Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Bob the Builder

Ikea is a fun store. It's huge...acres of products you get to put together yourself. It has tables. It has beds. It has lighting. It has everything.

Except well-written instructions.

The instructions aren't so much written as drawn. This is necessary because one set of instructions needs to be understood by everyone in the world. So they're in pictures.

Usually the pictures get the point across and projects go together without any problems. But now and then a step is illustrated in a way that lets some people (me) get things wrong.

Here we have a time-lapse movie of Jerry and me putting together a corner desk with two extensions.

The problem with the instructions for this project is that they are for desks whose main work surface is either on the left or the right side of the corner. The illustrations didn't make clear (to me) how the frame is put together to accommodate the different models.

So you get to see me attach the corner frame on the wrong part of the main frame. Then we compound the error by putting the wrong extension on that frame and attaching a leg to the wrong piece. After we figured out what pieces go where the desk went together rather quickly.

I think this video is more fun than if we had gotten it right the first time.
The video was shot at one frame every two seconds and played back at 24 frames per second. The two hours and 10 minutes it took to build are given to you in two minutes and 42 seconds.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Part 2

When I showed my first attempt at a time-lapse video of a car driving through traffic, I said I'd like to try it again on a Friday evening when the freeways have been very congested (sniffle, cough!, cough!) where I'd get to see more of the stop-and-go interplay between the lanes. And I wanted to take the video from the front seat where I'd get to see more of the roads and less of the car's interior.

I spent time at lunch securing the camera's tripod to the front of the front seat with bungee cords. It seemed rather stable.

Before I left for my drive home I checked the traffic conditions. It showed the freeway was moving right along. Very little red indicating slow traffic.

I'm disappointed. But what can I do?

I took a longer route to the freeway and got on one exit to south from my regular on-ramp. My plan was to get in one of the middle lanes where traffic seems to go slowest. But there was only a brief period of slow-and-go traffic. Oh, well.

Here's my latest movie of my commute home.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Antz

This one just doesn't work very well.

Here's a video of the activity of a colony of ants. They're foraging for food. They aren't doing any housekeeping. So all we see is ants coming and going. Occasionally some of the sand or dry grass moves. Around 0:43 an ant drags a largish piece of the grass from the top edge near the right side of the frame and drops it near the hole. At 0:51 somebody moves it out of the way. That's the most thrilling moment here.

I'll have to try this again when they're cleaning out their tunnels. After a good rainstorm, perhaps.

What we have here is made up of shots taken every second for an hour played back at 24 frames per second. Nothing interesting happens.

Really.




Update at 2:30am: Woke up with an "Aha!" moment. "They're foraging for food." Chuckbert, give them something to eat and watch how it's taken down the hole! What will we watch them eat?

Monday, August 23, 2010

A Night to Remember

In my other blog I told about my trip to a dark spot in Southern California where I watched the Perseid Meteor Shower. I hinted that there might be a time-lapse movie of the goings on in the sky that night.

Here it is.

I went to a scenic view spot southeast of Julian where I watched one of the spectacular appearances of the Leonid Meteor Shower. It was a popular spot. Several people were already there when I arrived around 9:00PM.

I set the camera on its tripod and aimed it to the northeast. I took a few test shots with various ISO settings and exposure times. I settled on 15 second exposures and an ISO sensitivity of 2000. I set my intervalometer to take pictures every 16 seconds. I started taking my pictures of the sky around 9:30.

The camera happily took pictures until about a quarter after two. Then the battery died. Somehow I noticed that it was no longer clicking. I replaced the battery with my spare. I managed to swap the batteries with only a four and a half minute gap without even moving the camera much.

I let the camera continue snapping away for a little more than an hour. I then was feeling very tired and decided to head home.

I made the video at a rate of 15 frames per second. The nearly six hours are compressed to a minute and 21 seconds.

I was surprised to see that there is as much traffic in Southern California's skies as there is on its freeways.

I captured some bright meteors in the pictures. Since they appear only in single frames of the video they don't move and they appear for only 1/15th of a second. You can see some of the meteors if you happen to be looking at the spot where they appear but you won't see any motion, just flashes.

I'd like to do this again without the glow of Palm Springs at the bottom of the frame. But the glow adds some interest, I think.

The spot had cars coming and going through the night. Their lights occasionally light up the bushes in the foreground. Again, I think that added interest. A few times the cars went around the loop the wrong way and their headlights aimed directly on the camera's lens making some bright, full-image flares. Oh, well.

Remember, you can watch in HD by selecting the resolution at the bottom right of the player. You can watch in full-screen mode, too.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

About Last Night...

I had used my camera to take pictures of the night sky and was impressed with the results. The camera was still new and I didn't change the ISO sensitivity. Even with the speed set to ISO 200 even dim stars showed up well in the long exposures.

I thought that if I increased the sensitivity I could take short exposures of the night sky that would leave the stars as dots rather than streaks. It works pretty well.

We were having a period of cloud-free nights. But the clouds decided to move back in the night I decided to try to make my first movie of stars. Moving clouds are a good subject for a time-lapse movie so this wasn't a disaster.

In the first attempt at a video of stars moving across the sky you get a very brief glimpse of the head of Scorpius. Then the clouds completely cover the scene.

I had set the camera's ISO sensitivity to 3200 and took 5 second exposures at 6 second intervals (meaning the shutter was closed for one second between shots). It's played back at 15 frames per second.

The rooms you see through the windows are lit only by the light in the hall. The trees are lit by street lights and house lights. The clouds are lit by Escondido. The stars are lit by nuclear fusion.

This didn't satisfy my desire to watch the stars move across the sky. I made another video another night. This time I pointed the camera to the north. You get to see the Big Dipper rotating around Polaris. A couple of airplanes fly across the scene.

I should have checked Heavens-Above before I made this video. It turns out that the satellite Lacrosse 3 was making an appearance in last few frames. It rises from the horizon and crosses the Dipper's handle. If I had checked for appearances of satellites I would have let it keep taking pictures and captured its whole pass. That's a project for another day!

The Big Dipper video was made with the same settings as the clouds covering Scorpio.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Birds

Here are two videos of my bird feeders.

The first one is a wide-angle view where we can see the birds at the seed tubes, beneath them and in the distance. There are times you can see some bunny action near the fence you see at the top right.

This was shot at a frame every 1.5 seconds and played at 24 frames per second. The camera shot the pictures for an hour and 17 minutes. I need to have a checklist when I set things up. This time I had the pictures saved with too little compression so the files were bigger than I wanted. The camera was set up outside the garden room where I was reading the newspaper. I noticed the periodic noises from the camera had stopped. The memory card had filled up so the camera stopped taking pictures. It's just as well, I had taken more shots than I really needed.

Here are all the shots I took.

I would like to see have had the feeders on rigid supports rather than hanging on hooks. The swinging adds too much motion. I'd rather have the birds be the only things moving.

I enjoy seeing the birds hopping toward the feeders on the ground from the distance. And there's a dove hanging around whose feathers puff up periodically that's interesting.

I got a second memory card and zoomed the camera in on the seed tubes. I set it to take one shot every two seconds. Again, after a while I noticed that the camera quit making noises. This time it was because the battery died. Another checklist item! It took pictures for 50 minutes. This was long enough.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Another Sunset

Every Thursday evening Oceanside has a Sunset Market. It has a farmers' market, a food court, a bandstand, tchotchke booths and so on. I took my camera and intervalometer over there and recorded the comings and goings of the crowd near the intersection of the two streets in the middle of the market.

It was a lot more crowded than I thought an every-week market would be. There was a lot activity.

I set the camera to record one frame per second. About the time I started taking the pictures, the sun was setting. I set it to be in aperture priority mode so the shutter stayed open longer and longer as it got darker.  After a while it seemed to me that the shutter was trying to stay open longer than the one second interval. So I bumped the interval up to two seconds.

When I looked at the information about the exposures, they never reached one second. So I didn't need to change the interval. But this gives us the opportunity to compare movies of crowds when shot at one frame per second and a frame every other second.

As I said, this was at the intersection of two streets. I would like to have been able to take the movie from the roof of a building at the intersection. From the street level we just get to see the crowd passing in front of the camera. From above we'd get to see the people negotiating their ways through the crowd as they go from one street to any of the other three directions (four when you count U-turns).

Here's a view from the street of 40 minutes of the Sunset Market. While I was taking it, a couple of kids came up to me and asked me to take their picture. I told them that the camera was already taking pictures. They clowned for the camera till their mother dragged them away. You can't miss them.



Next street scene needs to be from above the action.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Short Ride in a Fast Machine

(Again, a version of this video has been seen on my other blog. Sorry. This won't happen again!)

I had to try the old time-lapse-movie-from-a-moving-vehicle schtick. I took my camera to work with me with the plan of recording the trip home. I spent my lunch hour trying to decide how I'd set up the camera.

I put the camera on my tripod and stood it on the floor in front of the front passenger's seat. It seemed to be very wobbly there. So I considered the back seat. I moved the front passenger's seat all the way forward and set the tripod in the space between the seats. It seemed rather wobbly there, too. I hadn't brought anything to tie it down (and I haven't figured what I could have tied it to anyway).

I ended up putting it in the back seat.

I set it to take a picture every 7/10ths of a second. I started the camera, got in and took off.

As I drove, I looked in the rear view mirror to see how the camera was managing. It was wobbling but there was nothing I could do. I went around corners rather gently to keep the tripod from tipping over.

I pasted the frames together at 24 frames per second. I was happy with the result. The wobbling isn't terribly apparent in the finished video. I especially like the stop-and-go period just before I got off the freeway. I wish I had had more of the stop-and-go. Maybe I'll try this again some Friday evening when all of San Diego heads north.

This version of the video is slightly different from the one I posted earlier. I didn't put a title at the beginning. And I uploaded a higher resolution version. You can play it in HD! Just select the 720p HD item from the little menu at the bottom right corner of the player. You can expand it or even watch it full screen. Yowza!



When I do this one again I will try to figure out how to secure the tripod in the front seat. Having more of the road visible and less of the car's interior would be more interesting. And I need to remember to set the white balance to something other than auto (I'm getting better at it but I forget). I also forgot to cover the viewfinder. The sun was shining in it as I went down the hill at the beginning and made mucked up with the exposure a bit.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Sunset Boulevard

For several evenings, we were having sunsets that turned a very pretty red so I tried to make a movie of one. This turned out to be last of the pretty sunsets. Since then the sky has been clear at sunset.

I had the camera set to do its automatic exposures. It had taken some nice sunset pictures a month earlier on our trip to New Mexico with its automatic program so I figured it would capture the beauty of this sunset. It got glimpses of some redness but it doesn't show the beauty of the scene.



This was about an hour and 18 minutes. I had it take a picture every eight seconds and play them back at 24 frames per second.

In the last four or five seconds you can see Venus in the upper left hand corner.

I'm going to have to research how to set the exposure for clouds. I'm having very little luck with them so far.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

More Morning Clouds

I tried to see what morning clouds being burnt off looks like again. This time I put the camera at the front door looking east. But it didn't work out very well.

Focus, Chuckbert, focus!

I somehow didn't manage to get the camera focused at infinity. Or even at the things in the foreground. Everything is blurred here.

This video covers the time from about 6:30am until 9:55am on August 1st. I had the camera take a shot every 12 seconds again and played them back at 24 frames per second. For nearly three of those three and a half hours, the clouds just hung on. Pretty dull.

Once the clouds started being burnt off, things pick up. You have to endure 34 seconds of gray. At least that's better than three hours.




Dull, gray scenery.
Out of focus.

Failure.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up

(This video has been seen already in my other blog. Sorry to those who have already heard this story.)

I sometimes introduce my new gadgets on my other blog by showing them off in YouTube videos. I posted a video of my new coffee roaster as it went through the phases of roasting a batch of coffee. One commenter asked how long it took to roast the coffee. Another suggested I could have had an old movie cliché, such as spinning train wheels or flying calendar pages, show the passage of time.

A few days after I posted that video my intervalometer came in the mail. I knew what I was going to do with it as soon as I figured out how to use it and got some light out in the garden room where I roast my coffee.

I shot a video of the entire roasting process with a clock next to the roaster. This video served many purposes. Among them:
  1. I got to show off my newest gadget.
  2. I got to show a clock spewing out the passage of time.
  3. I got to answer the question of how long it takes to roast coffee.
Coffee roasting, start to finish:


I looked at the timestamps of the segments from the original video and found that from start of the preheat to the end of the cooling was about 25 minutes. So I figured that's how long it would take to roast the batch for this video.

I then needed to come up with a bit of music to accompany the finished video. It needed to be short and evoke caffeinated hyperactivity. Rimsky-Korsikov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" seemed to cover all that. My recording of it lasts a minute and 33 seconds.

I decided to make my video at 24 frames per second.  I needed 93 seconds (the length of the music) at 24 frames/second. That meant that I needed around 2200 frames. I planned on shooting around 1500 seconds of roasting (25 minutes times 60 seconds/minute).

Dividing the 1500 seconds by 2200 frames, I came up with 0.68 second per frame.

I set the intervalometer to have the camera shoot a picture every 0.7 second.

I turned on the intervalometer as the second hand approached the 12 and hit the start button on the roaster when it reached the 12. My hand makes appearances when I dumped the beans into the roaster after the preheat period and when I needed to make adjustments to the heat element and the fan. When the cooling finished and the roaster shut off I let the camera take a few more shots then turned off the intervalometer.


The first five seconds after the title were just five frames at one frame per second. The rest of the video was made of the shots shown at 24 frames per second. The music I chose lasted just the right amount of time.


I had intended to have some time left ticking on the clock after the roaster had come to a full stop. I was going to have the video go back to having the clock tick once per second and have the video to black. But I wasn't paying attention. I let the camera keep taking pictures for a few seconds after the bar stirring the beans in the cooling tray stopped moving. But the roaster's drum was still coasting to a stop. The drum quit spinning just a few seconds before I shut off the camera. Not enough for a fade out. Shoot!


Better, more uniform light would have been nice to have.


I'm happy with this one.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Gloom

My second test movie shows the morning June Gloom (At. The. End. Of. JULY!) burning off. It was shot at one frame every 12 seconds. The movie is played at 24 frames per second. That makes the wind sculpture even more hyperactive than in the previous post. After the low clouds are gone there's a brief bit of the high clouds moving at a nice pace.



I let the camera do its fully automatic exposure business. I probably should have figured out a single exposure value and set the camera to use that value for the whole movie.

I'll figure this out. There's help out here on the Internet.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Moving Right Along

Here is my first time-lapse movie. It was taken in my back yard at sunset.


This was taken one frame every six seconds. The wind sculpture by Lyman Whitaker has had way too much caffeine. A frame every second would have been a much better rate. But what did I know? This was my very first attempt.

I like how the reflection of the bedroom's window moves across the yard.

I used QuickTime Pro to put the frames together in the video at 24 frames per second. I did no other processing.

The Land Before Time-lapse

I like gadgets.

I recently got a new camera, a Nikon D90. It was at Costco, so it must be a good camera! It has all the features I want in a camera and more. It's an SLR. It came with two zoom lenses. It takes videos.

But one thing I wished it could do is take time-lapse movies. I've always found speeding action that is otherwise imperceptible to be fascinating. One of the first shows I taped when I got my first VCR was Nova's "Moving Still," a program that showed us what we normally can't see because it happens too slowly or too quickly. I never erased that tape. I wonder where the collection of video tapes is.

One day I happened to think to Google something like "Nikon D90 time lapse." The results of the search sent me off to find how time-lapse moviemaking can be done with a digital SLR camera. All I needed was an intervalometer.

One of the first intervalometers I came across at was the Pclix LT. There were others that are less expensive but for some reason I kept going back to see if the Pclix was the one I wanted. It seemed to be quite versatile and somewhat simple to set up.

I got that gadget.

For what I've done so far, it is simple to set up. For intervals longer than 89 seconds or for having it control the camera in bulb mode, I will have to reread the manual.

Let's see what I can do with my intervalometer. I'll post examples of my successes. And failures. Maybe I can learn something about this art and make something of it.