It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy with other things. I'm working a lot on my software project ... an application to help me remove flicker from my timelapse sequences. You've seen the flicker ... the video looks like something from the old hand cranked camera days with each frame having a different brightness. It can be very disconcerting to see something like that in a modern sequence and I work very hard to avoid getting that effect. Sometimes it's impossible to avoid like taking a sequence of images at a waterfall in the moonlight. The amount of mist changes from shot to shot so the intensity of reflected moonlight causes the image to 'flicker'. In that case you can do very little to fix it as it's part of the scene. The flicker I'm talking about has more to do with variations in shutter speed and aperture from one shot to the next and I can do something about that. I've been working on this program for several years now as it keeps getting shelved as my interests shuttle from one project to another but this time I'm intent on getting the thing working, at least for my purposes. It may never see any commercial success but that's OK. I want this for my purposes and that's good enough for the present. Right now I'm working to get bugs out and to make sure there's enough capability for my workflow which, at the moment, means making sure I have the ability to read in images in the correct format and to output images in the proper format. Right now that means being able to read Adobe .dng files and to output the same or DPX movie frames. I got that working yesterday (all except for the .dng output part). I also want to add some capabilities to the effects I can use to give me more latitude in how I fix the flickering. I think that takes maybe a few more weeks. When I'm finished I'll post a few examples so you can see what I'm doing.
Shiprock Sunrise
My first stop on this last cycle was Shiprock, NM. It's in the 4-corners area. I've written about it before so won't bore you with a rehash. I slept on the indian reservation so I could be at the rock at sunrise. When I awoke, the sun was just starting to lighten the sky so I was able to set up my camera and take a quick panorama of the colors in the sky. It was the first sunrise I'd seen in a long time and was very spiritual in a way. There's something very different from a sunset which has an ending quality about it. With a sunrise there's renewal and the feeling that there's hope for the new day. At day's end you know whether there was success or failure and your emotions are colored by those outcomes. The new day offers a chance at starting over and that's special.
 |
| Shiprock Sunrise - 17mm(1.6 crop),f4.0,2.5 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
No comments:
Post a Comment