This past weekend a historic snow storm hit the mid-Atlantic region and dumped about 30 inches of snow on average across the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. As I'm typing this another storm is on its way to hit us with another 10 inches of snow.
During the weekend snow storm I took hundreds of photos of the storm and the day after results. I also took the opportunity to setup several cameras to do some photographic experimentation. My first experiment was a time lapse of the snow fall on the trees in my backyard. I setup a camera on a tripod and set an intervelometer (Canon TC-80N3) to record an image every 30 seconds for the next several hours.
During the weekend snow storm I took hundreds of photos of the storm and the day after results. I also took the opportunity to setup several cameras to do some photographic experimentation. My first experiment was a time lapse of the snow fall on the trees in my backyard. I setup a camera on a tripod and set an intervelometer (Canon TC-80N3) to record an image every 30 seconds for the next several hours.
This was my first attempt at a time lapse and the first thing I
learned is I need to set a preset white balance while taking the
images. As the light fell off during dusk, the color shifted which
required more post processing work. I could have also shortened the
duration between shots to something like 10 seconds to get a smoother end result. I could have also gone for a longer duration as well.
The process of creating a time lapse is fairly
easy, you just need to take a series of photos and place that series of
photos into a folder. I used the paid version of QuickTime Player to
open the folder of images and select the first image in the series.
Another dialog box will ask you what frame rate you would like to use to process the images. This is where you can experiment with different frame rates to give you different effects. For the time lapse above I used a frame rate of 24 fps (which is the standard rate for movie film.)
Once the conversion has finished you just need to save the file as a self contained movie file and upload it to the service of your choice. I uploaded mine to both Facebook and Vimeo.
I shot the first time lapse on Friday afternoon. On Saturday I decided to experiment with shooting a time lapse of me shoveling snow. This time I set a preset white balance. When I started the second attempt I also discovered I needed to lock down the focus as well. The falling snow kept fooling the auto focus. This time I setup the intervelometer to take an exposure every second. Since I was just experimenting I had know idea what it would look like so I had no set shots planned. Here is the result of this time lapse.
After seeing the movie I was quickly reminded of Benny Hill and I grabbed the Yakkity Sax Benny Hill theme music and added it to the video using Adobe Premiere. Now that I see what it looks like I probably should have hammed it up a bit more for the camera. Maybe for my next time lapse. Philip Bloom has written a nice post about the lessons learned of time lapse photos at DSLR Timelapses addictive, frustrating and often rewarding... that I plan on reviewing in detail before I do my next time lapse.
My third experimentation for my snow weekend was to shoot a panorama. The sun came out late on Saturday after we finished shoveling the driveway. I decided to go for a walk and take some photos of the neighborhood. I ended up taking a panorama of the cul-de-sac. When I brought my photos into Photoshop I discovered that the pano I shot didn't blend very well since I didn't use a set exposure for all of the images. I saved the image by up using a frame around each image to give it the snapshot layout effect you see below. I think this effect would work better if I shot more shots with closer details and also with alternating image tilts. I could have also just shot it correctly to start and I could have done a traditional pano as well.
As with all experiments some work and some don't. The key is to keep trying stuff out and to keep learning your lessons so you can do better the next time.
The process of creating a time lapse is fairly
easy, you just need to take a series of photos and place that series of
photos into a folder. I used the paid version of QuickTime Player to
open the folder of images and select the first image in the series.Another dialog box will ask you what frame rate you would like to use to process the images. This is where you can experiment with different frame rates to give you different effects. For the time lapse above I used a frame rate of 24 fps (which is the standard rate for movie film.)
Once the conversion has finished you just need to save the file as a self contained movie file and upload it to the service of your choice. I uploaded mine to both Facebook and Vimeo.
I shot the first time lapse on Friday afternoon. On Saturday I decided to experiment with shooting a time lapse of me shoveling snow. This time I set a preset white balance. When I started the second attempt I also discovered I needed to lock down the focus as well. The falling snow kept fooling the auto focus. This time I setup the intervelometer to take an exposure every second. Since I was just experimenting I had know idea what it would look like so I had no set shots planned. Here is the result of this time lapse.
After seeing the movie I was quickly reminded of Benny Hill and I grabbed the Yakkity Sax Benny Hill theme music and added it to the video using Adobe Premiere. Now that I see what it looks like I probably should have hammed it up a bit more for the camera. Maybe for my next time lapse. Philip Bloom has written a nice post about the lessons learned of time lapse photos at DSLR Timelapses addictive, frustrating and often rewarding... that I plan on reviewing in detail before I do my next time lapse.
My third experimentation for my snow weekend was to shoot a panorama. The sun came out late on Saturday after we finished shoveling the driveway. I decided to go for a walk and take some photos of the neighborhood. I ended up taking a panorama of the cul-de-sac. When I brought my photos into Photoshop I discovered that the pano I shot didn't blend very well since I didn't use a set exposure for all of the images. I saved the image by up using a frame around each image to give it the snapshot layout effect you see below. I think this effect would work better if I shot more shots with closer details and also with alternating image tilts. I could have also just shot it correctly to start and I could have done a traditional pano as well.
As with all experiments some work and some don't. The key is to keep trying stuff out and to keep learning your lessons so you can do better the next time.
