July 15, 2007
Inverted Cloud Timelapse
I use a batch action in Photoshop to process the photos from my timelapse adventures. Usually I just resize, crop, and color correct but you could do a lot more if you feel like it. Above is the result of some layering, inverting, and I can’t remember what else I did to this batch. The second half is especially psychedelic. Enjoy…
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February 28, 2007
Enormous Cloud
I am going to start sharing some more of my timelapse movies here on Found Photography starting with this short clip of an enormous cloud. Even with the wide angle lens I couldn’t fit this cloud in the frame! I wish I would have been faster and could have got this from the beginning, but I am happy I got what I got.
The YouTube video is a bit dark and fuzzy, so if you want to see a version with more detail, check out this Quicktime movie (8mb).
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November 21, 2006
Timelapse Sunset
I have been pretty quiet on this blog for a while, so I thought I would share with you the timelapse movie I made yesterday. This is the view out the window at work. Not bad, huh?
The YouTube video is a bit dark and fuzzy, so if you want to see a version with more detail, check out this Quicktime movie (13mb).
Posted by Adrian at 10:36 AM | TrackBack
August 9, 2006
67,583 Photos = 3.5 Minutes
It is about time I talked a little bit about some of the timelapse photography I make. Below you can watch one of the biggest timelapse projects I have completed. I took 67,583 photos from August 2005 - May 2006 to create this 3 minute and 40 second clip. Obviously alot was edited out and spead up, but still that is a heck of a lot of pictures.
(If you like what you saw on the YouTube video, but want to see a cleaner version, you can download a 30mb file here that shows better detail.)
Posted by Adrian at 10:42 PM | TrackBack
March 22, 2006
How to Make "Spinning" Vehicle Photography
I am going to take a break from camera modifications, and show you a simple way to make large objects (like a car) “spin” by taking a series of still images. You have probably seen this effect in car commercials, and maybe you wondered how it was done. For small objects a turntable is obviously the easiest way to create this effect, but if you want to do this on a large scale, things get a little more complex since most of us don’t have access to an enormous turntable. The solution is to let the large object remain stationary and take a series of photos in a circle around the vehicle. The hard part is taking each photo from the same distance from the vehicle, at the same height and at equal intervals. You can “eyeball” it like I did for the car above, or if precision is crucial, you can be more precise by using the following instructions. Actually it isn’t that hard, and you don’t even need to do any math, make any measurements, or use any tools! Here’s how to do it…
Before you get started, make sure you have the following supplies: A digital camera, a tripod, about 100ft of rope, a second person, and chalk. That’s it!
A. The first thing you need is a large level area with enough room to draw a large circle around the object, let’s say a car, in the center. A parking lot is ideal, but If all you can find is dirt or gravel, you can mark the ground with spikes or nails instead of chalk. Find a spot in the middle of your space and mark it with chalk. This will be the center point of our circle. Anchor one end of your rope to this point or have a friend hold the rope to this point. Tie a piece of chalk to the other end at the distance that you want the radius of your circle to be. Now draw the circle. For this example, I will be doing a half circle. Once you have drawn a circle, each of you stands on opposite sides of the circle and pull the rope tight. Position yourselves so that the center of the rope is directly over the center of your circle. Mark you and your partner’s place on the outside of the circle. These points are the beginning and end of where we will be taking photos. You should have something that looks like this:
B. Now we have to find the point on our circle half way between our start and end points. To do that, think back to your geometry class. Make 2 arcs using the start and end points as the center. Then hold the string from the center of our first large circle through where our two new arcs intersected and mark this point on our original circle. It is easier to show you a diagram than to explain, so this image should clear up any confusion:
C. Now we have a starting point, an ending point, and a middle point. Now we simply mark the points half way between them. To do this, we basically do the same things as step B. It looks like this:
D. Repeat this process of dividing our circle until you have as many points as you need. Since we are dividing the circle equally, the number of points will go from 3 to 5 to 9 to 17 to 33 to 65, etc. The ideal number is probably 33 because that gives you about a second of video at 30 frames per second. A final map would look like this if you were shooting for 33 photos:
E. Now that our map is finished, we are ready to start taking photos. Move your car so that the center of the car is over the center point of our circle. Lock your camera into your tripod, and take one photo from each point on our circle. To make sure that your tripod is in the same position for each shot, have each leg of the tripod sit on the circle and center line like this:
F. Now you should have 33 photos of the car. Each photo becomes a frame in our movie. There are several ways to make a movie. You can use Quicktime Pro to turn the series of images into a .mov, or use Photoshop to create an animated gif. Obviously, you are going to have the background in each shot, so if you want a silhouette like my example above, you are going to need to cut out the vehicle in each frame and replace the background with white. This is quite tedious, but the result is worth it.
Conclusion: I have used this technique for commercial television work with great success. You can see an example of this technique used in a Jayco television commercial I helped with. You should be able to see the spinning RV’s at the bottom of the spot. I hope you find this tutorial helpful. As always, if you end up using my advice, I would love to see the results!
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November 12, 2005
Batch Action to Remove Hot Pixels
Although I haven't talked much about it yet on this site, I have been doing a lot of time-lapse photography lately. I use a Nikon Coolpix 995 which does a great job. The only thing is that it is getting old, and has a bunch of hot pixels. Hot pixels are those bright pink, green, or blue dots that show up in the same place on every photo. They aren't a problem for me under normal shooting conditions, but during long exposures they get really bad. Last week I was doing a time-lapse at night to record the stars moving in the sky. The exposure time was 8 seconds, so the hot pixels were very evident. Here is how I removed all the hot pixels from over 1000 pictures by creating a batch action in Photoshop.
1. The first thing we have to do is figure out where all the hot pixels are. You do this by taking a long exposure in the dark or with the lens cap on. Open this picture in Photoshop, and you will see a completely black image with hot pixels scattered all over. Use the magic wand with a tolerance of about 10 to select the black. Your selection should select everything but the hot pixels. You may want to experiment with the tolerance to make sure that you select the right amount of black vs. hot pixels. Next, go to Select and click on "Save Selection." In the window that opens, select "New" from the Document drop-down and "New" from the Channel drop-down. Name your selection "Hot Pixels" and click ok. This will open your selection in a new document. At this point you can close the other file so that you are left with only the new selection file open. Save the new selection file to your desktop, and name it something like "Hot_Pixels.psd." When you save it, make sure that "alpha channels" is checked. Now you can minimize that window (but don't close it) because we will use it again later.
2. Open one of the files that you are going to be removing the hot pixels from. We are going to create the action that we will use on all the files. If your Actions palette isn't open already, select "Actions" under the Windows menu to open it. In the Actions palette, click the triangle in the upper right corner and select "New Action." Name your new action "Remove Hot Pixels" and click "Record." Now unless we hit the stop button (the square at the bottom of the actions palette) everything we do in Photoshop will be recorded. Be careful not to do any undo's or extra steps. Next, under Select, click "Load Selection." In the window that opens, select "Hot Pixels" under document and "Hot Pixels" under channel. This will create a selection of everything except for the hot pixels. Under "Edit" select "Copy." Next, under "Edit" select "Paste." This will create a new layer. Now we go to "Filter" and select "Gausian Blur." Depending on the resolution of your image, you should set the blur to between 2-10 pixels and click "OK." Next, under "Select" click on "Load Selection" and load the "Hot Pixel" selection again. This time, make sure that the "invert" box is checked. This will make a selection of just where the hot pixels are located. Under "Edit" select "Copy," then under "Edit" select "Paste." Now delete the second layer (the one that is blurred). You should be left with two layers. One is the original image, and the second is a layer that covers up our hot pixels with the pixels that we blurred. Click the second layer on and off to see the before and after versions. If you aren't satisfied, you may have to go back and change the amount of pixels that you blurred earlier in this step. If everything looks good, flatten the image. Now save the image as a .jpg into a new folder on your desktop and close the file. Click the square on the bottom of the Actions pallette to stop recording our action.
3. Delete the image that we just saved into the new folder. We don't need it because this picture will get recreated when we finally batch all the images. If we don't delete it, it might mess up our batch when it tries to save over this file.
4. Back in Photoshop, make sure that our "Hot_Pixles.psd" file is still open. Now we are ready to start our batch of images. All the files you want to remove hot pixels from should all be located in the same folder. Under "File" select "Automate" and then "Batch." In the window that opens, make sure that "Remove Hot Pixels" is selected as the action. For the "Source," find the folder that contains all the photos that you want to remove hot pixels from. Under "Destination, select the folder where we saved our photo from step 2. It should look pretty much like this:
When you click "OK," the action will begin. It will take a few seconds for it to start processing, but then it should open every file in the folder, apply our action to it, and resave it to the new folder. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take quite a while. I am usually doing several thousand images, so I like to let it run over night. Since my photos are all going to be combined into a time lapse movie, I usually add a resize command and sometimes some color correction to my action so that I can simply open the series of images in Quicktime as a finished movie.
I hope some of you find this tutorial helpful. Good luck, and let me know if you find anything missing in this tutorial.