One of the issues with doing timelapse with a DSLR is the wear and tear on the shutter. If your final output is at say 25 frames per second, then you need 100 images to get 4 seconds of footage or to be more sensible 1000 images to get 40 seconds.

Now remember that the shutter on a typical DSLR is rated at between 75,000 and 150,000 actuations depending on model. This is the MTBF ( mean time before failure ) so you might get less, you may get more. To replace a Shutter is in the order of $400 so you can see where I am going hopefully. Using a DSLR for timelapse can be an expensive exercise so unless its essential you may want to consider what equipment you use. For Night timelapses you really don’t have many options as nothing beats a decent DSLR such as a Canon 5D for low noise at long exposures.

But what about daytime shots ?  I recently purchased a Canon G12 for just this reason. It has manual Controls and most importantly it shoots RAW format. This high end P&S camera is mirrorless so there is no shutter being worn out.

There is an inbuilt miniature function in the camera itself that does a fake Tilt Shift video similar to that used by time lapse animators such as Keith Loutit but it has limitations and lots of them. You select miniature Video mode, you select a band that will remain in focus and you then select whether to run at 5x, 10x or 20x speedup. It effectively records a video with missing frames and blurs the area above/below the band you select. The resultant file is a MOV file that you can play straight out of the camera. Impressive for what it is, it’s no match for REAL Tilt Shift or even normal timelapse then applying fake Tilt shift in Photoshop however I’m sure its sufficient for some of you that dont want to get too technical.

What I wanted to do is traditional Time lapse with the G12 mounted on my Motion Timelapse Rig ( Dynamic perceptions with an MX2 Dolly Engine ). First issue I had was the G12 has a 2.5mm TRS connection for the remote release and the cable for my DLSR is one of the Canon propietary ones. I have ordered a 2.5mm to 2.5mm TRS cable, but it hasnt arrived yet so what to do ?

I mounted the G12 on the timelapse Rig but there was no communication between the camera and the Dolly so there were times that the camera was taking a shot as the Dolly was moving. Not ideal but since I was shooting at 1/160 of a second it didn’t matter too much.

There is no inbuilt Intervalometer so time to break out into CHDK ( Canon Hack Development Kit ) – Link here  which unlocks new functions for quite a few Canon cameras. It is not Canon supported so use it at your own risk – You really need to READ up on this if you intend on using it. CHDK has problems also in that it wont load into memory cards larger than 4 Gig and if shooting RAW a 4 gig card will only hold about 270 images ( about 10 secs worth of footage ). Here’s where it gets technical and Tricky. Ive got a 32 gig SD card so what I needed to do was create 2 partitions. A small 2 Meg FAT partition to load CHDK from and then a 30 gig FAT32 partition for the images.  Stereo data maker (SDM ) assists with this ( Link here ) , but it is quite complex. Basically you need to keep changing the active partition on your card and you need to do this via the SDM utility. You load CHDK onto the small 2 Meg partition, then you need to swap active partitions and remove and reinsert the SD card, then put another copy of CHDK into the root folder as well as any Scripts you want to access. I wanted to use the Intervalometer Script – Link here

When you use your SD card if you just turn on your camera it will complain that there is not enough space to save any images as it will have booted off the 2 meg partition. You need to turn the camera on using the PLAY button then select firmware update and run the CHDK firmware and then load the intervalometer Script. For the video I tested this with I set the interval to 1 second. To get maximum battery life I framed the camera Set the script running and then turned off the LCD screen. I managed to get over 1000 shots and the battery was still going although I doubt it would have lasted much longer.

The next problem comes from when you want to use the images. You need to load up SDM again and change the active partition back to the large FAT32 partition to be able to see your images. I imported them into Lightroom, but yet another issue. LRtimelpase doesn’t seem to like RAW files from the G12 so I couldn’t run any Deflickering. Thankfully there wasnt much to start with but hopefully someone will find a way for that to work. I exported the images to a MOV file in Lightroom using the LRtimelapse Video templates at 25FPS TL then combined the 4 seperate movie files along with some still images into WLMM ( Windows Live Movie Maker ). WLMM is fairly basic and cant do half the stuff I can do with Adobe Premiere CS4 which I also have but for quick results it does the job.

So how did it turn out

For Commercial Enquiries about Motion Timelapse Services please go to Dynamicmotion

I could write a lot about the Grates as they are one of the most Awesome Australian bands that is currently touring. I first caught the Grates at The Gov in 2008, then at HQ in 2009, The Thebby supporting The Hives in 2011 and then this show so you know I like them.

The Lead singer Patience Hodson has to be seen to be believed so rather than me rant on I suggest you check out the Video below.

Full Gallery of photos is up HERE

The Juke Joint is the highlight of the Annual Blues festival held in South Australia each year under various names. This year it was the Backwater Blues and Roots festival which ran for over a week at various venues around Adelaide and some country/regional areas also. I had previously photographed the 2008 and 2009 event which was held in the old Queens Theatre. In 2010 the event moved to light square and I didn’t attend that year. I was looking forward to attending this year and was there shooting for “faster louder”. It was an early start to the evening which started off with Adelaide band the Streamliners. These guys have been around for a while and put in a pretty solid performance. Next up was Old gray Mule which was pretty cut down blues with just guitar and drums. Third act was Chris Wilson who is quite a renowned Harp player from Victoria.Joining Chris on stage were local guys Rob Eyers on Drums and Sweet baby James on Guitar. Being a fellow Harp player I really enjoyed listening to Chris blast out some Boogie Blues.

The Highlight for me though was The Mason Rack band. So much energy from all the band members and they swapped instruments a few times as well – sort of a Round Robin. Gravelly Vocals, Slide Guitar, Manic bass and a Solid beat made for a great show. Even the Beer kegs got a percussive work out at the end of the performance. Highly recommended to see these guys if they are playing locally to you.

Check out all the Photos HERE << Click

Sorry about the delay in getting this one up. It’s been sitting in Draft status..anyway on with Sundays review.

Sunday was always going to be the busiest day with a pretty full lineup of Music as well as some guest speakers that would draw crowds. It was fairly obvious why they scheduled Cate Blanchett to be on nice and early so the lines to catch the bus from the Belair Train station area were already pretty long and that was before Midday. I had concerns given the previous days the only buses I saw running from there to the festival were the small city of Mitcham buses but thankfully they had some large buses interspersed to move the larger crowds on Sunday. It ended up only being a 15 minute wait before we were on our way.

The first event was the discussion on which Cate Blanchett was on the panel of speakers and as expected all seats were already taken. I took up a position mid way down the tent on the side but unlike the other speakers the festival management insisted that all Photographers were only allowed down the very back of the tent and could only take photos of Cate for 5 minutes.

Got my shots and headed off to catch the Kronos quartet play again. Despite a few technical glitches with the PA system whilst the quartet had to wait for the tech guys to fix it, it was a great and varied performance.

Next up were the Catholics on the Karka stage. I quite enjoyed them with their Jazz influences and stayed and watched quite a bit of their set and cracked my first beer for the day.

Back to the Internode stage for the Emma Donovan band. The two backup singers added a lot to the sound and they really looked like they were enjoying being there. Paris Wells was the next act back on the smaller Karka stage. I’d heard of her but didn’t really know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised and she looked the part on stage with bright red lipstick, blonde hair and massive earings swinging from each ear.  Konono #1 from the congo was a bit of a surprise. Being mainly percussion and  rhythm based I was hoping for some good beats and wasnt disappointed. They had many in the crowd up dancing at the front of stage. I found that after about 15-20 mins that most of their songs sounded very similar to the ones they had already played, however this didnt matter to the swelling crowd of people that took off their shoes and danced in the lush grass.

The Tallest man on Earth was one of my Sunday highlights. Up on stage by himself with just a guitar I could see why some reviewers regard him as being in the same mould as “Dylan”.

Great sounding songs, good lyrics and a stage presence that you could just feel as he strutted around. I had to leave early to start heading down to the Internode stage and caught the end of Rod Quantocks talk ” Bugger the polar bears this is serious “. Rod is one of the funniest guys around and even catching only 10 minutes of his performance I left with a massive smile.

One of the headline acts was Rickie Lee Jones. She may have a few more wrinkles that she had 25 years ago but still has an amazing voice. She played a mix of some old stuff and some of hr newer material, and I wasnt at all surprised that she didn’t play here most famous song ” Chuck Es in love “. People I spoke to afterwards who were massive fans were mesmerised by her performance.

With the night approaching I went back to the Karka stage to see the Shanghai Orchestra again play on the smaller stage. They were playing mainly solo parts and it wasnt that conducive to taking photos so I grabbed a glass of red wine and sat on the fringe area listening and relaxing.

With the night drawing to a close it was back to Stage 1 for the final 2 acts. The Kronos quartet again this time with 2 speakers ( one on each side ) who read quotes as the Kronos quartet played. It was quite effective. Rain started to lightly fall which was actually quite welcome at the end of the evening. When the Kronos quartet had finished the stage was cleared and a piano rolled in for the final act – Abdullah Ibrahim. The crowd had thinned by this stage with many weary or having to leave to get connecting buses/trains but for those that stayed he put on a great show. It was fairly laid back  Jazz influenced music but it suited the final event. There were a few kids that headed down the front and danced around with streamers. It was entertaining for a little while but personally I found it quite distracting as we weren’t there to watch their “performance”. I didn’t stay for the whole of Abdullahs set as after three nights and 2 days of lugging 10 kg of camera gear around I was bushed so I bid farewell to the park and headed home. Sundays schedule of bands was pretty packed unlike Saturday when their seemed to be periods of nothing much happening. I would have liked to have had time to listen to some of the speakers, however being there as a photographer meant I spent more time at the performances. I mean How many photos can you take of speakers ?

Would I attend again – definitely.  Is there room for improvement – definitely.

See you in 2012 Earth station

You can see the full Galleries for each day HERE < Click

When an event is run for the first time you always expect a few things to crop up and sure enough they did, but before going into some suggestions for improvements, let me start by saying I enjoyed the first night of the event.

Having lived and grew up in Belair, the event was literally being held in “my backyard”. I had asked a few days earlier on the Earth station facebook page whether the shuttle bus was going to run internally to the park off Sheok Road and was advised that the shuttle bus was going to be only going through the main Upper Sturt rd entrance. Imagine my surprise when I turned up at the train station bus pickup area to find they were going through the Sheok road entrance. The buses running through were City of Mitcham Mini buses which had very small capacity ( about 20 people ) so it took over 45 mins to get on a bus despite being near the front of the ever growing line. We got to the event and headed straight to the Karka stage getting there just as the opening speeches were being made.

I caught the start of the first performance by Frank Yamma and David Bridie and then headed down to hear some of Stephen Pekars talk.  My Family decided to join the Bat workshop run by Simon who was surprised at the sheer number of people joining him, but said it was amazing that so many other people thought bats were cool.  I myself had a bit of a look around the site and then headed to the Keynote by Roy Neel. I was quite surprised to see only a handful of people at his keynote address. I think most people had left the Karka stage and either gone off to try and find bats or were getting some food. I think the organisers should have had Roy on a stage straight after one of the performances so that the crowd were already there.

A quick listen to the start of the talk by Mike Sandiford and then back to the Karka stage for Vika and Linda Bull, who put on a great performance which had many of the kids in attendance down the front dancing.

The main act of the evening and indeed the only act on the main stage was the Kronos Quartet accompanied by the Adelaide Chamber singers who were positioned down in front of the stage area. They would have been praying it wasnt going to rain because if it did they would have all been drenched. One can only assume that the organisers hadn’t checked the Freight Train Schedule as 5 mins into the performance the Adelaide – Melbourne Freight train came screeching around the hill to the North of the stage and drowned out much of the subtle music for the 3-4 minutes it took to pass. I got used to the humming/droning of the generators behind the stage area, but there were 2 people a few metres back to me that just talked throughout the performance despite a few glares from myself and other around us. These two were not kids, nor young adults, they were middle-aged and should have known better.  They even increased their talking volume when the music and singing on stage got louder. Really if you want to talk to each other at such a performance PLEASE move to the back or side of the stage area.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Kronos quartet and before you know it the night was over. I was a bit concerned about the bus trip back to the station as the line was quite long, but thankfully they had much bigger buses acting as shuttles on the return trip and we were back on the road again to the station after only a 10 minute wait.

There is room for improvement and hopefully the organisers will have a Debrief and take on board some suggestions from those attending to make the festival bigger and better next year. Two more hours and I’m back there again. Memory cards have been formatted and batteries charged up.  Check the gallery tommorow and there should be at least a selection of images from the Saturday session.

You can find the Full Gallery of images up HERE

Only 1 more sleep to go until Womad Earth station kicks off. Unfortunately my request to get site access to get some timelapse of the stages being set up was ignored but never the less I’ll be there from tommorow capturing some still images of the event to share. I’ll try again next year with a request for site access for some timelapse footage.

Fridays music lineup is highlighted by the Kronos Quarter performing Sun Rings. Other live performances on Friday are by  Frank Yamma & David Bridie as well as Vika and Linda Bull. Should have the first photos up Saturday morning

I pulled my bike out of the shed and went for a Ride to the Earthstation site at lunchtime. Looking good and the location is nice and green with the recent rains. Some photos of the site taken today 20th October are up HERE

The Streets of Adelaide graon to the sound of Zombies yet again with the Annual Adelaide Zombie walk heading from Rymill Park to Light square. Lot’s of great costumes and makeup as usual.

Full Gallery of images is up here