This just needs sharing as an example of something that just made me go wow..
It’s hundreds (thousands) of images taken from the International Space Station of the Earth as it orbits the parts of the Earth during night time. The views it captures are outstanding, and definitely the pinnacle of time-lapse photography..
Sit back and watch it. It’s under 4 minutes and it’s definitely going to make you want to go to space!
View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.
See. Amazing.
Since I started doing timelapse photography more and more, i’ve learnt a few of the tricks and things I have picked up.
For one, you need to have something interesting. For another, the gap between photos really matters. I usually use 5 seconds because it just seems right. However, want it quicker? Use a longer gap. Longer? Shorten the gap.
If you get the gap wrong, the way it looks in the end can be totally different.
As I explained in my previous post on timelapse photography, I used a plugin for Lightroom to edit the photos into 24 fps. This means I have to take enough photos, as one second of footage will include 24 of them. Self explanatory, yes, but it makes you think when you have to sit there for hours getting the shots.
I went out to Llandudno’s North Shore on Friday night, and took this of the sea going out, and light falling over the pier. You can see the light change in the sky, and the lights come on along the pier and the Grand hotel.
The problem I had with this, and a similar one I did the other day, was that I started possibly too early. It is over nearly 90 minutes, and the light changes more dramatically at the end of the video. The sea going out is dramatic, and it’s what I wanted to capture, but I also wanted to capture the sky going to dark. I think at the moment it’s going dark too late- I couldn’t stay there for much longer. Once I can get stay there for longer, it’ll be better, I hope.
To do that video, I put it on AV, underexposed the shot but keeping detail in most of the shadows, and let the exposure change with the light, to keep it fairly constant, and allow it to drag as the light went down. This is more noticeable at the end, when it was on 30″ exposures – one second is about 12-14 minutes of filming.
The same sort of thing happened with this one – same direction, but different lens and perspective. I hoped for a good sunset, but it wasn’t to be. It speeds up towards the end, then stops. I need to wait at the end for the timelapse to get a good amount of low light stuff, it seems.
Another one I did on Friday evening, which worked OK, but does seem a little boring, and short, is this:
It’s 10-20mm lens at 10mm, same as the previous one, and with 10 seconds between photographs I think.
I think I’m going to get some more down. I’m enjoying timelapse photography, and I have a few ideas of what I want to do next – it just takes time to get there, and good weather. I hope they’ll converge in the next week or so.
And finally – you want some thoughts in person on getting these done? I did an Audioboo. Enjoy.
Posted in Photography, Video
Tagged 7D, Andrew Stuart, Llandudno, shots, timelapse, Video, youtube
One area of photography I haven’t really done much with is timelapse stuff for videos.
I do take star trail photographs, but for that I stick them through a blender programme to merge them. Usually, I use Starstax for Mac. I process each image in Lightroom, export, blend in starstax, add a watermark, and upload.
But Timelapse photography is something I’ve wanted to for a long time, and haven’t had the time or the ability to do it properly. The Intervalometer from Canon is way too expensive, and the third party ones not as good, or still quite expensive. Basically, I never found my way to justifying buying one.
That is until I saw the iOShutter on Photojojo, linked to me by @nicktheguitar that I thought this might be a good idea. It works off the iPhone or iPod, making it easier to control, and was at the right price and time for me to say go for it.
It came fairly quickly from the USA, and I used it to create some time lapse footage yesterday over the bay in Llandudno.
I set it up using (for the first three) my Canon EOS 7D, with the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens, on my tripod locked off, and it firing off my iPad. This was the first set up:
I set it to do about 30 minutes of photos, at 5 seconds each. I ended up moving after 20 or so, when I realised the shots were not that great.
Afterwards, I processed them in Lightroom, as normal photographs, and then to put them to video, I used the slideshow function in Lightroom, and a user preset I had been linked to. Anthony Woodhouse, AKA @ffotograffiaeth shared with me on Twitter a link to Lightroom:
@AndrewStuart cant remember if you use @Lightroom to process, if you do check out video by @Gavin_Hoey on @youtube youtu.be/TM7EJZ-8HWw
— Anthony Woodhouse (@ffotograffiaeth) June 19, 2012
I used the link, available on the video page, and instructed in the above video by @gavin_hoey to make the video I exported using the Slideshow function 24fps, 720p.
This is the end result, after a bit of tweaking in Final Cut and music added to it:
I hope you enjoyed it.
As tweeted by @lomokev this afternoon, an XKCD comic for photographers to laugh at and enjoy:
From XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1014/
And this, yesterday, is funny also – stuff people say to photographers:
That is all.
