100 Push-ups: Test Results

Tony: 43 push-ups, 45 sit-ups

Peggy: 38 push-ups, 42 sit-ups

Hubman: 37 push-ups, 46 sit-ups

Ell: 14 push-ups, 53 “good form” squats

Keep in mind: Peggy, and I all did the HundredPushUps.com program earlier this year. IIRC, my first try was 23 pushup and Peggy’s was 18. The number’s we’re throwing up are residual benefit, and we didn’t even complete the program. (Hubman, on the other hand is a just a natural stud!)

So why not jump in! Add your test result in the comments or via e-mail and I’ll bump ‘em into the post!

Some technical notes on the video clip:

The video of me doing my push-ups was made with our Canon PowerShot on video-mode. I wanted to do a little work in the contrast range before I posted it so I brought into iMovie, the free video-editing software that comes with the MacOS. But dammit, I couldn’t figure out how to do what I wanted to do, so I ended up bringing it into FinalCutPro, which is much more complicated and is not free. I guess I’m going to have to do a little woodshedding!

The video was shot on auto exposure and auto color balance. Exposure is how much light goes into the camera, and color balance is the way digital cameras account for the various “color temperature” we experience; from the very blue light of an overcast day, to the clean white of normal day light and flash, to the warm amber of light bulbs. These days most cameras have at least five color temp setting: auto, daylight, indoor (tunstun lightbulbs), flourecent, and manual (which you can set by pointing the camera at a white card to give the camera a reference point.

Most of the time Auto is good enough for snapshots and even a lot of more deliberate photography. But if you start to push your photos away from “average” subject, lighting, and/or composition, Auto has a harder time figuring out what the camera is seeing. That’s when the other settings can help you get the results you want.

Shooting across color balance can yield pleasant result too. Some of you might remember the Levi’s commercials with their distinctive blue look. That was achieve by shooting indoor balanced film under outdoor light. You can go the other way and get a nice warm effect. Doing this will also mute colors, which can be frustrating or pleasing, depending.

In the case of the above video, the camera is being fed a bunch of conflicting and changing information. Blueish light coming from a West-facing window, skin tone plus the ceiling to try and interpret with the balance between the two changing as the amount of me in the frame changes. Rather than try and correct this, I boosted it a little in FinalCutPro by increasing the saturation, which exagerates the camera’s misinterpretation of the information it’s getting.

Over used, in find effects like this wearing. I couldn’t finish Maulan Rouge. But a bit here and there, short films, music videos, etc. is fun. A lot of expressiveness can be achieved by playing with color balance, exposure and contrast; both at the time of the exposure and in post. Maybe something to play with while you’re recovering from your push-up test!