Yesterday I went out in the afternoon and shot a bit of video footage of long tail boats along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. I selected about 10 segments from what I shot and created a short, 2 minute video from it. When I edited the video I also slowed it down to 50% of its original speed, so it has a slight slow motion effect.

For the rest of this post I am going to explain the technical aspects of this footage and how I shot it (for those who are interested). If you would only like to see the video then please just click on the arrow button below and enjoy. If you are interested in all the background tech on how this video footage was shot then please read on.

I shot all this footage within a period of about 1.5 hours using a Sony a6300 mirroless camera, a Metabones Mark IV adapter, and a Canon 70-200mm L F/4 lens. Everything was captured at 120 frames per second and then slowed down to 60 frames per second in post. I shot at 120fps for two reasons. First, it allowed me to capture the footage at 100 megabits per second for maximum color depth and dynamic range. If I had shot it at 60 frames per second then I could have only captured it at a maximum of 50 megabits per second based on the camera’s specs. Also, I wanted to be able to slow down the footage a bit in post. So capturing double the needed amount of frames per second allowed me to create a 60 frames per second video at half its actual speed. Most video these days is shot (or at least rendered) at either 24 or 30 frames per second to give it a more cinematic look, but sometimes I like to produce video at 60 frames per second for the added sharpness and detail. Note though, if you shoot any footage at 120fps, you can’t use it for anything without slowing it down first, it is too many frames per second and would look very jittery. So you can slow it down to 60fps, 30fps, or 24fps, whatever you prefer.

For capturing the footage I used a gamma setting of Cine4 (instead of using SLog2 or SLog3) because SLog picture profiles force you to shoot at a high ISO minimum of ISO 800 on the Sony a6300. Cine4 is also a slightly more flat picture profile that is intended to increase dynamic range. So it allows one to shoot at a low ISO of 200 (less noise), but still get some of the wider gamut benefits of a SLog profile. The footage does not come out of the camera nearly as flat as when using a SLog profile, but I find Cine4 to be a good compromise for me.

The camera itself was set to shutter priority mode as I wanted to maintain a constant shutter speed of 1/250th for the entire time whilst shooting at 120fps. With shutter priority the aperture varies according to whatever the camera feels is necessary based upon the amount of available light. In most cases my aperture setting for this footage ended up being around F/11 or higher.

Since the Sony a6300 cannot use autofocus with non-native Sony E-Mount lenses (like the Canon lens I was using to shoot with), I was only able to pre-focus using autofocus. But once I started shooting video then the autofocus was no longer active, nor able to change focus in order to track the moving boats. I feel it wasn’t a problem though on this footage because the focus looks sharp enough to me in all the footage I shot.

In the first 2 second opening sequence of the video you might notice there is a slight rolling shutter effect, but it is not much thankfully. In fact, there is much talk about rolling shutter issues with this camera. Honestly though, I find it really isn’t a problem. Nor is it an issue on any of the footage I shot here even though the boats are moving from side to side in the frame, which is the type of movement where you would normally see a bad rolling shutter effect.

Much of the footage in this sequence was shot at a focal length of either 300mm or close to it. The maximum focal length on the Canon lens I shot with was 200mm, but the crop sensor on this camera creates a focal length multiplier factor of 1.5, thus giving me 300mm. It is also quite surprising how good the depth of field is at long focal length.

Normally I sharpen video when I edit it, but I felt this footage was so sharp already. So I did not add any sharpening to it. Sharpening can add unwanted noise and artifacts to footage. So I prefer not to sharpen video at all if I don’t have to.

As for the color grading, I first used a levels adjustment to simply reduce the highlights and brighten the shadows a bit. I did this in order to first make the footage a bit more flat and neutral looking as if it was shot using SLog2. Then I applied a fairly neutral LUT that was created for the Sony A7S SLog2 picture profile and applied that LUT to all segments of the footage at varying degrees.

If you would like to see what the footage looked like with the original Cine4 picture profile (and with no color grading added) then below is another version of the video with the color grading applied only to the right half of the footage. As you can see from this video, my color grading didn’t change much on the final render, but I wanted a fairly neutral look and nothing dramatic anyway. So the LUT I used just added a bit more saturation, some slightly reddish tones, and a bit of needed contrast.

Although it may not be so noticeable, some of the footage has a slight jitter. I was shooting with a long, heavy lens and unfortunately the wind was very strong where I was standing near the edge of the river. So the weight of the lens, combined with the wind, created a bit of movement to the camera. And even though the camera was securely fastened to a good tripod, the footage does have a bit of visible shake at times. If I was shooting a wider angle, and without so much telephoto effect, then it may not have even been noticeable.

Last technical point, I could have shot the footage as I did at 120fps (for the added color depth and dynamic range) and then rendered the final video to 60fps (as I also did here), but without slowing it down by 50%. I prefer a bit of slower movement though on videos like this as I feel it gives you a bit more time to visually take in the moment.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the videos and this post. If you have any questions or comments please feel to post them below as always.