Short timelapses from Belur and Halebeedu.

Architectures provide wonderful platform for composing HDRs. There are lots of perception to compose. Long time 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 consequence of 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 tempted me to pack-up 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. Love the atmosphere in middle of tune and used it to fit my timelapse. If you are interested, hear full tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SciajNJBiJA

Timelapse - Distant storm formation at Markonahalli Dam

Here is one more old timelapse which I love very much. The 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. The 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 is brief video 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 (say 4th day from new moon) 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 :).

Music: Innersync remix of Andy blueman's unifinished 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. 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. Good news is Blueman has promised to finish the track

Full tunes:

1) Andy Blueman - Away from Sun (Preview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn5yj7cdctc
2) Andy Blueman - Away from Sun (Innersync remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pu7RJ2d5E4

The next one is dancing fog with peacock. I 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 (Read related blog here). 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. I was forced to dispose them due to lack of disk space. 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 (majority 'M' mode while few of them in 'Av' mode). Even though the clip is around 3 minutes, the rendering swallowed almost 90 minutes of time :(. This is mainly due to hardware glitch. It was worth the wait since the final video turned out to be quite fantastic ;). 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 exposed clearly.

Music: Our one and only Andy Blueman's orchestral mix of Afternova's work of 'Serenity'. One of the top class work of Andy Blueman since his inception into trance world. 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. The actual fun starts at 3:30 when violin starts ascending towards high pitch, reaching peak at 3:40 and conjoins various instruments at 3:58 creating a serene ambiance B-). This pattern repeats further ahead but with different variations. Andy's brilliance in orchestral music is unquestionable and this music is no different! 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 :). Most of the European musicians are fond of orchestral melodies and design it very well. I hope my video pays due honest to his musical excellence. There is also plan to capture more timelapses to fit entire music!

Full tunes:

1) Afternova - Serenity (Andy Blueman orchestral mix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvoW5Qo3FxM
2) Afternova - Serenity (Andy Blueman remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1NOdB1uxDo

After gamut of inconsequential information, hope you enjoy the video too :)

Sunset and Sunrise at Kodachadri Peak - A short timelapse

Here is one more timelapse from Kodachadri Peak. This is 12th timelapse video in my youtube channel :-).

It was 5:30PM on bright Saturday when we reached Kodachadri peak after trek from Santosh hotel for about 5kms. We were sweating vigorously following long hike. After seeking blessings of Lord Shiva at Sarvajna Peetha, it was time to rest on one of the rocks awaiting sunset. In between casual chat, Rajesh pestered me to start a timelapse. I was bit lethargic but he was persistent :D. Finally, I started the intervalometer for 2images a minute. As a result it turned out to be wonderful fast setting sun ;-). Since there was an hour of time for complete sunset, I kept interval for 30s capture. I did not use manual mode since wanted to grab bright Sun always. The problem with Manual mode is it turns out quite darker gradually as sun loses intensity. As you know, the disadvantage of using Av is variation in lighting which can be corrected with software approaches. I did not carry tripod and consequently mounted camera on rocky surface for interval shots.

Next is sunrise timelapse. I realised a bit late there was only few time left for sunrise and hence tuned intervalometer to grab a shot per 10 second. The mode is Av mode due to said reason as mentioned above. Even this capture was based on Rajesh's input. I was bit skeptical that heavy breeze would shake camera which may result in out of frame pictures. However, the camera stood upright ;-). This time also I placed it on one of the rocks in sunrise point. Once Sun was arisen with golden colors, I could not resist and turned off intervalometer :-). The timelapse of Sunrise was achieved though ;-) however with less interval. Combining both the timelapses, here is a video. I thought of combining these with the already pending ones to form a bigger one. However, demand from boys and draining disk space forced me to compose the video and share. Hope you enjoy the same.

Settings:

I do not remember exactly. Both scenes were shot in Av mode. The video is rendered in KDENLIVE 1080p 25fps and 2pass encoding MPEG4/MP3.

Music: After lot of internal tussle, I settled for the Simon O Shine's musical brilliance - Your Distant World. Other options considered were excerpts from Sunset-Beautiful Life (Vol Deeman Remix) and SoundLift - Horizonte (Andy Blueman Intro mix). All of them matched well for video however could not resist the fabulous orchestral breakdown and eventually applied for the timelapse. It did fit too ;-).

Composing timelapses makes me exhilarated. Ever since I stumbled upon timelapse photography from internet sources, it has been one of my favorite hobbies. I enjoy composing timelapse despite requiring longer time. From my experience, timelapse requires persistence, perception, a bit of intuition and lot of patience more than camera techniques. To some extent few video editing techniques help a lot too! In order to bring up my mood (when I am down) and also since my disk space is exhausting at faster pace, I hope to upload more pending timelapses in coming days :-)

Ashutosh also pulled a wonderful timelapse and here it is. He has also some collection of star trail timelapse which he might share in his channel.

Timelapse - Melting Ice

After intense pestering by mother, I finally decided to clean fridge. This was shot few months back. As part of process, I was taking out ice pellets from freezer. Initially I did not notice but few minutes later, hey melting ice caught my eyes :-). I deviated from cleaning and setup a timelapse show of melting ice ;-). Initially I thought of capturing melting ice timelapse from inside freezer but did not have tripod. Hence, the melting cubes were only the option. I stacked up two books on a plastic table, poured those few ice cubes on the dosa pan, adjusted the elevation and started intervalometer. Why dosa pan? That was the only black object I found. Only black objects can expose properly this colorless ice :-). After the setup, it was time to resume cleaning activity :-(.

The final result? Yes it is this timelapse :-). The notional movement was achieved using motion time lapser tool (details at the end) where in we can gradually crop the sequence of images to have moving look. The actual movement can be achieved if you own DIY slider with servo motor. I do not have one since it is expensive and this was the only trick I could get around for movement scene. Hope you enjoy the timelapse.

The mistake I did was tuning camera in Av mode (aperture priority mode). That created flickering in middle of process :-(. The environment had unchanged light and I should have shot in Manual (M mode). Nevertheless, final one also turned out to be good :-).

Details:


Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Mode: Aperture priority(Av)
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: Auto
ISO: 100
Exposure value: -0.6EV
Metering mode: Center weighted average
White Balance: Florescence
Magic Lantern Firmware: v2.3
Picture interval: 6s (I think so)
Duration: (2frames/image)*(112 images)/25fps = 9s + 5s banner = 14s








Tools and options:

Video Editor: KDENLIVE under Linux Mint 16
Notional movement: Motion Time Lapser (Ran with wine)
Editing: Changed aspect ration to 16:9, slightly contrast increase, WB adjustment and RGB adjustments
Crop scale: 4500x3000 to 5166x3444

Here is my entire timelapse playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4EE9291CE4B94285
Subscribe to my channel if you wish to have instant updates: http://www.youtube.com/user/nakumar85/videos

Away from Sun - The Star trails

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 :-(.

Bike ride to Manchinbele Dam

After a month of lull period, its time to travel again. This time to Manchinbele dam near big banyan tree. Just 40kms from Bangalore. The short distance compelled us to take bike as transport. As planned, we started around 11:30AM from Silk Board junction and rode towards the mysore road. Barring few hiccups and traffic jams, the journey was smooth and calm. The route is same as one for Big Banyan tree except that you need to go further ahead by 10km from Big Banyan tree.

En route, we stopped at couple of places to have rest. We had snacks and some cold drinks at big banyan tree. It was around 1:30PM we reached beautiful dam site. The first view was so glorious to watch. I took many snaps near this spot. Then we went near the reservoir spot where considerable crowd was present. Fortunately no monkeys here :-). There was considerable amount of water near dam site due to copious pre monsoon rains. Apart from taking snaps of this gorgeous place, I also started Magic Lantern intervalometer to capture some time lapse. Took around 308 shots before crowd started filling the frames.

We left the spot and rode to top of a hill nearby Dam. The look from the spot was breathtaking. My camera was so busy too ;). I even went tuned aperture to f/25 to get massive depth of field of the place. Overall a memorable and soothing visit to beautiful place. The nature was at its best too with lush greenery nearby. We also enjoyed eye catching rural landscape from Mysore road state highway all the way till Dam. We also visited Shanishwara temple nearby Dam area. I personally enjoyed the glorious landscape amidst tough/bad days at work. That tuned my mind to real calmness. The only drawback is the apathy of people who litter the place with alcohol bottles. We could see a lot of crushed alcohol glasses. They can even pose threat to people since the pieces were too sharp.

Here are pictures!

En-Route to Dam

First view of reservoir

The parking place

The Manchinbele Dam

Close up view of Dam

Beautiful Landscape

One more Landscape!

Hills nearby reservoir

Clouds and water

Its raining somewhere there :-)

Reflections

View from top of Hill

Landscape of Reservoir from top of hill

Finally, not to miss this patient lizard which was sitting on rock steadily. It stayed till I changed my camera lens and shot properly ;-). Seemed like he stayed for long time on rock to give me chance to take proper snap (did not run away even if I went close).

Did you finally shoot me?

How to reach:

As stated in Big Banyan tree blog here. From here you need to travel further 10kms. Ask local people who will guide you better. There are lot of humps enroute and the path way is like ghat road. You will enjoy the beautiful nature en-route. The state of road is good barring seldom nasty pot-holes.

Food:

Pack some food yourself or buy some stuff near Big Banyan tree. No shops are available nearby Dam area.

Video time!

Here is the timelapse video and its settings. Thanks to wonderful ML firmware, you do not need any remote timers for time lapses. This time I intentionally left tripod at home town. After visiting the place, I started repenting as not to have left at home. Also the sunny day makes it difficult to expose the sky properly. A GND filter would have helped me here which I did not have. Nevertheless, I placed camera on even part of rock and started intervalometer. There is also video of surrounding areas. As mentioned in previous blogs, it takes lot of time to edit and compose video on relatively old hardware. I will upload sometimes later if I find time ;-)

Music:

Excerpt from Sunset-Beautiful Life (original mix). One of my favorites!

Video Settings:

Video Editor: KDENLIVE under Linux Mint 15
Post processing done: Changed aspect ratio to 16:9
Video + Audio Encoding: MP4 (H.264) @ Variable bit rate 2pass (1080p @ 30fps) + 256 kbps MP3
Number of pictures: 308
Frames per image: 3
Total duration: (3 frames/image)*(308 images) / 30 fps = 30.8seconds

Camera Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus: Manual
Mode: Aperture value (Av)
Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: Auto
ISO: 200
Exposure value: -0.6 (to expose clouds properly)
White balance: Daylight
Picture Style: Landscape
Metering Mode: Center weighted average
Picture interval: 8s
ML firmware version: 2.3
Tripod used: Even surface of rock :-)

Time Lapse Video - 4 [Dusk to dark with clouds and city lights]

After a long time here is one more time lapse blog. So a different try on a blazing windy day! The monsoon is about to begin and it is time to capture motion of clouds again with time lapse. This time it is dusk to dark with moving clouds and lighting city! Once again the Magic Lantern Intervalometer used for timelapse.

Here were settings. I let camera to choose shutter speed. I chose Auto White Balance since lighting was changing so much. Yes, thats not correct; Will experiment with constant WB next time (Initially thought of Tungsten WB but dropped it).

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Mode: Aperture value (Av)
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: Auto
ISO: 100
Exposure Value: -0.6
Metering: Center weighted average
White Balance: Auto
Picture style: Landscape
Flash: No Flash
Focus: Manual
Picture Intervals: 8s, 40s, 70s
Tripod used: Long painting stand ;-)
ML Firmware version:  2.3

I did shoot some Moon photos 2 days back did not fall back to normal setting. Initially some pictures were taken with spot metering :-(. Fortunately I spotted the mistake pretty much early and then the stage was set to capture TimeLapse. The major problem was wind. However the camera withstood it. There was long metal stand which was used for painting purpose. I placed camera on top of it[again forgot to bring tripod from native :-(] and started ML intervalometer. Everything worked fine until, day became darker. The camera shutter could not converge early and consequently could not sync up with intervalometer timer. Hence in middle, I had to increase the inetrvalometer delay from 8s to 40s and later 70s (Hence slight unnoticeable misalignment ;-) also effect of AWB is seen. Please bear with it!). The capture was taken from 6PM to 8PM. It gave me enthusiasm in midst of worst working days. I also enjoyed the pre-monsoon breeze along with camera shoot

Finally the composed video! As always composed in KDENLIVE under Linux. Since first part (before I changed interval) was taken at less intervals, I split video into two parts. One is fast part and second is slow part and finally merged into single video so that pace remained same. The frame rate for fast part was around 2frames/image while slow part was 4frames/image Watch & enjoy and comment for any improvements.

After my experiment was done, I looked into ML documentation. They also have FPS override feature to cater long exposure images during time lapse! Wow! I will try out after looking into documentation in detail. For now this is the one ;-)

Music: Excerpt from Rank1-Airwave (Electica remix). One of my favorites :-). What an amazing musical magic from Finland musician valtttu . Hear the full song here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vue4ReLd1nE

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

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