Traffic

Yesterday we went back to the spot on the Oceanside Pier where I had made some time-lapse videos. It was a hot day so I thought that there would be a lot of people there. By lunchtime there seemed to be room down on the beach for a lot more beach blankets. If you want a spot on the water on a hot day, Oceanside seems to be the place to go. It's easy to get to. We took the Sprinter from Escondido. The pier is just a short walk from the transit center.

I made a couple of videos.

The first isn't terribly successful. The tide was pretty high so there wasn't any beach under the pier. So there aren't many people in front of the camera. And the people setting up their blankets on the beach are pretty far away so they're just dots. And not very dense dots. I really had expected the beach to be wall-to-wall people. Maybe they showed up after lunch.

Here are about two hours and 15 minutes. The shots were taken at 10-second intervals and are played back at a rate of 30 frames per second. I shouldn't have used my fisheye lens. It probably would have been a lot more interesting to aim just at the part of the beach where the sunbathers set up. Maybe next time.


A more interesting video was taken from a spot a little way up the ramp that goes from the street down to the pier. I used my telephoto zoom lens set at the 70mm focal length and pointed it down the length of the pier. We get to see the people going up and down the pier and a lot of traffic out on the water. This video is much more successful.

It was shot at 2-second intervals and played back at 15 frames per second. I let the camera click away for only 18 minutes. I figured that if anybody wants to see more action all they have to do is play it again. Nothing really changes. Occasionally people stop and look over the rail for a while. There are two people near the start of the pier who are there for the whole time and the humanity swirls around them. That's kind of fun.

The Blob vs. Magneto: Final Smackdown

One more Crazy Aaron's Strange Attractor Thinking Putty-and-magnets movie. This time the magnets are the Neodymium Iron Boron magnet it came with plus two magnetic marbles someone left in an office when he moved on to another job.


I formed the putty into a cube and put it in the freezer. I thought it might make for an interesting effect with the action starting out slow (because the putty was really stiff) then speeding up as it warmed. I didn't notice anything like that happening. The strong magnet quickly got swallowed by the putty and the marbles took their time. The condensation forming then evaporating was the only interesting effect of the freezing.


I changed the interval between shots as time went by. It started with four-second intervals. Before we went out for dinner and "Sleeping Beauty Wakes" at the La Jolla Playhouse I had worked the interval up to four minutes between shots. When we got home from the show I increased the interval to eight minutes.


The shots were played back at 30 frames per second but the action got slow fast. So I broke it up into pieces and play the segments back at increasingly higher rates. The nearly 22 hours (from 9:22am until 7:07 the next morning) take only 18 seconds. Wow. (Or, as some might say, "MOM.")


I might be finished with my magnetic silly putty movies unless somebody gives me ideas for more.

The Blob vs. Magneto: The Rematch

I needed to try my hand at another movie of the Crazy Aaron's Strange Attractor Thinking Putty and Buckyballs.

This time the Buckyballs are on the bottom and the putty envelops it from above. Who will win?

I started with the intervalometer set to take pictures at three-second intervals. As time went by and the action slowed down I gradually increased the interval to six, nine, twelve, 18, ..., 88 seconds. The intervalometer's preset intervals go up to 89 seconds.

When I made my first cactus movie, I used a custom interval of two minutes. My second cactus movie was taken at four minute intervals. I still had those intervals programmed so I finished the movie with those intervals. The last eight or nine hours were taken at four minute intervals.

I'm effectively playing the images at a rate of 60 frames per second. You get to see the 16 hours of action compressed to a mere 28 seconds (plus a four-second long title).

As the putty was approaching the plastic sheet the things were on I saw that the putty would start to head out of the frame. So I moved the sheet away from the camera a little bit between frames for a bunch of frames. Then when it was about to cover the Buckyballs on the camera side I thought it would be fun to see how it might cover the balls on the side. So I rotated the sheet a bit frame by frame.

Unfortunately, by the time I got it all moved and rotated it had moved an inch or two away from the camera. The aperture was open pretty wide so the depth of field was pretty narrow. The balls went out of focus. Poop!

Maybe on the small screen it won't matter.

Here's the rematch between these mortal enemies.

The Blob vs. Magneto

Here's another movie featuring Crazy Aaron's Strange Attractor Thinking Putty.

This time it features another toy that Peggy introduced me to: Buckyballs.

The silly putty's devouring the little magnets starts out pretty fast then got excruciatingly slow. So I took chunks of the movie and doubled, quadrupled and even octupled the rate the frames are played back. I don't have the technology (at least not that I care to employ) to have the speed increase gradually. So the action will suddenly, and very noticeably, change. That kind of lets us see better how the action progresses.

Digging the Buckyballs out of the Thinking Putty and getting all the putty off the little balls is not fun. But I have a few more ideas of how to combine the two into little movies. If anybody has more ideas, I'd like to hear them.

There's not a lot more to say about this. The intervals between the shots doesn't really matter since I changed the rate of playback a lot. So, just sit back and enjoy the show. (I hope you enjoy the show!)

Hatari!

We went to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (formerly the Wild Animal Park) on Saturday to make a time-lapse movie. The subject of the intended movie wasn't moving that day so we took the Africa Tram Safari instead. I've been wanting to make a movie from such a ride so that's what I did. I had been afraid that the constant clicking of the camera would become annoying to the nearby passengers but nobody seemed to notice. Or at least they didn't care.

It took me a bit longer to set up than I had hoped and we were among the last to get aboard. The tram started rolling just before I got the camera clicking.

I had the camera take a picture every two seconds. I used my fisheye lens to get as much of the scenery as possible. Because it's using the fisheye lens the scenery in the movie is much closer than it appears.

I play the movie at a rate of 15 frames per second. The 31 minute ride lasts just over a minute.

This isn't a very interesting movie. There's just not much to see.

Star!

On Friday, August 5, my iPad's 3D Sun app sent an alert that told me that there had been an M9-class solar flare that sent a major Coronal Mass Ejection straight to earth. It told me that auroras were possible at all latitudes and that we should be on the lookout for them after dark.

This was an event not to be missed.

I packed up my camera, intervalometer, portable reclining chair and a not-quite-warm-enough jacket and went to our usual sky watching spot east of Julian.

If there were going to be auroras, they'd be a great time-lapse movie subject. If there weren't any the night was clear and the stars moving across the sky (along with the planes up there and the cars down on the highways) would make for a nice movie.

We saw a handful of satellites, a few meteors and a bunch of aircraft. But, alas, no auroras. The sky was pretty.

The moon was almost at first quarter so it was above the horizon till after 11:00. It was somewhat chilly, around 65º and there was a stiff wind blowing. We finally abandoned the chairs and escaped to the car. We watched the sky through open, leeward windows.

I set the camera to take pictures at its highest sensitivity (ISO 3200) with the lens at its widest aperture (f/2.8). I used my fisheye lens so the view is heavily distorted. I had the camera take 20 second exposures every 21 seconds. The movie goes from 8:43pm until 11:15 when we got tired of craning our necks to watch the sky through car windows.

We get to see the the sky and terrain darken as the twilight fades and the moon sets. The shadow of the moon scooting across the valley floor is fun. It didn't quite make it to the horizon. We're wusses and couldn't stay out any longer. It's 40 miles home through winding mountain roads. Not a good time to drive while sleepy.

The 437 frames are played at a rate of 12 frames per second. The two and a half hours take only 36 seconds. As usual, it's in HD. Select the highest resolution your connection will support and watch in full screen mode.



Here is a picture with one of the satellites (I think). It's at the top of the picture.

Oooh! Here's a better satellite. It flared a couple of times.

It disappeared then made another little flare three frames (a minute) later.