timelapse nature shots

[ckarcher]

http://hvx200.moctel.com/Users/ckarcher/


enjoy.

[Seamus McFlannel]

Absolutely beautiful footage. If you told me it was shot on 35mm as an opening for a feature, I'd believe it. Great job.
Seamus+

[Shawn Murphy]

I'm so pissed off, am I the only Windows XP machine that can't play Apple's H.264 files??? (according to my web searches I'm not the only one.. I even tried a handful of third party quicktime/h.264 players to no avail)

[mochouinard]

I can play it back using VLC on windows : http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
It my favorite Video Player

[Strong Island City]

very nice.......what settings did you use? im really curious because im doing time lapse too but my image seems to end up a bit more muddier than yours.

[jessecoane]

it looks great but extremely noisy. Is it from the web encode and / or CC?

thanks

jesse

[ckarcher]

The iris setting is critical for landscape timelapse. You'll have to look at given conditions and predict what the light is going to do:

Typically, if it's a morning shot you'll need to underexpose and allow the light to fill in detail as the sun rises- auto exposure here will only fluctuate and remove any drama and shadow from the capture.


If it's a evening shot/sunset I tend to use the Auto exposure with auto compensation adjustment for the desired look- that way after the sun sets, the iris will open up and reveal more of the night sky illuminating, ect. this requires a mattbox/ 3-4 stages with ND/polarizers and ND/sky grads.


I'll post one of the project shortly and you'll get the idea.

That being said, I love timelapse work. The morning I shot those images all I could think of was that while everyone else was sleeping, I was witnessing some beautiful and unique scenes. A bit of quit contemplation and inspiration from the incredible beauty of nature.


I ended up doing a lot of nature photography last year on 2 major projects. Funny thing is that when I was a kid, my father was a nature photographer/cinematographer- I spent many early summer mornings(sunrise) in the Sierra Nevada mountains with him- bored out of my mind as he shot landscapes while on "vacation". His ability to predict and recognize changing weather and lighting is still uncanny and incredible, and I can understand the thrill of capturing things that most people miss.

FWIW

[ckarcher]

These elements were shot in 1080p and were using the cinegamma. Yes, the original footage was a bit noisy-even for my taste. Next time, I'll probably shoot 720 and bpress- then crush the blacks a little.

[ckarcher]

A bit OT, but here is a post of some stills of a 3 screen HD presentation I directed/shot/edited last year.

Fairly decent examples of nature imagery, and most of the scenics were timelapse. Good filtration and extremely clean lenses and filters when shooting directly into the sun.

http://karcherdesign.com/clientaccess.karcherdesign.com/trilogy/trilogy.htm

[harlan]

I'm so pissed off, am I the only Windows XP machine that can't play Apple's H.264 files??? (according to my web searches I'm not the only one.. I even tried a handful of third party quicktime/h.264 players to no avail)


Are you playing the clip "fullscreen"?

For some reason, h.264 files in QT on the PC will stutter dramatically when playing fullscreen (even if you "Present Movie" at Actual size).

Try playing it in the Actual or Half sizes inside the normal quicktime window and see if that helps at all. By the way, Half size on it's own doesn't always playback as well as Actual size due to the computer having to scale the clip.


hope that helps.

[Shawn Murphy]

I can play it back using VLC on windows : http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
It my favorite Video Player


Thanks for this tip, it works great! I'm not sure how I missed it as I tried two other open source players to no avail, thanks again!


Now I need to figure out how to get the player enabled as a plugin for IE so it will default to using VLC instead of QT when a page tries to play h.264 files... I tried by changing my file associations so that all H.264 files are played by VLC, but IE still uses QT and the plugin manager doesn't give me a way to point to VLC. I'll do some searching on the VLC site.

[Shawn Murphy]

Are you playing the clip "fullscreen"?

For some reason, h.264 files in QT on the PC will stutter dramatically when playing fullscreen (even if you "Present Movie" at Actual size).

Try playing it in the Actual or Half sizes inside the normal quicktime window and see if that helps at all. By the way, Half size on it's own doesn't always playback as well as Actual size due to the computer having to scale the clip.


hope that helps.


No, my problem is that if I upgrade to QT7 then I don't get any audio when trying to pay any QT files, but when I use QT6 the H.264 files only play audio, no video.. weird. Well, the VLC is working so far, just need to figure out hot to configure it for IE.

[harlan]

Hey Shawn,

Sorry to hear you're still having troubles. VLC does work great, but I'm not sure how to configure IE to work with it.

Regarding QT7 and your loss of audio, do you have any NLE software installed on your system? Certain WM reliant NLE applications have issues/conflicts that result in stuttery or loss of audio when using QT7. I'm sure they'll get it to work eventually, but VLC is a great workaround in the meantime.

Nice avatar by the way (The Professional?)


ciao

[Shawn Murphy]

Yeah, I'm running Vegas (NLE) almost daily, so I'll get by for now.

Yeah, Leon/The Professional ;-)

[Rhys Brisbin]

mr.archer
maybe this is a silly question but did you shoot this in real time and alter the speed in post or were you using an interval setting? it doesn't seem very choppy, which is what i've run into with interval lapse material
thx for the morning glory
rb

[ckarcher]

The shots were done using the intervalometer at 1 frame every 10 seconds and 1 frame every second.