timelapse.. the river, the mulberry tree and the lake

[Phil Hart]

over easter i helped run a leaders camp at Camp Cooinda (http://campcooinda.asn.au) on the Gippsland Lakes (as I do every Easter, with our main camps for teenagers being over summer).

i had plenty of other things to do (like paddling 30kms there) but managed to sneak some gear including fred's new motion control system into the forward hatch of our 'launch' which accompanied us on our expedition so i was able to do some timelapse photography from our campsite on the nicholson river, and from the last night back at mainsite.

the weather was 50/50, and it even rained a little during the tree sequence, but the footage turned out ok if a little dominated by cloud. the last couple of clips are quite long, but i figure after the amount of time i've spent on this, expecting you to watch four minutes isn't too much to ask :P :lol:

check out the last file on this page (it looks better with the lights off :-) - http://philhart.smugmug.com/Astronomy/Stars-in-Motion

and just for mike (iceman), this one even has music :D

Phil


(i'm trying to upload a higher quality video but having trouble with big files on smugmug at the moment..)

[multiweb]

Great stuff Phil. You've got the timing and motion pinned down now. Impressive. I really like the deeper layer of clouds at higher altitude in the middle of the video through the tree. Looks like exploding stuff. Very very cool. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[iceman]

Really nice Phil, the music suited it well :)

Your timelapses continue to inspire me.

[Octane]

The sequence with the backlit clouds going nuts behind the trees, was awesome.

H

[bartman]

Stunning is all I can say.......
Cheers
Bartman

[M54]

Wow! That was gorgeous!

Thanks for that Phil.:thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

inspirational and great work Phil - always to another level

[RobF]

Truely stunning Phil. Loved it all. It really puts you in your place watching time fly by so fast too, not to mention revealing so well we really are on a little rock whizzing through space!

[dugnsuz]

Hi Phil - had major problems playing native on my Mac. Smugmug incompatibility methinks!?
Had to d/l the file and view offline.
Beautiful work my friend -the future of our art I think.
Liked the 'Time Machine' credit for Fred.
Doug

[alexch]

Excellent work, Phil!
I enjoyed the bit with the clouds a lot. Daytime sequence definitely adds to the feeling but I'd say the motion is a bit stuttering (not sure if it is SmugMug or the footage).

Cheers,
Alex

[Phil Hart]

thanks all.. glad you like it, especially the tree/cloud sequence even though it is a little light on for stars in an astronomy forum ;)



are you see stuttering just on the daytime sequence or the whole thing? the panning on the daytime sequence was a bit fast as it was largely an experiment on the fly. the rest should look pretty smooth?



thanks Doug. that's a bit of a worry though.. smugmug *should* work fine on mac? eg. supported systems here: http://www.smugmug.com/help/supported-systems

are you using something different?

Phil

[alexch]

Everything looked smooth and great except that daytime sequence. Don't get me wrong the daytime part is very good, just did not look as smooth as the rest of the footage. I was not sure it it was the SmugMug encoding of that particular part or the interval between frames was a bit too long.

Cheers,
Alex

[Bassnut]

Played well on my PC (gaud, mac, that figures ;)). Im was so impressed with Smugmug on Phils efforts, got an account myself .

I must say, Im very proud to have these master pieces produced by Phil with my Time machine design, inspirational stuff. I struggle to match his efforts on mine. I can assure you the gear is but a fraction of the effort required, composition and programing/planning in advance is very difficult for the kind of stunning results Phil gets.

[mill]

That was very good Phil.
Something isn't kosher with smugmug, my xp pro laptop spit the dummy and rebooted and then i had to reinstall my wireless drivers :(
But the time lapses were great :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Worked fine on my MacBook Pro. :P

H

[Phil Hart]

i should admit that i did still mess up the planning a little.. the moon was supposed to rise in the middle of the last sequence within the frame which would have added something to that bland section, but i was bit rushed getting things setup and running before a 6:30pm dinner deadline so didn't figure it out right.

on the beach later that night i was giving a bit of an astronomy tour and impressed several people by pointing out exactly where on the horizon the moon would rise, only to have it appear there a few minutes later. pity i didn't go through that thought process earlier!

if you are having problems with smugmug, you can send an email to: help@smugmug.com with a link to the gallery and see if they can help. they're generally pretty responsive.. at least may be good for them to see where people are having issues.

Phil

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Phil. Interesting compositions. The music is a great addition and the rotation of the composition adds a lovely feel to the work.

Only one thing put a small dent in the composition and that was the seagulls at the edge of field. Am I correct in thinking you are using the 14-24 Nikon? I thought you were shooting frames at 3.5 or 4.5 to avoid these artifacts. I know that 2.8 produces this sort of problem. Like I said jsut a small thing really.

[Phil Hart]

thanks paul

the seagulls are the inevitable result of using the Canon 24mm f1.4L wide open! timelapse works better with faster frame rates, so i shot most of this with 8 second subs which you can't do at f3.5. the seagulls are the trade-off. i may trade up to the mkII version of this lens one day which might reduce them a little (or it may not..).

[Paul Haese]

Yes I understand this. Astrophotography is often a trade off between one thing or the other. Though I am not sure about whether a trade up to the mark II will help. The 14-24 Nikon N lens is reputed to be the best in this class and it still gets seagulls wide open. That is why I shoot at 3.5 or 4 just to prevent this from happening. Not having done a timelapse yet I will have to take your advice on being wide open.

[alexch]

I exclusively use the 14-24 for time lapses and have to keep it wide open at f/2.8. Even then I have to keep the shutter open for 30 seconds (can get away with 15 especially when there is some moonlight). F/1.4 is a huge advantage shortening the required exposure four times, but there are trade-offs such as coma and vignetting (even most expensive f/1.4 lenses are f/2.0 in the corners)

The coma in 14-24 is more like a line of light rather than a seagull and does not look bad when downsized to 1920x1080 pixels. I found coma least pronounced at 14mm and most at 24mm.

[iceman]

Short exposure times make a huge difference.

My 40D is nowhere near as sensitive as the 5D Mark II, not to mention my fastest lens is only f/2.8 @ 17mm.

That means I need 30 second exposures @ ISO1600 or 3200, giving much noisier and grainier images than Phil will get.

Also the timelapses are much smoother with short exposures, not to mention no little trails either.
But he'll also take 3x as many photos to process :)

[Paul Haese]

Alex, I think this depends on whether you are using full frame or not. On my D3 with this lens I got seagulls at the corners and edges. No lines. With my stars over the murray shot I used F3.5 got lines in the edges but no seagulls like at 2.8. I figure the extra real estate makes for the extra distortions at wide open. Are you using yours on a full frame or crop?

Sorry Phil for the hi-jack.:(

[alexch]

Full frame Nikon D700.

Attached are two unedited top corners of the full frame from a recent image at 14mm, f/2.8, 30 sec, ISO32000. Note that in "Corner 1" the stars are more elongated because it is further away from SCP.

Cheers,
Alex

[Phil Hart]

On the contrary, this is very much on topic! You've got straight to one of the thorniest issues for timelapse and it's a very real trade-off (and some very pricey lens decisions as well!).

there's a couple of reviews that suggest the 24mm mkII may do even better where the mkI already does pretty well considering how fast it is:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-24mm-f-1.4-L-II-USM-Lens-Review.aspx

http://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Photo/CanonEF24mmF14L2/ (http://www.modeemi.fi/%7Eleopold/Photo/CanonEF24mmF14L2/)

Particularly the next time I do a moonlit sequence, i might try stopping down to f2.5 as the sacrifice may be worth it, so thanks for prompting me to think more about it ;)

Phil

[alexch]

Indeed, I am always on the lookout for a coma-free fast (f/1.4) wideangle lens, but it seems none exist at the moment.

Phil, you might find this review useful, lenstip is the only site that tests coma:
http://www.lenstip.com/245.7-Lens_review-Canon_EF_24_mm_f_1.4L_II_USM_Coma_a nd_astigmatism.html

They don't have a review for V1 of this lens to compare though.

[Paul Haese]

Hmmm, that is interesting. By way of example I have attached two sections of one of my images. Taken with D3 and 14-24 f2.8. There is some field curvature (PA related) but the seagulling is really evident. When I stopped this down I found I got much better results. MInd you this is 5 minutes on a guided mount. Some of my more recent images I have just the lines such as you do Alex.

I am assuming shorter subs even on a guided mount will show less of this particular problem. It is quite odd that your images wide open show no seagulling. I may have to investigate this a little more. Perhaps my lens needs some adjustment work done to it.

[alexch]

What focal length was that? I get similar seagulls at 24mm but not at 14mm.

[stevous67]

What nice experience to watch this video, thanks Phil.

Steve

[Bassnut]

Not necessarily, well number of exposures for smoothness anyway. After a huge amount of investigation and testing, I found a way of extrapolating frames in After effects to smooth timelapse motion after being plauged by stutter.

Here (http://fredsastro.smugmug.com/Timelapse/Timelapse-video/16566156_Mme2X#1278339808_f69zvjx) is a short test time lapse of the Milky way of only 150 frames extrapolated to 510 frames at 30fps. The exposure times were 20 secs with a 30 sec delay which was very stuttery in real time but rendered quite smoothy (scuse the low quality).

Trails are still evident of course due to the exposure time, but I now think very long smooth timelapse is possible with relatively few (short) exposures.