I thought it was worthwhile to write about this here, as it’s not often I do one of these. I decided (after putting the lights on the tree), that a timelapse of the tree being decorated would make a cool video.

I set the 400D with the Sigma 10-20 on a tripod, and started with a composition containing a table, filled with all the decorations, and then the fire in the background with the tree, which looks ‘christmassy’. I changed the composition towards the end to be with the tree more central, as it was unnecessary to keep the table in when it’s empty.

Anywho, I have written up about timelapses, HERE, optimistic post before I had the 400D, and I feel I have posted up some of my attempts before. This one worked well I think, so, let me know what you think, and I may work on a guide as to how I do these at least, when I have some time, tell me if you think it’s worthwhile!

So, here’s the video, I recommend you actually click through it to the vimeo site, and watch it in HD, but if you can’t be bothered, or have a slow Internet connection, feel free to just watch it here

Decoration of the Tree from Charlie Styr on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas!

Charlie -

Well, there’s a surprise, the world leader in photo sharing has jumped on the video bandwagon. To be honest, it’s not all that surprising, we’ll have a think about why not. In the mean time, this is an embedded Flickr video, the quality is really not bad at all. (YouTube esque, except they now have higher quality).

What’s interesting about this move on Flickr’s behalf is that they obviously want to get people staying with them for every bit of media they want to share. I recently joined the site ‘Vimeo‘, which has a lovely interface, and does HD video, et al.

I think that Flickr wants to make sure that they keep people that could potentially leave, even though this wouldn’t happen since their photography based anyway, but it gives people that may have the odd video to upload, the option to just upload them to Flickr now.

However, the videos are limited to 90s which is a little short, and 150mb, which I think is less of an issue. So, I think these really are meant to be just little snap shots, or ‘elongated photographs’ if you will!

Check it out: Flickr

Charlie -

Hi Everyone,

Well, I can only say sorry for not having posted much recently, I feel guilty that after buying the domain: theapblog.com, my posting has gone drastically down, but, there’s nothing I can do, I’ve been completely downed with work from school, and have had no time to get anything done really,

but,

I did get a spare moment alone the 0ther day with an incredible sunset, that you must see, I love it, so I made a timelapse that you may find interesting, or not, we’ll see…!

And you can view a high quality version at my Stage6 account, HERE.

Anyway, I hope you’re all well, and, normal service shall resume at some point, (just don’t ask when…).

Charlie -

Hi Everyone,

Well, Christmas is almost upon us, personally I just finished decorating the tree, and it put me in a very holiday-ish mood, and anyway, I’ve always had a thing for Time-Lapse photography, but I’ve never been able to do it with my Fuji, so, upon looking forward to Christmas, I’m even more excited by the fact that I may be getting a Canon EOS 400D, which is capable of Time Lapse photography, and I cannot wait, it’s going to be very cool, and to show you what I mean by cool look at this:

That is most certainly interesting, and being able to do things like that will make me very happy. It’s quite simple really, all you need is:

• A DigiCam capable of Time Lapse photography
• A Computer, (Mac or PC), preferably a laptop
• Compiler tool, (I will use Quicktime Pro)

And that is all it takes for some cool time lapse work. I say, preferably a laptop, because that means that you could do this outdoors. With Nikons, I believe, (however don’t know for sure), that you can set it to timelapse for you, with no computer, the advantages are obvious, however, it’s not hard to realise you’ll need a big memory card if you do that.

I think that Canon’s bundled software has a timelapse recording capability with it, which means, out of the box timelapsing. If it does not, you can easily download software, for example, GBTimelapse, which allows timelapsing with most canon cameras.

Once you have the software sorted, it is a simple case of getting the shots. The subject can be of almost anything, for example, mountains with clouds rolling through them, a road with traffic on it. Somebody working, all sorts of things. And then you set up the camera, on a tripod preferably, or on a solid rest, taking the pictures. You’ll probably want to take a lot of shots to make sure the video isn’t only a few seconds worth of footage, maybe taking pics of the subject for hours, even days.

With the final pictures you can use quicktime, (very quick and easy), to go, File>Open Image Sequence, then you just select the pictures, and there you go.

Of course, the advantage of doing all these pictures with a new digital camera, rather than with an old fashioned video camcorder, and then speeding it up, is that you are left with a sequence of images that are already HD, and can be cut to any resolution you want, 1980×1080, 1280×720, 640×480, anything! Ready for use in any situation.

Anyway, I’ll let you know if/when I get my 400D, and when I do any time lapse work.

Hope you’re well,

Charlie -