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African Nature Showreel

Robert Hofmeyr

Robert Hofmeyr

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Hi All,

I finally got round to cutting a reel of my nature footage. I've been shooting nature stock in my very limited spare time (mostly on family holidays out the window of the car with the kids in the back complaining about the lack of WiFi in the Kalahari). All footage shot on Epic MX or Dragon. Mostly with a Sigmonster, but there are some old Nikon lenses in there as well.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Rob


Link: https://vimeo.com/bobhof/nature or https://youtu.be/NuARc_7BuRs
 
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Great stuff, Robert - I'm always curious what everyone is using for support when in the field - what's your tripod and head of choice?
 
Kyle Wullschleger said:
Great stuff, Robert - I'm always curious what everyone is using for support when in the field - what's your tripod and head of choice?
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Thanks Kyle. I'm using an old Oconnor 515 on Gitzo sticks. It's a bit lightweight for the Sigmonster. I made up a bracket to lower the center of gravity (see attached pic, while standing on your head). The bracket helps a lot but at 800mm, in a light breeze, my shots still look like Cloverfield. The bracket also doubles as a nice platform to rest the camera on when shooting out a car window. Also, I can't change lenses quickly.

Rob
 

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Incredible. Love the colors and the credits at the end. Insanely talented cast you had there ;)
 
Visar Sulejmani said:
Incredible. Love the colors and the credits at the end. Insanely talented cast you had there ;)
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Thanks Visar. I appreciate your comment because I struggle with grading. I usually just play with the sliders in redcine till it looks good to me. Regarding the cast: very good looking, but totally useless at taking direction :-)
 
Outstanding Robert!! Very cool to see wildlife captured in this high end medium. I was wondering what Nikon glass you were using? I have an AF-S Nikon 400mm f2.8 that I would like to use on the new Scarlet-W but nobody can give me an answer on compatibility. Thanks in advance, Shannon
 
Shannon Curtis said:
Outstanding Robert!! Very cool to see wildlife captured in this high end medium. I was wondering what Nikon glass you were using? I have an AF-S Nikon 400mm f2.8 that I would like to use on the new Scarlet-W but nobody can give me an answer on compatibility. Thanks in advance, Shannon
Click to expand...

Hi Shannon, most of the footage was shot on the Sigma 300-800 Canon mount, but some of the older stuff (meerkats, elephant, warthogs, Oryx) was on Nikon glass. I used a 20mm 2.8 AF-D, 50mm 1.4 AF-D, and an old push-pull 80-200 2.8. Unfortunately, I used them all in manual mode since I only have a "dumb" Nikon mount, so I'm unable to advise you on compatibility of the 400mm. That said, Red's support for Canon is much better than Nikon, so, unless you are particularly attached to the lens, it may be worth getting a Canon mount and trading your Nikon for a Canon.

Cheers,
Rob
 
Hi All,

I've updated my reel with some Weapon Mg footage from Etosha (hyena, black-faced impala, Wildebeest) and the Kruger National Park (more lions, leopard, elephant, black rhino). Feedback is welcome!

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/bobhof/nature

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/NuARc_7BuRs

 
Hi Robert
There is some fantastic material in this video. Very inspiring and well filmed.

Some tips on grading. I found some of the cat images where too dark. They would be better if you increase the luminance maybe 30%.
Also I think some of the shots could do with a bit of additional sharpening. What I usually will do is I will select the center of attention, for example and area then do a mask around it, and then sharpen a bit more to pull the eye. Can give more ideas if you wish :)
I do recommend Davinci Resolve for grading, its really nice for editing too, dont get scared off by its interface its worth learning.

Once again, inspiring work! We are going to Sri Lanka in April, we will be happy to catch a few shots like these :D
Btw, how did you catch the shots of the crocodile and sea birds. It looked as if you had the camera extremely low, was this really from inside the car?

/Andreas
 
Thanks Andreas, I really appreciate the feedback!

All I'm doing at the moment is a rough grade in RedCine. I agree that I should take some time and learn Resolve. Does it have a good proxy workflow (my computer is pretty slow)? Perhaps I should also start one of those "grade my R3D" threads to get some ideas.

The low shots of the croc and birds were done from a sunken hide.

I'm sure Sri Lanka will be incredible. Enjoy! And post something here on your return.

Rob
 
I will post here when we are back. Currently gearing up big time, will be super fun to use it (but maybe not carry it).
Aha, that is very interesting with the sunken hide, that is why it looks so magical!
Redcine is pretty good, but the key thing in Davinci is that you can select areas so you san cay "make the head brighter, with more contrast and sharper" so that it pops out. Its a fun program. I did grade in davinci with a pretty slow computer. If you drop the resolution to quarter res then you can do it on a 4 year old Apple Laptop (but with some swearing).

Another tip is I noticed the saturation is shifting between the images a bit much. Normally you want the amount of saturation to be fairly constant over time. It can change, but not usually clip by clip unless you have a special reason. To fix this you can basically make sure to make some shots a bit more saturated before other very saturated shots are coming.
The edit I thought was really nice and the images are superb!

Andreas
 
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