LRTimelapse Forum

Hi folks, I work for a non-profit private college in the midwestern United States, and we are embarking upon a $14 Million construction of a new Library / Learning Commons.

$14 Million is a large number. But they allocated zero resources to us to document this project for posterity. So our IT department (that's where I work, as help desk manager) decided to foot the bill and do it on a shoestring budget.

We have a nice, out-of-the-way location in the 3rd floor window of a nearby building with a good view of the project.

Here's my equipment:

Canon Powershot S90 running CHDK firmware
A script called Selective Intervalometer, which fires off shots at intervals you program in (you also select days of the week, times of day, etc)
An automobile suction-cup window mount for the camera.
AC adapter for the camaera
we will shortly have a UPS to give backup power to the caemra (if the camera loses power, the camera turns off and the script stops until you come back and take care of it)
an Eye-Fi card, that is configured to instantly and wirelessly upload the photos to a nearby wireless-enabled computer. Said computer also has a hard-wired ethernet connection, meaning I can pull down photos in nearly real-time to my office, if I so choose. The eye-fi card is in "endless" mode, meaning every time it reaches 90% capacity, it self-clears all photos marked as downloaded.

Theoretically, with this setup, costing roughly $300 USD, we should be able to document the project. People have tested the canon powershots with intervalometer scripts over at the CHDK forums for upwards of 300K continuous actuations with no perceived ill-effects on the camera. Compare that to a DSLR and the P&S cameras aren't looking so bad. The S90 has a 1/1.7" sensor and a decently wide, 28mm FOV lens.

So. Given what I'm working with, would someone be so kind as to suggest what settings I use for the camera? I have it configured to shoot Monday through Friday, from 7AM to 5:30PM, the general hours I've seen construction in progress on the site. So we don't really have to do any Day/Night transitions or anything too terribly tricky. It will, however, be variations of daylight--cloudy days, rainy days, sunny days, hazy days, etc, etc.

Currently I have the camera set to manual focus@ infinity (the construction is probably 100yards away and I'm shooting at 28mm wide) in A/V mode at f/8, ISO 80, 3.2MP fine JPG mode (the smallest frame from which I can extract a 1080p frame). As much as I like the flexiblity of RAW shooting, I can't stomach processing 30,000 RAW images in the final render.

Is this anywhere close to what I want to be using for this project? would the f/8 be a concern for flicker or is that okay? I think this lens can go down to f/2.0 if I recall (for a P&S this S90 is a sweet little camera) but given the average shot will be in some sort of daylight, I thought I should stop it down a lot. f/8 is as low as i can go on that camera.

I'd love it if someone would be willing to walk me through optimal settings from a camera like this, in a situation like this. I'm sure I will have to encounter and deal with some sort of flicker just for the long duration of the entire project, but I'd like to get them as close to 'right' as possible, at any rate.

Thanks in advance! FWIW, I just purchased the e-Book and hope to make a donation to this project as soon as funds allow. Pay isn't the greatest where I work so things are a bit tight right now, so all I could afford was the eBook.

Kind Regards,

Matt

PS- Here is a tiny, 3-4s clip from today. It was the first day I had everything fully "in place" and working. It's only for six-hours of the project though, not quite a full day. I will be rendering out incremental updates every couple of weeks for our constituents, so I will be sure to post back when I have more, if anybody is interested.

http://youtu.be/YNr-37HhxsI

No need to "bump" this since it's on the top of the page still, but I thought I would share a little longer clip from almost three full days of shooting. During that time, I've made some changes, such as trying to attenuate reflections better and adjust the framing, so this clip probably won't make it into the final rendering, but here's what it shot:

http://youtu.be/eVLroBLqodk

I'd still really like some recommendations on exposure settings for this. Right now, I have it set to manual focus but it's just using program mode for the exposure. I was thinking I'd better shoot for A/V mode instead, but not sure on the aperture to set. Since this is only daylight shooting (7AM to 5:30 PM M-F) I thought f/8 might be appropriate, but I've heard the admin say shoot wide open. but f/2 really scares me a little for daytime shooting, I would think that's simply too much light.

any tips for the optimal exposure for a project like this? Thanks!

Hi, Matt, it's difficult for me to give any advice because I don't know the Powershot or the CHCD firmware. The videos look good, like they are. You will never get rid of all flicker shooting such long term time lapses because of the changes in lightning, clouds etc. But I think you could try to get it as good as possible.

Maybe some of the forum members have experiences with your cam!

I just had an idea... could you send me your images of week 1 sequence via ftp or dropbox?

(2012-06-05, 13:17)gwegner Wrote: [ -> ]Hi, Matt, it's difficult for me to give any advice because I don't know the Powershot or the CHCD firmware. The videos look good, like they are. You will never get rid of all flicker shooting such long term time lapses because of the changes in lightning, clouds etc. But I think you could try to get it as good as possible.

Maybe some of the forum members have experiences with your cam!

I just had an idea... could you send me your images of week 1 sequence via ftp or dropbox?

I would be glad to when I get some more photos in. In the meantime, here's a small sample from today (65 photos): [edit: Every time I submit the message with the dropbox link, it tells me it's a spam message and has been removed. Is there a way to send you the dropbox link without the spam filter catching it?

I went in and made some further changes last night that made me have to re-mount the camera (I did some changes to the window treatment to further dampen some reflections that were showing up) and I also changed the camera over to 3min intervals (from 5min) and set it to shoot in Aperture priority mode at f/6.3 (f/8 seemed maybe too stopped down so I backed it off just a little bit.

CHDK is a custom firmware you load onto point-and-shoot canon cameras that give them a lot more features, mainly the ability to run scripts such an intervalometer script that lets you set what days of the week to shoot at what intervals, for how long, etc. Also opens up some more exposure settings, enables RAW on some cameras, etc, etc.

If you were shooting this with a proper DSLR and intervalometer, what exposure settings would you use? i.e would you still shoot wide open with the aperture to reduce flicker, or would that only be for times when you go from day to night? Obviously I can't shoot full manual because the scene would change based on clouds, but I would be interested in finding the optimal auto-exposure settings to use for daytime timelapse shooting over a long time period.

In a few days, if you like, I can upload a much larger sequence of photos for your review if you think that would help. @3min intervals, shooting from 7AM to 6PM that works out to 220 photos per day. I'm on a university network so it's not a problem to upload large files, if you also have a fast enough connection. I estimate a week's worth of photos would probably be about 1.2GB.

I

3 minutes is way to frequent for such a project. You end up with tons of data you will never use. once every 10 minutes is fast enough, and maybe with steel construction, ones every 5.

My tip. By a 1100d, or 550d, hook it up to your computer and run GB Timelapse (granite bay software)
Gives you far more control, from out of the computer.

Regards,

Bas

www.thetimewriters.com

Diagragmaflickr is only visible in sunsetshots. In these lightining condintions, you are always gonna have flickr. The little from the diafragma wont matter in that scenario. So, P mode is fine as well. As long as you set your auto ISO very low. Or just stick with 100. You have the time for longer exposure, use it, and avoid noise.

Thanks for your input, Bas.

I wanted to do a Rebel with intervalometer but we didn't have the budget. Heck, I went over budget by spending $300 on the P&S + eye-fi card.

The reason for the frequent intervals is twofold: 1, we are rendering weekly or biweekly (haven't decided yet) videos to put on the website. When it comes to the final render I'll simply select every n'th photo from the series and drop a ton of frames. In fact, from the length of the project, I am guessing I will probably only select every 10th frame or so, and even then have a video that is very long. at 3 minute intervals, I will end up with a little over a minute of video per week. The second reason for frequent intervals is that these are transferred to a nearby PC live via wifi as soon as they're shot via an eye-fi SD card, and our webmaster wrote a script to display the most recent photo on our website as a sort of "construction-cam" thing for our constituents to view.

On these P&S cameras, you can actually do a lot more shutter actuations than a DSLR. Testing the intervalometer scripts at the CHDK firmware forums, they did 300,000+ shots in sequence (30s intervals for 3 months straight) and the camera was no worse for the wear in the end. Contrast that to an entry-level canon rebel, where you're looking at 50K to 100K average shutter count, and given that we don't need anything TOO fancy for this project, our little S90 P&S is going to work fairly well, I think. Make no mistake, it's nowhere near DSLR quality, but the S90 is better than most P&S cameras, with a 28mm equiv lens, f/2, a larger sensor than typical P&S, etc. It's compact which was also necessary because it's actually mounted in a window that overlooks the project. A full sized tripod wouldn't work where we have it.

I estimate I will have 50,000 photos by the end of the project, or more--likely more, as my boss told me today he'd like the sunrise and sunset captured, too, so now we're looking at shooting 16hr a day or so during the summer.

At 3minute intervals, the final video would be over 60 minutes long, so that's why I'm thinking 1 out of every 10 shots for that, as I think a 6-minute final video would be plenty.

since we are now planning to do sunrises and sunsets to help transition the days I set the camera to A/V mode and locked it at f/5.6 at ISO 80. I'm open to suggestions, but I'm not sure if I would want to go all the way open since the widest aperture on this camera is f/2 --For a bright, fully lit daytime scene I could see that maybe being a problem, so may need to find a compromise. f/5.6 was somewhere in the middle so I went with that. Minimum aperture on this camera is f/8

Strictly for kicks, here's a link to a render I did with today's settings to see what the final output might look like. Started at 7AM and ended at 10PM, 3 minute intervals. Tomorrow is going to go from 5:30 AM to 10:00 PM. I will, no doubt, have to adjust the start and end times at regular intervals, but I think my boss had a good idea to do sunset/sunrise. They go pretty quick, don't seem to waste too much time, and I think it will help transition the days better than it just cutting from 6PM to 7AM the next day without something in the middle.

http://youtu.be/QduLzQK2NIc

*eta, yes, I adjusted the framing in the middle of today's shot, by accident.

Looking good sofar!
Your lightning is very smooth. I think your settings are pretty okay. With maximum open diafragma, you have to take into account that the sharpest pictures are taken above maximum diafragma. So 5,6 is pretty okay I guess.

are you on Autowhite balance, or not?

But, I understand that with CDHK software, you have to go into the camera menu itself, on the camera, to adjust settings of interval?
Better make it really, really tight on the window. Really, put a lot of effort in making sure that the thing cant move for a year and a half. Not even by accident.
Its either in the end disappointing for the bumps, or you are in for a lot of postproduction.
You gonna hate yourself later on, for all those 'accidental bumps' when you render out the final one.

The Rebel in my box has done I think 90.000 and counting. No problems yet. Still.

Btw, I dunno who or what your boss thinks. But 300 bucks for timelapsing a one and a half year project is ridicious. I think you are great to put in the effort of making the best out of it, I like that in people.

(2012-06-06, 15:43)Bas Wrote: [ -> ]Btw, I dunno who or what your boss thinks. But 300 bucks for timelapsing a one and a half year project is ridicious. I think you are great to put in the effort of making the best out of it, I like that in people.

That's what I thought.