted on a pistol grip. With the 283, you just set the ISO, switch the removable sensor to one of several distance settings, and look up the color-coded distance setting on the illuminated dial to find the correct f-stop. But Bill never shot the flash directly at his subject. Instead, he pointed it upward, toward a small plastic reflector like. Sto-Fen makes several accessories for the 283, as well as Canon and Sunpak strobes.

 

The Sto-Fen reflector for bounce-flash photography

 

Bill used Sto-Fen's Twin Panel Bounce. Its compact, clever design eliminates hot spots and covers 24mm lenses and larger. Digicam zooms generally aren't wider than 28mm (speaking in 35mm equivalents). I also like their Omni Bounce, which is a white plastic dome with a black panel on the back that sits right on top of the 283 lens. It gives an even softer shadow than the Twin Panel but doesn't have quite the range. Both bounces come with a black plastic mount that just snaps over the 283? very simple, elegant, portable, and reliable.

 

If the head of your flash pivots upward, you can also bounce the light from your flash with a rubber band and the back of a business card. This disperses the illumination. Some flashes even include a bounce card built into the head.

 

Using bounce flash to produce more natural results

 

The 283's removable light sensor is an important feature. You can mount the removable sensor on the camera's hot shoe but move the light around to other positions and still get good exposures. I've rigged up a Vivitar 283 to a Nikon CoolPix 990. This isn't sophisticated dedicated flash circuitry precision, but it keeps the sensor with the camera; after all, that's where the exposure is made.

Bill would add an external battery pack to power his Vivitar, but I find that today's NiMH AA rechargeables handle the job with power to spare.

I like to move the flash an arm's length away, up high or even to the other side of the camera, depending on the subject. I know the sensor will adjust to whatever I want to do, rather than force me to do something the flash expects. I can comfortably wave the flash around, because it's mounted on a nice, molded Vivitar grip. The grip pops on and off a bracket that attaches to the camera via its tripod mount. It couldn't be simpler.

The whole rig is a bit ostentatious—it makes me look like I actually know what I'm doing—but it's actually easy and natural to use. And it's a lot of fun to be able to paint the picture with the light of the flash.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Websites for Photographers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starlight Effects for Candles and Lights

Add extra sparkle to your candle and chandelier images by using an inexpensive starlight filter. You can even make your own, if you don't mind scratching a little glass.

 

Candlelit rooms convey a romantic or sentimental mood for your images. All you have to do is steady the camera, trip the shutter, and play from there.The thing with candles, however, is that the light they cast on your subject is often more interesting than the candles themselves. After all, how compelling is a little flame of light? You can add a little oomph to these images by using a star-effect filter, which takes a normal candle flame and turns it into a blazing star.

 

Candle flame without and with a star filter       

This little bit of photographic trickery is accomplished by tiny etches in the glass that distort the light. If your camera accepts filters, you can pony up US$25 and start to play right away. One brand of creative filters you might want to take a look at is the Cokin System, which has star effects, gradual density, and special-effect filters  Cokin has adapters for every type of camera and lens, and it even has a special mount for cameras that don't even have filter rings, such as your digital point and shoot. I've played with the Cokin Star Effect, A Version, and have had good success, even on a Canon Digital Elph S400, which doesn't have a filter ring.

Cokin filter attached to a Canon S400

 

Shooting Technique

I tend to like the effect of these filters when the light source is smaller, such as the Christmas lights. I've noticed quite an improvement after I trim the candle wick, thereby reducing the size of the flame. Points of light produce sharp rays of light, emanating from the source. Larger light sources, such as a light bulb or untrimmed candle wick, produce softer, less detailed effects. Chandeliers can be quite impressive too.

I've had the best luck mounting the camera on a tripod and using the self-timer to trip the shutter. This helps me avoid the blurring effects of camera shake. Usually, I find that if I use -1 or -2 on the Exposure Compensation dial for close-up shots, I get better rays of light. Experiment until you get the effect you want. Rows of candles shot with a star filter can be impressive. The room is transformed into a magical place, part of some other reality? Not bad for an old UV filter with a few etched scratches in it!

Source: O’Reiley | Portfolio Website | Websites for Photographers

 

Photography Tips: Take Flash Shots of People Who Blink

Every family has one: the person whose eyes are closed every time you use the flash to take a picture. Here's how to get those eyes open.

 

Some of the most beautiful people take the worst photographs, especially if the flash is turned on. It's almost like they have a sixth sense as to when the flash is going to fire and, in defense of their sensitive eyes, they close their lids.

 

For years, I struggled to find an answer to this problem. Then, one day, by accident, the solution appeared. And, of all things, the secret is that otherwise silly function: Red Eye Reduction mode. That's right; the very flash mode that I've decided in pervious parts of this book is the shining savior for blinkers. Here's how it works.

 

The idea behind Red Eye Reduction mode is to shine a light, or a series of light bursts, into the subject's eyes, causing the iris to constrict and thereby reducing the chances of red eye.

It really doesn't work that well. But for people who are sensitive to the flash and close their eyes when it fires, Red Eye Reduction mode is a godsend.

 

This mode causes them to blink during the pre-shot flashes. Then, when the actual picture is taken, they've opened their eyes. True, this is an extreme measure, because you still lose spontaneity as Red Eye Reduction mode does its thing, but as a last-ditch effort for those people whom you just can't capture with their eyes open, this trick can save your night.

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We recommend different resolution settings for text and images. Scans should be produced at 600 to 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) at reproduction size for text and line art and at 300 dpi for continuous tone images. Increasing the resolution has minimal impact on continuous tone images. To determine resolution of existing images when scaled to planned reproduction size, Adobe Photoshop has an “image size” tool in its pull-down menu that can automatically calculate resolution at various sizes.

 

While digital color presses are excellent at reproducing color, they perform less well in reproducing large areas of some colors evenly — especially mid-tone tints and long blends. Often they come out fine, but sometimes they show unevenness.

 

Reproduction can be improved by choosing a lighter or darker percentage or using imaging software, such as Adobe Photoshop, to add “noise,” or texture, or to create a tight pattern. Thorough proofing helps ensure that the approach is working.

 

Source: Portfolio Website for Photographers | Photography Website Designs