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How do I film still photos effectively?
  • ahblezaahbleza

    I'm working with a producer who wants me to film some photos. I told him scanning and doing Ken Burns crops in post is much better, but he insists that I zoom in on a 3"x4" picture, not showing the border, then slowly tilt down. Yeah.

    Anyway, I have a variety of lenses, but wanted to know from the community -- what is your "go to" lens for this type of work? I have been trying the Voigtlander f0.95 25mm, and although it achieves focus, it's really too close to the image for comfort. Next I will try my Nikkor 105mm f2.8 mikro, but what else is a good option, and how do you light the images?

  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • RobertoRoberto

    @ahbleza

    I'd get the Nikkor pointed at photos stuck to an easel outside Mr Producer's window on a cloudy, windless day, angling the camera to avoid reflection.

    Then, in your studio, do the scans & Ken Burns crops in After Effects and show the results to Mr Producer, saying, "you were right!" :-)

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Other idea is to scan whole photo and glue small green screen to photo frame instead. So you'll replace it to the scan in NLE. Quality will be much better.

  • OedipaxOedipax

    If you're showing the frame, I like VK's idea. If you're just showing the image itself, try making the moves in an app that has motion blur, like AE or Motion. A little motion blur and ease-in/ease-out behavior will make it look a lot better than just keyframing in an NLE.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    You could also reverse engineer the resolution by scanning it, upsampling it with one of those high tech upsampling programs, print it, then use the camcorder to record it. That's only if you HAVE to use the camcorder, as the client requests.

  • ahblezaahbleza

    Thanks for the suggestion, everyone. Because the producer wants to be there when I shoot it, subterfuge isn't going to work, sadly. ;-)

    I decided to build a simple rostrum camera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostrum_camera) rig with my Zacuto parts, and mount my GH2 10 cm above a table pointing vertically downwards with my Voigtlander f0.95 25mm. I plan to keep the GH2 motionless, and simply move the image underneath by attaching it to a strip of paper, using my EVF or 7" monitor to watch the smoothness of the "pan." If the producer complains that the tilts aren't smooth enough, I'll tell him to move the image, while I shoot with a motionless GH2. :-)

    These photos are in albums with the family present, so I can't take them away for scanning, and my producer wants a more "natural" look.

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    @ahbleza I know you've been round this loop already, but if you can't physically remove those photos to scan them in, you will get a similar effect by shooting stills of each photo and then manipulate those in an NLE. I've done it on several occasions in my videos and it works pretty well because your source resolution from those stills is going to allow you to do quite a lot of panning / zooming before anyone will notice. You can also add grain / grunge afterwards to disguise the fact that you're using an animated still, and the following video starts with four "stitched" stills. I found this scene driving back from the shoot, and I had to balance across a ditch and take a set of photos through a hedge and then join them afterwards. No-one's ever spotted that the final resulting "shot" is not a pan done with video:

    If your client is REALLY insistent, then the use of video can add one thing that rostrum camera stuff can't, which is that you can interact with it - for example, someone can be holding the book or whatever. That adds a human touch. I saw a great video once where there were some old photos of a street scene. Three of them were done on a rostrum camera, with a voiceover describing them, and the fourth looked like the other three but after a while it was clear the narrator was holding it up and pointing to parts of it. It sounds odd but it was extremely effective at linking the past to the present.

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