I’ve been having fun with time lapse photography lately. I actually tried it a while ago, but could never figure out a way to stitch the photos into a video. I have tried 5 different programs on Windows, and none of them really worked right. So how did I finally do it? With the handy dandy command line Mencoder on Linux. I had a feeling Mencoder could do it… I just couldn’t figure out the command. I finally found this page, which gives several options. The command I used was this:

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=10 -o test.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vbitrate=800

Just execute that command in a folder full of jpg’s, and you’ll have an AVI movie suitable for… well whatever you want. I’ve been playing with the frame rate- I think 10 is a tad bit too fast, but 5 too slow. 7 or 8 seems like a good compromise.

So here are my first two experiments with stop motion photography.

This one is a series of photos I took in the winter (from the Sheldon Art Museum to my house), just by pressing the shutter button over and over and over. I understand that some Canon cameras have time lapse photography built into the firmware now- I’ll definitely be looking into that when it is time to buy a new camera.

This next one is a time lapse of me working on a painting. I have not yet decided what the painting will be- if it does not turn out, I will cut it up for smaller paintings.

To do the time lapse in the studio, I used the software that came with my Canon Digital Rebel- which is buggy and quits occasionally for no discernible reason. If I can find my old Ti-83 and connector, I will give this a try. Sounds pretty ideal. I’m also hoping to give this a try, when I get my Arduino at THAT Camp.