Supermoon Lunar Eclipse (original time lapse)
Blood Moon
Leaving your camera unattended on a the rooftop of an 18 story building across town in order to catch this rare event left me with a slightly uneasy feeling. Nonethelss,, the benefits far outweighed the downside so I commited to shooting the Supermoon Lunar Eclipse which occurred on September 27th, 2015.
In the end, the biggest hurdle turned out to be the large cloud bank that rolled through the western side of Denver, Colorado that evening. Interestingly, the view from the East side of town was mostly clear... oh the irony. Alas, I didn't have access to the same vantage point so you have to make do sometimes.
It was quite a bummer that I had not yet created an extended battery system for this camera yet which would have allowed it to continue shooting for several more hours. The camera's battery was exhausted after roughly 600 raw images which had an exposure range of 8.0 seconds at f6.3 down to 1/250 of a second at the beginning. I did not set it up for ISO changes. The color temperature shifts that are associated with so called 'holy grail' time lapses can be a real challenge to deal with (if you leave WB set to AUTO) - nearly impossible to fix without really good software/plugins.
In the end, I would likely use my RamperPro2 in order to just do a holy grail (day to night timelapse) if I were to do it again today. If you check on my youtube account, you'll see an earlier version of this which has really horrible color shifting going on as I shot it in aperture priority and auto white balance - DO NOT DO THIS - just set your white balance to anything and then you can make changes after the fact a lot easier. Also note the extreme amount of flicker (old version). I was in a hurry and distracted, more concerned that a hawk or squirrel would launch my camera over the side of the building. I've watermarked the image with 3 dots in the center for now - later I'll likely add my regular watermark. Ironically, while traveling I have exponentially more gear with me than I happened to have with me in my home city - go figure.
Words of Wisdom:
If you want to shot time lapse sequences while traveling, you should practice and refine your approach and do not worry about shutter actuations. Your camera(s) is a tool. I have run a T3i to around 155,000 shutter accusations before the shutter finally failed (some part broke). I have another T3i that is approaching that number once again. I have run a Canon 5dii to around 80000 exposures - no trouble and a Sony A7r which I haven't kept track of honestly, but it's likely quite easy to look up the actuations (I just don't care anymore).
Last Frame from the Time Lapse
(easier to enjoy and review the scene)
Resources:
If you aren't ready to pony up for LRTimelapse, then this is a great place to start tweaking images via Jeff's plugin:http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/timelapse-support
And of course, LRTimelapse by G.Wegner.
check out the demos: http://lrtimelapse.com/demo/
be well, Conrad ( @timelapse )
(verification link on my site: http://conradolivier.com )
So cool!
Thanks for take a moment to check it out and for the upvote! As stellab mentioned, we all like to get a gold star now and then
Cool view of West Colfax.
Indeed it is - that area is changing rapidly it seems. I did the demolition tl of St. Anthony's which reminds me, I need to get my rig off the roof.
wow, excellent vid, love your work.
would really like to get into timelapse myself. where do i start?
hey @pcste - for me, traditional photography is great, but I too wanted to take it to the next level. There are numerous videos on youtube of course, but you might start poking around here:
So long story short, what camera are you using or wanting to use - they make cheap intervalometers these days if your camera doesn't have an internal one.