Timelapse Collection - 2

It has been long break in this blog. Breaking the break, here is a brag about my new timelapse collection this winter ;-). The collection comprises of frames from Bhadra reservoir, Gajanur reservoir, and my village.

There are basically five clips.

1) The first is from Bhadra reservoir and the subject is sinking sun breaking for the day. This was shot around 4:30PM and hence quite intense Sun too! I shot the timelapse with help of 8 stop ND filter & 2 stop GND filter stack to cut down the overall luminosity. This also reduced shutter speed which helps in providing smoothness to flow of water. The main reason I shot this was because of diffused light resulting from piercing of the Sunbeam through strip of stratocumulus clouds! This type of setup scatters the sunlight and sprays the rays on to the earth's surface. The timelapse which is combination of moving clouds, and sun, creates beautiful passing rays with vivid projections on the earth's surface :D. This thought culminated in a timelapse captured for about 40mins. I am not sure on number of images but remember it was framed in 'M' mode since the intensity of Sun barely changes in 45 mins with minuscule cloud density.

The images were framed in KDENLIVE with following corrections

i) Increased the contrast to accentuate the scattered rays.
ii) Increased sharpness
iii) Shifted white-balance towards blue
iv) Did few RGB correction

2) The second was again caught in Bhadra reservoir, however along the entrance. The other mystical part of such type of clouds is that just before sunset, the rays of sun illuminates the stratocumulus clouds with beautiful orange-yellow pattern and finally cools down to blue. Remember, this phenomenon is created by the sinking Sun but actual color of clouds remain blue itself ;-). The colour initially being yellow shift towards orange and falls back to blue. This pattern once again perfect for timelapse and my camera successfully caught it ;-). I guess the shots were composed in 'Av' mode to maintain uniform brightness.

Same software used with following corrections

i) Increased the contrast to illuminate the sky bit more and darken the bottom portion
ii) Increased sharpness

3) The third one is very simple. Just a strip of moving clouds along with flowing water. I used CPL filter in this case to cut down haze. Nothing much significant editing carried out except for sharpness

4) The next two are star trails shot in my village. The first one is moon-set and second one is rise of orion belt from south-east. Booth were shot at f/2.8, 30s, ISO-800, tungsten WB. The lamenting part is not all images are steady. This basically due to absence of tripod. I used an artificial support to cling my DSLR which was not steady. Consequently some of pictures turned out to be blur. Hence the video is flickers at some positions. The final editing comprised of sharpening, increase in contrast and de-noising.

5) The last one is the dancing fog. There is nothing much to glorify about this clip. Probably, I should have turned the clip to monochrome so that fading of fog looked profound.

Hope you enjoyed the description and enjoy the video. Meanwhile, my next giant leap is to pull up HDR timelapse ;-). Do you think I can achieve it, lets try!

Gears:
---------
Camera: Canon EOS-550D
Lens: Sigma 17-70 f/.28-4 OS HSM lens
Tripod: Whatever steady surface at the location
Filters: 8Stop ND, 2 stop GND & CPL
Video Editor: KDENLIVE under Linux
Music: Royalty free music from Youtube

Lessons learnt from recent star trail experiment

There were lot things lacking in my first experiment of star trails (read it here). I am not kind of guy who achieves success at first attempt. Most of the time it is long hard journey. Initially, even though it creates disappointment, the joy of struggling is more exciting once we reach appreciable level. There were many faults in my recent experiment as mentioned. Time to correct those and build on top of that. The mistakes were spotted while reading write-ups from professionals. Following are the mistakes ;-).

1. Long exposure noise reduction should be turned OFF (my settings were ON)
2. Do not get illusioned by camera light metering. My image was shown as over exposed by light meter :-(. Ultimately they looked darker. So I should have exposed shutter for bit more longer time (around 25s).
3. ISO should have been around 1600
4. Should have focused upfront. I was struggling getting focus right at night. Many people suggest to focus to infinity around twilight and prepare to shoot at night.

There may be many more. Need to experiment lot more to get it right. However the experiment can be carried out only in my village and there is less scope in Bangalore. Hope will improve in my next trial :-).

Here are two start trail images created using StarStaX free software. There are gaps in between the trail which I need to rectify. The software is available for linux also but has some bugs. So I ran windows version on top of wine emulator and worked perfectly :-).

THIS IS BRIGHTEST BUT MORE GAPS!

THIS IS DARKEST BUT LESS GAPS. A SLIGHT INCREASE IN ISO WOULD HAVE HELPED

Time Lapse Video - 3 [Clock]

The third time lapse video. This time it is the moving clock. Initially I captured in auto mode. However pictures turned out with varying exposures. Also some images had flash due to low light. By that time even battery had drained off. After battery was fully recharged, I tried with Manual aperture mode by setting F3.1 and slightly over exposed to +1/3. This gave camera shutter speed of 1/4s. Since the camera and clock were steady, this shutter speed did not cause many problems. Also due to low light camera had to expose for long time so might have chosen less shutter. The canon sx 210 IS does not come with full manual mode. At-least one of them is chosen by camera (shutter speed, exposure value or aperture).

So here is the video. Watch and enjoy. Share if you like and comment if you have suggestion.

Watch my youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/nakumar85/videos

Short timelapses from Belur and Halebeedu.

Architectures provide wonderful platform for composing HDRs. There are lots of perception to compose. Few months back, I had traveled to Belur and Halebeedu to revisit the Hoysala empire glory after 20 long years. My primary intention was for photography and rest includes deviation from city life, relaxation etc.. Even though it was winter season, the weather was unusually hot and humid. Consequently, the atmosphere was hazy too :-(. To add to that, I did not carry my CPL filter (not sure why!). However there were clouds hovering around the skies which tempted me to grab few short timelapses. After fulfilling my thirst of photography wandering all around premise of Belur, I chose a platform to sit down and relax for sometime. ALongside my rest, I started intervalometer to capture a timelapse with the scaffolded pinnacle and huge premise as steady subjects. The movements were achieved by clouds and people. I believe, the clicks happened for few hours comprising of 250 pictures shot at an interval of 10secs. Eventually it turned out nice and the first part of video is timelapse from Belur. The psuedo movement is achieved by cropping the pictures using Motion Timelapser software

The second part is from Halebeedu. This timelapse was also captured due to similar aforementioned reason. The crux was to give myself a break :-). I sat on a bench near nandi statue and captured the timelapse. I did not carry tripod and hence could not obtain proper elevation. As a result, the frames are out of focus :-(. Despite the loss of focus, the movements of clouds are appealing :-). Overall did not turn up as better as Belur. I could have managed for some more timelapses if I had my own arrangements for transport. The gloomy weather coupled with time constraints forced me to leave the place as early as possible. There are numerous HDRs composed during my visit which I will share in subsequent write-ups. As of now enjoy short timelapses from Belur and Halebeedu. Any suggestions are always welcome.

Music: New World - Let me Go, beautiful medley of strings and piano. If you are interested, hear full tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_BoZf6sMs

Video Editor: My favorite KDENLIVE under Linux Mint

Time Lapse Video - 2 [4 in 1]

Here is the continuation of Time Lapse videos. This time the images were taken in my native village paadoor near kaup, Udupi district. One fine afternoon, I was sitting idle. There was heavy breeze from west as an indication of Monsoon Beginning. I saw the trees and paper on the table flying along the breeze. This gave a thought for creating time lapse video.

The first two were taken in AUTO mode. The first one is a cloth and paper flying along the wind and the second one is fluttering of trees and plants. I did not have tripod and hence used table to have steady frame :-). The second one though bit shaky since I could not get proper elevation in camera.

The other two were taken next day morning. The monsoon was about to begin and consequently lots of clouds floating around sky. With wind pushing the clouds faster, it was right time to capture time lapse. The first was around 10AM and the second one was filmed around 12:00PM. It was hot and humid so both the times I had to adjust shutter, aperture and exposure to have clear view of sky and clouds. In the first case the shutter speed and exposure were set manually (1/1600s, -1ev) and in next case aperture and shutter speed were manually set (F7.1, 1/2000s).

The first video was taking along with stool in the coconut plantation. My mother was surprised and asked me what I was doing. I told will explain later. The stool made sure that the frames were steady.

The second video was taken under hot sun. The camera was kept under hot cement roof of the house. My mother became furious seeing this. Somehow I convinced her that camera would be fine. I guess the images were taken for 5-10 minutes. Fortunately camera sat steadily on the roof and hence I grabbed nice interval pics. After the session, my mother inspected the camera for correctness. It was too hot and mother got angry that I will make mess of my camera. I showed her the time-lapse (approximate) by fast scrolling the images on LCD screen.

The video was created using KDENLIVE. One can create slideshow clip in KDENLIVE to get desired speed. For ex:

If you select 5 frames for an image and there are total 90 images and you select 30fps as frame rate, then the calculation goes as follows.

Duration of video = [(Number of frames per image) * (Number of images) ]/ (frame rate)

In above case, duration = 5 * 90 / 30 = 15 seconds [Simple math nothing special :-)].

You can increase or decrease duration by increase or decrease frames an image can take. More the frames/image slower is the time lapse and vice-versa. Ex: For clouds, one may want to have faster time-lapse while for sunset one may choose slower.

So here is the video! Watch and enjoy. Share if you like it and comment if you have suggestions.

Warning: Using intervalometer script may decrease the camera shutter life. So use it only when required :-)

Time Lapse Video - 1 [Dose Making]

This is my first time lapse video. It is not something like fastening up the video but taking images at intervals and rendering them as video. The images have to be very much steady to have better time-lapse video. It is good to use a tripod, make adjustments and start taking pictures.

So how did I do it? I own Canon SX 210IS. Using CHDK available for canon cameras, I used intervalometer script which captures the images at pre-defined rate without user intervention.  I am not writing on CHDK. Please refer links below for details.  The images were taken at the rate of 1-image per 2sec. So I captured around 69 images and put them up in KDENLIVE to create a video. Since I did not have tripod, the video came out bit shaky. Kindly bare with it :-). Next time I will take better one.

A simple slideshow creation in KDENLIVE will do the rest. I created slideshow with 3 frame drops   with 29.97fps and 720 progressive scan rate. I am not sure about the exact calculation of frame drops. If you are interested please refer wikipedia entry on SMPTE timecode (see references below).

Enjoy the short time-lapse video of Dose making. Of course I heated the Dose for long time to have
better detail [put the gas in sim :-)]. I am optimist of posting such videos often [That is why the title numbered 1 :-)].

Watch my other videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/nakumar85/videos

References:

1) How to Install CHDK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYOaspc4Ohw
2) SMPTE code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_timecode
3) Creating Time-Lapse video in KDENLIVE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVqrxNV5Y_s

Away from Sun - The Star trails

This is one of my old post which was carried during October month of 2013

The extended monsoon season seems to be finally over :-). It has been raining almost everyday since the onset of monsoon in June. It did rain till 3rd week of October and now  almost clear sky to enjoy. However the hot and humid still remains which indicates  winter is still not here. Nevertheless, clear sky provided me to shoot some night sky.  Consequently I tried some star trail timelapse at night.

Star shoot requires utter darkness :D. It means no external light noise at all. Otherwise  your photo would be full of light pollution ;-). In my case, the village environment  provided perfect studio for star shoot. Initially the light at pump house and  front light of house infused severe light pollution in photo. I had to switch off  both the lights. My father was astonished to see me switching off lights :D.  He was making fun of me as what would I capture at night and I may require Kaup beach  light house to have sufficient flash to expose sky :-). I asked him to wait till experiment ends ;-).

The initial setup created out of focus pictures with stars looking stretched out. After few more experiments, I realized that my focusing distance was not enough. Next  I found a place at distance and shot again. Aha yes! there are those stars in the  frame ;-). It was irritating to focus at night with so many failed attempts but fun eventually when focus was right ;-).

What was the lens used. The cheap nifty-fifty (50mm f/1.8) lens. This was the only  fast lens I had. The effective 80mm focal length made it tough to focus under darkness. Also the lens does not have much sweep angle on focus ring to focus properly. The initial settings were f/1.8, 10s and ISO 800 with tungsten WB. Actually sensor  evaluated this as over exposed image but it was bit dark. This made me to  increase shutter to 15s which increased the brightness in image. The stars in  sky looked like stickers :D but could see some more stars which could not be seen by  eye ;-). I just scrolled the images and excited after seeing the rotating earth ;-). Even my father was  excited too ;-). It was already 10PM and thought of carrying out some trials next day too with bit more  long exposure! As of now enjoy this small trial of star trail timelapse carried out for first time.

After brief pause, I have uploaded a timelapse video. But there are lot pending too. Since this was of different  kind, I uploaded to YT to receive some feedback. The editing was done in KDENLIVE as always. Did some white balance, contrast, saturation and RGB corrections! The brightness is not so much since more longer shutter was required (may be around 25s). Overall I am happy with first trial ;-). They say before you can make someone happy, you should be happy first :-). Hope you also enjoy this first experiment.

Music:
Excerpt from Med and Phil Metcalfe "January". Amazing winter music. Hear the full song here:  http://soundcloud.com/philmetcalfedj/med-phil-metcalfe-january-original-mix

Speaking of "Away From Sun" do hear beautiful preview of Andy Blueman's Away From Sun  which was composed 2 years back but unfinished:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn5yj7cdctc

Hope he finishes this work soon!

Also don’t miss the sensational preview of new work "Beyond the stars" by Kelly Andrew. On similar lines as Soundlift and Andy blueman enjoy his brilliance in orchestral and synthesizer blend!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf8zqnu-Xfg

Last Note:

The next two days were flop shows :-(. The crystal clear day was overridden by clouds with heavy thunderous rain  in subsequent days :-(. Despite fogged morning weather, it rained at night. It is difficult to predict nature. Deepavali fireworks was replaced by fireworks in sky :D. Consequently no more star trial was possible.  But there are still few more days for winter to pass by ;-). Hence I may carry out trials in coming days :-).  Also may be an elevated place is required to capture our milky way. I wanted to grab some lightening shots but was chased inside by mother :-(.

Timelapse - Distant storm formation at Markonahalli Dam

Here is one more old timelapse which I love so much. Those nimbus clouds forming distant storm is mesmerizing sight to watch. Due to such patterns of nature, I love monsoon season whole heartedly :-). So how did I capture this? You need some experience of watching the sky especially during monsoon season. Those whitish nimbus clouds illuminated by Sunlight turn dark as they shadow the sunlight. Such scenes are normal in coastal Karnataka and occur frequently during monsoon season. My curiosity towards monsoon makes me to watch at sky most of the times during monsoon season. Consequently this was one such scene which I could capture it as timelapse. The final video is edited in KDENLIVE for various parameters which I dont remember now. I aspire to capture more such timelapses during monsoon season. Hope you enjoy the timelapse.

The movements are achieved by usual cropping techniques. A little bit of boring math for cropping. The initial plane of frame was as shown in dotted line and final frame I wanted to achieve is shown as solid rectangle. Note that I wanted to maintain the the aspect ratio intact (which was 3:2). If not, the final frames would be clipped and video looks erroneous! The resolution 550D has is 5184x3456 pixels which is aspect ratio of 3:2. The motion time lapser counts (0,0) axis from top left and hence some offset corrections needs to be done to achieve movement. Consequently I fixed (x,y) co-ordinates to (0,1000) and later move the plane towards (1500, 0). To achieve this and fit the images to frame the offset correction goes as below

Frame length: (5184-1500),(3456-1000) = (3684,2456)
Movements from (0,1000) to (1500,0) with frame length of (3684, 2456).

Despite of this calculation, I had some clippings in last few images. May be algorithm used by Motion Time Lapser is different and hence I restricted final 'y' co-ordinates to (1500,200). The final math goes as

Initial (x,y)=(0,1000)
Final (x,y)=(1500,200)
Frame length=(3684,2456)

The final figure is as below. So what's the rule? There is no rule as such! It is upto your discretion to decide the co-ordinates to align with desired movements and speediness. Draw your desired movements on sheet of paper, execute simple math and set the co-ordinates in motion timelapser software which can be downloaded from here

Timelapse collection from my village and kaup beach

Here are collection of timelapses composed in my village and Kaup beach over period of 8months. It has been lying in hard drive for no reason and I thought of compiling in bulk. Consequently here are set of footages of timelapse uploaded in batches to youtube. Except the night timelapse all of them are impromptu ones. Bangalore environment never provided me motivation to capture timelapses (not sure why) however as I reach my village, camera becomes very much active :-). I need to find a way to launch myself in city environment. Last but not least, comments and critiques are always welcome. If you are enthusiastic about timelapse or photography, please drop a comment so that I can contact you offline to create some footages alongside for fun :-).

The first one is set of compiled star trails composed during winter season. The first clip has turned out be great :-). The technique I learned was the soft moon light (may be 4th day) provides perfect studio light for exposing stars :D. Especially the opposite horizon gets exposed well under moon light! However after 5th day, the moon light is of no use and star visibility becomes pale. In that situation, if there are plenty of moving clouds, it creates one more dramatic timelapse with slight star exposure :-). Overall it turned out well. The huge compilation brings a sense of joy and keeps viewers also engaged and curious :D.

Music: Innersync remix of Andy Blueman's unfinished music Away From Sun. What can I say about this music, its perfect for extra terrestrial footages :D. Innersync has immense talent creating such music. Even though Andy did not finish this music, innersync foresaw its prologue and movements well and infused his talent to complete the music :-). Of-course Blueman was irked by the remix since he requested people not to remix unless he finishes. Nags apart, watch the video with beautiful remix from Innersync.

The next one is dancing fog with peacock. I just left the camera in the plantation and luckily peacock arrived at the time when nobody was around. Also the dancing fog has come good too :-). At the end, the moving shadows also created beautiful effect :D. One critique I received from Rajesh was that capture should have been longer in length. Even I felt it later. Nevertheless, the final video turned out good with peacock and dancing fog.

Music: Royalty free music from YouTube repository

I have not grabbed much timelapses from Kaup beach. Usually I visit to enjoy the nature more than photography. Consequently only two short timelapses till date! The first was snapped during the day when stratocumulous clouds painted dramatic patterns on the sky during blue hour. The other one was captured during monsoon season. Overall good to be in collection but nothing like terrific capture. Hope you enjoy the same.

Music: Royalty free music from YouTube repository

Here is near 3 minute footage of pending timelapses from my village. This time some video editing has been applied to accentuate the presence of moving clouds and sunrise with shadows. Every timelapse has different intervals,  frames/second and shot in different modes (majorly 'M' mode while few of them in 'Av' mode). Even though last clip is around 3 minutes, the rendering swallowed almost 90 minutes of time :-(. This is majorly due to hardware glitch as I have been muttering from many posts. It was worth the wait since the final video turned out to be quite fantastic too ;-). Hope you enjoy the same. The last part of timelapse was shot at night even though it appears as day! Shooting against studio light of moon creates such an effect at night except that stars are not visible more clearly.

Music: Our one and only Andy Blueman's orchestral mix of Afternova's work of 'Serenity'. I used this music to depict serene village environment and it perfectly aligned with my video :-). This has been my all time favorite music and I listen to it every morning to calm myself down. Never makes you feel as how 9 minutes passed off :-). Gives a sense of peace and tranquility and with slow moving clouds over Kudremukh ghats. Those flute and violin blend is simply mesmerizing for ears. Andy's brilliance in orchestral music is unquestionable and this music is no different too! He was the first musician to introduce orchestral music in uplifting trance and since then has created many followers for him! The melody he generates is impeccable and gets you moving :-). I believe most of the European musicians are fond of orchestral melodies. After so much of inconsequential information, hope you enjoy the video too :D