Top Gear Black-sky effect

[Oman4x4]

On some of the track shoots Topgear does they have the sky fading from clear blue to black, even on a clear day... Is this a filter they use or a post-processing effect because... I like it 8)

[zenkidori]

It's a filter, JC even pulled one out in the last episode. You can do the same thing in post production.

[jensked]

I think Top Gear filming is so much better than Fifth Gear filming. Really a piece of art.

[pdanev]

It definitely includes post processing, as do 95% of the nice pictures on the internet. But yeah, as zenkidori said, JC showed the filter they use. However you can also achieve the same effect in PS, there's the exact same effect there.

[bone]

Originally Posted by jensked

I think Top Gear filming is so much better than Fifth Gear filming. Really a piece of art.

top gear filming is better than like any other show

[Kip_6666]

Though it does make the cars out to look a bit better than they do in real life, but hey, I don't mind

[jayjaya29]

Originally Posted by bone

top gear filming is better than like any other show

Agreed, I haven't seen many shows that can consistently top Top Gear's photography. It is fantastic.

[bartboy9891]

Originally Posted by jayjaya29

Agreed, I haven't seen many shows that can consistently top Top Gear's photography. It is fantastic.

they really are top notch, easily blows any other motoring program away

[zenkidori]

Originally Posted by Kip_6666

Though it does make the cars out to look a bit better than they do in real life, but hey, I don't mind

I think it comes closer to making them look like they do. I have seen a few cars that were hideous in press photos and the like, but in person were actually pretty good looking. I think TG comes closer to this.

[whoster]

it's called

Graduated Neutral Density.

or Grad ND filter.

Photoshop CS2 actually does NOT have this filter available because it is too difficult to actually simulate a physical filter with software. since you can't really mimick lighting conditions for every picture that will become processed.

however...i do have a huge filter plugin that CAN mimick it

called nik Color Efex Pro... it does the filtering VERY well.. (was very impressed)


if i had some car pics i could show you the difference...but i don't really shoot cars... sorry.

[whoster]

actually here's one




the sky used to be a LOT lighter, and lacked texture. a Grad ND filter cuts out glare and brings out detail where necessary. it's very useful for landscape shots and pictures taken on cloudy days (since the sky will come out just white)

[jayjaya29]

That is beautiful Whoster! Is this filter plugin pack free?

[lben]

That looks AWESOME! me WANT (the filter that is!)

-slaps himself for using caps-

[anto-t]

im talking about top gear camera work.. last week any one notice the camera maan in the studio, he was running round close shot of jc then a group shot with the full car then over to hammond and then back to a shot of the car. he must be well fit.. camer awork in top gear is the best in the world.. im starting to get an eye for good camera work and theres two other things that got me saying to everyone in the room that this is good camera work is RPM (irish based rally program) and the new harry potter film (but it shouldent count as i know it was shot with a blue screen)

[rootrider]

some of my favorite cinematography is still the first lotr movie. IIRC it won a few awards for that. I'm not a big fan of stylized video like in Top Gear, but they do do a great job with what they do. I love to catch their quick focusing in and out on different objects (from a car to a flower.. or whatever). I just wish I had the equipment to do something like that myself

[Kip_6666]

The plugin isn't free, but theres a torrent of a filterpack which includes the one whoster mentioned.

Very nice pic btw

[hanasand]

Want to see nice camerawork, then check out Road to Perdition. The old cinematographer died after the film and received his first Oscar for his pictures in Road to Perdition, but offcourse he was dead so he never knew he got it... bummer.

And offcourse, the visual package presented in Top Gear is unmatched.

[Overheat]

Yea, Conrad L Hall if I remember correctly, he did American Beauty with Same Mendes also - I love his work.

[Maxi]

As far as I can tell Top Gear use several different filters at the same time. In alot of clips the corners of the video are darker, an effect called vingetting which is caused when several filters are mounted on top of eachother.

I'd say they are using circular polarizing filters, ND grey and graduated ND grey filters and as JC told us, color filters. I doubt they do much PP on the video, since it demands alot of computing power.

And NOTHING can replace a real filter infront of the lense, those of you who use filter plugins for photoshop, if a sky is blown out, it has no detail in it and can't be recovered. The dynamic range(detail from brightest to darkest) of digital cameras isn't large enough to have the sky and ground exposed correctly. Adding a grad ND filter in at PP won't give you more detail in the sky, it might give a little, but it is in essence a local contrast fix. The only real way to achieve the effect is by using a real filter.

[whoster]

Originally Posted by Maxi

As far as I can tell Top Gear use several different filters at the same time. In alot of clips the corners of the video are darker, an effect called vingetting which is caused when several filters are mounted on top of eachother.

I'd say they are using circular polarizing filters, ND grey and graduated ND grey filters and as JC told us, color filters. I doubt they do much PP on the video, since it demands alot of computing power.

And NOTHING can replace a real filter infront of the lense, those of you who use filter plugins for photoshop, if a sky is blown out, it has no detail in it and can't be recovered. The dynamic range(detail from brightest to darkest) of digital cameras isn't large enough to have the sky and ground exposed correctly. Adding a grad ND filter in at PP won't give you more detail in the sky, it might give a little, but it is in essence a local contrast fix. The only real way to achieve the effect is by using a real filter.

that is why you do multiple exposures and combine them. -.-

the Canon DSLRS and Nikon DSLRS have a built in function to "Bracket" shots to be recombined later through photoshop to properly expose all parts of the image.

have you ever used nikColor? you'd be surprised at how much it can accomplish<<

of course a blown sky is hard to fix--but usually if the sky is too bright filters can't necessarily help either.


and you can't use a circular polarizer on a video camera--they're linear polarizers. for one thing Top Gear is shot in widescreen--which translates to a rectangular front end << the point of a circular polarizer is that you can rotate it and adjust the polarization. you can't do that if the mount is a rectangle) and also....vignetting from stacked filters doesn't produce the smooth dissipated look of Top Gear's video---filter vignetting is very much more pronounced, and rather bothersome as seen below




and given Top Gear's popularity and filming time << what makes you say that they won't have enough computing power for post-production?