I don’t video things that often but now and then someone does something impressive and I might video it on the phone, it always looks like they’ve ridden down a gentle slope or done an 8 inch drop. How do you capture this stuff better on video?

mbr trick of angling the camera 🙂

digital cameras don’t have very good depth of field, or at least not the ones in phones. it was a real problem for the movie industry until the ‘red’ cameras came along, if i have this right.

digital cameras don’t have very good depth of field, or at least not the ones in phones. it was a real problem for the movie industry until the ‘red’ cameras came along, if i have this right.

the glass you put in front a sensor controls the depth of field, not the sensor itself. this is the same for film as it is for digital.

Edit, just realised you were talking about phones and here’s me blabbling on about gopros… 😳

High mounting points always make the terrain seem flatter as you can see what’s coming up easier, plus mounting it to a helmet means it’s really well isolated from any body movement so any big drops don’t seem to shake it much. Mounting it lower down like on a chest cam gives a better perspective and also shows how much work is being put into moving the bike around which makes the drops seem bigger. Having the camera facing backwards at a rider following you is also quite good for showing how steep stuff is as there’s a good sense of scale.

Also the wide angled fisheye effect doesn’t help as it makes everything seem slower, you can remove this in some editors.

the glass you put in front a sensor controls the depth of field, not the sensor itself. this is the same for film as it is for digital.

Thats not really true – there is a well documented correlation between sensor size and depth of field (digital compact cameras and smart phones have much smaller sensors than film cameras did):

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6091822765/background-blur-and-its-relationship-to-sensor-size

However, I don’t really see what depth of field has got to do with making things look less steep?

the glass you put in front a sensor controls the depth of field, not the sensor itself. this is the same for film as it is for digital.

For any given sensor, but the size of the sensor, and therefore the focal length required for a given field of view is critical. and you just can’t get a long enough focal length to get a small depth of field with the tiny sensors in phones and many digital cameras. However, as mentioned above, that isn’t why it doesn’t look steep.

In answer to the OP, part of it is that you have no reference for the horizontal in video so POV shots look rubbish because you can’t tell if you are looking up or down. Off the bike shots look rubbish because the majority of us simply aren’t riding anything worth photographing 😉 A low angle will help though if you are videoing your mates, as will wide angle and getting really close (not an option with a phone)

Is it that things look less steep on video or that they look more steep than they really are in real life? 😉

I’m not sure what depth of field has to do with it either.

No, I don’t think DoF has anything to do with it. Phones tend to have quite a wide angle lens which won’t help, but mainly it’s because you’re not rad enough!

+1 for you’re just not gnarrr enough!

I don’t think it’s nececeraly a fisheye problem either, as most interviews with mountainbike photographers seem to list 10-20mm lenses as their default as they need to fill the shot with the rider, and often just drop the bike, grab the camera, turn and shoot the guy following them over the drop/jump/corner, so don’t have time to get a long way off track to use a longer lense.

But yea, low angles and getting as close to the rider as possible so they fill the shot, otherwise they become a small rider on a big relatively smooth hill, whereas if they fill the frame then whatevery they’re riding over will look big too.

That and my rule of thumb is the background should be worth a photo on it’s own, if your eye isn’t drawn to the point where the rider is then they won’t be the most impressive thing in the photo, so get them at a point where the horizon, trail, a tree, outline of a boulder, etc intersect so the eye is dran to them. Harder to do on video, but remember most MTB clips will be 2-4 seconds long (edited into a film lasting 3-4minutes). So be selective, it’s the 10s before/after the rider’s passed that make it crap.

I have an old Contour HD.

I experimented with camera height and angles etc and found the best overall (compromise) position was to fit the camera to the head tube. You got the impression of speed and most of the steepness of the trails etc.

The best overall place was on the fork leg but it used to get covered in mud so I had to move it higher up.

It’s partly because when you are there in person your brain builds an understanding of the situation through multiple views over time – i.e. you look around and get an understanding of the whole situation, rather than the portion in your vision at the time of the event.

Also the FOV – a photo is lacking the peripheral view [partly why fisheye makes things look more gnar]. This is related to why taking a photo of a cool thing will produce a boring photo unless you are able to set up a shot that gives context.

My contribution 🙂

Is it not just that the steepness is relative? So if you’re riding down a 45 degree slope, the camera platform (ie you or the bike) is also tilted 45 degrees.

Is it not just that the steepness is relative? So if you’re riding down a 45 degree slope, the camera platform (ie you or the bike) is also tilted 45 degrees.

This is what I thought.

I remember watching some videos of the matador run at inners, and thought ‘that looks a piece of piss’. When I was there in person it looked much much steeper. It was only when I reviewed the video that I noticed the trees were pointing back at a 45 degree angle!

^^This. You brain uses all it’s senses, and builds up a picture of your environment from more than the purely visual information. It has learnt what “steep” means and that it can be “dangerous”. Young Babies who haven’t yet learnt this are a risk precisely because they haven’t learnt this trick yet!

Is it not just that the steepness is relative? So if you’re riding down a 45 degree slope, the camera platform (ie you or the bike) is also tilted 45 degrees.

I think the OP is talking about videoing/photographing other riders (not his own POV stuff).

Young Babies who haven’t yet learnt this are a risk precisely because they haven’t learnt this trick yet!

Not relavent to the thread by our friends baby has developed a habit off doing it’s business in the ball pool (whether wearing a nappy or not). So far they don’t seem to want to go on a day out to IKEA* 🙁

*I hate IKEA, hence planning dirty protest by proxy.

I think the OP is talking about videoing/photographing other riders (not his own POV stuff).

Still kinda relavent, keep the camera level (not following the slope) so that the rider enters the frame at the top and leaves at the bottom of the frame, or bias it away from the slope MBR style. And shoot at an angle to the slope, not straight up/down.

Still, the best quick and easy angle is on the back of the first bikes seatpost.

Is it not related to depth perception? Simply it being very difficult to tell how far away things are in a photo/video.

But spineology always looks even more dramatic on film than it is. Fish-eye effect I reckon.

I think maybe it’s because you’re slumped on sofa while watching the video, compared to being just about to roll off the “Drop of Doom” ™ on while perched on a push-bike.

cameras capture what’s there, it’s your brain that adds the steepness.

similar case is a full moon, your eye says it’s enormous, but on a photo it’s tiny

This does.

[video]http://vimeo.com/98776106[/video]

😯

similar case is a full moon, your eye says it’s enormous, but on a photo it’s tiny

Again, depends on the lens:

(not fake, just big telephoto lens)