Time Lapse Experimentation

You know how it is on the web.  You see one thing that catches your attention (whoa ... thats pretty cool...  ) and you follow a link, which led me to another link, and the next thing I knew I was watching some cool youtube videos on creating time lapse images.  I tried one today on my way home from work.  As any of you who are local to the Central New York region are more than painfully aware - Spring is takings it's merry f_#c^g! time getting here.  While the weather certainly wasn't great today, it did have some low hanging, very quickly moving, and thick cloud cover.  I figured that I might head up to the top of the ridge that overlooks Munnsville (Hamilton County) and see if I could frame up a wind turbine or two with the cloud cover moving by as a backdrop.  I found a spot, pulled the car over and parked and then attempted to open the door to get out.  I say attempted.  It was windy as all hell up there!!  I mean like, I had to really push on the door just to get it open enough so that I could get out of the car... for real.

Now I'm standing out there in this gale force wind and am seriously second guessing my intent - the camera isn't heavy enough to stay put - even clamped onto the tripod.  My past experience from bike racing kicks in ... see if I can find shelter from the wind off of the back of the car and just keep the tripod and camera mounted as low at rear tail lights height...   that'll work.  There is still a fair bit of wind swirling about where I setup just off of the back of the car, but it's not nearly enough to potentially blow the thing over.

As usual I'm watching the clock...  I want to play with this as a test, but I also don't want to try and test / play with a full on multi hours long time lapse either...   I'd like to get home.  I figure I'll go for 200 frames with about a 5 second delay between shots.  ( you use the camera's built in intervalometer )  Quick math off of my cell phone tells me that this will take about 16'ish minutes ...  so I start it and then just go back into the car and check e-mail, facebook, etc ...  on my iPhone.  I go out and check it from time to time ....  125 more shots to go ....  back to the car.  75 more to go ....  hang out and wait for it ....    finished!

I get home, eat dinner and then sit down at the computer and revisit the video where I first saw this and more or less follow along.  My first (very rough) down and dirty time lapse... !  16 minutes (and some change I'm thinking) worth of images shot over 200 frames and then turned into a video compressed down to 12 seconds.

Fuji Play and Waterfalls

...  gotta post this quick - have to run car to garage for repairs.  I think I have a few more keepers that will wind up here.  Briefly though:

Oxbow Falls at Oxbow County Park in Madison County, NY.

Click the photo to see it larger | Click here to view the 1800px export (much bigger)

( .... a few hours of time has passed )

OK - dropped the car off, came back home, played with the dogs for a while, fed them, fed me, and just exported these other two keepers from the little batch of photo's that I took today at the falls.

I had seen signs for this little park in the past but had never stopped to check it out.  It's a nice little place - it would be good for a quiet day picnic with some friends and/or family.  The falls are nothing compared to Chittenango State Park which is 20 or 30 miles south of here.  But this is a nice, small'ish quiet little park none-the-less.

So I went down into the creek bed / falls and photographed my way back up and out.  The top photo is from the furthest point down in that I had gone on this particular outing.  The next two are sequential as I worked my way back up.

Click the photo to see it larger | Click here to view the 1800px export (much bigger)

Click the photo to see it larger | Click here to view the 1800px export (much bigger)

This was the first time that I have shot raw with this little Fuji body.  The thing produces huge files - averaging 32 - 33 meg .raf files!  Wow....  way bigger, and presumably packed with far more data, than either of my Nikons.  Talk about chewing up disk space though ..  ouch.  The more I use and learn this little camera though, the more I like it...  :)

The middle photo above:  yes - the lens did catch a few water drops in case you happen to notice those ...  'eh.

I may go back to this little park sometime in the future ...  not sure.  Maybe after a hard rain or a good long rain - see if the water is running a bit higher and faster, and maybe the falls will be a bit more "fally".  <grin>  :)

-=- jd -=-

FPS or Draggin' The Shutter?

When I first got back into photography five or so years ago, I quickly re-discovered that I have a passion for shooting uncontrolled, unscripted, unposed subject.  Basically I shoot sports.  I was a photographer in the Navy back in the early to mid 1980's and basically hung up my camera's for about 20 years before I decided to get back into it.  I purchased my first digital body, a Nikon D80, around 2009 and was smacked in the face with the reality of the fact that I hadn't shot or kept up with the pace of technological change for such a long period of time.  I kind of had to "re-learn" how to shoot again!  Fortunately my background did come in handy as I did have a basic understanding of how light, shutter speeds, iso, etc ...  all play into being able to produce a nice result.  Anyway -- this whole digital thing was a wild discovery and .... wow!  Instant results on the back of the body via the onboard lcd screen and cheap!!!  ( no film, no processing fees, no waiting..  this is great!! :)  )

Nikon D300, 1/80th @f/14, iso 200, 24mm with a 24-85mm nikkor lens, hotshoe mounted sb-600 flash - rear curtain sync | click the photo to view it larger | click here to see the full 1800px export

So getting back to the second sentence - I discovered I have a "thing" for shooting sports.  Initially I was really pretty hung up on frame rate.  ( how may frames per second can a camera body shoot - ie; is it a machine gun? )  I had to have faster and faster frame rates ...  I did also discover more robust "pro level" bodies too.  Not only did they satiate my growing addiction for faster frame rates, but they also tend to be much more robustly built - made out of metal instead of plastic.  And weather sealed.  "Ahhh .. this is good - now I can stay out in the pouring rain at football games, or get roosted with mud and rocks at the motorcycle races ...  Me like.  :) "

Nikon D300, 1/80th @f/14, iso 200, 24mm with a 24-85mm nikkor lens, hotshoe mounted sb-600 flash - rear curtain sync | click the photo to view it larger | click here to see the full 1800px export

Time passes and like all things as we grow and learn, we mature.  I find that while I do still appreciate my 8 FPS bodies that I have - which by today's standard in pro class bodies is considered slow - I also have discovered in recent years that I rarely actually use that 8 FPS capability.  I rarely shoot in bursts of more than 3 or 4 frames in succession, and am more often than not just single tapping the shutter release.  ( shooting single frames as opposed to just mashing down on the trigger and letting 'er rip )  As I come to get a better handle on both light, the gear that I own - and a knowledge of the sports I like to shoot - I find that not only am I slowing down in the machine gunning department of pure frames per second bursts, but I'm also actually slowing down the actual speed at which the captures are made.

Nikon D700, 1/25th @f/25, iso 200, 36mm with a 24-85mm nikkor lens, hotshoe mounted sb-600 flash, rear curtain sync | click the photo to view it larger | click here to see the full 1800px export

"Dragging the shutter" as it is commonly referred to in photo circles.  Basically it refers to using slow shutter speeds to achieve a particular look.  Slow shutter speeds are not uncommonly used mind you - but they are more typically used on stationary subjects.  Sports almost always dictates two basic principles - high FPS and even higher shutter speeds to freeze action.  Both of my bodies can shoot at speeds up to 1/8000th of a second shutter speed.  Thats very fast and it can make for some really spectacular imagery.  But it can also be very "static" too.  I've come to dig creating images that are not only reasonably well focused and exposed, but ones that also evoke a sense of movement or action.  It's actually kind of a challenge getting it (the camera) dialed in "just so" when trying to setup a scene - but then once you do get it dialed in and can make it repeatable ...  one can occasionally come up with some killer grabs!  :)

Nikon D700, 1/25th @f/25, iso 200, 29mm with a 24-85mm nikkor lens, hotshoe mounted sb-600 flash, rear curtain sync | click the photo to view it larger | click here to see the full 1800px export

So anyway -- I was up at Broome Tioga again today shooting a little of both hare scrambles (last race of the 2014 winter series up there) and some MX that they were doing on the MX track.  I was doing a little shutter dragging as presented in the photo's here.  These and the rest from today's batch will get posted up to the galleries over the next few days - keep checking back to see if I shot you.  :)

Sky Shot! ( and/or replacement )

Motoheads:  Hey man ...  if/when Broome or other facilities have open practice sessions and/or you just want to create some killer shots - let me know.  This guy was getting some pretty consistently good air off of the big jump at the top of the hill @Broome this past Sunday and for a not planned shoot - pretty cool!  ( if I do say so myself )

Yes I swapped out the sky.  While we had nice conditions on Sunday - again - this was not planned and with the equipment I had on hand, and portability always a top concern for shooting the races ...  I (as a shooter) often have to compromise.  I could expose for the sky (rider will be dark) or expose for the rider - sky will probably blow out or (best case scenario) be somewhat over exposed and not really all that great.  The original photo was the latter.

Now if this or a similar shot had been a planned thing ...  I could bring in lots of lights, expose for the sky (and then slightly underexpose - just a tad -  it to make it a little darker and richer) and then with multiple strobes nuke the rider as he/she (you) come into frame.

So long as you don't crash and or kill me -we could have some fun and make some wickedly cool photo's.  :)

Click the photo to view it larger | Click here to view the full size export at 1800px