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"Southwest Light"


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I watched the timelapse footage of the stars and the radio telescopes and noticed that the motion of the radio telescopes was jerky. I think the 720p format would smooth the motion if you are willing to accept lower resolution.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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A couple of recent iphone behind-the-scenes shots.

 

We are living way up in the High Sierra mountains now, with limited internet access. The producer of my film, Nigel Stanford, just arrived yesterday and will be shooting with me all week. I'm very stoked to have him here!

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Can you tell us more about the motion control slider rigs that you and other people are using? Is this off-the-shelf homemade parts or some sort of product?

 

 

I'd like to know this too.

 

Stunning BTS shots by the way, especially some of the sunset shots on the first page with the two cameras side by side.

 

 

Simon

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey guys, that is the camBLOCK motion-control system. It's available for purchase now: http://www.camblock.com camBLOCK is extremely advanced for its size, price and weight.

 

I highly recommend camBLOCK.

 

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We had another awesome day out at Mono Lake today. Thankfully, we had hauled the Cinevate Atlas down to the shore with us, so when this rainbow popped off, we were ready.

 

Frame grab from Red MX #352, shot at 50 frames per second:

 

redgrabmonobirdrainbow.jpg

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We spent the morning today on Mono Lake, searching for locations and birds.

 

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This afternoon, we worked on gear. I have become a field tester for KATA bags. They sent me this freekin awesome Kata Grizzly-4 pre-production bag, which is absolutely EPIC.

 

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The entire Red MX fits inside the Grizzly-4, completely built and ready to go with all cables, the Red cradle with Red RAM drive, a 150Wh battery, a Red 7" LCD, ET slider, filters, etc, plus the Duclos 80-200mm PL lens. This backpack bag is going to save a ton of wear and tear on my back.

 

xf41mh.jpg

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np5oub.jpg

 

Last night I did a field test of the add-hoc "Timelapse Crane" kit Kessler put together.

 

Check out the video here:

 

Next step is tossing a timelapse pan-tilt head onto this sucker! :ihih:

 

 

 

Here is a short video tour of our 30ft toy hauler trailer, aka the "Mobile Production Studio":

 

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Amazing stuff... what sort of ASA, shutter speed, f-stop setting do you use for the stars? How are you handling exposure changes when doing night-to-day time-lapse shots?

 

David, for that Bristlecone shot above, I was using a Canon 5D Mark II with an EF 14mm II at f/2.8. ISO 3200 with a 34 second exposure.

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How are you handling exposure changes when doing night-to-day time-lapse shots?

 

Day-to-night is still tricky. There is a new product called the Bramper (http://www.timescapes.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1893) that can ramp blub exposures on a DLSR. So, for example, you could start your shot out at 1/4 of a second, and have it ramp up to 30 seconds for night. It will take some finesse to master bulb ramping, because every environment is different. You need to account for the terrain, for example -- mountains, clouds, etc. And the ramps are not linear, of course.

 

Also, camBLOCK will be introducing bulb ramping as an additional key-framed "axis" in the coming weeks, which I am very excited about!

 

As of right now, for sunsets, for example, I just wait for the optimum timing (clouds about to flare up orange), and I start my exposure 2 stops over, and end it 2 stops under, then I extract the "sweet spot" for the final shot.

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As of right now, for sunsets, for example, I just wait for the optimum timing (clouds about to flare up orange), and I start my exposure 2 stops over, and end it 2 stops under, then I extract the "sweet spot" for the final shot.

 

Do you ever manually adjust the shutter speed or aperture doing a time-lapse series to compensate exposure?

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Do you ever manually adjust the shutter speed or aperture doing a time-lapse series to compensate exposure?

 

Never. I think the values jump too much. That's why an external bulb ramper that can operate on fractions of a second spread out over hundreds of shots seems to make more sense to me. Luckily, the hardware is starting to emerge to finally do this.

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