Digital photo animations

[Gordon]

One of the big advantages of digital cameras over film is the ability to make animations (relatively) easily. In November I was watching a storm that looked like a good subject for an animation, so took 193 photos over 55 minutes. Initially I had my old Nikkor 85mm f/2 on the D70, but swapped it for the 18-70 after a while, and gradually zoomed out and panned a bit to follow the action over the duration of the animation. Exposures started at 15 sec, but I cut that back to 13 then 10 sec as the clouds were in danger of being overexposed due to the almost continuous lightning, more than 1 flash per sec some of the time, but at least 3 or 4 flashes on every exposure.
You will need a reasonably fast connection for this 17MB 600 pixel wide animation:
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~gordon/GJG20 ... mation.gif

and an even faster connection, or else a long wait ( it took me just over an hour to upload on my ~240kbit/sec link) for this 54MB 1000 pixel wide version:
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~gordon/GJG20 ... mation.gif

Gordon

[big pix]

great storm and cloud movement......... a great effort.........

[sirhc55]

Gordon - absolutely amazing and well worth the effort

[blinkblink]

Thanks for that.

[mudder]

Wow, some fascinating cloud formations, great to watch them roll along, well done, admire the effort and the results...

[Catcha]

that looks really cool

[Killakoala]

Wow, that's extraordinary. You certainly see some interesting sights at the top of the Warrumbungles.

[DionM]

Wow! What a storm.

Great idea to put it all together like that!

[Steffen]

While I don't agree that animated sequences are a blessing of the digital age (rumour has it that some oddballs are still shooting at 24fps on silver...) I really like these shots. In particular the strange layering of the cloud bands, which gives the whole scene another dramatic dimension, IMHO,

Cheers
Steffen.

[greencardigan]

Gordon,
What software did you use to create these?

[Alpha_7]

Gordon, that is one impressive storm the clouds and the layers and then you got some great lightning shots aswell! Well worth the download if you have some spare bandwidth...

[Gordon]

>>What software did you use to create these?

I ended up using Easy GIF Animator, which cost me only $AU24. I had several attempts using various other programs, but all failed, either because of too many large images, or because they degraded the quality so much the images looked like crap.

Easy GIF animator is quite easy to use and you can download a 20 use trial version from: http://www.blumentals.net/egifan/download.php

Gordon

[mic]

Bloody Brilliant Gordon !

Mic

[Slider]

Great stuff Gordon. Some terrific sequences there.

[blacknstormy]

fantastic stuff - cool if you look closer, you can see a car coming across from the left of the screen at the 'beginning' of the sequence, and later on, a car zooming across from the right (near the end)

Gordon - well done !!!!

[Sheetshooter]

Gordon,

Excellent project well executed.

May I ask, did you use an intervalometer to make the exposures or did you patiently stand, release in hand, for the duration?

Cheers,

[marcotrov]

Great project Gordon. Worth the effort IMO.
cheers
marco