Timelapse

john_dennis wrote on 4/13/2016, 12:56 PM

Thanks to Rv6tc, a.k.a. Keith Hughes, I remembered what I had planned to do with my retirement. I spent the last two afternoons sitting on the north fork of the American River, watching the water ripple over the rocks and letting the laptop fire a camera every 5 seconds.

The first day was a beautiful day with stunning bight blue skies and white billowing clouds. Unfortunately, I let the camera record at ISO = 1600 and all the stills were noisy. With an aperture of F2.8, very little was in focus. Oh Darn! I had to spend another afternoon capturing the same scene. The second day was much darker.

Hope you don't think it was a waste of 29 seconds of your life. My two days working on it were quite pleasant. I could go back to my original retirement plan.

1) Drive to the site
2) Set up cameras
3) Shoot thousands of stills
4) Return home
5) Take a shower
6) Delete all the stills from previous trip
7) Skip to 1

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 4/13/2016, 1:16 PM

Find your pursuit and comments interesting about timelapse.

For several years I have been producing timelapse sequences which become photo beds for broadcast station promotion pieces - ( like 10 second runtime of station call letters ). This is an interesting business that is in serious demand.

What I have found AS THE necessary prep -
1) Scope the location several times a year - look for the horizon shaping, shadow casting, and in particular weather fronts associated with season of the year...
2) capture bracketed images of number 1 step with careful date and time logging.
3) Return to the most promising locations often and commit to several hours shooting timelapse each visit
4) Throw-away more than half of THE step 3 results
5) In the final review look for the best and most interesting of what has been captured

john_dennis wrote on 4/13/2016, 1:57 PM

I'm convinced that most people don't notice how many time lapse sequences they watch within everyday programming, but I'm amazed at how much I see. That must be a thriving business for some people, not that I'm looking for a business.

monoparadox wrote on 4/13/2016, 4:40 PM

John, totally with you. Even to the point of sitting in the local cemetery on a cold fall night and doing a star lapse . . . very peaceful :-) Retirement gives you the time to do the fun stuff you put off in the rush of getting the job done and needing to please others. If anyone has one of the newer Sony cameras with wifi, their Play Memories apps make it pretty easy to get some fantastic results.

-- tom

Chienworks wrote on 4/13/2016, 5:35 PM

This summer i'll be getting a vacation for the first time in 6 years. Will definitely be doing some of this for part of it.

Rich Parry wrote on 4/14/2016, 1:33 AM

Time-lapse is pretty much all I do during retirement, both DAY and NIGHT.

https://vimeo.com/album/2032359/video/56453608

https://vimeo.com/album/2032359/video/56453607

john_dennis wrote on 4/14/2016, 7:59 AM

It looks like you're keeping the stills. Great work.