Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

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technoendo
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Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by technoendo »

Cheers to my herping brothers and sisters in the field! :D

I just published this video and thought I'd share a link with the FHF! Enjoy!

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socalherper
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by socalherper »

Sweet! Nice Video!
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technoendo
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by technoendo »

Thank you Tony! With Washington being the "Evergreen State" its easy for people to think of the cooler, damper, and much greener western Washington side of the cascade mountain range than the dry central/eastern sides of the state. In this video I roll down the eastern slope of the cascade range finding a few sharp-tailed snakes at 4000' and then down through the shrub-steppe to the columbia river at 600' elevation. Its a 2-3 hour drive from Seattle to these locations and I made 7-8 round trips over the cascade mountain range to shoot this video. Washington reptile diversity isn't as frenzied compared to southern states but I figure there may be a few international or east coast herpers that are curious about rubber boas, alligator lizards, and the rainbows of garter snakes we have out here.

Trying to edit a few more videos before I blast off to Utah and Oregon this weekend. More videos on the way!
dthor68
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by dthor68 »

Dude, that was awesome. Love the gopher snake footage, love it all. I have only been to Washington one time. I absolutely loved it there, one of the best weeks of my life. We were at Mt. Baker for a week. We hit the Cascades, Olympic (rainforest, ocean & mountain top), waterfalls, and many other spots. I have been to 48 states, Washington was my favorite, Oregon second! Cant wait to go back.
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technoendo
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by technoendo »

Thanks Derek! Just checked out one of your online photo galleries -- you are a great photographer! Your landscapes, animals, and city structures all look great. If you ever get out to WA again and are seeking some grand landscapes to photograph let me know and I'll add a few scenic views to your list. I'm always looking to pair up with photographers for video collaborations... though some of your photos look good enough they might cost me a few limbs! :)

Hope to have another WA herping video out in the next week from the Kittitas Environmental Education Network's (KEEN) "Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe" public event from May 12th in the Yakima River Canyon. Professor Dr Daniel D Beck from CWU tubed a wild rattlesnake we found during a snake hike so everyone could touch/feel/get close to a well secured buzztail. The minds of the children present were all blown. https://www.ycic.org/get-intimate-with-the-shrub-steppe
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Scott Waters
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by Scott Waters »

Great video! Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to more.

Scott
tim_ugarte
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by tim_ugarte »

really nice video for sure
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Porter
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by Porter »

Cool stuff :beer: i’m thinking of getting back into video next year… I remember we kind of talked about this a little bit when I was at your house. What kind of editing software are you using for these and what kind of cameras? I can either upgrade my camera or by video camera for next year… But I’m leaning towards video camera.
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technoendo
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by technoendo »

Thanks for the kind words folks!

> What kind of editing software are you using for these and what kind of cameras?

Hey Porter! I can talk about this stuff all day brother!

For a few years I used the free Kdenlive software, switched to Adobe Premiere Pro CC, and also learned some Davinci Resolve. The subscription to adobe creative cloud provides convenient access to Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, and After Effects. Davinci Resolve does have a free version with some limitations (no 4k exports, just 1080p and lower), the full/pro version costs a 1-time fee of $300, which includes all future major upgrades, and Resolve Studio (paid) also has advanced capabilities Premiere lacks (object/motion tracking, denoising filters) but that Premiere could get from plugins or from After Effects.

If you don't already have a preference for editing software I'd suggest starting with the free version of Davinci Resolve. Its highly regarded as a coloring tool and in recent years its gained a lot of ground as a video editor and audio processor. Last year when Davinci Fusion (a vfx tool) was integrated into Resolve Studio 15 I got that for free.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Davinci Resolve

As for cameras I use a bunch of them. Its nice to get new video gear/upgrades when you can but I'll use all sorts of cameras which sometimes is just the IPhone in my pocket. Some of my earlier videos were all shot on a GoPro Hero4b and over time I've picked up more cameras, gotten new phones, learned their capabilities/deficiencies, and I'm pretty happy where I'm at today. I shoot all video at 4k30p across all devices.

Primary camera: Panasonic GH5. A Panasonic 12-35mm mkII is paired with it for landscape and animal+habitat shots. The In-Body Image Stabilization (IBIS) and Image Stabilization (IS) in the native lenses work really well together. The GH5 is a fantastic camera body that can internally record 10-bit video at 4:2:2 chroma-subsampling, has dual card slots, and grading 10-bit V-LOG is delightful. Micro-four thirds sensors are smaller than the APS-C/full frame sensors in popular DSLR cameras but I only really get sensor envy when I'm doing things like astrophotography. Night time herp shots are taken of subjects within a 6 foot distance (mostly, right?) which can be aided by bringing additional light. I recently picked up a Viltrox EF-M2 focal reducer/adapter so I can attach EF mount lenses and picked up a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. This has been a real win for me as the focal reducer brings the aperture of f/2.8 down to f/2.0 and I get a manual focus ring instead of the fly-by-wire focus rings common on Panasonic lenses (not a fan). I use the Leeming LUT One workflow for shooting/processing V-LOG.

Here's one of my favorite GH5 demo videos though it uses a different set of native M43/Panasonic lenses:



Secondary camera: IPhone 8+ running either 1) FilmicPro for recording any video as it can shoot higher bitrates, offer better white balance/manual controls than default camera apps, even pro camera features like focus peaking and false color, 2) ProCamera if I want to shoot RAW/DNG photos, 3) default camera app for panoramic images, 4) google street view for 360 photospheres. I always carry a gorillapod with a phone clip in my backpack so I always have the option to get perfectly steady shots.

Specialized camera: GoPro Hero4 Black, its 3 generations old right now, but its still a useful little camera. The waterproof housing is awesome for underwater shots. You can mount these things just about anywhere really easily. I very frequently will do dashcam shots when I'm out on a herping trip, or mount the camera to a head-strap as I flip. I have shot a lot of time-lapses on them and I've covered the lens with half a pair of eclipse sunglasses to film the eclipse! Also sometimes just having a second recording device running has saved me when my primary audio source is somehow ruined I can still pull audio from another camera even if I'm not going to use the video. I'm more willing to do risky things to this camera.

Specialized camera: DJI Osmo 1 which is more or less a GoPro Hero4b on a hand held 3-axis gimbal. Its not rugged/waterproof, but you can sprint at full speed and get butter smooth video. It also can be suction-cup/otherwise mounted to things and controlled remotely by smartphone (panning shots on the hood of your car). One major exciting discovery was learning that there is more software out there that can control the Osmo than just the app provided by DJI. The "Litchi for Osmo" app can do cool things like set an "a" and "b" camera position, smoothly pan from each position, while recording either video or photos, over any period of time you specify. It also allowed me to shoot 360 photospheres, in RAW/DNG, with a camera that rotates around its nodal point much more reliably than anything else I have. This can be used to make REALLY high resolution RAW/DNG stitched 360 photospheres.

Its likely I will retire the Osmo1 and get something like a Zhiyun Smooth-4 ($135) as it gained integration with the FilmicPro app around September 2018. I always carry a smartphone but don't always bring my Osmo1 (especially when flying) and think it would be nice to have a more portable gimbal stabilization system for capturing smooth movement (walking/hiking/climbing/dolly shots). I kinda want to have a gimbal sometimes but maybe not a heavy duty one for the DSLR/DSLM camera.

Lights: I wear a Fenix HL60R headlamp but I regret that its 4000k temperature clashes with other 5500k daylight sources. Recently I picked up a Yongnuo YN360II RGB LED light bar as I can just slide it right into a backpack when I'm night hiking or road cruising. It has a 5500k daylight calibrated mode as well as being able to do unnatural RGB light... not sure if this will turn out to be just a novelty or if I'll do experiments like adding orange/purple colors to color a foreground subject to complement/contrast a sunset background for example. I'll also carry a Manfrotto Lumimuse 8, its a little on-camera LED light but I'll sometimes unclip it and use it as a fill or eye light.

Lastly, if you see anything in my videos that looks 3D it is probably from Blender or Google Earth Pro. Video editing is already a time consuming process so I'm hesitant to recommend learning 3D modeling as the time commitment is steep, but as Blender is free and runs on all desktop computer platforms its easy to be enthusiastic about. Just this week I've been going over some earth/3d planet tutorials to see if I could produce something better than the usual google earth tour animation and I think I've come up with something pretty sweet.

This clip will go into my "Socal2" feature video which is still being edited right now. Here is a little preview video clip from 1 month ago that I don't think I've shared with the FHF before:
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Porter
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by Porter »

You coulda been just like, Nikon G27x and photoshop X2000...? :lol: :lol: :lol: Thanks for taking the time to descriptive info :beer: I’ll delve into this when I have some time :mrgreen: :thumb: I don’t google info on product shit, so do appreciate this. Chad basically picked out all my lenses for me :lol:
jamesmilner228
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by jamesmilner228 »

Thank you so much for the great topic.
Also I'd like to share with you fre programs like photoshop. I advice you to use this infirmation for future.
http://fixthephoto.com/free-programs-li ... oshop.html
Best wishes
James
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technoendo
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by technoendo »

A lot of great free/open source software on that list James! I've been using GIMP since around 1997-98 and am a big fan. Darktable/Rawtherapee are also fantastic for RAW photo digital darkroom stuff. I also have a couple herper friends that appreciate the convenience of developing their RAW files using online web based services.

On the topic of field camera hardware, I found a site called kit.com, which I think primarily exists to try and make money off of amazon affiliate links, but its also convenient for assembling lists of gear to share. Herping is not an expensive hobby and so it may be a bit pretentious of me to rattle off a bunch of expensive camera/equipment, but as I've already shared a partial list of some of the hardware above I figured I'd share a link that can update dynamically as my gear changes over time.

Technoendo's video/photo field herping setup on kit.com

One recent photography piece of software I've tried that really blew me away is Topaz AI-Clear. Dudes, I've been using many variations of sharpen filters, unsharp masks, and the like to try and carefully enhance my digital images for almost 3 decades and the tools haven't evolved much. I'll spend 5-15 minutes zooming into a photo to use unsharp masks, playing with the radius, the amount of the effect, adjusting the masking percentage -- sometimes even sharpening a copy of the image on a second layer and then blending parts of the sharpened and unsharpened image together. Even then I can still create halos or unsightly edges/surfaces if I'm not careful. This AI-Clear software has a free demo you can play with, but it costs $60 for what amounts to being an intelligent (AI trained) tool that both sharpens and denoises an image. Part of the magic is that the AI is used to recognize objects, based on your shallow depth photos for example it can figure out what the subject of your photo is, and where the foreground/background elements are in the photo. Because it has some understanding of your scene it can then do some spooky sharpening on the foreground/subject areas while denoising background areas (but not denoising foreground areas as much or at all). The end result is that I've yet to see a case where an AI-Clear processed image looks worse than an image I processed with only Lightroom for example. As high as sharpening/denoising are pushed with AI-Clear, I've never gotten halos/artifacts/loss of details in the wrong places that are commonly problems with the available sharpening/denoising tools.

AI-Clear is a game-changer in my RAW photo/digital darkroom workflow now. It is completely fine to use it like a moron -- it is spooky in how it can clean up noisy dark areas or make an area with lots of fine details much sharper. I don't mind pushing my camera ISO even higher as I can worry even less about noise in low light areas. AI-Clear does a better job cleaning up an image in just 5 seconds with default settings then what I can do by hand in even 30 minutes!

I do expect these AI sharpening/denoise features will likely be integrated with other image editors (Photoshop/etc) in the future so just keep your eyes peeled for it. I can point to 2 open source AI assisted image denoising implementations that have surfaced in the last 12 months that have already been implemented in some free software projects (see D-NOISE AI denoiser free plugin for Blender). Nvidia Optix and Intel's OpenImageDenoise library.

If you try the free demo of AI-clear on your images -- feel free to reply back to this thread and tell me how it compares to sharpening/denoising with Lightroom/Darktable/RawTherapee/etc (the old way). Am I wrong?

Topaz's Web Page for AI-Clear





I'm not affiliated with Topaz, and pardon my recommendation of a $60 sharpening/denoising tool when you had just mentioned a bunch of free tools James. I just thought it would be an interesting topic to mention and since you bumped this old thread I might as well mention the recent change in my photo processing workflow. I'm sure some photographers are going to feel uneasy about the new crop of AI enhanced image processing tools.

Cheers folks. If anybody is interested I could post some before/after photos if y'all want to pixel peep a few examples, though maybe I should go blather in a different forum section instead of mixing herp talk with software/technology talk.
jamesmilner228
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Re: Video: Spring Herping the Columbia River Basin

Post by jamesmilner228 »

Hi there
This information seems good. Thanks for sharing.
Also I'd like to provide you information about Adobe PS express editor. Nowadays it's especially actual.
http://fixthephoto.com/photoshop-express-editor.html
Cheers
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