time-lapse – Random Connections

Time Lapse with Daffodils

February 20, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Last weekend I tried setting up a back yard time lapse to see if I could capture the water rising when the beaver rebuilt his dam. Well, the beaver did rebuild, but I wasn’t able to catch the activity. I didn’t even get to catch the water rising. However, I did promise to post the results, and here they are…

As seen in the video, there’s a long stretch of nighttime, and that’s when the water rose. It’s low when the video starts, then when the image comes back in the morning, the water comes back up. Oh well. You can see the neighbor’s huge television from across the lake flickering in the upper left corner in the nighttime shots.

Read More “Time Lapse with Daffodils” »

Backyard Time Lapse Set Up

February 16, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Gear, Photography

We have a very active family of beavers in our back yard. They have managed to dam almost our entire little lake (or the streams that run through what used to be a lake.) While I personally like the beavers, and enjoy seeing the lake much fuller just upstream, their activity is flooding some of my neighbor’s yards. One of my neighbors will occasionally disrupt the dam and let the water flow through. But, the beavers build it right back. It’s a never-ending battle.

On Saturday I looked out the back window to see the water flowing again. With all of the melting snow, I guess there was the danger of more flooding, so my neighbor broke through the dam once again. I knew it wouldn’t last, that the beavers would rebuild quickly. I figured this might be a good time to try out my long-term time lapse rig with the Raspberry Pi.

Time Lapse with Raspberry Pi

February 3, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 1 Comment

Gear, Photography

Take a look at the video below:

Now look at this one:

Both of these time-lapse sequences are by UK photographer Neil Bromhall. These types of time-lapse photos take a huge time commitment – weeks and months. This one, from Norway, took a full year.

In order to get the correct effect, the camera must remain in place throughout the video. Unless you’ve developed some miraculous method for placing the camera in the exact same spot each time with the exact same zoom and focus, the image will jump around and not look right. That means that you’re going to have leave your camera there, probably outside, exposed to weather, and not very secure.

GoPro on Lake Robinson

February 12, 2013 Tom 4 Comments

Gear, Paddling, Photography

It’s been a tough winter. I hadn’t been out on my kayaks in a long time, and I missed a great Lowcountry Unfiltered trip on Saturday. I needed to get out on the water. So, Sunday morning before the rains started, Laura kicked me out the door with my touring boat and pointed me in the direction of Lake Robinson. The plan was to give the GoPro camera a shake down and make sure it would do everything it promised.

I chose Lake Robinson over the other local paddling venues quite frankly because it’s boring. The scenery from the park is spectacular with the mountains in the background, but once you get out on the water your only view is of the housing developments that ring the lake. Granted, there are interesting birds, and if you just want to get out and paddle it’s fine. However, nearby Lake Cunningham has much more to see with its lily fields and other quirks.

Yet, this suited me perfectly. I was here to test the new camera, and if it didn’t work correctly, I didn’t want to be disappointed that I’d failed to get a shot. I had my Fuji waterproof camera and Panasonic Lumix as back-ups, but the GoPro was the focus of the mission.

Read More “GoPro on Lake Robinson” »

Street View Time Lapse

February 2, 2013 Tom No Comments

Geocaching and Maps, Internet, Photography, Weirdness

I’ve been enjoying creating time-lapse videos while driving. Unfortunately, I’ve just been driving back and forth to work or rehearsal, so the scenery doesn’t change much.

So while I was looking at Google Earth the other day it occurred to me – I could use the images from Street View to create the same type of time-lapse.

Read More “Street View Time Lapse” »

MLK Day Photography

January 23, 2013 Tom No Comments

Photography

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a day off for me. In years past I’ve tried to get out and take some photos. Sometimes it’s been a local trip, and sometimes we have ranged farther. This year taking a longer trek was out of the question, so I stayed close by. Turns out I had a full day of photography, with lots to learn along the way. I’ll break it into three parts…

Falls Park Time-Lapse

Laura and I had appointments in the morning, and I wanted to watch the Obama inauguration around noon. So, it wasn’t until early afternoon that I was able to set off. I’ve got a hair-brained idea for doing a series of time-lapse videos around Greenville, and I wanted to shoot some proof-of-concept videos to test the waters. I headed down to Falls Park and the River Place area.

GoPro Time-Lapse – More Lessons Learned

December 29, 2012 Tom 1 Comment

Gear, Photography

I’ve been having fun playing with the little GoPro camera. It has some quirks, but it’s great for what it’s designed to do. Of course, one of the things I’ve been using it for mostly is time-lapse. I’ve learned lots of things about this little camera, and about time-lapse in general. I can add these to my growing list of lessons learned about time-lapse.

Lesson 1 – Christmas Dinner Videos

As with leaf blowing/raking videos, it seems that everyone does Christmas dinner time lapse videos, too. There were tons of suggestions and recommendations on the page with my Christmas video, and they all had similar titles. Here’s a playlist with 10 samples…

So, the lesson here is that whatever I may come up with for a video project, someone has already done it and uploaded it to YouTube.

Christmas Gear

December 26, 2012 Tom No Comments

Family, Gear, Photography

This year we spent Christmas in Greenville. Instead of traveling to Florida like we usually do, Laura’s sister and mother came up to visit us. The foggy Christmas morning was spent opening gifts and relaxing.

Since I’ve been so obsessed with time-lapse lately, I decided to do one of our gift giving routine. Here’s a short video…

The entire video was created on an iPad 2. I used the iMotion app shot a 1 frame every five seconds. I used the Garage Band app and an Akai LPK25 keyboard to record the music, and I used the iMovie app to add titles and mix everything together.

Time Lapse Shoot Out

November 25, 2012 Tom No Comments

Gear, Photography

In the last post I made some comparisons between creating a time-lapse video with a DSLR and creating one with an iPhone app. I was curious as to how these would compare, so I decided to do a shoot-out.

I set up my Nikon D7000 in interval mode shooting at 1 frame every five seconds. Right next to it I set up my iPhone 5 with the iMotion app, also set to take 1 frame every five seconds. Both of these were set up next to our lake, showing the same scene.

More Time-Lapse Observations

November 24, 2012 Tom 1 Comment

Photography

Source: amiria.co.nz via Tom on Pinterest

After posting my time-lapse video the other day I made several observations. First, it seems that anyone interested in learning time-lapse starts off by making a video of leaf-raking. There are TONS of them out there on YouTube. The most common soundtracks were Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” or Boots Randolph’s “Yakkety Sax.” Here I’ve made a short playlist that contains no less than 19 Youtube videos, all of time-lapse leaf raking.

Leaf raking/blowing obsession aside, here are some other observations I’ve made…

1. Video vs Images

Video is really just a series of moving images, or frames, so the “versus” implied in the above heading is false. However, there is a distinction in how certain apps and cameras treat time-lapse. Some capture a series of images using an intervalometer. Those images are single, stand-alone photographs, which then must be combined into a time-lapse video using another piece of software such as Lightroom or iMovie. Others capture the images in the same fashion, but software within the camera or the app automatically renders the video, which can be output as a .AVI, .MP4, or .MOV file.

If you capture a series of images before they are processed into a video there are more steps involved, but you’ve got much, much more control over the video. You can adjust the images for exposure and add other effects such as HDR (if you want). You also have greater control over frame rate and other video aspects.