A thread for links to our (and others) South Australian time lapse weather photography, and discussion of time lapse techniques, cameras, etc.

Good idea, Just a quick run down on techniques and software I use for Time Lapse photography... Firstly I try and keep the interval time as short as possible, this is so when the final movie is made it doesn't look jumpy. I usually set my camera so it takes Medium JPEG images, you can do it in RAW or other formats but I find using medium JPEG is enough for 1080p movies. Once the timelapsse has been taken, usually 300+ photo's then I use a program called Virtualdub to make an AVI. Virtual dub is free ware and has many free plugins which allow you to do almost anything with it. Once the AVI has been created I usually do final processing in a program called Sony Vegas, which you can do quite a bit in it. I usually do most of my rendering at 1080p and for web I usually make it a WMV file.

Just a note on the camera settings, do everything in manual, otherwise you will get jumpy lighting conditions, and funny colours. Set the Camera to Manual mode, Set the WB to Daylight or whatever suits you. Make sure your focus is in manual also, nothing worse than coming back to your camera and finding out it focused on a rain drop that had appeared on the lens. Some people set the aperture then slightly rotate the camera lens so the aperture iris doesn't keep opening and closing during the exposures, which can lead to jumpy lighting also.

I use a Micnova intervalometer for all my time lapses, works just as well as the genuine brand ones, but much cheaper.

No doubt others have different techniques, you never know you may do something different, which makes life easier.

I use my Canon HV30 hd video cam and basically point to the spot and shoot.I just let the camera do its thing in full auto,if i want to do manuel settings like exposure or apature settings to enhance the image or under and over expose the image, that is no problem at all.I use HD digital tape and run it for as long as i want (upto 45mins on sp on the tape).
I use Edius 5 and edit all my hd stuff there.For time lapse i put the sequence on the time line and speed it up to around 4000%,in other words a 30 min scene will be shortend to 45 seconds on the time line.
Depending on what quality you want the final project converted to you can get great results.I like to keep my hd 1080 stuff uncompressed and onto blu ray dvd.
HD tape records at around 28mb per second uncompressed so you can get some realy good images on video.

Thanks for posting into this thread Astro_man and Alpha67
Due to the Big Day I haven't had a chance to do anything on this topic since I started the thread but I'll get back to it when the dust has settled metaphorically speaking.
It's a big field of South Australian weather photography that remains almost completely untouched on the WZ South Australian forum threads - just a few examples have been posted so far.

Ok Unstable has asked me to post in here this vid I took of the Dec 7th 2010 action in the Mid North...

Thanks for posting your video here TE
It's the most dramatic footage of an SA storm taken by one of our members I recall seeing.

To get the best experience I suggest viewing it on Youtube on fullscreen with all the lights in the viewing room off. Viewing the embedded video should be regarded as viewing a thumbnail version only - it's gives us a first impression but not the full experience.

Here's some of the things I like about this video. TE and Helen arrived at a good vantage point well ahead of the arrival of the storm, with plenty of time to calmly organise their photo equipment, and video and photo the approaching storm. The video includes long periods where the camera is stationary and anchored rather than panning and jerking about. Also TE changed the camera view and zoom when he felt it was appropriate and then re-anchored the camera. The time-lapse sections of the video have speeded up the action to a speed that seems pretty appropriate to me - not too fast and not too slow. TE was using a camera with sufficient memory to take a lengthy video. Helen's cameo appearances work pretty well I think

Uploaded onto Youtube by Markus on Aug 12, 2011
"Some weak convection over the Mintaro area during winter"

I really like this time lapse video Markus. To my eyes the field of view is excellent with the low hills in the distance adding to the perspective, and plenty of sky in view, the fast motion speed is good for following the convective activity, and the camera is steady so we can concentrate on the convective activity without sudden shifts in camera direction or shaking.

Well done Markus - this is pretty good

nice work Markus, cheers for posting Unstable and Teckert thats an insane video of that day almost a year ago now.
Ive always been interested in Time lapses, I use to play around with them about 5 years ago with my video camera, back then I use to use a sony trv-27e with DV tapes, stream them to my pc via firewire and just increase the speed say 4000% lol, since my video camera stopped working a couple years ago I just didnt have the means (unles I wanted to use slr and go through a million shutter cycles) so last week as I was trawling through android market I found this epic little app that does it all for you on your phone TIMELAPSE APP so I gave it a go this morning and it works a treat, it even gives you the option of using your full sensor, so I have 8 megapixel camera in mine so in theory can make that size video, lol if you can find a tv to play it on, theres a calculator as well so you can work out how many milliseconds to set the 'shutter' to and how much space you need on your phone etc, so pretty much fully customisable , anyway its worth checking out if you have an android phone its free, go and have a play
did THIS ONE this one this morning

That's impressive Azz! Your trawling through the Android market has caught a rare fish I wonder if some of the digicams and digividicams could be similarly programmed by an app (I know nothing about apps and whether they can be used on digicams). Probably most of the digicams our members own would not have a time lapse facility built-in so require post-processing of normal speed videos or manual taking of one photo every n secods or minutes.

_Chris_ posted this video "A ten min time lapse of a coldie passing over the southern suburbs of Adelaide" onto Youtube "From: cmhandler86 ... Aug 15, 2009" and also likely posted it into these forums somewhere.

If I remember correctly Chris was still in the early stages of developing his time lapse techniques at the time, but this video shows an SA coldie that's smoking! Coldies with their often spectacular anvils and great heights in very deep cold air masses just beg to be timelapsed. Unfortunately there's been a dearth of classic SA coldies in the past three years, at least that's my impression anyway. I hope this few coldies and no snow was just a temporary phaze our weather/climate was going through.

Last snow i can remember was 09, from memory. Hope it is just a phase.

http://vimeo.com/32305544
This is from my back yard in the city, looking south, 17 days ago, shows a n/westerly prior to a slight s/westerly change. It's from a hacked Panasonic GH1 using this timelapser method.

Now I'm waiting for some more interesting weather...

Thanks for posting your time lapse video John
My mini-review is: "well-exposed clouds so that aspect is quite good, but the method of producing the time lapse has produced a video that is a little jerky for comfortable viewing". There are other time lapse methods these days that produce pretty smooth time lapse videos so I'd suggest upgrading to one of those so your efforts are better rewarded. You could look to see if Chris's and TE's method of using post-camera rendering would work for you and your camera maybe?

Unstable - not sure what you are seeing there? Maybe your computer couldn't handle it?
John's time-lapse is high quality stuff!! Much smoother than mine.
Cannot wait for him to do some time-lapse of some storm clouds approaching!!

CORRECTION
Crikey you're right TE, John's time-lapse IS high quality stuff!! . I just tried turning the HD off, reloaded the video from scratch and it played very smoothly
My apologies John!

I just tried it on a slower PC, and it is jumpy on HD.
On my PC, even with HD turned on, its smooth as.

*didn't realise it might push the older PC's*

I've got the chance to hit the tropics soon, so I'll post back here in the new year...hopefully something more dramatic!

from today...notice the vid is titled buildup...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE2j0Mzz-Q

Love that timelapse Jr, very well done.

Thought I would post this one here aswell, nothing special, just your average convection.

Helpful software for video shaking fix... (if using Virtual Dub)
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/deshaker_guide.htm