Stop Motion with BMPCC, lighting?

[slatr]

I want to see if I can use the time lapse function of my bmpcc to create some stop motion clips.

 

I have googled lighting and I haven't found the information I was looking for.

 

What I am looking for is some inexpensive, flicker free lights. I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

Thanks,

 

Brian

[Sean Cunningham]

Are you talking tabletop, like with miniatures?  You're going to be better off, if you are doing tabletop or miniature stop motion, to just do manual, single exposure rather than try to work with a time lapse function which will introduce increased possibility of error and unneeded tension while working, unless that's some part of your process, trying to only do what you can fit into the interval between exposures while getting out of the way.

 

Or, since I don't currently have a BMPCC, does it not do single exposure?

[andy lee]

LED work lights are small cheap and filcker free

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ROLSON-72-LED-PORTABLE-MAGNETIC-WORKLIGHT-TORCH-CAMPING-LIGHT-/131131567723?pt=UK_SportsLeisure_Camping_LightsLanternsTorches&hash=item1e880cee6b

 

I have a whole bunch of them I cover them with LEE difuser and then use gels on them to alter the colour temp.

 

also these LED tube strips are superb ( as used on Only God Forgives film)  Ive just started using these this past 6 months to replace my Kinoflo lights as these are smaller lighter cheaper and flicker free they come in 3200k or 6000k colour temp

 

the 9w version is very very bright , I have built these into banks of 4 like Kinoflo

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T5-9W-84-LED-3014-SMD-Warm-White-Fluorescent-Light-Lamp-Tube-Bar-AC90-240V-60-CM-/400588726101?pt=UK_Light_Bulbs&hash=item5d44f2df55

 

 

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T5-4W-30cm-SMD-2835-20-White-LED-Tube-Light-Lamp-Bar-320LM-Office-Market-/111251225393?pt=UK_Light_Bulbs&hash=item19e716fb31

[ergopossum]

I've used compact fluorescent bulbs of the sort made for conventional incandescent lamp sockets in stop motion animation for years without flicker problems. I was shooting at variable shutter speeds with a stills camera. The lack of flicker does depend on the shutter angle, I believe, though I'm not very familiar with how shutter angle functions in relation to fluorescent, with regard to the Blackmagic cameras. The colors are nicer than cheap LEDs, but of course they're somewhat omnidirectional light sources so they're a little harder to control than an LED panel.

 

I'm curious as to why you want to use the time lapse function, maybe this is just a simplicity thing using what's available to you. I imagine finding a way to feed the HDMI video into the computer and take stills from there would be a little easier in the long run since some frames take longer than others to set up, and this would allow for reshooting frames when necessary, etc. The BMPCCs are certainly very appealing for stop mo purposes as they do not incur the shutter life problems that DSLRs do.

[Axel]

I agree with ergopossum. Use the HDMI and a specialized software like Dragonframe (or other). Then of course a camera with higher resolution offers you some possibilities like "digital zooms".

 

What you should not do, imho, is use frame interpolation functions or added motion blur. I loved the old Wallace&Gromit films, but I hated the cinema releases. They looked too close to 3D GGI, and that was very disappointing.

[galenb]

Hey, I work at a studio that does stop motion. I've actually been in this industry since the early 90's. So, any kind light that you on a live shoot works for stop motion. We use everything from 100K Arri's  to tiny peppers, and sometimes even simple incandescent clip on lights.  If you're really worried about light flickering just use longer exposures and avoid florescent lights. It's not really something that we worry about. More troublesome are the cameras that we've used in the past that have automatic/motorized Apertures. Every time you shoot off a frame, it's actually slightly different. when you view the frames afterword, there's a slight flickering. So we always use Nikon manual lenses. 

 

Anyway, Now that I read your question I'm thinking that you don't actually mean "Stop motion" but rather "Time-laps". The two are not the same thing. I don't know if you know this or not so I'll just state it to be clear: Stop motion is where you move an object/puppet in small increments utilizing the principals of animation and take a picture, and then do it again and again until you have a sequence of frames that can then be played back at real-time.

 

Time-laps is where you set up a camera to shoot frames at a very slow rate until you have a sequence to be played back. For this the BMCC is fine but for stop motion, you would normally just use a still camera and something like Dragon frame to help with the shooting and putting the sequence of frames together on your computer. 

 

Sorry if you know all that already I just wanted to be clear.

[slatr]

Thanks guys

Technically it would be time lapse frames to create stop motion. There is no way to grab or take stills that I am aware of on a bmpcc.

 

I didn't want to buy another camera or more gear for this and I wanted RAW frames. Sounds like trying to use time lapse for this might be painful though.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I would use the normal video mode. 1 second for each clip or so and pull the frame.

[ergopossum]

As far as recording straight into the computer, I was thinking of the use of an HDMI-in card like this card, or this one or this one. In theory you could use a card like that to record the clean HDMI out of the camera into a program like Dragonframe's live view. But this is a significant amount of extra money and hardware.

[slatr]

As far as recording straight into the computer, I was thinking of the use of an HDMI-in card like this card, or this one or this one. In theory you could use a card like that to record the clean HDMI out of the camera into a program like Dragonframe's live view. But this is a significant amount of extra money and hardware.

 

Wow Ergo, that first card is really inexpensive. I will have read more about it. Thank you!