Anecdote

Wow it’s 2008 already! Seems like I’ve neglected updating this blog for a while :P, well this should make up for all the missed posts!

During a revision-sesh (read: a revision session) I noticed what an awesome clear sky ’twas outside. So I decided I’d do a time-lapse gradually getting darker to reveal some stars. Anyway it was already pretty dark by the time I got it all set up, so it ended up being just an ace video of a constellation moving across the sky. Obviously seeing as it was only a 4 second video, I had to add some titles, and an “extra sharp” version of the video where the stars are more visible.

The time-lapse was actually done using my digital camera (Canon PowerShot A75) and using the software that came with it I used the “Timed Shooting” setting to shoot at regular intervals. I started off using 5-minute intervals, but then the constellation was moving a bit too fast (as you can see in the vid at the start), so I changed it to 1min 15s intervals (the 15s was to compensate for the time it took to take the picture). I had to use the maximum exposure setting on my camera (15 seconds!), and still it isn’t as bright as I would like… hmm I need to get a Digital SLR.

With the resulting set of pictures I batch processed them using GIMPshop and a plugin called “David’s Batch Processor“, to fiddle with the brightness/contrast a bit, and to resize/crop them to HD framing. After this was done I dumped the files into a program called Monkey Jam, and then generated an uncompressed HD movie from the seperate image files.

As I say it was only 4s long, so I thought I might as well make a slightly longer video to make it worth posting… So I fired-up Edius Neo (trial version - might be buying it soon, more on that in a later post…), and did a quick edit, and added a second version of the vid with a bit (actually nearly maximum) of sharpening. The only (reasonable) option for HD output in Edius Neo is WMV, so I just did that… now I’ve uploaded it to Vimeo (which has a nice new HD-viewing feature, where if you upload a 1280×720 vid, it will keep it at that native HD resolution…), and you can view the result below.

Constellation Time Lapse (HD) from Joel Davies on Vimeo.

(hmm seems you have to go on the actual vimeo page to see the HD version.)

Well I did say I was gonna make up for all the lack of posting… SORRY FOR THE ESSAY GUYS!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Photography, Rantings, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.