Time Lapse
A selection of my time lapse sequences. Sky in stunning motion. There is no better way of seeing how the atmosphere works through all of its layers than by studying time lapse of the sky in motion. Try to imagine the air above us as a piece of cake with many layers. Each layer represents wind moving, at different heights and at different speeds. This is called wind shear. Very difficult to see at any single moment in time, however by capturing many hours worth of digital stills with a good quality digital camera, adding them together in sequence then you have a period of time lapse which shows the full spectacle.
Time lapse is an excellent way of viewing clouds in motion and you can see things that are unseen in real time. The wind shear (clouds moving at different speeds and direction with height) is a method used by balloon pilots to turn. Difficult to imagine a balloon in the sky turning as you would expect it to just be flowing with the wind. What they do is ascend and descend into the different 'layers of cake' or veering winds and turn the balloon. :-)
All of these time lapse have been captured with the Olympus E3 and 7-14mm, 8mm fisheye or 12-60mm lenses. By attaching a time lapse controller (Pclix), which automates the camera to snap a single exposure every 'x' seconds (I normally use between 5 & 10s), and after leaving the camera shooting for many hours in all sorts of weather, results in many thousands of images on the camera storage card. Note - this method of time lapsing really puts the camera system through hell, in terms of sensor image count and weather exposure. Only use a good quality weather sealed system :-)
Finally, in order to produce the movie, I import the many thousands of images from camera to PC, batch edit, and finalise movie in QuickTime & iMovie..... Phew, now you know how much work each one of these takes :-)
Movies may take a minute or so to load, depending on internet connection speed. Please be patient, as they are well worth the wait :-)
Read MoreTime lapse is an excellent way of viewing clouds in motion and you can see things that are unseen in real time. The wind shear (clouds moving at different speeds and direction with height) is a method used by balloon pilots to turn. Difficult to imagine a balloon in the sky turning as you would expect it to just be flowing with the wind. What they do is ascend and descend into the different 'layers of cake' or veering winds and turn the balloon. :-)
All of these time lapse have been captured with the Olympus E3 and 7-14mm, 8mm fisheye or 12-60mm lenses. By attaching a time lapse controller (Pclix), which automates the camera to snap a single exposure every 'x' seconds (I normally use between 5 & 10s), and after leaving the camera shooting for many hours in all sorts of weather, results in many thousands of images on the camera storage card. Note - this method of time lapsing really puts the camera system through hell, in terms of sensor image count and weather exposure. Only use a good quality weather sealed system :-)
Finally, in order to produce the movie, I import the many thousands of images from camera to PC, batch edit, and finalise movie in QuickTime & iMovie..... Phew, now you know how much work each one of these takes :-)
Movies may take a minute or so to load, depending on internet connection speed. Please be patient, as they are well worth the wait :-)
