Death Valley Time Lapse and Drive Over Hunter Mountain

[Imager993]

Killer...... I'm building a camera rig truck now. I may hit ya up on some ideas..... & gear! Where do you typically get your equipment?

Nothing special with my truck for cameras. I keep everything in soft bags on the rear passenger seat and the combination of the seat padding and the soft bags eliminate any worry about vibration or shock damage. Thankfully my 100" Dynamic Perception slider barely fits between the rear window and the front windshield. You can probably see it in some of the photos. Might not be a bad idea to build in the ability to stand on top of the truck, but keep in mind that any subtle motion will rock the whole thing quite a bit. A few larger goal zero batteries (Yeti 150 and/or 400) will give you plenty of power for battery recharging, laptop recharging, and powering other camera rigs.

I've converted from Canon to Sony over the last few years, but still have my Canon gear for certain types of shoots (car racing, other sports, or anything else which moves quickly). The Sony a7S cameras are great for time lapse, especially night time work, and the a7R is great for landscape and anything else where resolution matters. The range on the Sony sensors kick the butt of Canon these days. And I always buy from the best, B&H Photo.

 

[Xterabl]

Wow, fantastic as everyone says. What's the setup and settings for the orion shot? It's...amazing.

 

[Scott H Murray]

Very nice, I will be going through the desert here in Australia with a documentary film crew. We will be doing 4k timelapse, I use my D800E and D600 (Nikon) I also have a 4k Sony Action cam.

 

[Imager993]

Wow, fantastic as everyone says. What's the setup and settings for the orion shot? It's...amazing.

The Orion shot was done with my Sony a7R on a 200mm lens mounted on my Polarie star tracker. It moves the camera with the sky letting you take clean 30 second exposures of the stars. You leave the camera taking about 20-30 or even more of the identical exposures, bring them into photoshop, and stack them to reduce all the noise, leaving only detail. Plenty of tutorials online about stacking star exposures.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/843972-REG/Vixen_Optics_35505_Polarie_Star_Tracker.html

 

[outback97]

Great photos! I am not seeing the video link though, where did it go?

 

[Imager993]

Great photos! I am not seeing the video link though, where did it go?

Doesn't let me hard link to a vimeo page, it only embeds the video. If your browser won't view it, search for 'Death Valley Time Lapse, November 2015' on vimeo, or just look up my name on vimeo and it's the newest video. https://vimeo.com/user946589

 

[Xterabl]

Imager993, thank you! I did know about image stacking but last time I checked (years ago) it was used mostly to stack webcam video frames (short exposures but many per second)
All my life I've been an on-again/off-again astronomy buff and your photo might inspire me to go back for another round...especially as i did not know such star trackers existed with this kind of quality and relatively low cost.
Thanks again!

 

[SSSSTFIRE]

Amazing stuff. Thank you for your work and sharing your craft with the rest of us.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[outback97]

Doesn't let me hard link to a vimeo page, it only embeds the video. If your browser won't view it, search for 'Death Valley Time Lapse, November 2015' on vimeo, or just look up my name on vimeo and it's the newest video. https://vimeo.com/user946589

Thank you, the videos are amazing. Great work!