Wednesday, April 28, 2010



Sunrise at Landscape Arch in Arches NP. When I imagined taking this video what I had in mind was the shadow cast by the arch span moving slowly down the wall of sandstone behind the arch. However, some sandstone fins in front of the arch really block direct sunlight briefly at the start of sunrise so that by the time the shadow forms it is already half way down the wall. Also if I were to try this again it would be nice to find a higher vantage point from which to record the sunrise to get a better view of the changing shadows on the arch.

I got out here early enough that I could still see the stars in the west. This presented the challenge of trying to choose the right exposure so that the highlights wouldn't be totally blown out when the sun started to rise. I decided that there was not going to be any one correct exposure for the entire sunrise and decided that I would manually control the shutter speed while holding the aperture constant to maintain the same depth of field throughout. So, while I was taking pictures over the course of two hours I had the camera set to show the histogram of each shot after it was taken. When I noticed the highlights getting close to being clipped I would speed up the shutter by one step and continue. As you watch the video you will be able to recognize the places where shutter speed was adjusted. The change in brightness between shutter speed settings ended up being a lot more noticeable that I had hoped.

Its possible that more work in post-processing the images to blur the gap between shutter speed settings would help this problem but I'm going to have to continue trying to think of another way to achieve the effect I'm looking for.

I've painted this scene, which can be viewed at http://rarebowl.blogspot.com/ .

Monday, April 26, 2010



Sunrise at Dead Horse Point. The morning after I made the previous video, I got up and drove out here early to try and catch sunrise from this amazing viewpoint. When you see a series of time lapse shots in a movie like Koyaanisqatsi you think "Oh, that must have been fun, driving around Utah to a different place for every sunrise and sunset, I could put something like that together with 2 weeks worth of shooting". But, the environment has to cooperate or your results will be underwhelming.

This video suffered from clouds hanging low on the horizon to the east. The rocks are illuminated with the red color I was hoping for only briefly as the sun passes between clouds on its way up. This would have been fine for a still photograph where one can wait for the perfect lighting, but for time lapse you need perfect lighting for the entire sunrise. It may take numerous trips to the place that you're trying to record.

The tip that I can give based on another problem with this video is to set your camera to manual focus once you have your scene set up. Not only can a problem with autofocus delay your camera from taking its picture, changes in focal point can slightly change the framing of the shot and give the video a jumpy quality like the picture is popping forward and backward as the focal setting changes from shot to shot.

Sunday, April 25, 2010


Sunset at Park Avenue in Arches National Park. My first real attempt at time lapse and I learned a lot. First to describe the equipment that I am using. I have a Canon Rebel XS with some variety of lenses and a (at the time) a cable release. For this particular video I was carrying a cheap but super-light tripod that I always carry when I'm hiking. It is not particularly stable but is much more bearable to lug around in addition to my other gear.

The first thing I learned about doing time lapse with a still camera is: invest in an intervalometer. Unless you enjoy staring at your watch and counting off 15 seconds between shots almost 300 times over two hours, purchase the intervalometer, set it up to take the required number of shots at the desired framerate and let it go about its business.

Lesson number 2: pick aperture and shutter speed before you start shooting your time lapse. Lighting conditions will change, and your camera will not meter the scene consistently for every shot. So when your camera changes exposure settings between shots you end up with the horrible flickering seen in this video. Unless you plan to shoot the entire thing in RAW, it will be hard to correct this flickering afterwards. So take a few test shots to determine what exposure settings give you the best balance of lights and darks. Then consider what will be happening in two hours, in this case the sun was setting, so I should expect the pictures to start getting a little darker near the end. Choose some ideal exposure and stick with it. There are programs available to correct this type of flickering but as of now, I have not had much success using them.

I've painted this scene which can be viewed at http://rarebowl.blogspot.com/