Wednesday, February 20, 2013

1 Clip is My Way On The Highway

Hello All!

Here is the first Time Lapse I feel comfortable releasing created from my modified (CHDK Hacked) Canon Powershot S95.  

So this clip offered is my travels along my local expressways at night.

You can read about my experience as well as preview and download the clip by clicking "read more" below.  Happy Downloading!

POV of a car traveling on the highway
 
As always, please e-mail, like us or share this on facebook, tweet, google plus, pinterest or do whatever you can to spread the word about this site. Thanks!



Now the reason I said "comfortable", was this wasn't the first time lapse I did with the camera.  The first few tests were to just discover it's capabilities.  While they were technically fine, little attention was paid to framing or composition. Daytime time lapses are also trickier with this camera because, in order for a smooth video, you need to drag the shutter.  Doing that in the day lets in a lot of light.  The camera does not have a filter thread to add any ND stops (that I knew of at the time), so I needed to close the iris as far as I could, and even that didn't balance against the added light.  I thought it's strength would be at night, where I could keep the camera wide open while dragging the shutter.  This video was shot with a shutter speed of half a second, with a picture being taken every second.  It was shot in a .CR2 RAW format on a Class 4 Sandisk card.  I think the image interval could have been snappier, because I did notice a slight pause when it was writing the RAW image to the disk.  I'll have to test it using a faster card.
A Canon Powershot S95 modified with the CHDK Hack taking a time lapse video mounted using a flexible arm and clap

A benefit to this camera that I almost always have to deal with when using DLSRs is the "aperture flicker" that can happen if you happen to have the f-stop anything other than "wide open".  This happens because the iris opens and closes for each shot.  I saw none of that when I was shooting my tests.  For one of the tests, I had the camera at an f8 and had absolutely no visible strobe.

I am excited to add this camera to my kit.  It is small enough that I can put it on an arm and clamp, mount it virtually anywhere, and it takes up very little room in my gear pack.  Pairing this with some 37mm ND filters,  I see myself setting this up and letting it run while I am able to concentrate on full motion footage with my T2i, thus doubling my productivity out in the field.  If I did have to recommend this camera, I would definitely suggest upgrading to the Powershot S100 or S110.  It has a higher megapixel count, can accept the CHDK modification, and it is capable of FULL HD video recording as well.

As you may know, recently I am pushing the boundaries as far as how many media files I can associate with each clip through Archive.org.  You have the option of downloading a PhotoJPEG, H.264 or WMV file. I'd also like to go back and update all of the earlier clips and will do so eventually.  Doing so is a very big time commitment for me with the current processing power of my computer.

This video was shot using a Canon Powershot S95


8 comments:

  1. You've been a life saver. Made this as an intro video for my worship band and we used it yesterday for the first time. Had an awesome response...thank you so much! Here's a link to the video.

    http://youtu.be/-Sc4rbsoX4o

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  2. Hi, this is good work. And nice tutorial too. For those looking for more stock footage, you can find them at The Stock Footage Company. You can also sell your clips there for a very high payout.

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  3. Great video! In what city was it shot?

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  4. I've been looking for something just like this. Great work and thanks for sharing. I'll do my best to spread the word

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  5. I've been looking for something just like this. Great work and thanks for sharing. I'll spread the word.

    ReplyDelete