New Timelapse. NERSC Cray Cori name hanging

This timelapse was created with my new D810.  I was testing the timelapse feature in the camera.  Basically one just sets the parameters for the timelapse and the camera will take care of everything else.  The outcome is a movie already stitched.  Thus to downside is one can not change the interval at a later date.  An interesting trade off.

Timelapses

I guess it is time to catch up on a couple of posts.

First off, I did a couple more timelapse tests over the past month.  The first was just the night sky in Berkeley.  So there was a lot of light pollution, few stars but I was kind of interested in seeing how it would turn out.  Each frame is a 1 sec exposure at f2.8, ISO 2500 with a 2 sec delay.  There is not much too look at but I did catch a couple of airplanes flying through the frame and I would have to have either taken more exposures or increased the time between frames to get the stars to move.

This second one was an attempt to do a sunrise.  It was a cloudless morning and I figured I would again try something new.  This is from Kirby Cove which is in the Marin headlands area.  Very nice place.  This one is set at 1 sec intervals.

Lake Tahoe 2013

Fixed pictures.

This was suppose to be our Yosemite Trip but 2 days before we left, we get a call from the place where we where going to stay telling us that they are being evacuated because of the Rim Fire.  We where going to stay at Yosemite Lake and hope them the best.

Anyway, we still visited Yosemite in a some fashion since even in North Tahoe we where getting smoke and even ash one morning.  I think that lead to a bit more subdued time in Tahoe and it was still very enjoyable for the kids.  (We limited the hiking because of the smoke thus spending more time at the beach.)

It was not till the last two days did things start to clear.  We did a short hike up to the fire station lookout point at State Line.  Kids did not really like the hike but it changed briefly when they saw the view.

Here is a group of pictures on the way up.

And the last day, things cleared up enough that I was able to do a couple of timelapse shots at the beach.

Pt Arena Lighthouse

Here are a couple of time lapse sequences that I shot at the Pt Arena Lighthouse.  I was hoping the sunset would do a little more than it did but I did learn that small changes in setup distance can mean a lot.

This first one I missed getting the sun directly through the top of the lighthouse by about 2 minutes and 5 feet.  I noticed that the sun could be positioned in the light house window and changed my setup to catch it.  The sun was still about above the lighthouse at the time, but in the 2 minutes it took to reposition and realign, it was just below the top of the window.

This next one is basically a continuation.  I noticed that the sun would actually set behind the brush in the foreground, thus I wanted to move quickly to a new location.  I moved about 20 feet to the left, a spot where I hoped put the sun on the horizon right between the lighthouse and brush.  As you will see, I just missed and the sun set right behind the corner of the brush.  (If I had moved just 3 more feet to the left, I would have had a clear shot.)  Again, timing and setup needed to be a lot more precise then I had thought.

Timelapse

Here are some fun timelapses that I did over the weekend.  They are at the beach and mostly played back at 10 fps.  If I would play back at the more normal 24 or 30 fps, they where just too fast.  The sand one really needs more contrast but editing 1000 shots.  Each shot done at 1 sec intervals.

The first one has some camera movement because the tripod was sitting in the surf and when a wave washed back out, seaweed would wrap around leg and the sand would erode and I tried to compensate by steading the tripod with my hand.  (I needed to press the tripod deeper into the sand.)

Cancun Timelapse

Here is a quick little timelapse done during our past trip to Cancun.

I'm surprised at how well this turned out since the camera was mounted on a monopod held in place by a beach table.  (I was just relaxing, enjoying the waves, weather and quiet.)  The weather was rather windy and I really noticed that my camera moving in the breeze.

The stats are: 1 sec interval, thus 990 shots.  ISO 100, f/8, 1/640 at 22mm

Time lapse tests

Trying my hand at time lapse photography.

Here is one of my first.  Thought I would try at 5 minutes intervals but it ended up being too long.

Next was at 1 minute.  This worked much better for things like clouds which you can see here, but for the tide, it did not work well.  I ended up slowing the frame rate down for the tide to see if that helped.  You can see the difference in the second tide shot.

Technical, all shots used my D7000 in manual mode.  Autofocus and exposure were turned off.  This is the only way to make sure that the camera does not change focus during the shoot.  (Obviously this is all done on a sturdy tripod.)

Basically set your exposure via the camera at first, then turn everything off aka fully manual and set the iso, shutter speed and f stop to the exposure that was recorded when they where on.  Place on a tripod and set up the interval wanted.  Here the D7000 has an ability to do this in camera.  I set 1 sec, for 900 shots and let it go.  I read on the web and concur that shooting jpgs at this point is good enough.  Shooting raw will just be a waste and can run into storage and/or recording problems if the camera can take pictures faster than it can save to the storage media.

So the first picture was at 5 secs per shot and played back at 30 frames per sec and about 500 shots.  The other shots where 1 sec intervals and play back is at 30 frames.  And as stated above the second tide was 10 frames per sec.  Around 500 shots for the clouds and 900 for the tide.

Here is the moon raising.  This was a little different in that I tried a bit of long exposure.  The shots are each 20" long and 1 minute intervals.  The playback is 10 frames per sec.  This is just a 20 shot sequence.

I found a neat little program in the Apple App store for free that puts the jpgs together and creates either mp4 or mov files.  The name is Zeitraffer and all these have been stitched using it.

All in all, interesting and fun.