New subforum thought: rocketry photo & video

[Marc_G]

Hi folks,

First, to be clear, I'm not talking about onboard cameras. They go in Electronics.

I'm talking about taking ground based pictures and video. And build thread photo techniques. Would there be sufficient interest in say Techniques and Types for a devoted subforum?

My picture taking sucks and my video technique seems to have worsened since getting a better camera. I think I need help!

I occasionally see threads related to this scattered around several of the forums and have started to think it might be nice to have one area dedicated to the task.

Thoughts from my fellow TRF denizens?

After all, we love pics (and video) here!

Marc

[luke strawwalker]

Interesting idea, don't know if the mods/site owner will go for it... would be nice to have a "one stop shopping" place for all things pic/video related WRT rocketry...

If it IS done though, I do think it SHOULD be a "one stop shopping" area though... camera techniques, equipment, modifications, and posts of various videos and pictures as appropriate... Build threads should still go in their appropriate "power level" forums, but everything relating to discussions of various aspects of using various camera setups to "video of my new Cloudhopper 6 at this weekends launch" or whatever should all go in this area... IMHO... Everything "Camera related" should go in there instead of in "Electronics"... When I see/hear "electronics" I think "Dual deploy/altimeters/staging timers/telemetry setups/GPS, ect" type stuff anyway, not necessarily "cameras" per se...

Later! OL JR

[foamy]

I don't know about a dedicated subforum, but a stickied thread in an appropriate subforum might be doable. I'm a lousy photographer and any help/tips I'm able to pick up would be great.

[jadebox]

It's certainly a topic that interests me.

I'd suggest at least three sub-forums covering still photography, videography, and on-board photos/video. Those three areas seem obvious and distinct.

"Maybes" are sub-forums for photo editing and video editing.

Maybe "video editing" should be more than a "maybe." After reviewing a lot of YouTube rocketry videos, I'd very much like people to learn more about video editing. :-)

-- Roger

[dave carver]

Include me with the "needs help" catagory. I have a Mitsuba DV 3000 and my photos are blurry and I can't figure out why. This disturbs me because I was a newspaper and yearbook photographer in High School. The instructions were sketchy to begin with and I just don't know what to do. I've been told to use the "macro" setting but I don't think mine has that

A forum in technique section would be welcome

[gdjsky01]

Ground video is sooo bad. Typical Video:

Tiny rocket because the person zooms way out to not lose it at launch,
flies off the pad, often with it getting completely lost anyway,
the auto focus (which should have been turned off) hunts like crazy showing nothing,
finally locks on to smoke trail but no rocket,
then video cuts to the deployment which apparently occurred 15 seconds ago.

I don't say anything because I know they're filming "their baby" but seriously, IMO, stills are far more interesting than 95% of all ground launch videos. Also I see people getting better at still photography, but I almost never see people getting better at ground video. Ground video is hard to track well!

So I stick to my 40D. I am happy though to discuss getting good photos with point and shoot and prosumer cameras. I have owned a bunch!!!

[jadebox]

Ground video is sooo bad. Typical Video:

Three minutes of the rocket just sitting on the pad while the views zooms in and out.

Tiny rocket because the person zooms way out to not lose it at launch,

[...]

FTFY!

Capturing good video of rockets is hard. Presenting bad footage unedited just makes things worse.

I generally stick to still photography of rockets for the reasons you mention. Also, I feel more a part of the action taking stills. For some reason, I don't enjoy watching a rocket's flight through the small viewfinder of a video camera (I compare it to watching fireworks on TV). I guess because I'm reacting to events during the flight, I don't feel that way when taking stills. When it's one of my rockets flying, though, I'll often put the camera on a tripod so I can take photos while watching the flight directly instead of through the camera.

When I do create videos, I incorporate stills into the video - often to cover up the places where I don't have good video footage to use.

Anyway ... maybe we should wait to see if the moderators think the new forums are a good idea before we continue this on-topic off-topic digression. :-)

-- Roger

[dr wogz]

Hey, I just bought a new Canon and it came with three lenses..
SLR? Yup, it's An SLR.. I guess a name like MKS, GTO, RX7..
Yeah, it has extra buttons & dials, but they're confusing to use..
I leave it set to "automatic" as it'll do everytihng! hey, it's got a CPU in it, why shodu lI haveta think!
'Depth of feild? Id say it about 6" deep with the 55mm lens on it..
Shutter speed? yeah, i can make it to 1/4000 of a second, man thats fast. I can probabaly make really slow motion movies then..
Aper-what?!
ISO? Yeah, must have some German parts...
Colour Balance? yeah, i try to get equal reds to greens, blues to yellows.. I try not to get too much of one colour..

Now, where does the film go...

hehe..

Nice idea.. We all have questions, and we all have some advice..

[jadebox]

'Depth of feild? Id say it about 6" deep with the 55mm lens on it..\

Well, that actually depends on the aper-what! :-)

-- Roger

[Marc_G]

...would be nice to have a "one stop shopping" place for all things pic/video related WRT rocketry...

If it IS done though, I do think it SHOULD be a "one stop shopping" area though... camera techniques, equipment, modifications, and posts of various videos and pictures as appropriate... Build threads should still go in their appropriate "power level" forums, but everything relating to discussions of various aspects of using various camera setups to "video of my new Cloudhopper 6 at this weekends launch" or whatever should all go in this area... IMHO... Everything "Camera related" should go in there instead of in "Electronics"... When I see/hear "electronics" I think "Dual deploy/altimeters/staging timers/telemetry setups/GPS, ect" type stuff anyway, not necessarily "cameras" per se...

It's certainly a topic that interests me.

I'd suggest at least three sub-forums covering still photography, videography, and on-board photos/video. Those three areas seem obvious and distinct.

"Maybes" are sub-forums for photo editing and video editing.

Maybe "video editing" should be more than a "maybe." After reviewing a lot of YouTube rocketry videos, I'd very much like people to learn more about video editing. :-)

Wow! There is a lot of interest in this topic, it seems!

My own thoughts on the above:

When I was considering the post I almost suggested a multi-forum approach (photo / video / editing tools), but I think the amount of traffic in each category would be insufficient to justify three separate subforums. Admin / Mods may have different opinions, of course. In order to maintain a lively subforum, I consider the one-stop-shop approach to be a friendly ammendment.

Because there is already a lot of "on board video stuff" already in the electronics forum, I think maybe would be best to keep that topic there; it is fairly detachable from the rest of the photo/video topic. Or maybe not; I could be persuaded either way.

I agree that all the build thread stuff would continue in the appropriate power subforums... it's just questions / equipment discussions / software issues / editing suggestions & tutorials that would go in the Photography / Videography / Editing area.

And I wholeheartedly agree we need to as a group learn more about video editing. I'm a prime offender, though I do clip my videos at the front and back end, these days!

Marc

[Marc_G]

Ground video is sooo bad. Typical Video:

Tiny rocket because the person zooms way out to not lose it at launch,
flies off the pad, often with it getting completely lost anyway,
the auto focus (which should have been turned off) hunts like crazy showing nothing,
finally locks on to smoke trail but no rocket,
then video cuts to the deployment which apparently occurred 15 seconds ago.
...

Why Jeff! You have clearly subscribed to my YouTube channel!

Actually, I just got a new camera which has an autofocus once/continuous setting. I figured, hey, great, I'll go with continuous so it's always in focus! WRONG! All of my videos had the thing seeking back and forth, and even when I had the rocket in frame and sufficiently zoomed I didn't get much out of it. I like to take video so I can extract cool frames, but in this case last weekend, almost nothing usable!

It's this kind of discussion I'd like to have in a reproducible place!

Marc

[FastCargo]

I'd be interested in this topic too. I continually get frustrated with the photography on my model rockets...it never seems to come out just like I want.

I do aviation photography as a hobby, and I've gotten pretty decent at it, so I thought it would translate well to model rockets...er, not so much.

FC

[dr wogz]

I must admit, despite owning a rebel SLR digital, i do miss a few features my old Minolta 101 had..
Manual Everything! LOL!!

But mainly the splitfocus eyepeice. you know when it was in focus!
the Depth of feild scale on all my lenses! I've downloaded a quick 'make yourself' chart.. that alone I found invaluable to help negate the lens doing it's hunt-for-focus in & out. You knew at a certain aperture, what is in focus & out of focus just at a glance.. Set the lens to manual focus tho!

[stealth6]

I for one would love it if somebody - someone who really knew what they were doing - would post some info/guide/tutorial/etc. on how to go about doing decent launch videos. As stated before, there are LOTS of really badly done ones - shaky cameras, major "autofocus" problems, horrible extraneous sound, framing problems, etc. On the other hand, there are some great ones out there as well - lots of clarity, no extra garbage, exciting and fun.

I think we all could use some guidance on how to do it right. Nothing fancy that requires lots of expensive gear, just the basics on how to get decent footage, and how to avoid the most common problems. (And just how DO you go about flipping video 90 degrees when you've shot it holding your camera vertically?)

In the meantime, if anyone has just a couple of tips and such, please post them.

thanks, s6

[jadebox]

In the meantime, if anyone has just a couple of tips and such, please post them.

At RocketReviews.com, I listed some of my Tips for Creating Better Rocketry Videos.

Please forget that I admitted that I'm not very good at capturing rockets on video. :-)

-- Roger

[stealth6]

At RocketReviews.com, I listed some of my Tips for Creating Better Rocketry Videos.

Please forget that I admitted that I'm not very good at capturing rockets on video. :-)

-- Roger

Sweet. Some good info and help there. thanks!

s6

[Disaster_Guy]

I think that there are some good ideas floating around here. What I am hearing is potentially an expansion of the current gallery forum as well as a possible subforum related to actual photography, videography, and associated processing of both. I would certainly support the latter. I am not sure than more that more than one forum is required for the former however but maybe the current gallery forum could be slightly redefined.

As for shooting, I shoot with a Canon dSLR and a few different lenses (typically a 75-300mm for launches). One day I hope to upgrade to some better glass and I would expect to greatly improve detail at high shutter speeds when I do.

[Spacepirate R]

At RocketReviews.com, I listed some of my Tips for Creating Better Rocketry Videos.

Please forget that I admitted that I'm not very good at capturing rockets on video. :-)

-- Roger

Good stuff there. I am a film major (Job? What job?) but I have yet to film any of my launches as I am usually the only one there. I will give it a try later and see what I can come up with.

[gdjsky01]

I am sure the owners don't see #19 posts as a torrent. I'll tell ya though, I don't own a video camera. I am not sure how anyone is evah going to track a rocket in a way that one can see what is going on. Certainly not zoomed in where the rocket is more than a few pixels at apogee. Zooming an SLR in is also no picnic when tracking a fast mover (and has the same issues at apogee). It's one of those tasks I don't think most (if not all) humans are up to. Sure... sure... your slow stately rockets, of course.

Ya know Daveyfire takes awesome stills pretty consistently. Mine are pretty good. My bane is cheap lens and high(er) ISOs. Both combine to give me more noise (digital noise) and soft(er) images. But I'll probably never spring for a really good Canon L lens. Just not a priority.

So threads in the Gallery Section(???) or a single forum would be grand as I love to see the results people get with a Tamon or Sigma lens that is 'reasonable' (< $500). And yes, as an Astronomer I know, optics, great optics, cost money! But 'pretty good optics' can be quite reasonable.

[jadebox]

I am sure the owners don't see #19 posts as a torrent. I'll tell ya though, I don't own a video camera. I am not sure how anyone is evah going to track a rocket in a way that one can see what is going on. Certainly not zoomed in where the rocket is more than a few pixels at apogee. Zooming an SLR in is also no picnic when tracking a fast mover (and has the same issues at apogee). It's one of those tasks I don't think most (if not all) humans are up to.

It's not nearly as hard with a good SLR and lens. The lens is much bigger and the viewfinder is optical, so the image you see in the viewfinder is much brighter with higher contrast. Plus, it's usually easier to continually manually adjust the focus and zoom level with an SLR.

A professional or "prosumer" camcorder also makes it easier because of the larger lens, better viewfinder, and easier manual focusing and zoom. As soon as we sell about 12,000 more Odd'l Rocket's Birdie kits, I'm going to get one of those big video cameras! :-)

-- Roger

[Marc_G]

So, Kevin & others in power here... is there some process I should go through to officially request a photo/video/editing software subforum, since there seems to be a large amount of interest?

[troj]

So, Kevin & others in power here... is there some process I should go through to officially request a photo/video/editing software subforum, since there seems to be a large amount of interest?

Nope, no official process. We watch for ideas and interest, and go from there. The thing is "large amount of interest" is relative, and thus far, it looks like about 5 people have chimed in.

The thing is, we get a lot of requests for new sections, and have even created some based on 30 or 40 people saying "Yes," only to have them barely get used. And a ton of forums just increases the scroll time, so we're cautious about what we add.

Based on what I'm seeing right now, there's not enough interest to justify another forum.

-Kevin

[gdjsky01]

Based on what I'm seeing right now, there's not enough interest to justify another forum.

-Kevin

This is sorta what I thought. Let then ask, is Galleries a good place? Like Rocketry Photo and Video Gallery? After all, it's all about photos of rockets. JAL? Troj? No?

[BABAR]

Based on what I'm seeing right now, there's not enough interest to justify another forum.

-Kevin

First, thanks for all the work you guys do keeping "The Rocketry Forum" running. It has greatly enhanced my knowledge and enjoyment of the hobby. 'Course, every time I post I feel like Epstein on "Welcome Back Kotter,"----- "ooh! ooh! Mr Kotta! Mr Kotta! I got an idea!" Fortunately the more experienced gentleman and ladies tolerate me!

Second, regarding a subforum of currently undemonstrated significant audience size.

Based on what I'm seeing right now, there's not enough interest to justify another forum.

-Kevin

Understood. Being totally ignorant of web design, what effect would there be on expanding an existing subforum, e.g., changing "Galleries" to "Gallery and Photo/Video Tips"?


Then when you click on that link, Brings up three (or more) subheadings.

Gallery of Rocket Paint Jobs
Rocketry Photography Discussion
Rocketry Videography Discussion

Just a thought.

[troj]

I'm not opposed to modifying the name of the Galleries section.

-Kevin

[gdjsky01]

Well I think the moderator of the forum, who appears to have put in a LOT of work, is worth having his say.

[Marc_G]

I'm not opposed to modifying the name of the Galleries section.

-Kevin

Fair enough! As long as there's a clear place to collect our photo / video tricks and tips etc., I'm a happy camper. Thanks Kevin! You are awesome.

[Marc_G]

So, just doublechecking: we're clear to start posting hints / requests for help / etc. re: photo/video/software in the Gallleries?

[Aksrockets]

I would LOVE a video gallery.

Alex

[JAL3]

I have just seen this thread after it was brought to my attention.

1. I can think of nobody LESS qualified to moderate items dealing with photography or video than me.

2. That said, I don't really have any objection. I can see how it would fit in.

3. THis thread was apparently what generated the buzz in the moderator area (that caught me by surprise)

4. Apparently, the BIG BOSS does not have any real objections either.

5. If somebody wants to start a thread, I won't stop them but you should be aware of a few things.

A. I have no concept of an "indexing scheme"

B. There are some major organization changes coming to the gallery section. That is the primary reason I have not done much in that section for the last month and a half or so. I do not want to have to duplicate my efforts.

C. The organizational changes are waiting on real life issues that are important. Much as I love this place I put a higher priority on things like work, school, family, etc. I am not qualified to make the changes. The one who is qualified has other issues right now.

D. Post if you want but be aware of what is going on.