Bugged

Do I have to tell you that there is a fly on my window? It is distracting, isn't it? It is also annoying and in every sense save one*, it totally ruins the photo. That is the segue into my excuse as to why I have been slow to blog of late. Flies. And more precisely, fruit flies. And more grographicialy precise, California fruit flies. I bring this up because as you are aware, two weeks ago we were in NorCal to shoot the Wildflower Triathlon festival's two main events: The long course and the Olympic course. I thought we had nailed the shoot, but upon download and digitization it seems that on Saturdays long course a team of intrepid fruit flies had convened for their annual meeting on the lens of the Canon A1. This at mile 50 of the 56 mile ride, meaning that they are there, bouncing about for almost twenty minutes. AND YOU THINK THAT ONE FLY IN A STILL IMAGE IS BAD. Think about four in HD video for 6 miles!!!!!

I have tried everything in the book, from garbage mattes to rotoscoping to get them out of the video. To make matters worse, the Sony HC5 backup cam does not have a manual shutter speed control making the smooth cam operation in post look like hell when aligned against the heavenly rendered footage from the Canon. Three days with gradients, overlays, key-frames and croma/luma values. Nothing works. Why isn't there a video fly-swatter? A can of Raid on a button like the spray paint function in Photoshop? There is three days, gone.

At last I settled on a manipulation the scale and moving the center point of the clip. It is a little harsh at the onset but after your eyes adjust to the change in scale, it's OK, and the best solution. The same method will apply for Sunday's short course, where the fly is in the sky area meaning I can Gaussian blur it out as blue. There is the next three days and then off to Boise next week. Ordered another 7" TFT external monitor this morning, so that will help with the focus issue. Now I just have to figure a way to keep the bugs off the lens.

* It is not a ruined photo if you are taking a shot of a fly on a window.