My video of Crazy Aaron's Strange Attractor Thinking Putty swallowing a cube of Buckyballs that I featured in an earlier post is my most-watched YouTube video. It's had more than 260,000 views as I write this. It just went through a period of getting more than its usual number of views. One day it had 9,245 views. I was hoping to break 10,000 views in a day but the interest subsided. It gets a lot of comments.
Some of the comments suggest that I make another version of the video and let the putty fully engulf the magnets. I thought that that is a good idea so I tried it again. This time I kept shooting the putty vs. magnets for a full week. There's no way that the very stiff putty will completely wrap itself around my magnets.
I started with just three cubes of Buckyballs being surrounded by the putty. I realized that the action was slowing to a crawl so I added some more magnets. Then some more.
A bug makes a cameo appearance in the Blue Cube about 30 seconds into the video.
I went from taking a shot every two seconds at the beginning of the video to a shot every 45 minutes by the end. I play them back at a rate of 30 frames per second.
I added a timestamp on each frame so we can see how the action proceeds. It really gets slow by the end.
This probably will be my last video featuring Buckyballs and the Thinking Putty. It is a major effort to get them all out of the putty.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Flower Drum Song
Several years ago I showed some pictures of our giant squills in bloom. I mentioned that the flowers sway and twist when they're cut and put in a vase. Ever since I got my intervalometer I've been wanting to make a video of the flowers. But, alas, they took a couple of years off.
They finally bloomed again this year. They were sending up their flower stalks just before we took a week-long vacation. I was afraid that they would have all gotten too far along before we got back to make a video. Fortunately one stalk had not yet started opening and another had just started.
I cut those two flowers, put them in a vase in the living room, set my desk lights on the floor in front of them and set up the camera.
I set the intervalometer to take a picture of the squills every five minutes. The camera snapped away for just over seven days. The camera's battery finally died the eighth night. It had taken more than 2100 shots. The pictures are played at a rate of 30 frames per second. We see two and a half hours of action every second. The week flies by in just 70 seconds.
I hope that the video below fits in your screen. You might need to change it to one of the HD resolutions and play it in full screen mode to see the full glory of all the flowers opening, shutting and waving about.
The stalks didn't wave around as much as I remembered they did all those years ago. Perhaps the constant light on them stopped the waving. I don't know. There was some at the beginning so I'm happy with what I ended up with. Maybe I'll try again next time they bloom and put dimmer light on them during the nights.
They finally bloomed again this year. They were sending up their flower stalks just before we took a week-long vacation. I was afraid that they would have all gotten too far along before we got back to make a video. Fortunately one stalk had not yet started opening and another had just started.
I cut those two flowers, put them in a vase in the living room, set my desk lights on the floor in front of them and set up the camera.
I set the intervalometer to take a picture of the squills every five minutes. The camera snapped away for just over seven days. The camera's battery finally died the eighth night. It had taken more than 2100 shots. The pictures are played at a rate of 30 frames per second. We see two and a half hours of action every second. The week flies by in just 70 seconds.
I hope that the video below fits in your screen. You might need to change it to one of the HD resolutions and play it in full screen mode to see the full glory of all the flowers opening, shutting and waving about.
The stalks didn't wave around as much as I remembered they did all those years ago. Perhaps the constant light on them stopped the waving. I don't know. There was some at the beginning so I'm happy with what I ended up with. Maybe I'll try again next time they bloom and put dimmer light on them during the nights.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Night of the Shooting Stars, Restored version
A year and a half ago I showed you a video of my time watching the 2010 Geminid meteor shower. I mentioned that each meteor appears in only one frame so you don't really get to see many of them unless you happen to be looking at just the right spot at the right time.
I wanted to make a video where the meteors last more than a single frame. I finally decided that I had to learn more about Photoshop so that I could achieve my dream. I found a Photoshop "action" that combines multiple star images into a single image. Here's an example using that action to make an image from the pictures taken from 12:30 to 1:00 that morning.
Thanks to Star Circle Academy for the jumpstart introduction to Photoshop actions!
There are quite a few meteors in this image. Many get lost in the star trails.
The action that produced this image combines all the images in a directory into a single image.
I needed to make images that combined a few consecutive images that shows a frame at its full intensity with each of the previous frames gradually getting dimmer. I tweaked the Star Circle Academy's action by adding steps that dim the previous image when adding a new image to it and saving each iteration. As a result I ended up with the same number of images as the original set but each contains all the previous images that are progressively dimmed.
You'll see what I mean, I hope.
While I was learning about automating Photoshop, I decided that I wanted to add a timestamp to each frame. That meant learning a little about Photoshop's "Document Object Model" to add a Text layer to each image that contains the image's timestamp that was extracted from its metadata.
Anyway, here's the resulting video that shows the meteor shower with the stars, planes and meteors appearing then fading away. You get to see meteors this time. There's a meteor flurry when the timestamp is around "12-14-2010 00:40"!
As always, HD and full-screen viewing is highly recommended!
I wanted to make a video where the meteors last more than a single frame. I finally decided that I had to learn more about Photoshop so that I could achieve my dream. I found a Photoshop "action" that combines multiple star images into a single image. Here's an example using that action to make an image from the pictures taken from 12:30 to 1:00 that morning.
There are quite a few meteors in this image. Many get lost in the star trails.
The action that produced this image combines all the images in a directory into a single image.
I needed to make images that combined a few consecutive images that shows a frame at its full intensity with each of the previous frames gradually getting dimmer. I tweaked the Star Circle Academy's action by adding steps that dim the previous image when adding a new image to it and saving each iteration. As a result I ended up with the same number of images as the original set but each contains all the previous images that are progressively dimmed.
You'll see what I mean, I hope.
While I was learning about automating Photoshop, I decided that I wanted to add a timestamp to each frame. That meant learning a little about Photoshop's "Document Object Model" to add a Text layer to each image that contains the image's timestamp that was extracted from its metadata.
Anyway, here's the resulting video that shows the meteor shower with the stars, planes and meteors appearing then fading away. You get to see meteors this time. There's a meteor flurry when the timestamp is around "12-14-2010 00:40"!
As always, HD and full-screen viewing is highly recommended!
Saturday, July 21, 2012
The Birds II
What I'm posting today doesn't really support the mission statement of this blog but I'm going to put it here anyway. Maybe this blog is now about movies that show things that can't normally be seen well.
This is my first slow motion video. My new Nikon 1 camera has slow motion video capability! It can take HD videos at the normal 30 frames per second. It can also take low definition videos at 400 and 1200 frames per second. The camera lets us take five real-time seconds of video at a time. In 400 frames per second mode that ends up with a minute and six seconds of video. The frame size in that mode is 640x240 pixels.
This is my first movie using this new technology!
I have several hummingbird feeders in the back yard. The little hummers are very protective of their feeders. They seem to spend a lot more energy defending their feeders from other hummers than they get from their nectar. I'm happy to watch. It's amusing to watch them strafe intruders.
I set the camera near one of the feeders and took a lot of little movies of the hummers in action. I edit my movies using iMovie on my Mac. The camera's aspect ratio is wider than iMovie deals with so it loses much of its original 640-pixel width. This video isn't in HD so you don't need to push any buttons other than "Play."
Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
This is my first slow motion video. My new Nikon 1 camera has slow motion video capability! It can take HD videos at the normal 30 frames per second. It can also take low definition videos at 400 and 1200 frames per second. The camera lets us take five real-time seconds of video at a time. In 400 frames per second mode that ends up with a minute and six seconds of video. The frame size in that mode is 640x240 pixels.
This is my first movie using this new technology!
I have several hummingbird feeders in the back yard. The little hummers are very protective of their feeders. They seem to spend a lot more energy defending their feeders from other hummers than they get from their nectar. I'm happy to watch. It's amusing to watch them strafe intruders.
I set the camera near one of the feeders and took a lot of little movies of the hummers in action. I edit my movies using iMovie on my Mac. The camera's aspect ratio is wider than iMovie deals with so it loses much of its original 640-pixel width. This video isn't in HD so you don't need to push any buttons other than "Play."
Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Born on the Fourth of July
Here's a view of the July 4, 2012, fireworks in Escondido. It's more a slide show than a time-lapse movie.
The show was at Escondido's Grape Day Park. We sat on the curb across the street from the park. We had no idea where the fireworks would show up. We chose pretty much the worst seat in the house and much of the show was behind a tree. Oh, well, maybe next time we'll know where to sit. Somehow, I think that there aren't many unobstructed views of the show in the park. I didn't know how close we'd be so I used my fisheye lens. That was another bad choice. Next time...
I took six-second exposures and set the intervalometer to take a picture every 6.7 seconds. It seems like the camera's 6-second exposure lasts around 6.5 seconds. The ISO setting was 200 and the lens was open to f/8. I play the pictures at a rate of 2 frames per second.
For what it's worth, here's the show.
The show was at Escondido's Grape Day Park. We sat on the curb across the street from the park. We had no idea where the fireworks would show up. We chose pretty much the worst seat in the house and much of the show was behind a tree. Oh, well, maybe next time we'll know where to sit. Somehow, I think that there aren't many unobstructed views of the show in the park. I didn't know how close we'd be so I used my fisheye lens. That was another bad choice. Next time...
I took six-second exposures and set the intervalometer to take a picture every 6.7 seconds. It seems like the camera's 6-second exposure lasts around 6.5 seconds. The ISO setting was 200 and the lens was open to f/8. I play the pictures at a rate of 2 frames per second.
For what it's worth, here's the show.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
The Birds and the Bees
One of my bird feeders is for the orioles. The feeder is a flat container that hangs from a hook. It holds sugar water that the birds get to through holes near the perches. And it has some little depressions where we're supposed to put some grape jelly, one of their favorite treats. I've used this feeder for several years and, until this year, it hasn't been used by bees.
Something changed.
Bees have taken over the oriole feeder. It takes them little time to eat all of the grape jelly I put out for the orioles. I wonder if the beekeepers are bewildered with their purple honey. The bees also are fighting the hummingbirds for their nectar. Hummingbirds don't take guff from nobody so they still seem to be getting their share.
My big dollops of grape jelly don't last the day. Since the stuff goes from blob to nothing in a matter of hours I thought that this is a subject for a time-lapse movie.
I learned a lesson from previous videos of bird feeders. That is that things hanging from hooks sway and twist and aren't the best subjects for time-lapse movies. For this video, I took the feeder's hook off and set the feeder on an upside down garbage barrel. This way, the subject doesn't jerk around and the action is easier to follow.
The day before I made this video I put a bowl on the garbage pail and put some jelly in it. I wanted to get the bees accustomed to a new location so they would be ready to follow the food when I moved the nectar/jelly feeder the next day. The bees didn't care much for the jelly in the bowl but the orioles were happy with it. The day of the video I put a clock, the feeder and the bowl of jelly on trash can.
I thought I set the camera to use an exposure that would be good for the full sun period. I was wrong. It got terribly overexposed. Fortunately, after a while I decided to reframe the shot just to watch the feeder. I fixed the exposure settings for the rest of the movie.
I started with the camera taking a picture every 30 seconds. When I saw that the jelly wasn't going to make it till the end of the day I changed the frequency to a picture every 15 seconds. That's when I fixed the exposure and zoomed in on the feeder.
I can't really say what the frame rates I play things back are. After I made the initial segments of the video and put them together, I adjusted the segments' speeds a bit to make the movie last as long as the music I chose. You're probably getting tired of the same music over and over again but this time it is so much more appropriate than my earlier uses of the tune.
Watch in HD and full-screen for best bees.
Here are some stills from the video.
Something changed.
Bees have taken over the oriole feeder. It takes them little time to eat all of the grape jelly I put out for the orioles. I wonder if the beekeepers are bewildered with their purple honey. The bees also are fighting the hummingbirds for their nectar. Hummingbirds don't take guff from nobody so they still seem to be getting their share.
My big dollops of grape jelly don't last the day. Since the stuff goes from blob to nothing in a matter of hours I thought that this is a subject for a time-lapse movie.
I learned a lesson from previous videos of bird feeders. That is that things hanging from hooks sway and twist and aren't the best subjects for time-lapse movies. For this video, I took the feeder's hook off and set the feeder on an upside down garbage barrel. This way, the subject doesn't jerk around and the action is easier to follow.
The day before I made this video I put a bowl on the garbage pail and put some jelly in it. I wanted to get the bees accustomed to a new location so they would be ready to follow the food when I moved the nectar/jelly feeder the next day. The bees didn't care much for the jelly in the bowl but the orioles were happy with it. The day of the video I put a clock, the feeder and the bowl of jelly on trash can.
I thought I set the camera to use an exposure that would be good for the full sun period. I was wrong. It got terribly overexposed. Fortunately, after a while I decided to reframe the shot just to watch the feeder. I fixed the exposure settings for the rest of the movie.
I started with the camera taking a picture every 30 seconds. When I saw that the jelly wasn't going to make it till the end of the day I changed the frequency to a picture every 15 seconds. That's when I fixed the exposure and zoomed in on the feeder.
I can't really say what the frame rates I play things back are. After I made the initial segments of the video and put them together, I adjusted the segments' speeds a bit to make the movie last as long as the music I chose. You're probably getting tired of the same music over and over again but this time it is so much more appropriate than my earlier uses of the tune.
Watch in HD and full-screen for best bees.
Here are some stills from the video.
 |
| Female Bullock's Orioles |
 |
| Male Bullock's Oriole |
Friday, June 15, 2012
Paint Your Wagon
Jerry decided that now is a good time to give the family room a fresh look. That starts with a new coat of paint.
Here you get to see half of the room get its first new coat. The "Cheery" is being covered by "Cancun Sand." People get paid to come up with the names for paint colors.
I put the camera with its fisheye lens on top of the cabinet on one side of the room and recorded the action of the other side getting painted. I had the camera take a picture every 10 seconds. The video shows them played at a rate of 24 frames per second. That works out to show four minutes each second.
I somehow managed to mess up the focus. I started taking the pictures then realized that I had the camera set to take large pictures. That resolution isn't needed for even HD videos and makes the time to process such large images go way up. So I changed the resolution of the pictures while it was shooting and must have bumped the focusing ring. Sorry.
Because this is out of focus, there's probably no need to watch in HD. It's there if you want but why bother?
Here you get to see half of the room get its first new coat. The "Cheery" is being covered by "Cancun Sand." People get paid to come up with the names for paint colors.
I put the camera with its fisheye lens on top of the cabinet on one side of the room and recorded the action of the other side getting painted. I had the camera take a picture every 10 seconds. The video shows them played at a rate of 24 frames per second. That works out to show four minutes each second.
I somehow managed to mess up the focus. I started taking the pictures then realized that I had the camera set to take large pictures. That resolution isn't needed for even HD videos and makes the time to process such large images go way up. So I changed the resolution of the pictures while it was shooting and must have bumped the focusing ring. Sorry.
Because this is out of focus, there's probably no need to watch in HD. It's there if you want but why bother?
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