This time I had Liz find some small stuff around the house so I could test my new camera scripts. I wrote one that advances the zoom a specific amount so I can shoot stuff that “jump zooms” to the beat of a song.
Here is a little movie to demonstrate this effect. I wrote the song at 120 beats per minute and the footage plays at 24 frames per second. Easy to subdivide the measures and make everything come out even. Every cut is on the beat. There are other scripts in the film, but the one that “jump zooms” is the one I wrote today.
The A640 only has 9 zoom positions so it’s pretty limited. I want to use its choppy goodness to my advantage.
I will be using these effects and this style in the video for “Combat” along with the other scripts I’ve been working on and a top secret motion control device - OOOOOOOOOOO - top secret! I need to get me some tank models and some mini remote control helicopters.
Here is the 30 second experiment in time - “Jumpy”
We had a beautiful warm weekend in Portland but it’s back to being cold at night.
I decided to shoot some timelapse outside my house. It was dark … with an orange sky.
The shutter was open anywhere from 6 to 15 seconds per frame. I used another timelapse script and set it to shoot 24 shots. I was standing beside the road freezing my butt off. Batteries ran out … memory card filled up … I only ended up with 60 or so frames. I wanted the footage to playback at 24 frames per second, but I only had so many frames so its 6 fps.
Stitched it together in After Effects and made a droning sound in Sonar for a soundtrack.
Liz and I went up to the Japanese gardens today. It was over 80 degrees up there! Whew!!!
I finished a new script in uBasic for my Canon A640. This one shoots a number of pictures, moves the focus in a specified increment (shooting a picture at each step), and then shoots another round of pictures at a second (more distant) focus. It allows for focus control while shooting time lapse.
UBASIC CANON A640 FOCUS A TO B SCRIPT
(not in proper script format)
@title Focus Shift (Set Focus Manual)
@param a Hold On Initial (frames)
@default a 24
@param b Focus Shift (mm)
@default b 1
@param c Hold On Final (frames)
@default c 24
@param d Focus Frames
@default d 48
if a<1 then let a=1
if b<1 then let b=1
if c<1 then let c=1
if d<1 then let d=1
q=a+c+d
get_focus f
for s= 1 to a
print "Pic", s, "of", q, "Focus", f; "mm"
shoot
next s
g=f
for s= 1 to d
if g<62 then let g=62
if g>65535 then let g=65535
g=g+b
print “Pic”, a+s, “of”, q,”Focus”, g; “mm”
set_focus g
shoot
next s
for s= 1 to c
print “Pic”, a+d+s, “of”, q, “Focus”, g; “mm”
shoot
next s
end
I also shot quite a bit with my HV20 so the video below is mostly live action video, not scripted time lapse.
There are four scripted time lapse shots. The first shot is one of them. Maybe yall can pick out the other three.
I made my first attempt at a micro dolly today. I want to use it to shoot miniatures for the “Combat” video. I started with HO scale which ended up being way to small and unstable. The camera wanted to fly off the track. I took it all back to the hobby store and supersized it up to O scale. It ended up looking like this:
I have a Canon A640 that has hacked firmware. I wrote a script to control the focus and the shot interval based on code I found here. As of now, I can control the number of frames before the focus pull, and the amount of change in focus (in mm) between shots.
UNDERSTANDING TIMELAPSE
For this shoot, the camera took about 1 picture every second. I wanted it to play at 24 frames per second (the standard movie rate). The movie is around 9 seconds long so:
9 seconds * 24 fps = 216 frames
Another way to look at time lapse is to think about how long the even is that you are shooting. Let’s say you want to shoot the daylight hours of one day and you want your movie to be 30 seconds long. How may frames do you need?
30 seconds * 24 fps = 720 frames
If you are going to capture the whole day, how often should the camera shoot a frame?
This was a test with my still camera to see if I could have it control a shift in focus at a given interval. I sat in my yard and pushed the camera down the track and it took a picture every second. I pushed the camera REALLY SLOWLY. I stitched the frames together in After Effects at 24 fps. It worked pretty well in the first and last shots. The middle shot was a test of the interval timer.
Here is “Surfin’ with the Alligator” - 9 seconds of joy!
