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Fun Pictures with Nikon

JimCollum

JimCollum

Member
Leica 77 said:
Hello Jim Collum,
Beautiful IR images!!! I share images recently recorded in the Western Pacific during my recent assinmnet there. Nikon D300 + AF Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens. Thanks for looking. Leica 77:)
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I like the first one.. interesting illusion.. it appears as though she's walking on water
 
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I've been looking for some other creative outlets when out shooting landscapes and this is my first play with the Nikon D700's Intervalometer: Clouds in the Gorge

3780 images making up 756 HDR frames. Something different :D
 
L

Leica 77

New member
Hello Lloyd,
The photos using Provia 100F are stunningly beautiful!!! Great composition, high resolution, nice bokeh, all around. Leica 77 :)
 
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Cindy Flood said:
This is an amazing project. How long did it take to process and put this together? Thank you for sharing it.
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Thanks - it's a work in progress. I needed more frames really to match the music clip and to sample at a higher frame rate (this is 6 frames/sec).

The gorge timelapse was done using my D700/14-24 set at 14mm. White balance is set manually. Exposure and focus are both set to manual. I shot RAW.

I used the intervalometer to shoot a 5 shot -2 to +2 EV bracket every 10 seconds. I only really needed -2, 0, +2ev but that's not an option alas. I let the camera run for about 2.5 hours while I sat in the rain, hail, wind, etc. Whenever a rain storm passed over I would have to quickly wipe the lens to remove spots.

I used the MB-D10 with EN-EL4 battery to ensure that I didn't run out of power. You may see some subtle jumps in the footage where I missed a few frames as I had to keep reloading CF cards - I think I got through 2x16GB, 2x8GB, 3x4GB or so.

For post production I used Nikon Capture NX2 and put together a set of process settings to resize the image to fit to 2k wide pixels and also applied the distortion filter/auto CA etc but no other adjustments. This was run in batch mode against the 3780 NEF files to generate 16 bit TIFF files. This took a LONG time - maybe 10 hours or so to process. :thumbdown:

I loaded a sample of one of the 5 shot exposure bracket into Photomatix Pro to establish a reference HDR tone curve to be applied to each bracket set. I then used the batch mode HDR processing using my tone curve against 3780 TIFS to produce 756 HDR jpg files. That was a lot faster - maybe 3-4 hours :thumbup: I'm not at all into the weird post-apocolyptic HDR processing so the curve was deliberately photo-realistic and mild. I tried using the auto-blend but this looked better overall.

The next part was simple, Quicktime Pro can create a mov file from a directory of image files. You specify the sample rate, 6fps in this case, and it will generate the movie file.

For the arty stuff I used iMovie to add the intro/credits and also merge the audio clip. There was one tricky part here because the clip was something like 2:13 and the music track was 2:33 or so. iMovie has the feature to stretch out the video to match the audio so I used that to render the final files. The other neat thing is that it can render different versions and publish them to my .me account automatically so that was pretty easy too. :D

Next time I need to perform a spot removal step in the Capture NX batch as you can see some of the crud from the D700 sensor if you view the clip in large format. (Btw, don't believe the D700 sensor cleaning hype!!). Also I'll have a lot more 16GB cards, a business card for the tourists who kept asking me the same questions ... and a flask of coffee!!

This was the first attempt. Now I need to do a lot more captures of different scenes and combine them to make it a little more interesting. I picked up a motorized telescope mount and can also start playing with panning.

Glad you liked the movie! As I mentioned, I was looking for something else to spark some creativity. While the camera was doing it's thing I was also wandering around shooting stills with the D3x. It might sound complicated but it wasn't really that hard to do once I'd got the process sorted out. It's definitely something else fun to try at least.

Btw, I also did a trial run at 12mp vs 2mp which took longer to process for HDR but is simply incredibly detailed. Much much too large to upload unfortunately, plus you need a 30in screen to view it. :rolleyes:
 
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Jorgen Udvang

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
Graham,
Thank you for a great tutorial. Is the intervalometer a built in feature of the D700? Do you know if there are other Nikon cameras that has that feature?

Do you know where I can buy the time needed to work on projects like that? :LOL: :scry: :ROTFL: :cry:
 
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Jorgen Udvang said:
Graham,
Thank you for a great tutorial. Is the intervalometer a built in feature of the D700? Do you know if there are other Nikon cameras that has that feature?

Do you know where I can buy the time needed to work on projects like that? :LOL: :scry: :ROTFL: :cry:
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Intervalometer is built into the D2x/D200/D300/D700/D3/D3x and also no doubt some others. Another option is to use the MC-36 remote too.

Time: I know what you mean. This is the photographic equivalent to fishing though so you just have to make time :ROTFL:
 
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