Category Archives: video

Going Mirrorless

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Being late to the party is something that I make a habit of.  You could also be more optimistic and say that I am not an early adopter.  A number of friends and colleagues have added a mirrorless body to their collection of gear and I have followed suit.  I am perfectly happy with the performance of my SLRs.  This was to add something rather than replace something.  The primary interest was in size and convenience.  There are times when lugging the heavy bodies around is just inconvenient.

I went with an EOS M6.  I did consider going with a different manufacturer but using other equipment I already have was one factor.  Another was that this camera gave me an option I was quite keen on.  It has a screen for use while shooting but it also has an optional viewfinder to slot into the hot shoe.  This was discounted to only $11 when I bought the camera.  I like a viewfinder hit am okay with a screen.  Nancy, on the other hand, does not like screens so the viewfinder can be brought along if required and will make her happier to use the camera.

So far my experience with it has been very good.  Image quality has been fine, the controls are good and let me make adjustments without needing to enter menus.  The flippy screen is really handy and the kit lens fits plenty of needs.  The app that works with it is also pretty handy which gives a few options I wish the SLR could match!  The time lapse functionality is good too.  I have not tested it fully with my range of lenses and will do so at some point.  However, for what I bought it for, it is doing the trick nicely.

Mossie Night Run

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Night photo shoots are becoming more popular these days.  The Flying Heritage Combat Armor Museum (FHCAM) held one with the de Havilland Mosquito.  The evening started out with the plane on the ramp when people were free to wander around the aircraft.  I was shooting a lot of long exposures using the tripod which does a good job of removing the people provided they keep moving.  However, a few people were hanging around for long periods so they show up in the shots.  Others were using the flashes on their cameras or flashlights to look at stuff which made things blow out.

Once we were all cleared from the ramp, one of the FHCAM crew came out to talk about the aircraft.  He was the one that would carry out the engine runs and he ran through the test procedures that would be followed for the engines.  People had the chance to ask questions and get a good understanding of the plane and how it is operated.

Then came the fun.  The engines were fired up in sequence.  Then they were run through the test program.  The blue flame from the exhaust stacks could be clearly seen in the very dark conditions.  When the mag checks were carried out, the flames were even more conspicuous.  I moved around a bit to get some different positions.  I was quite surprised to see how blurred some of the shots were.  The aircraft clearly moves a lot despite being chocked and so some of the shots were totally unusable.  This was a lesson learned.  In future I would focus on shortening the exposure times a lot to minimize this issue which I hadn’t anticipated.

I also shot a bunch of video while the runs were underway.  The edited video is below.  It was a fun evening and thanks to FHCAM for holding it.  It would be fun to do on another type.  It might be nice to have a touch more light on the ramp but the dark conditions did have some advantages.  I discovered a bit about shooting in that environment which should hopefully help on future night shoots.

Puffs Across the Wing

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The day I left London was a bit damp which made for a bit of vapor on departure.  I was sitting almost directly over the wing.  I couldn’t see in to the inlet but I could see vapor puffs in front of the inlet at lower speeds anyway.  As we rotated and climbed out, there was plenty of vapor puffing over the upper surface, aided by climbing through a few patches of cloud.  I had the video running the get a view of the moisture and here is what I got.

 

Trying a Time Lapse of the Eclipse

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When thinking about the eclipse and what photos I wanted to get, I did contemplate running a video of the transition.  However, since the start to finish was going to be over two hours, I figured that would be a lot of video that would never get used or would only be seen speeded up.  Therefore, a time lapse seemed like the best option.  I set up a camera with the 100-400 lens on it can’t at an angle to, hopefully, align with the direction the sun progressed across the sky.  I didn’t know how much time it would take to cross the viewfinder so I planned on taking a number of sequences with re-positioning after each pass.

This ran just fine during the eclipse itself.  My only problems came at totality when I really lost the plot on what I was supposed to do, so overcome was I by the sight of the corona.  I initially forgot to remove the solar filter so everything was just dark.  When I did take it off, I had not adjusted from the manual exposure I had been running up to that time.  However, in the scheme of the eclipse, the totality moment was fleeting so is not a big part of the time lapse anyway.

I have edited together the sequences I shot and here is the resulting video.

Otters on Speed

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Otters are known as being playful.  However, having watched a bunch of them at Woodland Park Zoo, I have to think that they are on some serious drugs.  The speed with which they flew around the enclosure, wrestled with each other, lay in the water getting blasted by the water jets and generally acted like hooligans, you would think this was a vast waste of precious energy for a creature in the wild.  I think they must metabolize something in their food to create something like cocaine or speed.  What other reason could there be?

Adobe Fixed the Time Zone Issue for Video

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In this previous post, I noted that there was a problem with the way in which Lightroom identified the time of video files.  I was having to manually adjust the capture time after importing them.  When I contacted Adobe, they said it was a problem with Canon and vice versa.  Not helpful.  However, I notice that, with a recent update (I won’t say upgrade because some aspects of it seem to have really screwed up Lightroom performance), the video files now come in with the correct time associated.  I only found this out because I was about to adjust them when I realized they were already correct.  One little annoyance has now gone away.  Hurrah!

Time Lapse Cloud Formations

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I will fall into a stereotype about our new home here.  We have actually had some very nice weather but this one is about rain and clouds.  I was sitting in the office on a call and the clouds were visibly swirling outside.  I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for a time lapse so I used that most valuable of photographic tools, my phone.  I switched it to time lapse mode, propped it against the window frame and went back to my call.  The swirling is emphasized so much more when accelerated.  I can point out, though, that it all passed through and we end up with a blue sky!

The Unusual Oakland Approach

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Over the last few years I have flown in and out of Oakland more times than I can recall.  It has been my transit point for the majority of my travels.  A recent return brought me a new experience there though.  The airport is in two halves.  There is a main runway alongside the bay which is used by the airliners and is often the departure runway for the bizjets.  Then there are two further runways that are over near the old airport infrastructure.  These are used by light aircraft and for the arrival of bizjets.  (There is another intersecting runway but that doesn’t factor in this story.)

The normal approach brings you across the shoreline and over the water on the approach.  The other runways are on a different alignment and the approach comes over the local towns. I was looking out of the window and filming a hyperlapse.  I was a bit confused as I was seeing bits of San Leandro that I don’t normally see and we didn’t pass Hayward Airport.  We continued to descend over land and it was pretty clear we were not heading for the normal runway.  Sure enough we touched down on the old part of the airport prior to taxiing back and all the way across through the freight area back to the terminal.  I watched jets depart from the runway we had just landed on as well as from the normal runway so I have no idea what was going on.  I doubt I will experience this again anytime soon.