burnt embers

Another time-lapse movie, continuing my attempts to show shadows moving through the day. I find that there is something fascinating about watching the shadows moving with the sun, something not normally watched carefully, though it is often noticed.

To view the video click on the image below. I find that viewing it at high-resolution in WordPress runs a bit rough and recommend you move over to YouTube and watch if full screen at high-resolution.

.

This video is taken at 30 second intervals over 3 hours, with a burst of 1 second intervals near the end. Since it is all about shadows, it seemed that a high contrast black and white treatment would work well. The chair is a dark blue, oxidized, but not very bright white which is an advantage in this shot.

Things to learn from this video: there is a bit of camera shake from the wind, which was leaning on a balcony railing. I would have placed the chair a bit differently if I had thought everything through to the ending, but I just left it where I found it. I accidentally shot at full resolution when there was absolutely no need for that, no zooming or panning.  It was a slow job of processing the video, but no computer crashes so that was an improvement. Finally, I used an automatic lens and forgot to lock the aperture which resulted in some flicker from the mechanical differences each time it opened to a slightly different diameter. LRTimelapse has a de-flicker feature which worked very well for this. Also, the light ramped up about 1 f-stop in brightness during the shot, but between Lightroom and LRTimelapse this was easily dealt with.

.

If you look closely near the beginning you will see the cat pop in and out of view – at 30 second intervals she must have sat still for a minute or two to even be seen. I have a few stills of the helpful beast around this shadow, which will probably show up in a future post.  The spindly shadow moving across the chair is a ginkgo tree just coming into leaf, the larger leafy shadow is a potted horse chestnut that must be 10 or 12 feet high now, and flowering. The faint reflections of glass on the left are from the French doors which open onto this patio, they are one of the surprises in the video.

.

Technical Details: Canon EOS 5Dmkii, Video: Canon USM 50mm/f1.4, ISO100, f10, 1/80th, 503 frames, 458 taken 30 seconds apart and 61 frames at 1 second apart, using a Pixel TW-282 timer. Manual settings, custom white balance, RAW files shot at 5615 x 3744 . Edited in Lightroom 4 and LRTimelapse  2.3.1, then rendered as a movie through LR4 Slideshow module, with LRTimelapse templates, 23.976fps option.

Stills: top – Canon 50mm/1.4 lens, f-6.3, 1/160th; middle –  f-11, 1/50th; bottom – Nikkor-N 24mm/2.8 lens, ~f-8, 1/100th

.

.