Buying an iPhone 4S... nearly

About 80-90% there now - below an example of a video fully shot with the phone. In the beginning you can sort of tell but later scenes are simply amazing.

Timelapse photography

Did my first technical timelapse experiment this morning. Not feeling too great yesterday so why not spend an early Sunday morning with some coffee and sun?

Doing this video was actually really fun and it tied together many of the things mentioned here before.

First things first - finding the sun
A sunrise is over quickly and it is vital to be positioned at the right place before the first rays enter the picture. The Photographers Ephemeris is a free application that allows you to see in detail the angle of the sunrise and sunset. This allows you to plan the exact location of where you should stand. As an example - below is the plan I used:

Timelapse gear
Once on site a few things are required:

• Camera (duh)
• Fully charged battery and spare (many shots=lots of energy)
• Tripod
• Plan on final video (length/number of frames etc)
• Coffee, newspaper and patience (will take a while)
• Intervalometer

The last component is key - an intervalometer triggers exposures at regular intervals. As luck would have it, the Magic Lantern custom firmware mentioned earlier is now much easier to use (new release in August) and also includes a software version that is sooo convenient. Works for most of the modern Canon cameras.

Editing
This is all created in Lightroom with the support of another free application called LRTimelapse. The homepage contains several great video tutorials on how to use it and timelapsing in general. Basically, it allows for intelligent and streamlined bulk editing of all settings stored in the .XMP-companion for each RAW-file.

There is also several pre-sets for the video encoding that is really helpful once the output is ready. It is a joy to use and it also allows for correcting the "jitter" that shows up. I still havent really learned how to do all of this yet but there is always a next time.

Lessons learned

• Plan in advance how many shots to take - for 8 fps or 12 fps between 480 and 720 shots are needed for one minute of movie
• Make sure the histogram is shown for each shot - very quickly the highlights will begin burning out when the sun appears
• Get a bean bag or something to remove that motion jitter occuring every now and then
• Protect the lens better - used my polarizing filter now which is not really adequate
• Take even more shots or over a longer time period - it is not a video camera..
• For multiple scenes - take a minimum amount of shots for e.g 20 seconds on screen - that would be 160 or 240 shots
• Shoot in manual mode and make sure white balance is not set to "Auto"
• Read up more on timelapsing techniques on the TimeScapes board
• Spend more time in editing :)

The inspiration for this really came from this video:

Fantastic scenery and he also uses a dolly to create the panning effect. Specifically this dolly, which seems really nice...

High-end photography

And since I am walking into the gear territory, here are some shots from the new frickin amazing Canon EOS 1D X. An example shown below:

EOS-1D X / EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS II USM / 1/1,000 F2.8 / 0EV / ISO51200
That last figure is just.. way out.

Mobile photography

Really keen on the new iPhone 4S with the upgraded camera. This would really allow for some mobile photography in the spirit of the last coupe of posts. Features include:

• 8 megapixels
• 1080p
• “73% more light“
• Faster picture-taking
• Improved lens
• Real-time stabilization

I am particularly interested of the improved lens which is an f/2.4 at about 30 mm. Below a sample photo and here are some more

Point and shoot

Inspired by this excellent post from David duChemin I dug through my old equipment storage and found an Ixus 750 that has seen very little use since my Australia trip many years back. During a run today I shot the photos below as an experiment, quickly and without stopping.





In general, I want to increase both the number of photos I take and the amount of feedback received in combination with a travelling lifestyle. I did the same in the military by taking a small APS camera with me to places where all other equipment would be either too big or too delicate. Further - these smaller, quicker digital shots allow for easy sharing and it's really fun to shoot them off to friends through e.g WhatsApp on the phone.

It is also neat to try out some of the more insane post processing alternatives to simply learn what works and what doesn't. Will most definitely use this as an optional way of bringing photography into the average day.

Portfolios

Checking my Lightroom library I now have 11 499 photos from today and all the way back to the millenium shift. In a previous post some of the ways of I have been sharing parts of this library was discussed.

However - one thing I still haven't really figured out is what a portfolio of the best work I have would look like and how I would maintain it. A dear friend just created one and I am really intrigued. Will try to work something out soon!

Getting back into it

Had some work and life come between me and and the writing. Will begin to post stuff here again regularly now. Below - a video using wide angles and slow motion that just felt.. really autumn and soft. I really like the color scheme as well, will try to recreate it in Lightroom asap. More!