We Bought a Zoo

I bought a new gadget.

I've wanted to get some camera motion in my time-lapse videos. My camera has always just pointed at the same spot for whole videos.

A time-lapse video I watched on YouTube ended with a credit to the provider of its camera motion. I checked out the device it used and some similar ones. I settled on the StarLapse system by Losmandy. A Google search for information about the system took me to Oceanside Photo and Telescope who had it in stock. I ran over and got one!

It's a heavy thing. With all its pieces and my camera and its largest lens, it weighs more than 12 pounds. My tripods were all too feeble to support it. I ran back to Oceanside and got a new tripod and head.

This setup handles my 12 pounds nicely.

I took all this equipment out to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (formerly the Wild Animal Park). Jerry was my Sherpa. I need a rolling case that will hold all of the camera pieces, the StarLapse and the tripod. We had to pause a lot as we walked through the park to shift the weight from one arm to another.

I recorded some scenes of the African Plains enclosure. I don't know what kinds of animals I got in the first segment. The second part is mostly giraffes.

I had the camera take a picture every five seconds. The StarLapse was panning at a rate of 40º per hour. That combination was just too fast. Especially for the first segment where the zoom was set at twice the focal length of the second segment.

I play the first segment at a rate of 10 frames per second. It's very jerky. The second segment is shown at 15 frames per second.


Another reason for getting the StarLapse is to take pictures of the night sky. Up to now, my pictures of the stars were longish exposures with a fixed camera. That results in the stars having trails.  Here's a 30-second exposure of the sky last Friday with the camera fixed:

And here's the same scene with the StarLapse moving the camera at the rate the earth is rotating. No more trails (except for the airplane)!

It took me a long time to get the camera set up so I didn't get these pictures taken before the moon started lighting up the sky. Its glow is seen at the corner of the pictures. The picture isn't all that great but it does show potential. You can see a lot more of the Pleiades than just the Seven Sisters. Unfortunately, the sky isn't dark and is rather blotchy.

I'll need to go out to the dark part of the world and try again.