Timelapse-Asia 

Kit update

Some projects I am working on require flower blossom time-lapse related to the local area, South East Asia. The idea dates back to before my work, Monsoon Cambodia, featuring water lilies opening in the final scene. Realising I needed a controlled environment, my first attempt was trailed in April 2018 with a water lily.

Thinks have progressed significantly. I still have a compact fluorescent bulb for the fill light. This is controlled via an Arduino board which also switches an led grow light and gives signals to two cameras and one for motion control gear. My first led grow lamp was a cheap 100w unit from China which did not give enough to help plants along. I now have a second unit, unbranded 600w LED grow-lamp purchased mainly due to it’s availability here in Cambodia.

The control gear, Dynamic Perception NMX linked to a simple slider / pan tilt, will be used for small movements. First trials were a disaster due to the inability to upgrade the unit’s firmware (i do not use the kit often). The issue with my NMX controller has been fixed, Jay at DP kindly offered a free factory reset.  I am waiting for the NMX to be returned, hidden somewhere in the postal system.

The biggest step forwards has been isolating the kit from daily activities. Previously the gear was in my bedroom where the windows were blanked out for controlled lighting. Now that I have stopped using this room for general living purposed, problems like leaving the door open, unintentionally kicking tripods or touching plants have now been eliminated. This gives me better results and less post processing. I am still getting some flicker, that may be due to fluctuation in current. One other significant improvement is the use of a UPS. Living here in Cambodia, power outages are common, usually only for a short period. This unit has saved my bacon on many trials, switching in most days during power outages.

An up and coming issues may well be the climate here in South East Asia.  We are now entering hot season where temperatures can reach over 40 degrees. My room is essentially a concrete box which holds heat.  The plant life in and around the the Angkor temple complex often thrives in shady cooler areas.  I think this will be an issue, time will tell.

Other improvements, with a bigger working space gives me more ability to set a scene and I am also starting to pay more attention to lighting.  I have had two cameras running continuously for over a week from one after market power supply, fingers crossed this is reliable.  On the down side I am getting hot pixels, something easily fixed in post, but a tedious task.

I now know the plant I trailed back in June 2018 do not respond well to transplanting. They are now growing well from seed at home. Hopefully I will see flowers emerge within a month, and the NMX controller will arrive in good time. All this initially just for two shots, but the possibilities are endless.

Peace flower from Darren Wilch on Vimeo.

My quest to photograph the lifecycle of plant has come a step closer. The investment of a few bits and pieces to control the environment, mostly an Arduino micro controller and a grow lamp looks to be paying dividend.

My interest in the pulsing lifecycle of the Tonle Sap and cyclic flood seasons of the Mekong, alongside my passion for time-lapse led me to this quest.  The growth cycles of local flora and fauna could be shown as metaphor of the Mekong seasons.

I learnt a lot from my first trials growing blossoming lilies indoors. I had got to the stage of blanking out windows and having to find a solution to controlling lighting conditions to simulate that of the plants in the wild. Previous searches on the internet proved fruitless until I came across the work done by Chris Field at Biolapse. Reading his blog has probably saved me many days of failure, the best way to learn. So I’ve jumped in, and with a little over $50 of kit, the possibilities have grown significantly. For the technical information I suggest you go over to Biolapse, where Chris has lots of information available.

Live and learn. A time-lapse of whole plant cycle is new for me. When the lily shoot came up it was shaking violently – well, in a compressed timeline it was. To tried and help it along I strapped it to a stick. Big mistake. This shaking from side to side is a kind of growing up, building up strength for when the stem has to support the massive leaf. Do not interfere with nature 🙂

On a side note. 7/7 orders from China / Hong Kong have been delivered to the Post office here in Siemreap. Items took a while to get here, but 100% success rate, thats surprisingly impressive given the bad press the postal service gets here in Cambodia. I can only hope the success continues.

Black Box one year in,

I was introduced to blackbox.global one year ago. It seemed like a possible way to add passive income to my obsession of time-lapse photography. This keeps me busy and challenged during low season, my main work being Angkor photography tours. One year in, I can see things starting to work.

For those of you who are not familiar with blackbox, it is a platform which uploads your video clips to multiple stock agencies thus spreading your exposure. There is also the possibility to add a curator and share profits on sales, a sort of (now) large group for pooling work.

A commonly asked question by new members is how many / how long until sales start. Well, here are my stats. Over the year I have amassed one hundred clips and sold fourteen. Thats not a lot, but for only a small number of clips, I see that a success. I have gradually added over the year so the average would be fifty clips.  I have also notices a slight upwards trend in sales.

Scaling things up is an option, however I would rather continue challenging myself. Other than online stock, each time-lapse I shoot has an alternative purpose, be it a technical challenge or working towards a project such as ‘Monsoon Cambodia‘. This keeps me moving forwards.

I do think, over time the stock video footage will get saturated similar to the photography market. However, as long as we  continuously develop, our work will hopefully get some recognition and continue to make sales.

Uploading to blackbox is only adding another step to my workflow, I create content as it is what I enjoy doing. If your in the stock footage game, or just a hobbyist videographer, I would say Blackbox is certainly worth considering.

If you are thinking of joining, you can help me a little by using this referral link 😀

Check out some of my work here.

Blue Lotus Macro from Darren Wilch on Vimeo.

So here is my 2nd attempt, which worked much better than the first trial.  The main difference was blocking out the windows in bedroom, fast becoming studio.  This prevented the flicker you can see in the first trial.

The other main change is the use of cheap Chinese extension tubes ($10) to get the macro look.  These worked well, but the camera fitting was not great.  As nothing is moving when set up, the play was not a problem.  A compact florescent tube was used for lighting.

I used my Sony A6300 powered with a standard battery pack which was on charge and it ran all day.  A bit of an odd ball mix with a Sony E mount/ Canon EF adaptor, extension tubes and a 70-200 2.8, purely because the Sony is earmarked for studio timelapse, freeing up my 6D for other tasks.  To set the aperture, I have to put the lens on a Canon and do the lens twist trick, then put it on the Sony.  This sets the hole to a fixed position so eliminating flickr.

Shooting over three days, keeping iso low, 20 second interval time, 10-15s exposure.  For intervalometer I used this free timelapse app on the Sony.  It works ok but has it’s limitations, so things will change.  Any movement you see was done in post process.

Lessons learnt from last time.  Set things up and leave alone, walk away.   Keep the door shut preventing any light change.

Lots of things going on in the background.  There is an objective to all this so keep an eye out.

Stunning Lotus macro with cheap extension tubes.

You may also like Kampot Salt Fields, an ongoing project.

final cut lily from Darren Wilch on Vimeo.

A bit about gear, moving from Canon to Sony for timelapse.

I have been wanting to do a timelapse of the iconic red water lily’s opening for some time but with high season here in Siemreap, Angkor photography workshops have kept me busy. Now low season has arrived, I have geared up with a Sony A6300 to partner my faithful 6D. The reason for this is to shoot 4k video and stunning 120 frames per second HD footage. I will mix this with my timelapse work in an attempt to add content. The Sony also adds a second shooting option for timelapse and a backup camera. Several occasions when shooting storms, I have recomposed on a different scene thinking it looks better only to see the initial composition light up better. A second camera may help.

With the Sony, I will at some point venture into native lenses as the focus system works best for video. For now I have purchased a cheap adaptor ($20) to run my canon lenses.  The more expensive adaptors have communication therefore control of aperture and focus capabilities, but they can be the price of a sony lens. With my set up there is no communication from camera to lens.  Unless you have manual aperture adjustment on your lens, everything will be shot wide open. I linked the sony up with qdslrdashboard just to use the intervalometer. In the past I have has some issues with inconsistent intervals while using the 6D and this app, the same thing happened with the Sony. To run this app, you have to connect the Sony via wifi with the Sony play app. Be aware, as you have to set file type (raw) and iso etc. within the app, even thought you have set them on the camera. In hind sight, I think an external intervalometer or the Sony timelapse app ( or the free one ) would have been a better option.

Sony a6300, cheap Fotasy adaptor Canon 16-35L. Not so ‘compact’.

I use magic lantern with the 6D and have found it reliable. If i’m in a changing light environment, I would connect up qdslrdashboard to control exposures, it works well. For this exercise it was just magic lantern as lighting was controlled.

The shoot.

The lily’s were brought home to a controlled environment. They open at night, usually from 6pm, closing after sunrise. It was hit and miss at to which flower would open. I shot over three evenings as the first two attempts there was a power cut, knocking the lightbox out, giving black frames during the openings. So, on the third evening, a battery powered torch was used with a transparent bag acting as a softbox.

For intervals, I wanted at lease 300 frames. 20 second interval gives me 1hr 40min for 300 intervals, while a 30 second interval gave me 2.5 hours. I prefer more shots than less, so would continuously run the camera (not limiting to 300 shots). Then, for iso100, I would set my exposure time, not to have any pure white. The sony was stuck on F4 because of the adapter, while the Canon I could up it to f8 or more.

It was simply a case of setting the light up correctly to eliminate most of the background. Some scenes were not used as removing objects with after effects was simply too time consuming. Had I known this, then I would have spent more time in setting things up correctly.

It is my first attempt, I’m pleased with the result. Theres room for improvement, thats for next time. The final scene of a  closing lily, has some flickr due to changing daylight conditions behind a closed curtain. I could not remove with LrTimelapse, which mostly does a great job. As always workflow was Lrtimelapse with lightroom, followed by after effects to clean things up and produce the prores 422 files, finally putting everything together in premier pro. That final scene took a whopping eight hours, the last two leaves took a painful eternity to close!

Murphys law of timelapse – what went wrong.  Something always does.

Power cut, losing my lightbox.

Varying intervals due to lrtimelapse.

Clutter in image making it difficult to use, must set up better next time.

Run a sequence on a flower which I think will open.  The flower stayed closed.  Turn camera off, sleep.  Flower fully opened in morning!

You mat also like Kampot Salt Fields, a moment in time.  Timelapse.