IISAC11 smooth timelapse part A

[sheeny (Al)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Attached is an example of the blotchiness.

Yup. That's what I was getting.

Al.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Thanks guys.
Ive had lots of feedback that the playback is fine, more than not.
Im wondering if smugmug uses coding thats not universal on playback codecs or something.

[iceman (Mike)]

Just upload it to vimeo and be done with it

[Steffen]

Hi Fred,
it plays perfectly on this Mac (Safari 5.1.1 and QuickTime plugin).

Can you let me in on how you did it? You say the lens was a 24mm f/1.4, was it shot wide open? Also, how did you move the camera? Did you use a pano head or a rail or something? Was the 10 second exposure merely to achieve the required exposure or does it also affect the look of the time lapse (smoothness-wise)?

I must say, I'm quite impressed with this one.

Cheers
Steffen.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Just upload it to vimeo and be done with it

Done
http://vimeo.com/31408242


Is this OK?.

[Jen]

very cool Fred

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Yes it was wide open. Movement was with a homemade dual axis stepper controller with exposure timer built in on an EQ3 pointing alt az.

As Phil Hart found, always the shorter the exposure the better for smoothness. The 1.4f was fast enough with the 5D at 3200iso to allow 10 sec exposures at night. The noise at 3200 is acceptable.
I have a 12sec period to allow 2 secs for the 5D to download a raw to the card after a 10sec exposure. Its very close, the cam is busy, but it works.

Ive tried 20 and 30 sec exposures with a 2.8f lens, but it doesnt come close to 1.4f at 10secs for smoothness, noise and brightness/sharpness, the difference is very noticable. The wide angle 24mm also makes a difference.

I also cranked the frame rate to 30fps which is way over the top, but the total movie time seemed appropriate. Longer wouldve got boring although 15-20fps would probably looked OK smooth wise.

Composition is the real deal of course, which I hope to learn, but this was a good technical exercise to start with.

Originally Posted by Steffen

Hi Fred,
it plays perfectly on this Mac (Safari 5.1.1 and QuickTime plugin).

Can you let me in on how you did it? You say the lens was a 24mm f/1.4, was it shot wide open? Also, how did you move the camera? Did you use a pano head or a rail or something? Was the 10 second exposure merely to achieve the required exposure or does it also affect the look of the time lapse (smoothness-wise)?

I must say, I'm quite impressed with this one.

Cheers
Steffen.

[sheeny (Al)]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

Done
http://vimeo.com/31408242


Is this OK?.

OK??? Its GORGEOUS Fred!



Thanks for posting where I could see it too.

BTW I think you could make it a lot longer before I'd get bored of it!

Al.

[iceman (Mike)]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

Done
http://vimeo.com/31408242


Is this OK?.

Brilliant! It worked out fantastic.

I love the red lights and silhouettes standing at the dam, and then one of them walks to the top of the hill.

Love it!

I usually go with 25fps. Your 30fps is very smooth!

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

If you've got an exposure of 10 seconds, how do you get 30 frames per sec? (I'm just confused)

The movie is just so entrancing

[iceman (Mike)]

You take an image every 10 seconds, over several hours.

You play back those frames at 30 frames per second.

30fps is the playback speed. 1 frame every 10 seconds is the capture rate. So you compress 2 hours of time into 30 seconds (for example).

[Ric]

Lovely work Fred.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Very smooth and beautiful on my machine. Lovely.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Jen,

Say, you captured 600 x 10 second exposures. To turn that data into a smooth film, you choose a frame rate, of, say, 24.97 (25) [PAL/SECAM] or 30 [NTSC] frames per second.

So, say you choose to play back 30 individual frames per second for a smooth video, you end up with: 600/30 = 20 seconds of film.

H

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Thanks guys. Mmmm, methinks I should stick to standard size and frame rates for video, that might reduce playback grief. I appears smug mug plays as posted and vimeo converts to the nearest standard, reducing problems, but also looses some quality if the posted format is way off a standard.