Grwyne Fawr Reservoir (revisited)

[Paramount]

On Sunday the weather was looking good and I was planning on doing another time lapse. I was originally going to go up Haugh Woods in Hereford but when I checked the forecast sites the weather looked better at the Grwyne Fawr reservoir and dam (where I had previously done a time lapse last November) so that's where I went, my good buddy Anne Shuker gave me a lift to the end of the road near the dam and I headed off up the track to the reservoir itself. I set everything up and waited for the moon to set and started the time lapse shortly after 10pm and it ran till just after 3:30am. In all 582 x 30 second exposures were taken with my Sony A7Sii and Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 lens which was set to 15mm and f2.8 and the ISO on the camera was set to 25600. Motion was created using my Rhino Camera Gear Evo carbon slider with motion and arc.
Although the forecast showed clear skies for the whole night there were some whispy clouds blowing over which created a nice effect in conjunction with the sky glow caused by the light pollution from Abergavenny and the moon which had just set behind the hills. I managed to get some nice reflections in the water of the reservoir but it was quite breezy for most of the night so not as much as I had hoped.
The RAW files were processed in Adobe Lightroom before rendering to video in Adobe Premier Pro
It is best viewed in at least HD and it's also available in 4K both at the following link

https://youtu.be/Y_X7f-g47uM

[JA]

Hi P,

Wonderful timelapse, the colours and the scene are spectacular. I would have only wanted one thing - that it was a little slower, to match the music more. Of course that would have required more images for a smooth flow, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.

Out of curiosity can I ask whether it is hand panned & tracked or motor panned & tracked between frames?

Best
JA

[Paramount]

Originally Posted by JA

Hi P,

Wonderful timelapse, the colours and the scene are spectacular. I would have only wanted one thing - that it was a little slower, to match the music more. Of course that would have required more images for a smooth flow, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.

Out of curiosity can I ask whether it is hand panned & tracked or motor panned & tracked between frames?

Best
JA

Hi
Thanks for the comments, I was a bit puzzled when I read your comment as there is no music on this time lapse yet. The only way to make it slower is to have it play at less frames per second which creates a bit of a problem in that the video will then be a bit jerky and not look as smooth. I am in the middle of a longer term project of putting together a longer video with some tips and pointers on how to shoot time lapse which will include more clips as well as music to which this clip will part of. Shooting with 30 second exposures over a 5 hour 30 minute period meant that for the resulting 23 second video played at 25 frames per second the camera set up took 582 images with a gap of 4 seconds between each one.
The panning/sliding movement that you mentioned is controlled by a piece of equipment made by Rhino Camera Gear, it consists of a sliding rail and two motors, the one motor slides the camera while the other one pans it. You set the camera to 'Bulb' mode and then everything is set up on the remote control for the slider including the start and end points of the slide/pan, the exposure time, the frames per second of the resulting video, the length of the resulting video and the period of the actual time lapse. From this information the control then works out the time between each exposure (in this case 4 seconds), it then fires the shutter, when the exposure is finished it then slides/pans the camera a tiny amount before taking the next exposure and so on until the time lapse is finished. the system is very versatile and there are several ways that you can create a slide/pan movement, it can also be used for real time video as well. You can find more info on this at their website at the following link

https://rhinocameragear.com/

Hope this helps
Best wishes
Gordon

[JA]

Thanks Gordon.
My Bad I had your other video playing in the background after I watched the one you just posted and then rewatched it without closing the other in the background. Oppppsss

Best
JA

[Paramount]

Originally Posted by JA

Thanks Gordon.
My Bad I had your other video playing in the background after I watched the one you just posted and then rewatched it without closing the other in the background. Oppppsss

Best
JA

I've done that loads of times before as well
Best wishes
Gordon

[JA]

Hi Gordon,

Just out of curiosity I played with the frame rate to see what was noticeable. I known we normally strive for the typical motion picture standard of a minimum of around 24 fps based on human perception of smooth motion, determined way back "in the day" along with acceptable panning rates, but with slower moving subjects this can be stretched a little (Quite a bit).

Try your 25fps vision and using Youtube's speed adjustment set the speed to 75% (~18fps), then 50% (~12fps) and finally their slowest setting 25% (~6fps). Because I believe there is so little time between your frames (only 4s) and the rate of movement across the frame is not fast, you can get away with quite a lot of speed reduction (if you want to for a longer sequence or to use fewer images and thereby reduce the total session imaging time), without it looking too obvious: 18fps is OK, 12fps is on the border of acceptability/unacceptability, 6 fps is jerky/unacceptable. Interesting I think, but also dependent on image size, which I only considered on a 24inch screen at about 700mm.

Anyway all the best - Great Timelapse/s

Best
JA

[Paramount]

Originally Posted by JA

Hi Gordon,

Just out of curiosity I played with the frame rate to see what was noticeable. I known we normally strive for the typical motion picture standard of a minimum of around 24 fps based on human perception of smooth motion, determined way back "in the day" along with acceptable panning rates, but with slower moving subjects this can be stretched a little (Quite a bit).

Try your 25fps vision and using Youtube's speed adjustment set the speed to 75% (~18fps), then 50% (~12fps) and finally their slowest setting 25% (~6fps). Because I believe there is so little time between your frames (only 4s) and the rate of movement across the frame is not fast, you can get away with quite a lot of speed reduction (if you want to for a longer sequence or to use fewer images and thereby reduce the total session imaging time), without it looking too obvious: 18fps is OK, 12fps is on the border of acceptability/unacceptability, 6 fps is jerky/unacceptable. Interesting I think, but also dependent on image size, which I only considered on a 24inch screen at about 700mm.

Anyway all the best - Great Timelapse/s

Best
JA

Hi
Thanks for the comments, it's a good point that you make about the speed of the time lapse and when I first started doing them I often thought about this, however, after doing some research on the internet when looking up tips on processing, etc I found that the general consensus was that clips should only be about 10-15 seconds long otherwise they can seem tedious and people will lose interest. There are exceptions to the rule however, such as in the case of this one where I was trying to catch reflections in the water, or doing a meteor shower and so on. If I had halved the speed of this then the clip would be 48 seconds which might put people off watching it. It's all a matter of personal taste really. My clips range between 10 and about 35 seconds depending on the above. As you tried viewers can then speed up or slow down the clip to suit them in YouTube. It's a good point though and I'm sure people will have varying views on it
Best wishes
Gordon

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Watching this reminded me of my Father's accounts of life in the Brecon Beacons. He, among other things, walked the Beacons taking water levels during the 50s.