Another long-form real-time bike ride (37 min) - this time with better audio and widescreen. Put your TV on sleep-mode and play this video to drift into zzzzzzzz..... The main purpose of this video was to test the handling and framing of the Ulanzi 1.33x anamorphic lens on an older smartphone mounted to a gimbal.
October 2021: sunny and warm as the fall colours begin to enter peak saturation. A nice day to try slow bike tour of a nearby stormwater run-off reservoir and practice filming and riding.
I still use an old Samsung Galaxy S5 phone from 2014 (it still works!), on a DJI OM3 gimbal. After the last ride, I decided to try a couple of relatively cheap accessories:
(1) - a 1.33x anamorphic smart phone lens. It gives a wider angle of view and a more "cinematic" look to the dimensions - because everyone is supposed to be obsessed with cinematic video.
(2) - a cheap directional mic with a windmuff to cut down on wind noise. This is big improvement since the wind noise really dominated the last video and was difficult to eq out afterwards.
Things Learned This Time Out:
The S5 seemed to do a decent enough job filming in HD, though I don't have anything newer or better to compare it with. The OM3 seemed to handle the weight of the anamorphic lens and audio cable just fine. I didn't use the DJI Mimo app since I wasn't doing anything fancy with the gimbal, and I don't think the app likes Android 6. With some more practice, I will get smoother and more deliberate with framing while riding.
The Ulanzi 1.33x anamorphic lens seems solid and did a nice job making a sharp widescreen image, but the clothes-pin clip that holds the lens isn't very tight so it slid a bit and the left edge is blurry. This isn't the fault of the lens - its just not made to attach easily to such an old smart phone. I will try to find some settings in Davinci Resolve to see if anything can fix the wide-angle lens distortion - its not bad, but it is noticeable at some points.
The Moukey MCM-1 is a mono directional mic that made everything sound closer and louder. I mounted it to the base of the gimbal on a cold-shoe arm, and it connected to the phone via a TRRS adapter cable. The included muff isn't very thick, but it did a decent job of cutting out the worst of the wind noise while biking. I would like to see what options there are to get a stereo mic with a wind-muff that can attach directly to a smartphone on a gimbal. It seems that phones can only do mono-audio from an external mic. I saw some USB mics and adapter cables, but from what I can tell, none seem to work with even newer Android phones. Going with external audio is also an option, but adds more complexity.
16 сен 2024
