As visualists we tend to spend most of our time working with digital processes. So it’s good to step back occasionally and remember that computers don’t need to do all of the work:

1154 stills taken over 2-3 weeks. The lighting and setting is kept remarkably consistent, although I’m guessing someone with a little more production knowledge (or spare time) would have removed the tripod-bump in post.

The folks over at CHDK have been implementing custom firmware for the Canon Digic II and Digic III PowerShot cameras for some time - allowing for some awesome features for these small cameras. Previous added abilities such as shooting raw mode, USB tethered triggering, in camera motion detection and increased video recording options (compression options and no file size restrictions per clip).

But recently a new fimeware build by firmware hacker Allbest has allowed some very impressive high shutter speeds and high speed flash unit timings. CHDK folks have done tests measuring ccd timing vs flash timing, as well as capturing high speed subjects in controlled environments to find real world numbers. At the smallest aperture, the fastest timing available is around 1/64,000. Compared to high end professional cameras which costs one to two orders of magnitude more, this is quite the feat!

Check out the High Speed Shutter wiki page at the CHDK wiki for more information on high speed photography with the CHDK firmware.

Also be sure to check out the Video Plus options for extended recording and compression settings.

You can find a list of supported cameras on the CHDK wiki front page.

Impressive works. Thanks Yair for the heads up.

Every weekend Create Digital Motion will (try to) feature some small doses of inspirational material - things we find compelling enough to get our creative juices flowing - and hopefully yours as well.

First up: videos.antville.org - Users submit new and old music video links. Updated many times during the day, videos.antville.org contains a metric <expletive ton> of videos. Browse it, you are sure to find something cool, fun, different, weird, and never before heard of. At least you won’t be bored.

Ffffound - Image bookmarking with a brain - Ffffound’s image engine not only shows you images, but recommends them to you based on other users’ tastes and bookmarks. Ffffound is in beta, and registration is closed, but people are posting some pretty quality stuff. I’ve fffffound (ahem) quite a few inspirational images, and check it at least once a day. Good stuff.

Video would be nowhere without music - so if you haven’t already, be sure to check out NIN’s fan remix site. For those who aren’t NIN fans, its not all moody and dark, there are some inspirational soundtracks that cant help but invoke some imagery.

Please feel free to share any inspirational material - we’d love to feature it here at CDMotion. Thanks!

Yeah, I know, most of you probably read Digg, but this was simply too good to pass up: Flickr user Integral Lens has posted a wonderful set of in camera glitch effects. I’ve seen quite a few variations of digital camera glitches, but these take the cake simply for being so different, and aesthetically interesting. Lovely.

Check out the gallery for inspiration

Has anyone seen anything remotely like this? Have a special piece of gear thats broken in just the right way?

Be sure to check out Malfunction Junction for more photos gone awry.

Previously:
Beautiful Camera Footage from a Dead CCD

New York City, having already banned dancing (don’t ask), now wants to ban videography in the streets without a permit and $1 million in liability insurance. Some I talked to suspected anti-terrorism paranoia. I suspect the lucrative deals the city feasts on for big-budget, commercial projects — and an utter disregard for everyone else.

That is, if any rational explanation can explain these criteria:

• Two people + one camera + 30 minutes.
• Five people + one tripod + 10 minutes.

According to the proposed legislation, those would add up to one required permit and liability insurance.

Obviously, this is absurd. Fortunately, if you are in New York, it hasn’t happened yet — meaning it’s time to hit the phones, locals. For everyone else, you can just marvel at how annoying our city government can be. (Is yours worse? Let us know in comments. Do you live in a paradise for independent videographers? Tell us about that, too, and we’ll start checking airfares.)

For more:
City Proposes Limits on Public Photography, Filming

Dedicated site, with a call to action + petition (sign the petition, then take the time to make personal contact with city legislators for maximum effectiveness)
Picture New York Without Pictures of New York

Videographers should be very scared. But if the Flickr community gets mobilized, NYC government should be scareder. (Heck, outsider tourists, maybe you should write in, too!)

We look forward to the day when visualists on music tours are norms, rather than exceptions. And no, playing lots of pre-rendered footage and/or hiding someone in the back of the house does not count. Fortunately, our own Jaymis has been lucky enough to hook up with a very lovely musician on tour in Australia, and has been right up onstage during gigs and playing live visuals that are tightly integrated aesthetically and in terms of timing with the music. This has had the effect of: a) creating wonderful touring for Jaymis and b) creating a large void in posts on CDMotion. The tour is nearly done, but while we wait, here are some snaps of what the action looks like! It certainly inspires me to push my live music sets that much further/harder/better.

Jaymis has promised lots of info from this tour, including some production/performance tips picked up along the way. Stay tuned! Really, please, stay tuned!

Related: Bobby Flynn and the Omega Three Gig Report or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Rock

While we’re on the subject of animated pieces of paper: Switchfoot’s “Awakening” has been treated to a similar workflow (frames printed and photographed) with a very different result.

StudioDaily has an interview with Brandon Dickerson, on the workflow required to put this piece together.

Ways of adding a second layer of animation to a video:

1. Composite them digitally. Use lots of tricks, like match moves, to line everything up.
2. Print each individual frame onto paper (4,133 in this case), tack them up to stuff, and video the results into a time-lapse video.

Max Tyrie chose the latter for the Modest Mouse video contest. This is probably beyond the wildest dreams of what Modest Mouse’s promoters hoped for. Viva viral. It’s funny that, as digital technology progresses, people are discovering new, more “analog” means of producing visuals.

Via the excellent Wooster Collective:
Shit We’re Diggin’: Max Tyrie’s Hand Made Modest Mouse Video

Lately, I’ve been looking for ways to embrace creative and technological restrictions, to dial back all the high-tech choices possible in making motion. When a DV cam died, it seemed the perfect opportunity to examine a still camera as a means of generating footage. I picked up my Sony DSC-W1, a basic but decent 5 megapixel point-and-shoot. The DSC-W1 has a multi-burst mode that takes a stream of pictures at high speed. I loved this retro, flip-book approach. But I hadn’t used it in so long that I forgot why I had abandoned multi-burst in the first place.

In camera, multi-burst shoots a nice, 16-frame movie. But load the image off your camera, and you get all 16 pictures pasted together into a single, 1280 x 960-pixel image. Looks interesting, but no motion. A quick search revealed other digicam users (and apparently Sony owners aren’t alone) had the same problem. Solutions: 1) manually select each image (uh, no), 2) use a GIMP script programmed in Perl (two were readily-available, but not quite what I needed, and mucking with GIMP and someone else’s Perl is not my idea of a good time), or 3) write a script for Photoshop CS. The point here was to engage the creative process, not create meaningless work for myself.

Sometimes the best solution to a problem isn’t a black box: it’s attacking a problem head-on in the simplest, most elegant way possible. And that’s why Processing is such a joy. (See previous CDMotion coverage.) The solution is so simple, in fact, that it could be a good exercise for people learning image manipulation in the tool, even if they’ve never coded before.