A Cloudy Tiny Planet

I am still out of inspiration for suitable mystery objects at the moment. To fill the gap here is a tiny planet video I put together a short while ago.



I had been searching for the one and only timelapse I made of a Sunset but it has eluded all efforts to find where I stored it. This timelapse was of daytime clouds which looked a bit insipid until I added the 'blast' clip filter in iMovie.

As we are heading to longer and longer dark evenings and nights I have been adding to my stock of audio books. I do use Kobo for eBooks and audio books. They are limited to use on their apps and hardware. I also like to have audio books in mp3 format. I can have them on a USB stick so I can play them on anything, especially my audio system. To that end I found quite a few download sites with free to download and use recordings. Two I have used a lot are Digitalbook.io and audiobooksworld.org. Most books are decades old as they are now out of copyright. They tend to be Librivox recordings which are all in the public domain. You could, of course, go direct to librivox.org though I find their site a bit more daunting to sort through. As far as I can tell all the books can be listened to on line as well as being available for download.

Time Lapse Clouds

This time I mounted my 3D printed phone holder on a tripod.

 

iPod clamped in place and set up in the garden.
5V power bank hanging below.



That view shows why I end up walking about half a kilometre when cutting the grass.

Once again I used the Apple Camera app to take the shots and produce the video.
I let it run for about 45 minutes.



Next time I'll try to get things level!

Another Phone Holder

I have been searching through many designs for 3D printed holders for phones which were suitable for use on a tripod. Finally I found one on thingiverse I thought worth trying out.

Just three printed sections



which fit together to make



I fitted it to a universal ball joint I already had and clamped my iPod



The whole thing will fit on the standard screw on a tripod.
I also found the stand from an old 7 inch monitor and attached it to that

 

so I could stand and angle it in the bedroom window to take a time lapse video.
The block on the right is a rechargeable 5V power bank.
Useful when something may need  power for an extended period.

Not a brilliant day for time lapse photography!



If I understood things correctly the built in Apple Camera app (when set to the time lapse setting) chooses the number of frames per second so that the resulting video is no more than 40 seconds long no matter how long it has been filming. It does this after the recording has been stopped. Not exactly a speedy process but nor is it speedy transferring 100s of individual photos to a laptop and putting them together to make a video,

Timelapse - Clouds

Nice fleecy clouds and some restful music.



Canon 350D, 1477 photos taken 1 every 5 seconds.

Once again the title was made using HitFilm2 Express.
I have now installed the latest version.  HitFilm Express v8.1
This is a free app / program available for Mac and Windows.
Of course they hope you will eventually buy their Pro version.

Timelapse - Sundew Flowers

The finished timelapse video of my Sundew plant flowering:



If the video looks a bit blurry YouTube may have chosen to show it at 480p
In that case click the cog wheel at the bottom and then Quality.
Choose a better quality, up to 1080p depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Title scene made in HitFilm 2 Express
Stills compiled to video with TLDF
Final video made with iMovie
Soundtrack found on Wikimedia Commons.

Sundew Timelapse - Early Test Sample

Five days ago I started taking a flash photo of the Sundew flower stems every 15 minutes. The idea being to make a timelapse video. Here is a test video made from the 473 photos taken so far:



The video was made at 30fps and then slowed down 50%
I had to adjust the camera view a few times as the stems are still growing in height.
You may need to force YouTube to show in HD.
Click on the little wheel at the bottom and choose HD

Avoiding the Death Trap + A New Project

Spotted this crafty fly which had settled on the outside of a Venus Flytrap:



Longish term project.



It's quite a while since I last made a time-lapse video.
This set up is to try capturing the Sundew flowers opening.
The top bud is just starting to show some pink.

An old Canon 350D powered from a mains adaptor made by Canon.
Canon 18-55mm lens.  8GB memory card. (room for well over 2 weeks photos)
Flash gun powered from a 12V battery via a voltage dropper to supply 3V
Battery operated digital timer set to trigger a photo every 15 minutes.
Focussing was the very devil as the Sundew is so 'furry' it always looks fuzzy.

No idea how many days this will need to operate to get a result.
I reckon the final video will be about 5 seconds for each day.

Blue Sky and White Clouds

As it looked like being a fine day yesterday I set up a camera outdoors to take a photograph every five seconds. Now the bulky leylandii is no more I have a better view of the sky. This is a time lapse video made from just over 1200 shots. About 2 hours sky watching reduced to 40 seconds:




I wonder whether you spotted the one frame where a Wood Pigeon photobombed the view of the clouds:

 



As for the camera nest box - both Great Tits have continued to make visits every day so far.
No sign of any nest building activity as yet.

Friday at the Flicks

 

Another one bites the dust.
The tree just past the end of my garden damaged in the recent storm is no more:



That video was compiled with about 2300 photos. One taken every 5 seconds.

Some photos:
 

Clouds - Time-lapse

I've been promising myself to get round to making another time-lapse video of the passing clouds. To give a reasonable length of time to take the stills I have to wait until we return from our mid-morning perambulation. In this day and age it would be foolish to leave expensive camera equipment unattended even in the back garden. Problem is, the clouds often evaporate during the morning as the heat from the Sun increases and I don't always have fully charged batteries ready for a lengthy session.

Anyway, today I got round tuit and set up the modified Canon 1200D. The one which sees more IR and UV than normal which is why the green trees aren't.  1000 jpg exposures later I managed, with a struggle, to convert them to a video:



The cameras I usually use tend to run out of battery soon after the 700 exposure mark but this one still had about half left even after a couple of hours taking a shot every ten seconds.  I usually shoot the clouds as they retreat. Don't know about you but I find the time-lapse approaching clouds feels more foreboding, sinister in some way.

YouTube cut off the sound at the end. I had slowly faded it after the final part of the video but YT chopped that bit off. Must remember to put a plain colour filler in next time.

I've been playing a lot with my Amateur Radio gear. Had my first confirmed contact with a station in Brazil which really made me 'well chuffed'. 6039 miles with just 25W of power using a digital mode. Nearly got my first direct contact in the USA last night. My call was received and acknowledged but the conditions deteriorated rapidly so a full two-way contact wasn't made. I've talked to American amateurs in the past but that was by sending my signal up to an amateur satellite and having in re-broadcast.

Friday at the Flicks - Amaryllis

 

One of my Amaryllis plants had started to show its flower buds so I thought it would be just the thing for another time lapse trial. It was pure guesswork as to whether the flower would actually end up in frame:



I was surprised just how much the plant moved as it tried to track the Sun.

Photographs were taken every 45 minutes but the flower bloomed much faster than I expected. The photos were compiled to a video using the trial version of Sequence for the Mac. This did a good job of reducing the flicker and adjusting the white balance over the 185 photos. As the original video only ran for about 7 seconds at 25 fps I reduced its speed when I put it in iMovie to add the title and music track.

Time Lapse Trial Two

The attempt at a long term time lapse with the rotting tomato worked better though there is still some flicker. It is probably better to use a dark background where it would be less noticeable if there is slight variation in lighting.



This is 270 photos taken at one hour intervals over eleven days.
The photos were made in to a video using Zeitraffer on a Mac.

Following a hint from Adrian I replaced the green background using iMovie's green screen masking effect:



Trial number three is under way using a different background.

Apple Time Lapse Experiment

Well, my first experiment at long term time lapse photography has been running for about five weeks. Today I stopped the experiment. Instead of rotting away the half apple just dried out, shrank somewhat and became mummified. This is just the final 500 shots, one taken every hour, converted to a video. I will have to try to find out why the lighting flickers so much. There are several possibilities. Maybe the flash gun doesn't give exactly the same light output every shot. Maybe the camera doesn't give exactly the same exposure every shot. It is set for 1/25 sec at f18.



I have started a new one with a tomato which is already showing signs of mould growing so that may give a more interesting video. I had to stand it on something to stop it from rolling around. The blue object is an upturned measuring cup for the liquid I use in the washing machine:

    

One thing which is working as it should is my program on the Arduino. Even after a week or so the timing is within a second or two of the 60 minute wait between shots I set it for.

First Extended Time Lapse Experiment

On Thursday afternoon I started a first test run for a long duration time lapse video. As I was checking the apples I keep for the Blackbirds I noticed a couple going bad. That gave me the idea of cutting a good one one in half and filming it over several days, one shot every 10 minutes.

That is 6 each hour, 144 photos each day. Each day of shooting producing about 5 seconds of video. The camera card should hold 1,150 photos which may well not be enough, about 8 days worth. I may have to reduce the picture quality a little, buy a larger card or lengthen the time lapse.

The first set up:



The 12V battery is on the left next to the topless grey box containing the Arduino Nano and associated electronics with a 2 digit display to show how many minutes between shots. It is now programmable from 1 to 60 minutes delay in whole minutes. That switches on three 12V LED lamps for each photo and fires the 350D.

After a short test I decided too much daylight was reaching the subject so I rearranged things with the apple inside an upturned cardboard box which should help keep the lighting from the three 12V LED lamps more even day and night.

 

Only time, a long time, will tell how successful it has been. and whether the battery will last long enough. No problem with the camera as that is powered from a mains adaptor. The lamps are the largest drain on the battery but they are only on for 2 seconds for each photo.

This morning I checked the battery and its voltage had dropped a bit below 11V so the light from the LED lamps had lessened. Fortunately I was able to find a 12V 1A power supply to replace the battery.

Two Way Clouds - Timelapse Video

Monday morning started with some interesting cirrus cloud formations:



Later on I set the Toshiba on my sturdy tripod in the back garden:



A bit of overkill with such a tiny camera on that tripod!

As before I set the Toshiba to take one picture every 5 seconds until the battery ran flat. This time it took 1126 photos which were downloaded to the MacBook, processed as a video in the free Mac app Zeitraffer and then cropped and title added in iMovie.

Cirrus moving northwards and Cumulus moving southwards:



I always find it fascinating the way the winds at different levels can blow in different directions. That can be seen clearly in this video. There is some flicker as the exposure is automatic and can change from photo to photo.

Soundtrack is royalty free music 'Slow Dissolve' from Purple Planet.

The Met Office have a useful pdf file for identifying cloud types HERE.

X-Sports Timelapse Clouds

It's ages since I last used the Toshiba Camileo X-Sports camera so I though it was time to blow the cobwebs off it and grab a bit more timelapse. I wanted to see how long a battery would last. I made sure one was fully charged. The camera was set to take a shot every five seconds and placed on a mini tripod in my bedroom window. Bits of the window frame and building show as the Toshiba has a very wide angle lens.



The disadvantage of shooting through glass is reflections which show on the brighter sections but as I knew I would be out for part of the time it was running I didn't want to set it up outdoors.

The battery lasted about 1.5 hours with those settings. In that time it took 989 photos.
The camera saves each main photo but also a thumbnail for each one. I found this a problem last time as I only wanted the full size ones for processing as a video. How to get rid of the thumbnails? It was a while before it dawned on me to sort them according to size. Then it was easy to see which were the small files and delete them.

The stills were processed as a video using the free Mac app Zeitraffer (German for timelapse). It just makes either an mp4 or mov video. That was then processed in iMovie to crop to 16:9 and tweak exposure as the originals were too dark.

Friday at the Flicks - Sunset Clouds

Taking a video of clouds at Sunset is very much a pot luck, suck it and see, exercise. As I prefer to start a short while before Sunset there is no guarantee that any colour will appear. I got lucky with my second attempt.

Time lapse taken Wednesday night towards Sunset:



Shot using the LapseIt app on an iPod Touch 5.
One shot every two seconds.
Total 1837 frames processed at 24 fps.
Colours and contrast slightly enhanced in LapseIt and iMovie.

Doing the same thing on a DSLR means having hundreds of individual shots which have to be transferred to a PC or Mac to be made into a video with a suitable program.  The LapseIt app for iPhone or iPod Touch does the whole process in one app with the advantage of being able to preview things before making the final video. It is possible to add music in the app but I find it easier to use iMovie on the Mac as I have a large selection of music to choose from on disk.

Toshiba Camileo X-Sports Camera

Managed to pick up a very little used Toshiba Camileo X-Sports camera. It belongs in the same range of cameras as the Go Pro but for far less money. The Toshiba version comes complete with waterproof casing and a range of fixings for mounting it. Without the case it is a very dinky size:



It has a fixed wide angle lens which focusses from about 30cm to infinity, 12M pixel sensor  and built in WiFi (which is very useful as there is an app for iOS and Android devices which can control the settings of the camera, operate the shutter and gives a live view of what the camera sees). It also comes with a wrist control which can also be used to control the camera but is much more basic. There is the facility for up to 10x digital zooming though that will obviously affect the picture quality. On the back of the camera is a 2 inch LCD. A microSD card is needed for storage.

Yeserday I just had time for a quick fiddle with the camera to work out what does what and make sure it was working OK. Along with various qualities of movie and frame rates, still photos and burst shots it can be used for time lapse photography. This was a quick trial looking through the bedroom window. One shot every 2 seconds:



The Toshiba doesn't make the video. It just saves the stills. These can be dragged and dropped to the laptop once plugged into the USB port. One problem I found was that the camera stores two photos for ever still shot. One is full quality, the other being a thumbnail which is what is sent to the app for the live view. That made it a lengthy job choosing only the full quality photos. These were then process using a free program called Time Lapse Assembler. This used the full size of each frame:




The resulting movie was then cropped to 16:9 in iMovie. As can be seen there is distortion noticeable at the edges of the view as a result of the wide angle lens. I think it has about 135 degrees view.

Friday at the Flicks - Clouds + Two's Company

A few days ago I set up the Ipod Touch running LapseIt to shoot some time lapse of the clouds through my bedroom window. I then promptly forgot it was there so it ended up taking over 3000 shots, one every two seconds:



A couple of nights ago two hedgehogs met up. One was in its house when the second arrived. It ran out and charged the other. A while later they both met up in the Hedgehog House:



No sighting the following night and still no sightings of any activity in either of the camera nest boxes. Will this be the first time in four years there won't be a brood to watch?

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife and nature in general wherever you are.

Friday at the Flicks - Clouds

 

Wednesday was quite a Sunny day though with a very chilly wind. OK indoors or outdoors out of the wind.  It had been a while since I made any time lapse video so in the morning I set up the iPod5 facing North and running LapseIt to take a shot every 2 seconds:



In the afternoon I set it up again, this time facing South:



Have a great weekend observing signs of nature around you.