My first Show it! slideshow: Laguna E-session!

[Philco]

I wasn't really planning to buy the showit web application, only because I was going to hold out for one that I could use to make my own dvd's. Well, the mother of one of my brides attended a wedding recently and she loved the slideshow on the photographers page, so she asked me to do the same thing. I worked the cost into her contract and voila! I now do slideshows!

I have to say that the program is everything it's sold as. It's super, super easy to use and quick. I made this first show with shots from last Sunday evening after exporting full res. jpgs out of Lightroom. I chose most of the zoom in/out points, set a tempo, and let it go. There's a lot of room in the app. to adjust things to a fine point in terms of changing on beats, etc., which I chose not to do. You could really create a work of art if you have the time / inclination.

Anyhow, here's my fist one:
www.defalcophoto.com/slideshow/padilla

The first series could stand some editing down, but I'm happy with the majority of it.

Thanks for looking,

Philip

[spphoto]

The shots are great for the most part (I'll get to C&C in a sec) but it's too long! No one will sit through anything that long (even I barely did). Dropping some of the duplicate photos, or some of the less than perfect poses, or both would cut the time down, but you'll probably still end up with something very long. Time some other slideshows you like to get an idea of how long it should be.

The shots are really good. The few things I have to say are pretty technical and nit picky. First, on the shots where he's leaning against the rock wall and she's leaning against him the light just catches their foreheads. Moving them a little or waiting for the sun to go down a bit would have made a huge difference here. Your clients will probably never notice, but it bugged me. The other thing that bugged me on some shots was the lack of catchlights. I realize that they both have very dark eyes, but they look like pits sometimes. I don't know if you used much or any fill flash, but that might have helped bring catchlights out more. A slight dodging on some of them (just catchlights not the whole eye) might do it too, or not I don't know :P

[th3r0m]

Nice work :). I couldn't quite make it through the show (it seemed a bit slow i.e. the zooming and transitions were very jerky which bothered me a bit), but I did like what I saw. Also, I have to agree about the duplicate photos as stated above. Again, nice work.

Edit: After visiting a couple of other sites with sideshows, I think it is my connection producing the herky, jerky transitions.

[Philco]

Hi Stefani,
With a little adjusting, I could make it go faster. I've already removed some images. If you have 80 images, just a transition time of one extra second adds over a minute to the show...something that I'll play more with in the future. It's under four minutes, which I think is okay.

The clients are old friends of my wife. They know I'm waiting on PickPic to be installed, and for now they're happy to just have their images available in this format, since you can manually flip through them with the controls. For clients where I have a more formal relationship, this wouldn't do. That has something to with why I edited only to a point.

Thanks for the CC. I know exactly what you mean about that shadow in those few, and I tried at the time to get her closer and in the shadow, but it just wasn't going to happen due to the incline/sand on the ground. We shot everything in less than an hour and we covered a lot of ground. The usual marine cloud layer on the horizon killed the light in a hurry, so I went from ISO 100 to 800 quickly, at F3.2. I chose not to use fill flash for the last beach shots in part because we were cold, it was dark, and my wife went down the beach with my flash in hand. : ) - and we wanted to go eat pizza! Even with direct flash, like on the stairs, in Reza's eyes it's hard to see much reflection. The wedding is a week from Friday, and all the formals will be outside. I'm sure I'll use off camera fill for that.

Thanks.

[geester]

I think they were saying the average attention span is right around 2 mins for that type of slideshow. So you'd probably want to stay within those parameters. Once you get 30-60 seconds beyond that, it does feel very repitious.

[song4themoon]

I didnt make it through the whole show either but what I saw looked nice

[tlc]

its a little long, and some of the shots are basic repeats - also, and dont get me wrong, you have some really nice stuff there - they are very basic - i dont see any artistic PP done on these at all?

i would advise you stick at least a few more 'arty' type shots in there.

but all in all, you did a really nice job.

[LeesaB]

The pictures are nice...You did a good job, It was long, I did not watch the whole thing....maybe even a change of shirts or clothing would have been nice too...just a small suggestion with all the others.

[markdon]

didnt make past the maybe the first 15 images as they all looked the same

[Philco]

Okay, if you have an attention span of 15 images, maybe slideshows aren't your thing at all.

Let me just make it clear that A.) All my images will be viewed with PickPic in the very near future, so B.) All slideshows will be much more limited in terms of time and number of images. These are our friends, and they want to see all their images. This is my first one and it's been a fun experiment, especially for a program I wasn't into buying, but am now cheerleading. So, forgive me for putting up nearly four mintutes. The clients love it of course, but for the impartial observer, it is a lot and I appreciate the feedback. Even though it's long, I thought the controls w/ thumbnaials and ease of use for clicking through made showit a pretty cool program, so that was what I was tryint to show. The last few images are my favorites, so it's a shame.

Thanks for the feedback. I get what you're all saying and like I said, future slide shows will be much more selective rather than a viewing tool.

Cheers

[Grace]

i'm patient, i'll go watch the whole thing :) i understand your wanting to show all images for this particular event :)

kp

[Grace]

i can see why you like the last ones!!! very well executed!! (sp?) Its ashame everyone bashes the slideshow being long. I enjoyed seeing a couple that is so clearly inlove! Her smile is contagious! I think you did a great job capturing them. A little extra pp would be cool too, but these are really great images. I know they are extremely pleased.

[bcap]

I watched the show, it was great.

The slideshow looks great and the layout of the page looks fantastic.

Are you giving this to the customer or is it just for viewing purposes?

[geester]

sorry....after reading your initial post, didnt mean to critique as you weren't asking for it. I see you were just pointing out functionality of the program. Showit has a lot to offer and is a wonderful tool. You can create wonderful slideshows once you get the timing to the song in sync.

[Philco]

Thanks Kathy. I appreciate it! really.

[Rick Rosen]

Hi Philip,

I do a lot of slideshows so perhaps I can offer you a few pointers.

First, the show and images is very nice. I do see quite a bit of "jumpiness" in some of the images. This is usually the result of too much pan or zoom for too little on screen time. The video card has to redraw the entire image for every minimal movement and if you don't allow enough time with a short image duration on screen the redraw will skip because it jumps lines of data. My suggestion would be to either lengthen the duration per image or use less of a pan or zoom.

Also, slideshows are awesome, to be sure. My clients absolutely love them. But it is not the right medium for proofing all the images. At the very least if you want to use the show for proofing I would set the show for manual advance by mouse click rather than automatic and remove the music. Then I would create a show of your favorites only, set to music.

I use a program on the Mac for my shows. The program will create full resolution web shows and DVDs.

Rick

[bcap]

Well Rick, please, inform us:

What program would that happen to be ... ;)

[jamesdean007]

Nice job Philip. Great photos especially some great ones at the end. I can see some of the above comments being made about near duplicates, but I am sure the Bride and Groom liked it. If you were showing it to a prospect I am guessing you would trim it down to the best of the best. What did the Mother of the Bride and B and G think?

[Rick Rosen]

Well Rick, please, inform us:

What program would that happen to be ... ;)

bcap,

I use FotoMagico on the Mac. It creates shows for everything from the web to screensavers, DVDs and HD DVDs. What is great is that you create the show once and then it adjusts the full resolution image files to whatever is appropriate for the type of show you are exporting.

Have you heard of it?

You can see some of my web shows here:

http://www.rickrosen.com/presentations

http://www.rickrosen.com/catalina

Rick

[bcap]

Yeah I've actually been playing with it for quite some time now. It's very impressive actually.

I think it's great how technology has evolved and now, as photographers, we have the ability to put together a superb looking slideshow, all coordinated to music, custom animation, etc, all with great ease of use and very quickly.

Clients really love the ability to show off these great photos in such a unique and ellagant way.

Oh, and to the OP - I watched your WHOLE slideshow. Great job!

[Rick Rosen]

Yeah I've actually been playing with it for quite some time now. It's very impressive actually.

Glad you are enjoying FM.

I think it's great how technology has evolved and now, as photographers, we have the ability to put together a superb looking slideshow, all coordinated to music, custom animation, etc, all with great ease of use and very quickly.

Clients really love the ability to show off these great photos in such a unique and ellagant way.

Oh, and to the OP - I watched your WHOLE slideshow. Great job!

Not only has technology evolved but along with it has come a change in the viewing dynamics of the consumer. When families went digital they no longer just had every image printed 4x6, picked the best ones, put them into an album and the rest in a drawer. Now they upload to consumer sharing sites and want to view their images on the monitor and the TV. With the incredible growth of HD TV and available content as well as the price drops there is an entire new world for the average family and one we professionals can market into very effectively. Hence the desire for slideshows and screensavers. The times they are-a-chang'in.

Rick

[bcap]

I totally agree with you Rick.

As an event photographer, I find my customers ordering more digital images, on CD, more frequently than a printed image.

[Rick Rosen]

I totally agree with you Rick.

As an event photographer, I find my customers ordering more digital images, on CD, more frequently than a printed image.


This is "the year of HD" in many ways and it is the natural "next step" for digital consumers. Just walk into a Costco or even a WalMart and see the wall of HD TVs for sale. The price of HD DVD players is dropping now as well. To get true HD quality from a Hollywood movie or a FotoMagico HD DVD you need both the DVD layer and the HD TV. The players were $1500-$2000 a year ago and now you can find them for $400 and up. As soon as the debate over HD DV vs Blu-Ray is resolved and one format wins the industry standard the flood gates will open on this technology big time.

Here's a great site on HD:

http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com

Rick

[bcap]

Yeah I am not too knowledgeable on the ups and downs of HD vs Bluray I think I will give that site a look.

Does FotoMagico export to HD format, do you know?

[bcap]

Oops, guess I was too quick to ask you. Should have done my homework. A little reading over at their site http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/overview/, tells me it is capable of exporting HD. Very nice

[Rick Rosen]

Does FotoMagico export to HD format, do you know?

Yes. Both 720P and 1080P. "P" stands for "progressive" which means that if you have a DVD player (HD DVD) that is capable of reading all the data on the DVD you will get true HD quality. That is why the HD DVD player is needed. A regular DVD player will read the data but cannot transcribe it because there is too much data and the unit cannot keep up with it so it "interlaces' the HD data. The term 720-I or 1080-I indicates that limitation. Basically the DVD player is reading only every other line of data. You lose 50% of the image quality but it's still pretty nice.

Rick

[islandphoto]

Really beautiful photos and you make me want to buy showit! I agree that it would be better if you narrowed the photos down for example there are a lot of them walking down the beach - but they are all great! Nice work :)

[DAVIDJAY]

Glad you're enjoying Showit Web. :)

Cheers,
DJ

[Yella Fella]

how long is the slideshow? I thought an average time of 2.5/3 secs per pic is usually more than enough?

[Philco]

Thanks David. The clients flipped out completely at their images, and I'm learning that slideshows have an impact above and beyond a thumbnail gallery. I think it creates a sense of anticipation as it progesses, versus seeing a bunch of pictures all at once. It's a great tool. These clients are friends of the family you might say, but they're still paying customers and they're delighted, so we all win. They will want a dvd of their wedding images after I've shot those I'm sure.


Rick,
I think image compression and pixel dimensions have as much or more to do with smooth transitions as what you're describing. I wanted to push this one and see how it does at 720 pixels accross and an 80% quality compression. Showit will warn you with a pop-up that images of this size may not view as well on all computers. I think 600 pixels is the default. I've gone to 5 different computers and have not experienced a stutter, but I'm sure that depending on web connection speed and the computer itself, there are bound to be issues. It's super easy to adjust the image size, transition time & length, compression, etc. in showit, so I will experiment more with my next slideshow in a week or two.

Also, I don't know if you read were I explained that using this as a proofing tool was/is a one-off experiment since my relationship to the client is less formal and they're okay with it and I'll be using PickPic from now on for proofing. Their wedding slideshow will be limited and all their images will be on viewed w/ my customized PickPic shopping cart.


Oh, and hey Joanna, thanks for the kind words. I agree that there's too many at the beginning. The client loves'em, so I gotta leavem there. Cheers.

[DAVIDJAY]

Right on Philip - I'm stoked you and your clients are loving it!

[Rick Rosen]

Rick,
I think image compression and pixel dimensions have as much or more to do with smooth transitions as what you're describing. I wanted to push this one and see how it does at 720 pixels across and an 80% quality compression. Showit will warn you with a pop-up that images of this size may not view as well on all computers. I think 600 pixels is the default. I've gone to 5 different computers and have not experienced a stutter, but I'm sure that depending on web connection speed and the computer itself, there are bound to be issues. It's super easy to adjust the image size, transition time & length, compression, etc. in showit, so I will experiment more with my next slideshow in a week or two.


Since I export to QT video at H.264 I am not very familiar with the parameters of flash video. We could debate the merits of QT and flash but perhaps that is a topic for another thread. You will notice though that all the movie previews from the major Hollywood studios on the web are QT video and the consumer sites like Youtube use flash to keep the file size low.

Again, I don't know anything about flash video, but for your information I did get jumpiness on some images on my IntelMac running off a cable internet connection.

I don't know if image size is an issue with flash, it is not much of an issue with QT video where the smoothness of the transitions is related to the data rate and frames per second as well as the image duration on screen. The shorter the image plays and the greater the pans or zooms or transitions the more likely you are going to get the jumpiness. The higher both the data rate and fps, the smoother the flow but the higher both the bigger the video file so it takes longer to download before it will start playing. I've noticed many flash video shows taking time to load as well. The web play for any video is always a compromise of file size (number of images, duration, data rate, fps) VS download time and you will see that many studios have the QT videos at a choice of sizes where they have incrementally reduced the quality to accommodate different web access speeds.

There are really two different issues at play here; one relates to the general acceptance of slideshows by clients (they love them!) (see my previous post about the evolution of viewing habits among consumers) and the other issue relates to how to create those shows for maximum impact and return to the studio. That involves selecting the best software for your needs from many excellent options and marketing a "full-featured" slideshow which to me means create the show, present it on the web or in a stand-alone player with an expiration and then burn DVDs for the orders, all from the same file.

Rick

[coreypolis]

Rick, I'm not starting anything here or debating, but of the 3 or 4 shows you've posted on various boards all had much worse jumpiness and compression issues. The show of the single pano image hurt to watch. But obviously thats not a QT issue, it has to do with how the show was made. Either program can be amazing or awful depending on how its produced.

[Rick Rosen]

Rick, I'm not starting anything here or debating, but of the 3 or 4 shows you've posted on various boards all had much worse jumpiness and compression issues. The show of the single pano image hurt to watch. But obviously thats not a QT issue, it has to do with how the show was made. Either program can be amazing or awful depending on how its produced.

I don't see any of that nor have any of the many viewers commented on that to me.

As I have said, video for the web is a series of compromises. To keep the shows smooth, whether they be QT or flash, involves date rate and fps settings while at the same time trying to keep the file size as small as possible. Since my shows for the web are usually fairly long (too many images perhaps) I adjust those two parameters to allow the shows to start playing without too long a delay for downloading. Bringing the date rate kbps down creates some jumpiness but allows for a much smaller video file so it is always a compromise. Of course it also has a lot to do with the memory on the video card and the processor speed of the viewer's computer as well as the download speed of their internet connection. As I said, it is always a compromise.

Rick

[bcap]

Everything these days is a comprimise.

You want a faster shutter speed? Well damnit you are going to get some noise then!

You want a smaller video file? Well, better not hope for hollywood quality.

Why can't someone just find a way to erase the word "compromise" from the dictionary :)

[Philco]

I'm just sharing my experience with this experiment here and I don't have an opinion about the merrits of flash vs. QT. Like I said, a different client specifically asked (and was willing to pay for) a showit slideshow, so my cost was zero. All I can say is that it works and does what it's supposed to do and I say that as a reluctant customer turned cheerleader, not with any particular agenda of my own.

[DAVIDJAY]

I'm just sharing my experience with this experiment here and I don't have an opinion about the merrits of flash vs. QT. Like I said, a different client specifically asked (and was willing to pay for) a showit slideshow, so my cost was zero. All I can say is that it works and does what it's supposed to do and I say that as a reluctant customer turned cheerleader, not with any particular agenda of my own.That's awesome that they specifically asked and paid for a Showit Web show and we're always happy when someone gives us a shot and finds the experience worth it.

Keep rocking!
DJ

[Philco]

Yep - they went to a wedding in Montana. When they got back, they were sent a link to the photog's web site (on Pictage) and they asked if I could do the same thing. I recognized it as showit, so it was an easy decision: I agreed, but increased the price on the contract, so zero cost for me and a happy customer.