Wolf Moon Timelapse (and a quick collaboration idea)

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/9095255[/vimeo]

Last night the full moon coincided with the lunar perigee, so the moon was a bit larger and brighter than usual. Normally when the heavens line up for events like this it is overcast, but last night was an exception (although nature managed to throw in a twist). A time-lapse seemed in order.

OK, this was a spur-of-the-moment idea and so the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Here in New England, the full moon was accompanied by single digit temperatures and gusty winds -- so I opted to shoot indoors. (This has its share of drawbacks.) The images were captured with a Canon 5D Mark 2, ISO 2000,16-35mm f/2.8 at 16mm using SRaw1. I processed the images with Lightroom and then used Quicktime Pro to create the ProRes movie clips. Slapped it together with FCP. (I didn't notice the hot pixel till after I finished everything, so if I go back I'll fix that in Lightroom.) I edited it in camera-native 4x6 aspect ratio, but my Compressor settings stretched the frame to 16x9. (Another thing I'd tweak if I re-edit this.)

I added second (spur of the moment) clip of the moon shot a couple of days earlier when I had come home from a meeting and saw a ring around the moon. I should have let that run longer, but it was getting late. The sky only marginally matches up so I'd normally be hesitant about cutting it in, but I bumped the camera on the backyard sequence so I needed something to cover up my goof. This worked well.

I admit that these two sequences are kinda lame all by themselves. So is anybody interested in doing a quick collaboration? It would be pretty cool to add additional footage of the moon rising (or whatever) from other places and documenting this unusual astronomical event from different viewpoints (geographically and otherwise). If you shot some real-time or timelapse footage of the January 2010 full moon (or therebouts) that doesn't stand alone, let's bring a few sequences together and see what we can do. My music bed lasts 4 minutes, so there's plenty of time to fill in.

Message me here or on Twitter if you are interested.

Nice Dave! I don't get to view this forum much because of my connection but I am somewhere where I can so catching up. Love this!

Hi Samuel,

The video is not sped up, it was captured as time-lapse photography. (Perhaps I should write an article...) Basically my camera was set up to take an exposure every 30 seconds. I then combined the images into a video clip (as mentioned in the post). At 30 frames per second, with the images taken every 30 seconds that translates to the video showing 900x real time (did I do that right?) This is the only practical way to do long period time-lapse, in this case compressing 8 hours into a few seconds. When you just want to speed up a clip by a smaller multiple (say 2-8x), you can use video editing software to sample the frames. Final Cut Pro, for example, has the ability to slow or speed up a clip. Much beyond that an you are burning up a LOT of footage for a much shorter final result.

(Thanks Greg!)

- dave