Time Lapse with 645D

[Ed Hurst]

Hello all,

Last night, the Queen Mary 2 was docked in Sydney and left just before midnight. I will be posting some still images when I have had time to process them, but in the meantime, here is a much-compressed time lapse sequence of her departure...

645D Time Lapse | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

You may have to press the play button. Also, probably best to click on the full screen button.

Ed

 

[tsjanik]

Really nice Ed.

 

[Charles Wood]

Very nice! I've been hesitant to use up shutter life with my 645d creating time lapse clips although it's very tempting. I have been using my K5 for time lapse, then creating them in 4K resolution (3840x2160) with Time Lapse Assembler and Quick Time. Pretty amazing resolution when viewed on a 2560 pixel wide monitor.

 

[Ed Hurst]

Thanks guys. You are probably right Charles - after all, you'd have to go some to use the full res 645D fies for the video sequence. It just happened that my other cameras were not available at the time, so I used then 645D. The whole thing was a bit 'Heath Robinson' in fact; I didn't have an intervalometer with me (and forgot that the camera has one built in) so ended up using the basic cable release and counting the delay in between shots out loud (it's no joke doing that for over a hundred frames and trying to keep the spacing even!).

 

[malmac]

Ed

Quite inspiring - with that lighting and the movement of the ship what iso did you use to keep the images sharp?

Mal

 

[Giorgio]

Lovely, but how did you know the ship would turn?

 

[Ed Hurst]

Hi Mal,

ISO was 800 - which is quite usable on the 645D. The files would be even less noisy than they are if I hadn't lightened them a little in post...

Giorgio - I knew the ship would turn because they have to go that way to leave the harbour. And I knew it was about to leave because I researched the schedule beforehand (they usually depart just before midnight to save paying the Port Authority for another day of berthing!).

 

[rga]

Very nice example, Ed. Been thinking of doing this kind of time-lapse with MFDB and you show how stunning it would be. Alpa's new FPS would be perfect for this type of application (built in intervalometer) and the Kessler rails would also be neat so that the camera would move along a path.
Perhaps if the market continues moving up at the current pace for the next 5 years...
Thanks for posting. Very impressive,
Bob

 

[Ed Hurst]

Thanks Bob. I just wish I could get the file to run at full 40MP res. But I suppose it's asking a bit much for a computer to handle files of that size multiple times a second!

 

[GrahamWelland]

Ed,

I know from the experience of shooting timelapse shoots with my D3x (actually HDR too!) that it can take a LOT of processing to build the video at full resolution. I found myself shooting '000s of images for even a couple of minutes of output and then reducing the res to 2k max on dimensions since unless you own an IMAX theatre nobody is going to really notice the difference.

However, if you've got the resolution and really want the worlds best video, why not? :thumbs:

 

[Ed Hurst]

I am not put off by long processing times - being quite accustomed to it with large pano stitches, etc.. But what I have found is that even with my grunty Mac Pro, it won't actually run the videos at the required fps if each frame is 40MP... Now if I had an Imax cinema... ;-)

 

[Ed Hurst]

As a matter of interest, and for comparison's sake, I reshot a similar sequence using my 5Dii and Zeiss 15mm f2.8 last night. To my mind, although on close inspection the camera delivers less noise, it somehow lacks the drama of the sequence shot on the 645D. I know the sequences are not directly comparable, not least because of different angles of view, but to me, this underlines the value of MF, even with such an application (and even after compressing):


Time Lapse 2 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[gerald.d]

Ed - you might want to check this out:

Main Page - GigaPan Time Machine

Regards,

Gerald.