OT: Vancouver - time lapse

Check this out - the coastal fog moving through the city is a perfect time lapse subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4&feature=player_embedded

Be sure to watch it with full screen HD resolution.
Almost makes me want to upgrade to one of those new fangled cameras with video.

Wow, the fog sequences are amazing. Thanks for the link, Bill.

Saw this the other day. There's a whole bunch of good ones from those guys.

Sweet stuff!

Hey Bill, you don't use video to do that, you can do it with your camera right now. All you need is a wired remote that has an intervalometer built-in. Then you take a gazzillion shots, 1 second apart, and string them together with Quicktime Pro ($29.95). You need 30 frames for each second of video, and you only need 1920x1080 jpegs to get HD. That means small jpegs, not raw. So for night shots, set your camera to manual to get the exposure you want (probably iso 800, f5.6, then whatever exposure you need, say, 6 seconds). The timer unit wl take a six-second image every 1 second, for example. So let it run and gether 600 images, and Quicktime Pro will knit you 20 seconds of video, to save as a .mov file. That's how it's done! No video slr needed! Pop the file into Premiere Elements or some other inexpensive editor, and with several of those clips you can do all that too! I'll post the link later to the timer unit I got... 24 bucks, straight from Hong Kong. The Canon one was way too expensive.

Ok, here is the one I just got. You can search the site for the model that fits your camera. This thing also lets you dial in a long-exposure time, like when you want to take a 4-minute exposure. Set it, and walk away. Not bad for 24 bucks!

Thanks, Paul. That's great info. I'll have to give it a try.

good post bill.

thanks for the info paul. i gotta give it a try

No prob... there are two fellas that do this stuff real well, and they explain HOW if you hunt around on their site. One it a fella named Tom at www.Timescapes.org, and the other is Philip Bloom, a film maker in the UK. His site is worth visiting. Get this: he was flown to Skywalker Ranch in December by George Lucas... Lucas is interested in the 5D2 because he needs to do some tight shots in a movie he's working on. While this Philip fella was there, he did a short movie on the grounds of the Ranch that includes day going into night and other really nice effects (and got it edited in just hours... wild). THEN he got to watch his piece on George's 40-foot screen, and he said the image quality was outstanding. This is certainly a departure from what we do here on NPN, but as image artists it sure is interesting. If anyone is interested, you can read about that here. The video quality of the short he did looks amazing, but it's nifty to know that the timelapse part could have been done on any camera. It's interesting that 1920x1080 is considered to be wonderful HD in film/video, and to us that's TINY!

So, let's keep that timelapse thing in mind... imagine a foggy sunrise at Grand Canyon or the sun piercing through Mesa Arch... would look great in a timelapse! Manual focus and manual exposure is key, otherwise any auto function on the camera will alter the frames and it'll look choppy.

OK, I've yakked enough about this I guess! Back to work...

Huh. Don't most cameras just come with a time interval function built-in? My D300 does. I just figured it was standard these days.

LOL! NOPE, not for us Canon-heads. Maybe some models, but not the 5D or 5D2 that I've owned. Pete's sake, my first digital camera was the Minolta 7D in 2005 and THAT had it built-in. Canon leaves it out... it's a cost-saving measure so they can afford all the white lens paint.

another reason to love my nikon

Incredible!