[chupathingie]

I dropped off a cleaned-up, re-stitched .tif of this at the printer’s this weekend. Had them print up one at 36″ and a handful at 20″ (the big one’s for the wife, the smaller ones are requests from friends). It’s hard to describe being able to see all the detail at once. I was really surprised that even at 36″ it still looks sharp. Looks like after a year we’re finally gonna have something to hang in the living room LOL

[chupathingie]

Late to the party as usual with a big, enthusiastic ditto. That last shot is frame-worthy; just awesome.

[chupathingie]

Yeah, a PNS is better suited for that kind of thing. The “good” camera won’t get used for that unless I need the extra light sensitivity or longer exposures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t0WCwadKm4

I really want to re-do that with the 5D. I could easily crank the ISO up to 25600 and get clean HD after reduction. That kind of thing would benefit from abusing it a bit, though I think I will see about wedging the mirror up for it. 30 second exposures thru L-series glass aughtta look tack-sharp and bright.

[chupathingie]

Ahh, cool. Currently I have a remote shutter release that’s programmable for interval, duration, # of shots, etc… but that looks like a nifty addition to the PNS cam. The timelapse linked above was almost 15,000 frames. Keep in mind, that was with a 300D, so once the buffer filled up I had to wait for the image to transfer to the card before another image would take. This slowed it down to about 4-5 seconds between frames. I’m using a 5DmkII now, I’d likely fill an 8G card in under 1/2 hour with it; at full rez the raws are like 20 meg each and it doesn’t slow down nearly as much as the original Rebel when the buffer fills up.

One thing anyone attempting to do timelapse with a DSLR should consider is some way to lock the mirror in the up position (this is not the same as the “mirror lock-up” function on some models) for the duration of the shoot. It’s very easy to run off many thousands of frames and wear&tear on the mechanicals is an issue. You can’t avoid running the shutter, but if you slap that mirror assembly up and down 100,000 times something’s gonna break.

[chupathingie]

Thanks, linguine 🙂

Cause, I have a tough time keeping the speed low on the RX8… 😉 I’m in the habit of 7MPH over/engage cruise/change lanes as needed. I think I had the auto focus set for each shot, but even off it would have made no difference. I sheared the plastic pin off of the secondary mirror mechanism; so that when the primary mirror flips up the secondary doesn’t retract and hangs down in front of the shutter covering 80% of the image path :(. Full auto, BTW. I just locked the remote shutter release and let ‘er rip. You can see where I pull over a couple times to change the battery (had an inverter charging the spare). I’m not familiar with CHDK.

Software: Normally for this kind of stuff I run a command line for ffmpeg, but I was having issues at the time (HUA… was still learning my way around linux). I wound up feeding the directory into Blender as a sequential background texture and outputting to avi. Getting everything set up in blender took longer than I hoped… I’m much more familiar with 3DS MAX. It’s actually a very easy process with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i IMG_%4d.JPG video.mp4

-i = input file follows

IMG_%4d.JPG = input filename. My camera shot as “IMG_0001.JPG”.
If your camera shoots, say, “pic00001.jpg”, it would
be “pic%5d.jpg”. These must be in order, none can be
missing or corrupt or ffmpeg will halt at the error. Also,
your first file should be 0001 unless you specify a
starting frame.

video.mp4 = output file and type.

There are a lot of options that can be specified, ie. framerates, scaling, bitrates, etc. This is just a scaled-down minimal command that works using defaults. There are also a lot of front-ends built for ffmpeg ported to whatever OS you’re using if you’d rather drive a mouse.

[chupathingie]

That’s how I broke the auto-focus on my Rebel… it kinda came apart after a few tens of thousands of frames.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFAuoA4JPo0
There’s one of the timelapses I did after applying ducktape to the secondary mirror.

[chupathingie]

Ya know, you’re up way too late when you come home from work and see Rigel well-risen and the Pleiades approaching zenith in August. Got some pretty skies tonight, but only an hour before pre-dawn twilight.

Peeps are lucky I love my job. 😉

[chupathingie]

Good to hear the diffs. Yep, they expect it framed with attached hangar. I’m guessing they want to make it easily displayable. Part contest, part exhibition. I’m planning on as minimal a frame as I can get away with, of course.

Their forum, their rules, I guess.

[chupathingie]

/me breaks out calculator

It’s color, BTW. 24″ gives me 590 without reduction. The original is 14.1K width. I’m trying to be as gentle in post-processing as I can, as well as only applying global filters (it’s a photography entry, not a PS thing; so I’m trying to stick close to analog equivalents).

[chupathingie]

Would it make more sense to reduce the final size to allow a 2:1 reduction and get 600? The reduction would help me as far as noise goes; it’s a high-contrast image and reduction would help a lot with the speckling up on the high end of the histogram…

[chupathingie]

I was actually thinking for this (if it actually garners enough interest) to be a late spring thing next year. I have little time to spare this year, and plan on working as much OT as I can pry out of the folks paying me.

May/June will see Scorpio high up due south in the middle of the night. The temps aughtta be decent, and night time temps in the 60’s should be the norm (good for thermal noise on long exposures). That’s for the site I was originally looking at in NE NM. If we go out towards Rav’s suggested area, we’ll be an additional 2500 feet up (at about 7,000 feet) which means cooler temps at night (better for imaging) at the expense of a very marginal increase in light pollution (there’s not a lot of difference between the 2 locales on the LP front, and the difference in altitude may very well cancel that out). Also, Rav’s location is near Mesa Verde, something I’ve always wanted to see (cliffside ruins).

Probably the biggest thing we should consider is if we can set up “camp” for the all-night shoots out away from other folks and any courtesy/safety lighting. I’d hate to keep the normal people up all night, or have to deal with the streetlight over the bathrooms…

Not to mention I STILL need to pull the trigger on that Losmandy.

[chupathingie]

Exploit the cat. I like the last one shown above, personally 😆

[chupathingie]

hmmmm… know anyone who owns some land south/southwest of town by a few miles? Or even a hilltop with a trail (I’ll likely bring the Jeep anyway) that’s unlikely to be intruded upon with headlights/flashing blue/red strobes, etc…

As far as accomodations go, I’m good to go with a tent and bag, but I understand if others want something a bit more comfy and secure.

[chupathingie]

This got me to scouting out a possible location…
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=36.041882,-104.116745&spn=0.448611,1.144638&z=11
looks pretty appealing to me. It’s in a nice, dark hole in the light pollution map, federal land so it will have public access, and the Canadian River has carved a canyon through the western edge so there will be opportunity for hiking and terrestrial photography during the day. Atop the rim, it looks pretty flat so there should be plenty of horizon for some of the farther-south stuff near the center of the galaxy. It’s grassland, so there should be few if any trees to interfere.

Oh, and you BETTER be bringing the lightbucket, Rav! 😆

[chupathingie]

“CauseISaidSo wrote:

I don’t have a scope. I have some decent glass, but it may be not enough for this? F/2.8 70-200mm, plus 1.3x tele-extender.

That sounds like an outstanding piece of glass for doing AP with. As fast as that is, you’ll be able to stop it down a bit to cut down on chromatic aberration/coma and still be able to pull off F4 likely. I’ve noticed that even Canon’s L Series glass shows flaws when used for AP (hard to get more demanding than pinpoints that are 10 stops brighter than the background).

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