Tuesday 23 February 2010

Adventures in Time-Lapse

This video is copyright Richard A Roworth 2010 and must not be copied, published or broadcast in any way shape or form without written permission.

For a while I have been wanting to record a time-lapse video of falling snow. Today I (only just) got that chance. Although I knew snow was forecast, it wasn't scheduled to arrive until after dark so I thought my chances were slim. However, the snow arrived just before dusk so I managed to film 30 seconds worth (over 60 minutes). This worked out as 720 frames at 1 frame per 5 seconds.

Unfortunately I only had a few moments to set up as we had visitors, I was cooking dinner and our 1 week old baby needed feeding and changing! Also, the arrival of the snow took me by surprise so it is a bit of a rush job.

Nikon D300
50mm
f8 - 1.8

I left the camera on a/p as the light was fading, changing it to manual and 15th sec a few minutes before the end to produce the fade to black effect.

I also changed the aperture to f1.8 about half way through as condensation was smearing the glass of the patio door I was shooting through. This changed the depth of field which is an effect I might play around with in future time lapse projects.

Mistakes;
  • White balance on auto.
  • Perhaps it would have been better on full manual shutter, but I wouldn't have been able to alter the depth of field half way through.
  • Little preparation time led to poor choice of composition.
  • Tripod pressed against the patio door was not steady enough and led to camera movement.


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