Time-Lapse Photography

An extension to my photographic interests is my time-lapse photography. You've probably heard of this or seen it. It's when you take incredilby slow things and speed them up. Like a plant growing, or a flower opening, or the sun setting, or clouds floating by.

I used the time-lapse mode on my Vivitar Vivicam 4000, but unfortunately, it's once-every-minute mode makes videos that are too fast. I sometimes used ImageSalsa to capture images every 10 seconds from a webcam. My webcam is inferior to my digital camera (notably in terms of color consistency, color drift, contrast, and high-brightness definition), but the speed is much nicer. In both cases, I used VirtualDub 1.6.4 to merge the JPEGs into video files.

Note: ImageSalsa is the best software of its kind that I've seen, and it's reasonably priced. But the interface is really complicated. It has a lot of really cool features, though, including a "histogram mode" that watches a webcam and captures dramatic video changes (i.e. lightning strikes!). Sweet.

Request: If anybody knows of a web cam with a high quality CCD, image processor, and lens, I'd appreciate hearing about it. It appears that most webcams are very poorly constructed.

Here is everything that I've filmed, so far. For the most part, these are pretty large, so I recommend right-clicking the links, saving them to your desktop and then viewing them.

First Sunset 3/2005 AVI File 320 x 240 - 170 KB My first sunset with the time-lapse mode of a vivicam 4000	Clouds 3/25/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 1,594 KB With a cheap web-cam and ImageSalsa Software.	Clouds 3/26/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 1,489 KB The next day with my web-cam and ImageSalsa Software. This one has a lot of streaky sun beams.
Clouds 3/31/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 31,053 KB An entire day	Hurricane Rita 9/22/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 44,348 KB In anticipation of a cool hurricane, I set my webcam up all weekend. No hurricane meant for a better weekend, but a lousy video.	Sunset 3/24/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 862 KB One of my earlier sunsets
Rain Storm 10/31/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 25,823 KB I thought it would be neat to time-lapse a storm. It was kinda cool.	Sunset 11/02/2005 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 1,759 KB light streaky clouds promised a great sunset, so I captured it. I'm proud of this one.	Rain Storm 8/28/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 814 KB This little clip was really neat and odd because of the lighting over downtown Dallas. Also, I caught a lightning bolt.
Sunset 9/07/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 2,732 KB Most of the day was boring, so I cropped it out, and just preserved the sunset	Whole Day 9/08/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 7,715 KB Cloudy days are interesting. The sunset was purple and blue.	Whole Day 9/09/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 8,993 KB The clouds had interesting textures. Also, they were moving in two planes, the stratosphere going north, the cumulus going west.
Whole Day 9/10/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 8,726 KB Generally speaking, it wasn't an exciting day. Little fluffy clouds filled the sky and there wasn't much wind. However, there was some kind of heat or agitation and the clouds started "boiling", which is kinda unusual.	Sunset 9/11/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - 4,200 KB I was playing with the camera settings. Everything is too blue with hard contrast. It gives an underwater feel to this video.	Whole Day 10/12/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - KB I started putting date/time stamps on the pictures. The sky is pulsating and rippling.
Whole Day 10/14/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - KB The day had a gorgeous sunset with sunbeams. My camera has taken around 250,000 pictures, And I'm sacrificing the daytime quality with settings geared towards the sunset. Sorry.	Whole Day 10/15/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - KB Rainy and windy. It's so cloudy and misty that this video is pretty bland. The clouds are moving so fast, that it's dizzying. Also, There were raindrops on my window.	Whole Day 10/16/2006 Full Sized AVI File 640 x 480 - KB The day started rainy and drab, but then the clouds started moving in layers again, Animated, this one is pretty interesting. The sunset was pretty dramatic looking, too.