Gone in 96 seconds

Something a little different on the blog today following an experiment I tried at the weekend on the way down to Galway where we were heading for an engagement party, and to catch up with friends.  I took a notion on Saturday morning before we left to try something I’ve seen others do in recent times very successfully – a time lapse video by stitching together multiple frames taken at regular intervals and putting them into a video with a frame rate that effectively speeds up time.  The subject of my video would be quite boring – the drive from Dublin to Galway.   But it would be a chance to see how this whole time-lapse thing works.   More on how I made the video below, and if you want to watch all 96 seconds of it, click on the (low resolution) screen shot above or just view it here.

I did get a strange look from Aoife when I told her I was going out to set up a tripod in the back of the car, but I guess she’s used to me by now and didn’t object to the camera taking a photo every few seconds for the next three hours.  I had been inspired by some random browsing on the web the previous evening  – in particular Treasa’s recent experiment with time lapse photography – so I thought the drive to Galway might make for an interesting first attempt at it.  “Interesting” in this context not necessarily relating to the content, but for the process at least.  The content afterall was just going to be what a back seat passenger would see.  If there was a back seat passenger there, he or she would probably have fallen asleep.  There was much to learn from the process.

So first of all: the setup (see the iPhone snapshot on the right).  I had my camera and 24-70mm lens (at 24mm) set up on my tripod in the back seat, with two legs extended down to the floor and the third on the seat.  This in itself wasn’t stable enough, so I did two things to make it more secure.  Firstly I buckled it in via the centre seatbelt (more to avoid a catastrophe in the event of sudden braking).  I then tied each leg via some string to the front headrests and one rear headrest.  That actually worked in keeping it relatively steady.  The road to Galway is relatively straight once you’re off the M50 so the bulk of the journey wouldn’t stress the set up too much.

I used the interval shooting function on the D700 to take a photo every 5 seconds, and set it to take the maximum number of shots it can be programmed for – 999.  Getting my maths wrong, I thought this would get me all the way to Galway.   Only on the road did I realise this would finish an hour and 20 minutes into the journey… somewhere between Athlone and our destination near Athenry.

Not to worry, because a crisis near Liffey Valley about whether or not the iron was switched off caused us to turn around, and as the iron was checked (and found to be off – of course), I reset the camera and upped the interval to 8 seconds.  This would give me about 2 and a quarter hours of shooting time (as it turned out this was, annoyingly, about a minute too short to do a door-to-door).

I should mention that the exposure was set manually before I left, as was focus and white balance (cloudy), while I switched from RAW to smaller sized JPEGs to ensure I didn’t fill the 4G memory card half way through the journey.

I left the first aborted attempt in the final time lapse so this is a journey to Liffey Valley and back, followed by a journey to Athenry.  Because the first trip is a shot every 5 seconds and the second is a shot every 8, it looks like it takes much longer, relatively speaking, to get to Liffey Valley than it does to get to Athenry.  The final video is constructed from about 1500 images at a frame rate of 16 frames per second.

I made the video using Picasa 3, running on my netbook, and after an aborted attempt to batch process all 1500 images (the netbook wasn’t really up to the task) just went with the files straight from the camera.  The music is a Randy Newman track from Seabiscuit and the only reason it is used is because it was what I found when looking for instrumental music about 96 seconds long.   There’s probably more appropriate music I could have used, or I could have used none at all.

What did I learn from all this?

I could use even smaller JPEGs next time.  I could find a more exciting subject.  I could shoot one at a time of day when the exterior and interior exposures are more balanced.  A shorter interval between shots is better, as long as the 999 shot limit doesn’t truncate the video.  A faster frame rate in the final video is better.

Oh, and it would be a better video if there had been a dramatic crash in front of me, or if llamas had stormed the M50 or something.

That said, it works quite well for a first attempt and is a feature on the camera I’ll use again.

In case you haven’t yet clicked through to the video (what a dedicated reader you are) here it is for your viewing pleasure: