Wednesday, February 4, 2009

As Fur as She’ll go!

This class assignment has pushed me over the edge! I have been interested in tinkering with time-lapse video for some time but kept putting it off. Now, there was no excuse. My only hope for meeting this course’s tough requirements lay in an untested method and the hope of producing four time-lapse videos over four consecutive days.

Fortunately, the equipment needed is minimal and I already had it in hand: a Mac with OS X 10.4, an iSight camera and shareware software called, “Gawker”. My intent was to position the camera looking outdoors from a window. With a fresh dusting of snow and warmer weather ahead, any winter-weary viewer, anxiously awaiting Spring, might watch spell-bound while the snow melts in minutes --- or, so I imagined.

Not willing to relocate my iMac or commandeer my wife’s laptop, I had little choice in camera placement. As anyone can plainly see, I had reached the end of my "rope":

This south side of the house was not ideal either as the camera would look in the sun’s direction at times during the day. Nevertheless, for a first attempt, it would have to do. And, after a day’s shooting, here’s the result:

No, not exactly a blockbuster but the method has possibilities. The bothersome flicker is apparently due to fluctuating sunlight caused by passing clouds.

For anyone contemplating a similar experiment, the Gawker software can be downloaded from the website,
Gawker is free although donations will be graciously accepted. Actually, after seeing how easy this application is to use and how well it works, I feel a donation coming on.

The software setup is simplicity itself: the user sets the start and end times for shooting and the time increment between shots. The quality (high, medium or low) and the choice of 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels can also be made. At the end of shooting, the software automatically converts all the photos into a QuickTime file. The video above was shot at 30 second increments over almost 11 hours. With my choices (high quality and 640 x 480), the resultant file size was 80MB. Happily, that meets Blogger.com’s 100 MB limit but a smaller file would load faster.

As an added note, it may be wise to prevent your computer from sleeping while shooting is in progress.

Tomorrow, another exciting episode in the saga of the disappearing snow cover.
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1 comment:

  1. Steve WilliamsFebruary 6, 2009 at 7:56 AM

    Now you are ready to put a plant in the window and watch it grow!

    I've been fascinated by time-lapse photography for a long time and recently learned that my Nikon D200 has a built in intervalometer. You can set the resolution at the largest JPEG size, important the final files into QuickTime or Final Cut Pro, and with those high resolution files it allows you to zoom into the scene without any loss of quality and also pan left and right, up and down.

    I learned this from a filmmaker for National Geographic who came to Penn State to document some "smart plants" He borrowed some lenses from me and showed me how to set up the camera.

    The final results are amazing.

    What do you have in mind for your time-lapse work down the road?

    Steve Williams
    Scooter in the Sticks

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