Amazing timelapse photography from award winning night sky photographer Ben Canales.

http://vimeo.com/26968340

I'm home sick today. One the right of the video, there as another on the tips and tricks he uses to take his photos. I hope you enjoy the vids.

Andrew

Ben's website.

http://www.thestartrail.com/

Unbeliveble that is rael sky... 

feel good man

Nice video. These things are always cool to watch. In addition to scenic skies with passing clouds and stars, cityscapes and cross-country drives are among my favorite timelapse subjects.

I know a little bit of technical on these too...

Don't mean to boast on Nikons, but if you've got one - many models have this thing called "Interval Mode" that makes this kind of thing relatively easy. With a tripod, it's something that may be neat to try out sometime. Of course it's still possible with other cameras, but they require extra kit in order to do the same thing. (Having it built in the camera makes more sense though, as almost all models have a clock of some sort built in anyways. Also this means less stuff to carry around and worry about if you do this kind of photography.)

Slow pans/dollys must take some planning or special kit though. Likely an astronomy tripod with tracking. Nudging a typical tripod manually over time works too, but is hard to get precise.

I've done one or two stabs at this kind of thing so far, and memory and batteries tend to go fast. Use external power if you can and avoid using the flash. Smaller image size and quality settings are good too, as photos from DSLRs are already much larger than HD video resolution to start out with and this gives the memory card a break. It's best to go full-manual and learn what settings to use, as auto-modes tend to jump around metering and white-balance in a way that looks funky. (Sometimes that look is interesting too, if you like a sort of grungy flickering feel to your time-lapse. Stop-motion in Tool or NIN music videos comes to mind.)

It's challenging to get right, but I find it fun to do. I really need to try doing some more sometime. The downside is that it typically involves "babysitting" the camera, particularly if you can't guarantee that it's location is secure from tampering or theft. Having a comfy portable chair and bringing your laptop or some books to read will make that easier.

Then you've got to figure out how to stitch still photos into video. Something like Sony Vegas or perhaps Adobe Premiere will work. This can also be done for free btw. (That's how I do it.) Script-fu batch interpreter in Gimp to crop/resize images to video size and save sequenced copies to a working folder, and Virtualdub to stitch the sequential frames from the working folder and converting to video while applying codec and compression. In regards to compression, Xvid seems to work best and with the least hassle while on a freebie budget. When on a PC, I definitely suggest using those as they work much better than MS Movie Maker for this kind of thing. I believe Macs also come with a good video editor already included, but iirc it costs extra to unlock some features.

Thanks for all that great info Paul. He used this dolly.

http://www.dynamicperception.com/