Androids Need Love HD

Yesterday I put up a video shot using the stop-motion feature on my Nintendo 3DS. Titled, Androids Need Love, it got a little bit of love from popular gaming blog Kotaku. I mentioned that I shot it with my Canon 7D as well, and I finally got around to processing all those RAW images.

But the results are less than spectacular.

The video is jerky as a result of the camera being shifted incorrectly between shots. My focus was on my 3DS, so I had my 7D positioned next to it at an angle. Because of the way the shutter button is positioned, and the amount of force needed to press down on it, this caused my camera to shift slightly at an angle on quite a few of the frames. Also, because the 7D was kind of at an OTS (over the shoulder) angle, and not in a wide shot like the 3DS was, panning with the camera was a little more difficult.

I’d like to try again sometime, maybe using the 7D exclusively. And maybe shooting JPEG instead of RAW because I’m not really concerned about editing the images in post and it will take considerably less time processing hundreds of JPEGs than it wold RAW images.

Anyway, you can see the video below.

The framing is kind of tight because I was on a 50mm f1.8 lens. Because the 3DS version (when viewed on a 3DS) is in 3D, I needed to do something with the 7D to help make the figures pop a little more. This particular lens has a very shallow depth-of-field; it’s not the same as 3D, but I wanted more separation between foreground and background.

If I ever shoot another one of these, I’ll make sure to choose a better angle, or at least plan out exactly how the camera is going to move. With the 3DS, it wasn’t too much of a concern because the system was parallel to the “actors.” And the lo-fi quality of the 3DS kind of lets it get away with some mistakes.

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