Multimedia Photojournalism
1,200 students, staff and faculty at the University of Alberta unofficially smash the Guinness World Record for most players in a single dodgeball game at the Universiade Pavilion better known as “The Butterdome” in Edmonton, Alta. on February 5, 2010. The former record was 450. The event was organized by the U of A students’ union. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Watch a time lapse in 360-degree Video ….that’s right…a 360-degree video panorama! Click on the image to the left.
Watch a time lapse of the Murder of Crows sound exhibit being set up at the Art Gallery of Alberta. 98 speakers are set up over a two week period. Time progresses all around you as you click and move your mouse to look all around.Video by Ryan Jackson /Edmonton Journal.
To build make this 360-video I had to build a special rig with three cameras. I used this before for my Indy Panoramas back in the summer. The rig consists of three old Canon 1D d-SLRs with three Peleng 8mm fisheye lenses in a 120-degree offset pattern. The three cameras are wired together to be triggered by an intervalometer. The rig is super heavy and annoying because triple cameras means triple the things to go wrong. If the shutter speed or focus or anything is wrong on one off the cameras then the whole panorama is ruined.
The 1D cameras can only handle 2GB Compact Flash cards which is around 2000 images. I set the intervalometer to trigger the cameras every two minutes which meant I had to change the cards every two days. In total nearly 30,000 images were taken (10,000 per camera).
For post-processing the images, I used Photo Mechanic to organize the images by time taken. I had set the clocks on the cameras to be 1-second apart so when Photo Mechanic sorted the images by time taken, they would go 1st camera, 2nd camera, 3rd, camera, etc.
I then renamed all the images so the files went 0001, 0002, 0003, etc.
I use PTgui to stitch all my panoramas together. It has a great batch process where you can setup a template for your first panorama and then it will auto stitch the rest of the panoramas in file order. This meant that (0001, 0002, 0003)–>Panorama1.jpg , (0004, 0005, 0006)–>Panorama2.jpg
Needless to say this took HOURS and HOURS to process but I just let my laptop chug away overnight for three nights until I had a folder filled with thousands of stitched panoramas.
I then looked through that folder of panos with Photo Mechanic and removed all the boring images where nothing is moving or being installed (ie. at night time, during lunch break, days off, etc).
I then took the folder of usable panorama images and put them into a video using Quicktime Pro’s “open image sequence.”
I set the frame rate to 12fps so that 1606 images would become a 2-min:13-second video.
I then told Quicktime Pro to export the video and I used the Adobe Flash Video Encoder Plug-in to export the video as an .flv Flash video file using On2 compression, 2000×1000 resolution, 12fps, 1200kB/s bitrate. This made about a 20MB video file.
I purchased the panorama player krpano which supports video. I only had to alter a little bit of the .xml code to add a full-screen button and a play/pause/stop button. I plunked the krpano files on a server and embedded it in an iframe in a story page.
The whole project was pretty cool. I hope to use this camera more in the future but as you can see, it is A LOT of work. There are other, far easier methods of doing 360-video but you have to buy expensive cameras and lenses. For this setup I only had to buy a couple more 8mm lenses and use The Journal’s old 1D’s. My rig only shoots stills and you have to make them into a video… for real video check out CNN’s 360-degree video from Haiti. Pretty crazy!
Here are the images of my DIY 360-degree video panorama camera.
Ryan Jackson speaks at CUP 2010 from Ryan Jackson on Vimeo.
Jack of all Trades: Becoming a Well Rounded Visual Journalist.
Follow along with the Google Doc Presentation tinyurl.com/y9uaefv
Edmonton Journal staff multimedia producer speaks at the 72′nd Canadian University Press Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
He goes through his still portfolio and gives advice to students for getting a job in this new media landscape.
Video by Ryan Jackson. ryanjackson.ca
Here is the video and Google Doc Presentation that I gave on Sunday at CUP. You can also CLICK HERE and scroll down to the bottom of the page, RIGHT CLICK on the “Download this video” link and download the .mp4 file which should play on any video iPod, nano or iPhone. Enjoy!
Smoky Lake Pumpkin Carriers, left to right, Alex Anderderenowsky, 16, Chris Wolanski, 16, Zack Sparling, 17, and Adam Shupenia, 17, take a rest after moving dozens of giant pumpkins and squashes during the 20th annual Great White North Pumpkin Fair in Smoky Lake, AB. October 4, 2008. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
I’m honored to win Feature Photo of the Year in my category for Editor and Publisher magazine’s 10th annual photo contest. I won for my Smoky Lake Pumpkin Carriers photo. I also won Honorable Mention for my Clearing the Air video. You can read the Journal’s short write up.
Watch the video. Definitely one of the coolest projects I have ever worked on. We asked readers what worried them and then wrote those worries on pumpkins and blew them up! I felt like I was on the show Myth Busters all week. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. All of these photos were taken under the supervision of experienced professionals.
Click the image above to watch the video on the Journal website.
Aside from the the joy of destroying pumpkins this also gave me a chance to take extreme high-speed photos. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. You see when a flash is set to its lowest power setting the flash duration becomes extremely fast. On Kevin Lewis’ Blog I found that a Canon Speedlite at 1/128th power has a flash duration of 1/35,000 sec.
This means that whatever is caught by your flash is “frozen” at 1/35,000 sec since the flash is the only light exposing it. In order to do this though you need to keep the ambient light out either by shooting in the dark or shooting at a high aperture like f22 so the only light hitting the object is flash.
Here you see two hammers. That’s because the sound trigger set off the flash when the the hammer hit the pumpkin and then again when it hit the table. There was a 0.2 second delay set for the sound trigger.
A pumpkin is frozen in liquid nitrogen by Matt Green, Staff Interpreter. left and Frank Florian, Director of Public Programs at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton on October 2, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal |
Here is the setup for the frozen pumpkin shot. I built a sound trigger and plugged it into my Pocketwizard Multimax so I could set a delay from the time the sound was made till the time the flashes went off. The problem with this method is that it takes a lot of trial and error to get the time delay right and we only had three pumpkins. |
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The sound trigger circuit is just a simple 400V SCR circuit connected to the headphone output of my audio recorder which simply acts as a mic and amplifier.
Now we move on to the exploding pumpkins! Dr. Roy Jensen with the Chemistry Department at Grant MacEwan was very excited to help me with this project. I can’t tell you what he used to blow up the pumpkins but I can say that it was in a balloon and ignited with an electric sparker. Roy also had the very important idea to score (slice) up the inside of the pumpkin with a knife so that it blew up semetrically. We also put a little bit of corn starch in the balloons to add a powdery haze.
This is actually a frame grab from my Canon XH-A1. The camera was set to 1/500th shutter speed and shot in 60i. Though it “caught the moment” the quality isn’t there.
Can you tell the difference? I was amazed what a camera shooting 10 fps can catch in an explosion. It’s not as much about the explosion (which only lasts microseconds) but the re-action after.
Frame grab.
Still image. Three flashes. Just awesome!
Frame grab again. The next frame after this one is at the top of this post.
For the exploding pumpkins in the MacEwan University Chemistry lab I didn’t bother with the sound trigger. Instead I just had a Canon 1D Mark-III bursting at 10 fps and a Mark-IIn bursting at 8 fps. Since the cameras have a 2 fps speed difference they fired out of sync which means I was getting about 18 fps of stills combined.
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I doubled up the flashes so that I would only need two stands instead of four. One camera had two flashes and was triggered by Pocketwizard Flex 5’s and the other one had three flashes that were all hard wired. Both sets of flashes fired every time with no problem. The Pocketwizards fired just as good as the hard-wired flashes. The flashes were at 1/128th power and zoomed to 24mm.
The cameras were both set at 1/250th (sync) shutter speed, F22, ISO400 so there wasn’t any ambient light in the exposure. Only flash which lasted 1/35,000 sec thus freezing the explosions.
Here you can see the Canon XH-A1 video camera, the Canon 1D Mark-III and the 1D-Mark IIn. There was also a Canon HV20 video camera and a Canon SD960 IS point and shoot camera on video mode. The cameras were tiggered by Pocketwizards so I could stand a safe distance back.
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As you can see the pumpkins did a little damage to the ceiling. There…was….pumpkin…..EVERYWHERE!
Now for the shotgun photos.
This photo was done with two flashes. One to the left and one to the right.
This photo was ambient light at 1/2000 sec.
For the shotgun photos I did a similar setup as the exploding pumpkins. Three video cameras and two still cameras shooting a combined 18 fps.
I placed a sheet of plexy glass in front of the line of cameras incase a pellet from the shotgun went astray. (Just being paranoid.)
Here you can see the two video cameras (the third one was used to take this photo), the two still cameras and three flashes. One camera had two flashes and the other one only had one.
Finally you can see the black king-sized bed sheet that I used for a backround. I bought the sheet at Walmart for cheap and then draped it over a monopod superclamped to a light stand.
Good times! Watch the video
Don Metz, President and CEO of Aquila Productions directs people during rehearsal for the opening ceremonies of The Edmonton Oilers season opener at Rexall Place in Edmonton on October 3, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Click here to watch the video.
Take a behind the scenes look at the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremonies for the Edmonton Oilers season opener with Don Metz of Aquila Productions on October 3, 2009. Video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Journal readers Dan Allinson, Debra Ward, Carson Fong, Journal reporter Ben Gelinas and Journal reader Brent Welch play The Beatles Rockband on XBOX 360 on the roof of the Journal building downtown Edmonton on September 8, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Don and Debbie Gulayec stand in front of the burnt remains of their hog farm near Derwent, Alta., 200 kms east of Edmonton on August 18, 2009. They awoke around midnight on Tuesday morning to the fire after a concerned neighbour called them. All of their barns and 900 sows were lost in the fire. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Edmonton Eskimo defenseman Kitwana Jones, right, and Journal Crime Reporter Ben Gelinas sit and play the brand new Madden 10 for XBOX 360 in Gelinas’ living room in Edmonton on August 12, 2009. Kitwana is a fan of video games and says many players enjoy video games in the locker room to wind down. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
This assignment was fun. Our very talented crime reporter Ben Gelinas also runs the video game blog Button Mash for the Journal. For his review of Madden NFL 10 for XBOX 360 he asked Edmonton Eskimo Kitwana Jones to play it with him and he accepted. It made for an interesting review and a fun video.
To shoot this I placed a Canon HV20 beside the TV pointed at Ben and Kitwana. I had my Canon XH-A1 off to the side to get details and wide shots. The room was dark so I had a 300w tungsten hot light going into a shoot through umbrella to the side.
My third “camera” was my laptop. I split the video coming from the XBOX 360 to the TV and to an AV->DV converter box which basically takes composite video and audio in and then gives you a DV video stream through a firewire cable. I had Final Cut Pro set to capture the stream and then synced all three cameras up together in FCP after.
In total there was two hours of game play which resulted in six hours of footage (three cameras times two hours). The XBOX 360 signal was standard def so it was recorded in 720×480 DV video. My HV20 and XHA1 were 1080i HDV. Final Cut Pro is great at mixing DV and HDV footage so that wasn’t a problem and the SD video up-sized to HD looked pretty good in the end.
I would have liked to have captured the XBOX 360 video in HD but that would involve buying a component video splitter and a component video capture device which are super pricey. Most cards are over $1000 but Hauppauge has a new box that can convert HD component to H.264 video. Pretty cool, but then you would have to convert the H.264 video to HDV to mix in with the video cameras and that would be a lot more work = just capture in SD and no one will really care….
Oilers Prospects at CFB Edmonton from Ryan Jackson on Vimeo.
Edmonton Oilers prospect Jordan Eberle who was the Oilers 1st round draft pick in 2008 jumps out of a parachute simulator with Warrant Officers Eric Miles and John McNabb behind him during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospect Jesse Dudas from St. Albert, left, carries Master Warrant Officer Steve Merry during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
An Edmonton Oilers prospect fires a weapon simulator during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospects stand in front of a mock jump tower before simulating a parachute jump during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers Team Services Coordinator Patrick Garland jumps from a parachute simulator with Warrant Officer John McNabb guiding his line during an Edmonton Oilers prospects team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospects rest after doing a mock tower jump during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
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