OK, you know those cool time-lapse videos like “Panama Canal at 600 knots” and the like? Well, I thought maybe I could do some time-lapse video of my local waters, and it might be kind of fun.
So here’s what I came up with. Don’t laugh.
Anyway, I mounted my little camera onto this preposterous tripod contraption and set it to take pictures at one-minute intervals. That’s the quickest it will take pictures.
And then I went for a little circuit of Lake Union. I took some nice pictures, but one minute is not NEARLY often enough for this sort of thing. I need a camera that takes pictures about once every five or six seconds.
Once I’ve got my pictures, I’ll need to figure out how to build them into a movie. Anybody with some experience here, please feel free to make recommendations in the comments! Thanks.
Oh, you want to see some of my “movie”? Well, it’s more of a slideshow, and without the sensation of motion, it’s a fairly boring one!
…etc. I think you get the point.
One thing that becomes clear is that the camera isn’t QUITE level! In my boat, I need to adjust the camera so it will be level while I’m at the helm (starboard side), NOT so it’s level while I’m standing on the bow adjusting things. Hmmm.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Though the pictures aren’t all that often, it’s still kind of cool to see where you’ve been. Let the camera do all the work! Nice pictures as well.
Tim, are you on a Mac? Here’s how to make a time-lapse movie with iMovie:
http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/stop-motion-digital-camera/
Looks like you need a bowman to assist with the camera operation. I VOLUNTEER…….just love to go for a boat ride………….
An important element with time lapse is for each capture to be framed alike. With an unstable camera platform (the bow deck) every capture is framed differently and the result is an extremely “jerky” movie. The horizon will move up and down and right to left with each frame. 30 of those changes every second will cause headaches to the viewer. Perhaps what is needed is some sort of self-leveling platform for the camera. Several tools can be used to get the desired results. Windows Movie Maker will not accomodate frame stretch so capture should be at no fewer than 1 frame/sec. Adobe Premiere Elements allows the editor to speed up or slow down the playback speed. I tested a 3min 30sec clip and sped it up 2997% (the equivalent of 1 frame/sec.) and it played the entire clip back in 7sec. So if you have some advanced movie editing software you can shoot at normal speed and take care of the timelapse issue in the editing room. The editor will not however take care of the stable framing problem. That sounds like a Mythbusters “out-of-the box” type solution.
Have you tried Flickr.com? Upload them all and you can at least get a slide show (which may be better than a movie given the unlevelness?)
You can post a flickr movie also but haven’t done it – though I think you create it and upload it so that doesn’t solve making it.
After I typed this I did a quick check and forgot that the free software Picasa will do this on a PC. See http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=19533
I use a cheap camera in the boat for some work. It is a Unibrain fire-i and connects to my windows laptop via a firewire card. Many apps are available to do things with this type of video/still camera. I keep the camera inside the cabin though due to waves/salt-spray. I have a custom app I wrote in Vis Studio 2008 and I use Taksi for recording.
I’ve played around a bit with time-lapse video recordings of cruises using a cheap Linksys wireless network camera (http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WVC54GCA). The resolution won’t be nearly as nice as a “real” camera, but you have a lot of control over the frame rate.
The last time we had great luck just placing the camera on a non-skid mat on the roof of the pilothouse, but we had some pretty smooth water.
I use Rose Point ECS to record and playback the video (along with all of my other navigation data), but there are a lot of other programs out there that should be able to record the low-rate MJPEG output from these cameras…