This was filmed very quickly one Sunday morning as we were headed out of town for the day. The sun hadn’t quite fully come through the gorge so lighting was a bit sub-optimal. However, we were still able to get some good shots of Mosher Hill Falls.
We’re still in a bit of a drought here in Maine so the volume of water coming over the falls is much less than we’d see in a normal year. The same is true of Houston Brook Falls I posted last week. I’ll take this as an opportunity though – I’ll return to all these falls when water levels return and we’ll have an interesting comparison to make.
I didn’t like some of the flickering in the HBF video so I switched the camera on the Phantom over to manual and messed with the settings myself. I’m mostly pleased with the way things came out.
I filmed in D-Log color with an ISO of 400 and a shutter speed of 60. There wasn’t a lot of color information to begin with as there was little sunlight and we were in a narrow gorge (not the most colorful place around).
I turned the shutter speed down as I’d seen some videos where people claim that it gives a more cinematic look and I wanted to give it a whirl. Well, I’m not pleased. Turning the shutter speed down introduces natural motion blur as the shutter is open for longer periods of time. You also lose some detail in the image if there is any movement while the shutter is open. I prefer a much sharper image than what we got in this video. I would really like a hyper-real image when shooting the falls.
It’s all a matter of preference and this is mine. We’re headed out again on Labor Day to another large set of falls to capture some more footage. I’ll crank that shutter speed back up and see if I can’t get a better detailed image this time ’round. Also, the ND filters for the Phantom came in which gives me one more variable with which to work.
Happy Trails,
FatherGoat