A study of clouds

This post will be somewhat different in that while there's no images we have included movie clips.

We've been practicing taking time-lapse images and transferring them into a video now for a couple weeks now and I feel I'm getting the hang of things. Don started out using the Canon 1DsII IR converted camera and this morning I used Sandy's 1DsIII.

The setup is rather simple in that you need to set the camera on a sturdy tripod set the camera to manual (manual focus, f/stop and shutter speed) and use some method of triggering the shutter. Don uses a Canon TC80N3 Remote Timer Release that enables me to set the shutter to fire every 10 seconds for a maximum of 99 images before setting it again; he's been shooting at 10 second intervals till this morning; he attempted to shoot every 5 seconds however the remote reset back to 10 so he'll need to look into this a little further.

We've included two time-lapse videos of clouds from out back yard. The first was shoot using the Canon 1DsII IR (665nm filter)and is a combination of two separate sessions which were shot last night then processed into a black & white format. The second clip is the end result of one-hours' work this morning with the 1DsIII where the camera was focused at three different areas.
 

The processing is straight forward of the time-lapse; capture the images, open them in Capture One Pro to process then save to a Jpeg format opening Quick Time Pro to make into a finished movie. We've either left the processing there or in some cases where we've wanted to add a title or combine clips I've used Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0.

The third clip is from what we call our Jeep Cam. We have a small video camera that shooting through our windshield as we travel the back roads and this clip shows the areas we traveled in the past couple of days in search of the wildflowers we've shared.

We hope you enjoyed our first attempts at time-lapse as well as the Jeep Cam.

We might share more time-lapse and write more about the process if there's any interest - so let us know.

Sandy & Don

There's a great tutorial on time-lapse photography here.