Eye North

Trailer for the Wood Project - and Sony NEX woes

2012-02-25T20:42:00.001+01:00

This just went public - shot on stage in Düsseldorf and edited for Felix Bürkle/Starting Point.

I've been following Felix Bürkle's work process for this piece from the beginning of rehearsals all through to the premiere - and it's been exciting. Throughout the period I've been shooting on a combination of Canon DSLR's, a SONY NEX VG10 and recently a SONY NEX 5N.

I want to write a bit about my experiences with the NEX cameras, especially how their footage fares in post-production. My attitude towards these cameras has changed quite radically after having been stuck with their footage in editing on a couple of projects. I must say I was surprised how poorly the footage from both the Sony NEX VG10 and the NEX 5n (although the NEX 5n is slightly superior to the NEX VG10) holds up in editing. There is quite intense picture processing going on in both cameras before compression (same issues on the hdmi output) that really messes up the grain at high gain/ISO and makes working with flat picture profiles a real pain. A flat profile and just slightly increased gain will seriously damage image quality on these cameras. Dead spots all over the place in the shadows on nex vg10. The internal processing smearing the sensor noise reduces effective resolution in addition to the very poor downscaling on the NEX cameras and makes any later denoising a very frustrating task. It's admittedly not as in your face on the NEX 5n, but still very ugly once you start grading. My Canon 550D looks a million in post in comparison, and the hacked panasonic Gh2 is in a completely different league altogether. I use denoising in post mostly to smooth and improve chroma info for increased latitude in grading (thanks to a tip from post processing wizard Normann Bjorvand at Journey West Media in Stockholm). By using the quite amazing plug-in neat video to smooth out and interpolate the chroma to full 32 bit, my footage becomes extremely gradable and with thorough noise analysis within Neat Video there is no loss in sharpness or actual detail. This works a charm on the footage from both the canon and panasonic cameras. But the Sony footage is severely hampered because of the blotchy noise it outputs.

Cliff of Sand and processing

2011-11-21T21:32:00.001+01:00

Had an opportunity the other day to go to the west coast of Denmark and take my new SONY NEX 5N for a spin. Must say I'm pretty impressed from what I've seen until now. The heavy aliasing seen in SONY NEX VG10 footage seems drastically reduced - to the point where I couldn't really spot any annoying aliasing artifacts of the landscape footage I shot this weekend. From what I've seen until now I'm very impressed by what this little beast can capture and render.

Anyway, below is a still taken with the NEX 5N, with the processing involved in it. The texture I used below is from flickr user borealnz and available here.

- First I did some minor curves adjustments in Photoshop Raw and increased the clarity a bit before importing to Photoshop.
- Cropped the 3:2 image to a ratio of 1:1,618 tweaking the composition a bit.
- Duplicated the base layer, denoised a bit without reducing the sharpness in contrasting areas and applied the high pass filter. The layer was then set to overlay @ 47% opacity.
- New curves adjustment layer. A very slight S curve on the red and green channels and pulled the white output down to about 230 and black output up to about 8 on the blue channel.
- New dark blue solid fill at blending mode exclusion and 10%.
- New gradient map with default black and white set at softlight 61%.
- New Black & White adjustment layer tweaked to bring the tones of the sand ranging from soft, bright tones toward the bottom of the picture to the dark black shadows in the cracks on the cliff of sand. Set to Divide at 8%.
- Flattened the image.
- Duplicated the image and applied Add Noise filter at 400% Gaussian monochromatic. Blurred this with Gaussian blur set to a radius of 1,5. Set the layer to overlay @ 61% opacity.
- Added the texture PB-cream from borealnz, and set it to darken @ 30%. This also served to control the luminance and tones of the water in a nice way.

And that was that.

Flexible Film Grain Effect

2011-11-15T23:05:00.000+01:00

Thought I would post a little tip to a quick, nice and very flexible way to work visually pleasing film grain into an edit. I haven't been too happy with the plug-ins I've tried - they've either been to rigid in they way they apply grain or make to much changes in the luminance levels of the image.

So here goes another option which I use in Premiere, but I guess it is equally applicable on other editing platforms.

First we have the start image - for illustration I'll be using an untouched still outtake from some video footage I had (click to download large image):

And here goes the procedure:

First copy your clip and place it on the video layer above your base clip properly aligned in time. The top layer will serve as your adjustable noise layer.

Now add the native effects of Premiere of Noise, Color Balance (HLS) and Gaussian Blur, and as a starter adjust the parameters of the filters as shown in the screenshot below:

The filters need to be applied in the order shown on the image; the HSL filter has to be applied after the noise filter to pull down the saturation in the colors of the generated noise, and the blur filter likewise should be applied at last on both filters.

Noise filter
First of all I apply the noise filter and tick off 'Clip Result Values'. This choice is a matter of taste in the particular project - by ticking 'Clip Result Values' your grain will manifest normally in the midtones and blend more in at higher and lower luminance values. This might be what you're going for, but if you are applying blending modes like overlay or softlight on the noise layer it will also increase the overall contrast. By unticking this box you'll start off with a much more neutral noise layer that won't change the luminance make-up of your grading. Here I also pull down the amount of noise to 90% just to bring a little image info from the original image through.

HSL filter
The HSL filter is then used to pull down the saturation so the noise color is more pleasing to the eye.

Gaussian Blur filter
The blur filter is used to smooth the grain out a bit and also determine the size. The more radius - the larger grain.

Blending
Finally I work out a fitting blending mode and opacity setting for the layer. For this example I've used overlay at 38% opacity. By using overlay and the relatively neutral settings on the noise filter, I get noise that moulds nicely into the image without upsetting any additional grading done. Here I'd also try out different settings and clipping the values of the noise filter making for a more dramatic application of the noise layer (quite nice for BW).

So here's a screenshot with grain (click for high res):

And here with clipped noise values and otherwise same settings:

Finally, keep in mind these shots weren't graded - normally this step would also come towards the end of the grading workflow.

Towards the wood project

2011-11-09T22:48:00.001+01:00

Just finished editing a short docu for director/choreographer Felix Bürkle and his upcoming stage performance 'the wood project'. We were in South Germany where they held rehearsals in the forested rolling hills of Schwarzwald. Beautiful country and exciting to film extended improvisations in a setting like this.

Filming the improvisations was especially intriguing. They were very long, ranging between 15 minutes and over an hour, and quite intense. This made for quite focused and controlled filming, and the possibility to delve into the matter in a very inquiring way.

I shot the film using a Sony NEXVG10, two Canon Canon T2i/550d's and also brought along the small Sony HX9V. For the most, I had the Samyang (Rokinon etc.) 8mm F3.5 Fisheye mounted on one of the Canon's coupled with Marvel cinestyle as picture profile, and a zuiko 50mm f1.8 on the other Canon for close ups and more controlled frames. I actually started with a zuiko 50mm f1.4 auto-s, but the hard cat's eye bokeh at f 1.4 and 1.8 on it are not appealing to me. I much prefer the way the f1.8 goes out of focus. These are nice and affordable lenses, making them perfect for running around in the forest a few days - I don't have to be nervous about them because of their cost, and they perform very well.

Some notes on the Sony NEXVG10. Pretty hard aliasing going on there, but this can be mitigated some by using portrait mode and -3 on alle settings. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the stabilisation in the lens almost completely eliminated rolling shutter issues. If stabilizing was off, there would be rolling shutter distortion like on other dslr's, but once the stabilizer was on the issue became negligible. The onboard microphone on the nex vg10 has been lauded some, but I found it pretty much useless. The slightest handling is picked up through the body and the stabilizing motor is picked up as well. Also, the fact that the vg10 neither has focus assist or focus peaking has made me very wary of using it with my other lenses through adapters, which for me is one of the main points of a large sensor video camera. I had one experience while shooting the road movie for Don*Gnu where I shot a whole sequence focusing past infinity with the Samyang 8mm attached via adapter because I simply couldn't tell the shot was out of focus from the viewfinder. It wasn't far out of focus, but enough to annoy and possible trash the whole shot. It's a strange beast the nex vg10, but the 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 kit lens and it's stabilizing is great and I find myself using it quite a lot.

Below here is also a short teaser we produced for the same performance, and based on the same footage.

Dance Film 'RUSH'

2011-10-12T00:31:00.000+02:00

The dance film 'RUSH' ('Hastværk') produced by RØRSTRØMSK Dance Company that I have been DoP on as well as editing, will be premiering at Bora Bora Dance House in Århus this Friday. The above is a still image from the film.

Looking forward to Friday's showing, and will be posting later on some issues that cropped up during post-production. One of them being a closer look at Premiere CS5's much vaunted on-the-fly chroma-interpolation to 32-bit color space of dslr footage. Was a bit interested in testing this carefully during post as the film was shot on Canon dslr's. For quite heavy grading I was doing it turned out it was quite poor and pretty useless, so no short cuts in the work flow.

Still - happy days, and looking forward.

Video snapshot #2 - Don Gnu Roadmovie

2011-09-15T16:28:00.001+02:00

Don Gnu still searching, and now in the mountains close to Junkerdalen valley...

Just arrived in Oulu, Finland, and will be staying here for workshops and shooting until the 18th.

Video snapshot #1 - Don Gnu Roadmovie

2011-09-14T20:18:00.001+02:00

Don Gnu searching across the mountain plateau of Dovre...

Still on the road shooting Don*Gnu's Roadmovie. Have had a chance to test the Sony NEX VG10 extensively - image ok, kit-lens is a bit slow but versatile with great stabilisation (The shot above was done handheld!). Handling is quite fiddly and bad. No focus assist is definitely a big minus. Makes me use my Canon cameras even when I could have good use for image stabilisation in the Sony lens. Also, the color profiles available for Canon cameras are preferable to the onboard tweaking on the Sony.

Don*Gnu Roadmovie - on the move

2011-09-04T20:50:00.002+02:00

On monday, finally, Don*Gnu sets sail for Norway, Sweden and Finland on their roadtrip to find their inner selves, and to be documented as a roadmovie. Looking forward to shooting this project, and also working with these great guys.

The teaser above is based on test shoots we did for the film, a lot of which turned out quite good so we might actually use it in the final product. The music was a hidden pearl of a recording Jesper Kaltoft had hidden away.

The crew is small and will be crammed into the same bus, so equipment is kept light. I'll be shooting off Canon dslr's and a Sony nex vg10, and have only brought a few lights. So the style will be harsh and documentary with mostly natural light. This will prove challenging in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finalnd where the angle of the sun doesn't excede 27 degrees above the horizon these days. Hard light!

Trailer for Felix Bürkle's 'Starting Point #3'

2011-09-04T20:41:00.000+02:00

Here's the trailer for Felix Bürkle's choreography 'Starting Point #3' based on live footage shot during the Connections Festival in Aarhus.

Will be working together with Felix again this fall for his new piece premiering in Münster at Theater im Pumpenhaus on the 24th of November. Looking forward to it!

Brilliant free RAW/image viewer

2011-04-29T09:59:00.000+02:00

Came across this brilliant image viewer yesterday: FastStone Image Viewer 4.5.

Very fast and intuitive - and free!

Path at Raabjerg Mile + processing

2011-04-28T22:03:00.000+02:00

Finally got down to working on some shots taken with negative film (kodak ektar 100) this winter, and here is the result of one of captures. The latitude in captures on this film is significantly larger than on DSLR's - the Canon 5D mkII's latitude comes in at around 9 stops while ektar100 measures to 11-13 stops. So there's a natural HDR shot for you.

This image was taken in Northern Jutland close to Skagen where sand travels across the mainland between the east and west coast creating a small "desert" called Råbjerg Mile. It's a very peaceful place, where, when standing on the sand dunes, you have sight to the ocean on either side.

Here's basically the processing I did for this shot - most of textures/actions I used are free, and those that aren't can be replaced with similar ones from f.ex. this excellent group on flickr: textures for layers.

-Negative scan from Kodak Ektar 100 capture.
-Brightened the base image to a balanced one via curves (it was a bit dark).
-Duplicate base image and applied sunshine photoshop action from Pioneer Woman's free action set #2. Opacity normal@60%.
-Base image duplicated and applied filter poster edges: 0 - 0 - 6 (lowest possible setting) normal@60%
-Base image duplicated and applied Imagenomic's Real Grain filter with Agfa Optima Prestige 400 preset, adjusted contrast in filter to 0 and reduced color noise. The grain effect can also be achieved by using photoshop's native filter, although it won't be of the same quality. Normal@50%
-Flatten Base image
-Flypaper Serafina Sky (can be replaced by quality free sky texture). Normal@39%. Everything except the part covering the sky brush-masked out.
-Les Brumes' texture/235 (free) rotated and stretched so lines fit. Linear burn@24% and under blending options Blend If Grey - This Layer 39/128 136/255. Some interfering scratches brush-masked out.
-Flypaper textures' Lime Plaster' (can be replaced by free faded plaster wall texture). Difference@14% with points of focus - such as poles - softly brush-masked out.
-An aged paper texture. Softlight@100%.
-Borealnz's Folded Paper texture (free) rotated. Softlight@100%
-Transparent layer for highlight painting along ridge and other areas of interest. Soft white brush opacity 10-20%. Softlight@48%.
-Transparent layer for contrast painting on poles and other areas of interest. Soft black brush opacity 10-20%. Overlay@68%.
-Flypaper textures' Antiquity (can be replaced by an aged paper texture). Softlight@17%
-Flatten image.
-HSL Adjustment on Master: Hue -2 Saturation -4 Lightness 0

That's about it.

Rubjerg Shore

2011-04-23T00:10:00.000+02:00

Got down to processing some more of the photos shot this winter - here's one result taken outside Lønstrup in Denmark close by Rubjerg Knude lighthouse. I used flypaper textures for most of the processing on this one.

Don*Gnu Roadmovie Testouts #1

2011-04-21T01:00:00.001+02:00

Don*Gnu Testouts #1 from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.

Some rough tests for Don*Gnu dance company's roadmovie that is currently in pre-production. Basically we shot an improvised sequence in character in the studio with only available light and natural surroundings. Since a roadmovie naturally will have some edge visually we may want to run with a rough documentary style, but also want to open up for an aesthetic that allows for more stylistically focused sequences as well as incorporating movement sequences naturally into the film. Anyway, some rough editing, sound and grading strategies tested here.

We recently did another test shoot for the roadmovie sponsored by Danseværket in Århus, to try out some of the more location-specific ideas. Warning - it's in danish. This whole thing was shot off the Samyang 8mm lens, and one problem I didn't spot until watching the footage on a large display, was how the Samyang can really distort the eyelines between characters onscreen if you're not careful - interaction on a diagonal axis in depth from the camera with one character close to the lens will bring out this problem.

On a side note this was my first shoot with Magic Lantern firmware on my camera, and I ain't looking back. Simply awesome!

Felix Bürkle's Starting Point #3 video diary - part 3 of 3

2011-03-28T22:41:00.000+02:00

This is the third and final part of a work-in-progress video diary I've been working on with the german choreographer Felix Bürkle, charting his work preparing his next choreography 'Starting Point #3' in small impromptu edits. Felix is in Mumbai during preperations, so all the video and material is captured by him India, and then post-production done here in Denmark.

Felix Bürkle's Starting Point #3 video diary - part2

2011-03-23T15:58:00.000+01:00

This is the second part of a work-in-progress video diary I'm currently working on with the german choreographer Felix Bürkle, charting his work preparing his next choreography 'Starting Point #3' in small impromptu edits. Felix is in Mumbai during preperations, so all the video and material is captured by him India, and then post-production done here in Denmark.

Note to Self - dance trailer

2011-03-22T22:22:00.000+01:00

Here's another trailer I made for RØRSTRØMSK that just went public.

Note to Self - trailer from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.

The footage for the trailer was shot during a couple of run-thrus of the choreography as performed at Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum. The postprocessing was done in photoshop for the color shots, and premiere for the washed out monochromish shots.

Here's the recipe for the photoshop processing I did:
-very slight/small application of paint daub filter
-poster edges: edge thickness 0, edge intensity o, posterization 6 @ Fill 64%
-chlorophyll texture(from flypaper textures ) blurred @ softlight 100%
-chlorophyll blurred @ overlay 61%
-global desaturation and tweaking of hue to warm up a bit

Felix Bürkle's Starting Point #3 - video diary

2011-03-18T00:56:00.001+01:00

This is the first part of a work-in-progress video diary I'm currently working on with the german choreographer Felix Bürkle, charting his work preparing his next choreography 'Starting Point #3' in small impromptu edits. Felix is in Mumbai during preperations, so all the video and material is captured by him India, and then post-production done here in Denmark.

For processing, I did the main body of grading in photoshop to achieve the overexposed positive film-feel. Remember when processing video in photoshop to convert to 16bit mode and then convert the clip to a smart object so your changes are applied globally to the whole clip in a nice colour space. For most of these shots, I faked a slight cross-processing feel with a balance towards blue and green with an RGB curves adjustment layer, then a channel mixer adjustment in monochrome with Red:20% Green:20% Blue:60% and opacity@40% to desaturate and balance colours abit, and finally I tweaked the red and blue channels with a level adjustment layer to warm it a bit further. Further film-projection noise was applied in Premiere.

Trailer for Connections Dance Festival - post processed partially in Photoshop

2011-02-17T17:35:00.001+01:00

The trailer I made for the Connections Dance Festival just went public today:

It was a very nice shoot (on a very cold day) with dancers Joy Hall and Simon Beyer Pedersen in downtown Aarhus. I shot it off my Canon 550d/t2i mounted with the Samyang (Rokinon) 8mm f3.5 for the wide shots and a zuiko 50mm f1.4 and an old nikkor 35mm f2.8 for the closer shots.

For stabilisation on the hand-held shots I attached a quick clamp to my monopod with an adjustable head and held the monopod at the balancing point while lightly touching the clamp's end to keep the balance stable horizontally as well. It's quick, cheap and flexible.

In post processing I decided to do the color shots in photoshop. Since I wouldn't be applying anything dependent on motion tracking, photoshop packs quite a punch for video processing. For those who haven't done it before just import your footage, right-click the thumbnail of your video in the layers dialogue and choose 'convert to smart object'. Any change you apply in photoshop now will be applied globally on your video. Also remember to change your image mode to 16bit to upsample your chroma accordingly before applying grading.

Unlocking your Nvidia card for hardware accelerated playback in premiere cs5

2011-01-23T21:26:00.001+01:00

Came over this great fix yesterday for computers that aren't set up with the high-end nvidia cards that Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 supports out of the box. Should unlock any cuda-enabled nvidia card with 896mbs + dedicated memory for hardware accelerated playback with the mercury engine in premiere pro cs5. Great!

Remember to update your nvidia drivers as mentioned in the article!

Show Trailer for 'Mænd i Sandaler' (Men in Sandals)

2011-01-21T01:50:00.002+01:00

Mænd i Sandaler (Men in Sandals) - Forestillingstrailer from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.

Just finished production on a live footage-based trailer for Don*Gnu's choreography 'Men in Sandals'. The footage for the edit was shot strictly from live audience performances which provided for some harsh lighting conditions and impromptu situations. But the rough look of the footage off the shows worked well with choreographers Jannik and Kristoffer's vision for their choreography. One of the cameras set up for the shooting was mounted with the Samyang (Rokinon, Opteka, etc.) 8mm fisheye stopped down to f8. The reason for this is that the Samyang is in fact crazy sharp once you stop it down a little, and the massive fov and crisp images gave me a lot of space in post to play around with since alot of my CU's were doomed to turn out horribly grainy because of the very low light conditions during periods of the choreography. In balancing the different sets of footage, some subtle cropping, zooming and rotating on the samyang shots just moved the differing footage towards each other while spicing up the trailer.

The Old Wave

2010-12-17T00:13:00.000+01:00

Testing the Epson V330 Scanner

2010-12-14T21:48:00.006+01:00

A while ago I got myself one of the new Epson V330 scanners. After having done a deal of research looking for an affordable scanner with good performance, it seemed to fit the ticket. Priced at $120-$150 and offering 48 bit color depth and 16 bit greyscale with an optical resolution of 4800 dpi, it seemed like quite a bargain. I've now had the opportunity to do an amount of scans with it, and have gained some experiences.

My main purpose in getting the scanner was because I wanted to go back to shooting landscapes on color negative film again. The captured d-range on a good c-41 film is just so much better than anything out there digital. F.ex. the Canon 5D mkii has an effective d-range measured at 8,5-9 stops, while Kodak Ektar 100 has been measured to give 12-14 stops effective d-range. So there's HDR photography for you without that sneaking plastic feel. With this in mind, I would only be scanning selected series of shots and not engaging in mass scanning of old negatives. Therefore, I didn't need to buy the more expensive Nikon and Canon scanners to get the ICE software on board. I thought I'd give the Arcsoft software bundled with the Epson a go at dust/scratch removal, or just do it myself in Photoshop since I would be working every chosen image carefully anyway.

Installing the Epson on Windows 7 64-bit was a nightmare. I wasted a lot of hours until I read in a forum that the installer itself was in error. The fix can be found here under RBBrittain's post. In the case of the Epson V330, the file that needed to be moved was a different one, but the procedure of the fix is the same. Once this was done, the Epson V330 booted and the fun started.

The test scans posted below (follow the link to full-res versions) were scanned in 4800 dpi and at 16-bit uncompressed. I quickly found out that the auto-levels and sharpening the scanner software does is unusable clipping out a lot of the highlights and the blacks and doing nothing good with a crude unsharp mask. So switching those off, and manually adjusting the levels so as to keep in as much image info as possible while maintaining a good image base, results started to look more pleasing.

Arcsoft's dust/scratch removal is also a complete waste. The artifacting and image distortion resulting from even low level use of it is more disturbing than the hot spots from dust particles. Now ICE might be much better, but any auto removal of complex noise from an image is a little shaky if you ask me. Of course, if you want to scan masses of images then it's very tedious to do it yourself, but if you're into fine-tuning them then it seems a bit reckless to leave that to automated filters. I've done it manually in Photoshop, mostly with content-aware fill, and it's not a hassle at all and gives very good dust/scratch removal.

So we have a clean scan with no filtering then. And I have to say, I'm really impressed with the quality of the scans I get out of the Epson once I take manual control of what's going on. Below I've posted three shots, two of them off an old Olympus om10 with Zuiko lenses with Kodak Ektar 100, and one (the mountain and lake) is a 10-year old negative shot on a cheap canon point-and-shoot with Kodak Gold 200. They're all shot hand-held, so sharpness isn't 100%. Still, it's a little bit shocking to me that a cheapo compact with a fair lens can hands-down outperform my dslr in all departments except for perhaps the limits to a given film's ability to resolve image information. Anyway, there has been no image processing on the images below except a little adjustment of curves and dust/scratch removal. Since in my scans I focus on retaining image info, I scan with a quite large dynamic range making the output slightly bland - therefore the slight curves adjustment.

Old negative, cheapo camera - but highlights intact and colour rich ;-)

Clear winter's day with very hard contrast, and still the shadow detail is pleasant, and the leaves in sunlight retain vibrant colour even though they are overexposed quite a bit.

Well, what can I say. The results I get with the scans coupled with the Epson's price, far offset the problems with installation and poor dust/scratch removal. The Epson v330 is not suitable for mass-scanning, but for more concentrated purposes I think it's a real bargain and can only recommend it.

Snow and Sand off Rubjerg Knude + processing

2010-12-12T21:26:00.003+01:00

Another landscape from shooting at Rubjerg Knude off the west coast of northern Denmark. The combination of ice, snow and sand sculpted by the harsh wind made for some quite striking landscapes. For the processing of this, I stuck to free textures available online - so below is a the approach + links to the textures. This was taken with the Canon eos 550d (t2i/kiss x4) mounted with the light and cheap Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II. Wide open this lens doesn't perform very well, but once you stop it down to f8 or more, you'll be surprised at the quality of the shots it can deliver - especially considering the price. If you want a shot with nice bokeh though, be warned - its bokeh is terrible. But since it weighs next to nothing and can perform quite well stopped down, its an easy lens to carry with you as long as you're aware of the pitfalls.

-Applied Poster Edges filter to the base image: Edge thickness -0, Edge Intensity -0, Posterization -6.
-Adjustment Layer clipped to base image for contrast painting. Set to Overlay 100% and black soft brush @ 4% opacity for accentuating the dark pebbles along the rim of the depression.
-Adjustment Layer clipped to base image for highlight painting. Set to Softlight 74% and white soft brush at 20% for accentuating the stripes of snow across the sand.
-Sky texture by Adriana H.G. @ Overlay 100% and desaturated to -71 via an HSL Adjustment Layer clipped to the layer. Rotated and scaled the texture to fit the ridge and brushed away the parts of it that were not covering the sky.
-Textura 04 # Ática by Osolev @ Soft Light 73% and parts covering the snow brushed away.
-Paper Texture from borealnz @ Soft Light 100%.
-Duplicate of the Paper Texture desaturated and Soft Light 86%
-Merged all layers.
-Final tweak with curves to bring out the white spark in the snow a bit more and seperate the dark pebbles a bit more from the sand.

Some of these textures are available through the group Textures for Layers on Flickr - a group dedicated to sharing textures for processing. You might need to join the group to access the textures, and I highly recommend it. It's a great place for inspiration and also for sharing your own textures.

The Lighthouse at Rubjerg Knude

2010-12-07T12:56:00.000+01:00

Been on some target practise on the western coast of north Jutland, Denmark. This shot is un-cropped and captured with the Samyang 8mm f3.5 mounted on the Canon 550d/T2i. The Samyang lens is a beauty to work with - not only for photography but I've used it extensively in video work as well since I got hold of it - like here and more recently a choreography project for Rørstrømsk Dance Company where two 10-15 minute sequences are shot exclusively on the Samyang lens. The dynamics of the lens work very well with human movement without too much image distortion, and the wide fov usually gives some room for extra stabilisation if needed in post.

Texturing tests for video

2010-12-06T21:50:00.000+01:00

Below are some texture tests with slightly different ways of mapping textures in different blending modes over video. What I want to achieve is a post-processed look like f.ex. approximately this:

-that still would blend in with the more dynamic properties involved in video, and not seem intrusive or awkward. Below are three quick tests shot on the Canon T2i/550d mounted with a zuiko 50mm.

The top one is a simple test with static textures in blending modes mostly softlight and overlay. The second one is a test where I motion-mapped the textures in after effects to different points within a hand-held shot. I quite liked this way of mapping the textures, and want to refine this a bit more. The third one is a quick test where the textures are gradually and slightly distorted. This works fine as well, but it's ruined by the fact that the shot has slight disturbing movement relative to the textures. The shot should either have been stabilized completely, or the textures motion-mapped to the beach.

All color grading is done through the texture work - and quite a lot of the textures I used are from flypaper textures.

Texturing test - Strandby from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.

Texturing test - blade of grass from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.

Texturing test - strandby2 from Christoffer Brekne on Vimeo.