Canon 814 Shutter Angle Question

[Erik J. Weber]

Hi,

 

I have a question about using the Canon 814 xls - the manual I have oddly is missing a few pages that happen to inform the owner about the shutter angle dial - can anyone tell me what shutter angle the sunlight icon stands for and what angle the odd grid icon stands for?

 

Also, I am planning on shooting a timelapse of a friend of mine painting a large graffiti-painting - with plans to shoot it 1 frame per second (takes about an hour) on my Velvia in broad daylight, which shutter angle should I use, 150 degree or 220? I would prefer a sharper image, but would it look too jumpy due to potential strobing?

 

Thanks,

 

Erik

[Alessandro Machi]

Hi,

 

I have a question about using the Canon 814 xls - the manual I have oddly is missing a few pages that happen to inform the owner about the shutter angle dial - can anyone tell me what shutter angle the sunlight icon stands for and what angle the odd grid icon stands for?

 

Also, I am planning on shooting a timelapse of a friend of mine painting a large graffiti-painting - with plans to shoot it 1 frame per second (takes about an hour) on my Velvia in broad daylight, which shutter angle should I use, 150 degree or 220? I would prefer a sharper image, but would it look too jumpy due to potential strobing?

 

Thanks,

 

Erik

 

The sunlight icon is for 150 degrees, the odd grid icon I think is supposed to stand for a "window shade" or something like that, meaning less bright situations that require the longer shutter angle of 220 degrees.

 

There are several strategies to consider. You may find that when the canvas is white the 150 degree may look too stroby, but as the paint covers the white canvas, you may then like the look of the 150 degree shutter and it's "sharp" look. On the other hand, if you are shooting in bright light the 220 degree angle may be overkill, especially when the canvas is blank. As you can see, there are compelling reasons to do it either way.

 

I think a bigger issue you have to deal with than that technical one is the fact that you are using only one Super-8 camera. You should be using two cameras, not one. One camera always locked off on a wide shot, that shows the entire canvas and a bit more around all four edges, but not too much more so you can use the second camera to get time-lapse wedges of all kinds of angles, perhaps even handheld.

 

Be careful with the 1 second per frame interval, although that is probably your best option, you will go through an entire cartridge in exactly one hour. 60 frames per minute X 60 minutes = 3,600 frames, the approximate amount of frames in a super-8 cartridge.

[jacob thomas]

use the second camera to get time-lapse wedges of all kinds of angles, perhaps even handheld.

 

I just wanted to say that I really like handheld time-lapse, it has a really neat feeling particularly if you move the camera around quite a lot in a somewhat random fashion.

[Erik J. Weber]

Hey,

 

Yeah actually I'll be breaking it up with my Rex 5 Bolex with black and white film for shooting stuff around the fringes of the frame, playing around, etc.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Erik

[Alessandro Machi]

Hey,

 

Yeah actually I'll be breaking it up with my Rex 5 Bolex with black and white film for shooting stuff around the fringes of the frame, playing around, etc.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Erik

 

That's both clever yet problematical. Editing back and forth between a black and white image and the color images could give enormous impact to the color velvia, on the other hand, you may regret not capturing color with both cameras. I have footage of a group of people hand painting a long mural. I too shot the events of that day in both color and black and white. I ended up not liking the black and white footage because I felt as if I had muted the artistry of the color mural.

 

Another time I shot the Desert Storm Parade with a couple of super-8 cameras, one camera was in color, the other was in black and white, another dumb move on my part because the hollywood parade was COLORFUL. I still cringe when I see the footage that I captured in black and white.

 

I have loved the way black and white worked when I shot slow motion of runners during the LA marathon at the 13 mile mark, that seemed to work really well.

 

If the mural your friend is painting is a color mural, you may want to shoot all color and if you still want to use black and white, convert some of the footage to black and white when editing.

[Erik J. Weber]

Filming went quite well, we took a trip out to a recycling plant in dirty ass Trenton (NJ), shot the whole timelapse of the graffiti art on two carts of Velvia, plus got some nice insert shots using my Bolex Rex5 and a 100' roll of Plus X reversal b/w. During the timelapse I picked the camera up a few times to slowly move it toward the painting, got some good closeups and whatnot, using the remainder of the second roll I shot a bunch of misc. insert shots that could be further used to break up the timelapse as a whole. Will post in a couple weeks once I have it all edited along with a prior short I shot on Velvia and Ektachrome to test the camera out involving a friend of mine and his videogame induced daydream.

 

Thanks for all the help,

 

Erik