Flowers 2012 (Photoclubalpha Phlora!)

[Dr. Harout]

BTW, Mark, I was just surfing on e-Bay to find a shutter/timer remote and then I saw your post here.
Quite a coincidence...

[mvanrheenen]

Thank you both!

@Yildiz: Yes, I am pleased with the timer. It's a third party JJC remote I got off ebay new. Sony doesn't have a remote with intervalometer. You can set delay, interval, exposure, how many shots you want to make and have a bulb button for manual exposures. Pretty handy device

@Doc: I do see the 'like', thank you! It is quite the coincidence! If you are serious about a remote, I can recommend the JJC Timer Remote. Costs about £40 on ebay.

The biggest problem with timelapses is the difference in exposure between shots. I set the camera on manual, but made the mistake of using outdoor light, which isn't controllable. This meant exposures were all over the place the whole set. You could see when the clouds past the sun that day This is called flickering in videoland, which is a real b*tch to remove. That's what took the most time. Setting all exposures about the same in LR and then did some smoothing and deflickering in Virtualdub. That's the one thing I have to pay attention to the next time. Also, I made a mistake by changing the focus near the end, which made for a very weird ending. I cut that part out.

Mark

[Dr. Harout]

I hadn't thought of that Mark, so thanks, I shall definitely keep that in mind.

[Birma]

Fabulous first attempt Mark, and thanks for the tips and equipment recommendation. It is tempting to give it a go

Here is a very ordinary static picture from today - if only we had smell by picture as these really made the whole wood very pleasantly fagrant .


2012 Monkswood - Meadowsweet by Birm, on Flickr

Not flowers, but flora


2012 Monkswood - Grass at the wood's edge by Birm, on Flickr

I think tall grasses look wonderful in the sun light and it is a challenge to try and capture this in a picture.

Both A700 and beercan.

[Greg Beetham]

I had a look at the time lapse Mark, it was quite a project, was the focus off to begin with? Or did the subject move out of good focus/dof afterwards during the shoot? (I know how difficult it would be with wind, plant structural strength variations and such) And you can see the variation of WB in the sequence for sure, but it was a mighty effort and thanks for that.
I think those look suitably grassy and wild woody Birma, like you say not an easy subject, maybe the last might have benefited from a slightly lower angle perhaps to take more advantage of the dark background...hard too say, but the lacy look is certainly attractive.
Greg

[Birma]

Thanks Greg - good points about the angle

[Dr. Harout]

Birma, you can crop the second shot from the bottom.
Great shots by the way.

[Birma]

Thanks Doc . I think you're right; a square crop, losing the bottom, looks better.

[mvanrheenen]

I had a look at the time lapse Mark, it was quite a project, was the focus off to begin with? Or did the subject move out of good focus/dof afterwards during the shoot? (I know how difficult it would be with wind, plant structural strength variations and such) And you can see the variation of WB in the sequence for sure, but it was a mighty effort and thanks for that.

Hi Greg,

I made mistakes 'a plenty' in this first go.

The shallow DoF because of the aperture I chose (f/4) and the fact I used a 90mm macro lens has contributed to the sharpness issue. The focus was spot on to begin with, but as the flower blossomed, the distance of the subject to the static camera setup changed. I think this is what you see.

As far as the WB goes, I have a little love/hate relationship on that part with LR. As I was editting the series of shots, I used the copy -> sync settings combo a lot. However, as you can clearly see at the end of the sequence, the settings weren't synced to the last shots of the series. Maybe I didn't see it because it was late when rendering the shots and film, but I was struggling to get LR to do what I wanted too. Maybe it was a combination of those factors.

However, what I learned from the whole experience was:

- check the exposure every x shots, let the camera choose exposure or use controllable light sources. De-flickering footage afterwards is a real pain!
- think longer about the effect of the chosen DoF when doing macro footage, especially if the distance between camera and subject will vary through the sequence

I did manage to create a simple workflow for editting the footage. This will help me in the future I hope.

For those who are interested in the setup I used, here's a list:

Hardware
- subject
- Sony a580 (M-mode, manual focus)
- Tamron 90mm Macro @ f/4
- 32Gb SD card Class 4
- Manfrotto 055XPROB Pro Tripod with some weights for extra stability as the arm was put in a horizontal position
- JJC TM Series Multi-Function Timer Remote Control setup as intervalometer (setup: interval 2 minutes, infinite shots, exposure control by camera)
- Computer: AMD FX-8120 (8 cores) @ 4 Ghz, 16Gb RAM, 2x Crucial 128GB SSD discs in RAID 0. Believe me, you need speed for this!

Software
- Lightroom 4.1 (editting WB, basic de-flickering by roughly minimizing exposure, export to JPEG)
- Irfanview (quick renaming of JPEGs in order)
- VirtualDub + MSU De-flickering plug-in (for smoothing transitions, de-flickering, cropping and rendering footage)
- DivX codec for rendering

Mark

[DennisG]

Well sens we have had the rainiest summer in about 100years or so it hasent been that much to shoot, but the last few days has been slightly better so the other day after a some rain i got ot in the garden to take som pic´s.
but maybe the should be in the macro string
Tamron 90mm on all

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In this one i played with the partial color settings so it´s done in the camera
( don't know if the older sonys got that feature )

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[Greg Beetham]

Nice yellow Rose Dennis.
Greg

[DennisG]

thanx greg, i have struggled a bit with yellow flowers but that one came out nicely i think

[Dusty]

I really love the yellow rose - seeing as it's my favorite rose!

Could you do us a favor and send some of that rain over here? We didn't get what was promised last night.

Dusty

[sury]

Hi guys (and gals),

This is something I wanted to do for a long time, and now I can! This is my first timelapse. I shot 260 shots over 5 hours of a blossoming orchid. This is the result. I'm pleased with the result, only the last frame is a bit quircky, but acceptable for a first go. I can tell you one thing, it's a hell of a lot of work!

Alas, I wasn't able to embed the video. Here's the link: https://vimeo.com/45373032

Mark

Great job Mark. I certainly enjoyed it. I am curious to try it. Since my Dimage A2 has time lapse capability, I will see if I can do it with that one before buying a timer.
Thanks for the inspiration and a new idea to pursue.

Sury

[sury]

Nice Series Dennis. I liked the color/b&W effect of the last one quite a bit.

Sury