But now I need to find something actually worth recording:
Made any time lapse videos?
If you have made any time lapse vids using my script and they are publicly available (youtube, etc) I’d love it if you’d post a link! I’ve still not done anything interesting with it — I have a few ideas but never the right time to sit there with camera and computer for several hours. Sadly nothing worth seeing from where I live or work and even the sky has been cloudless for days so I can’t do the “clouds streaming across the sky” thing.
Anyway if you have had better luck, or better ideas, than me lets have a look!
Demo Video for DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.1
I thought it was well past time that I did some more explanation of how to use the new features in DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.1.
Turns out my video skills need a bit of work though as I ended up putting together a 10 minute video, the YouTube limit, and only covered half the features. Still, I hope this is helpful both to see what sort of thing the script is useful for — in this case I’m covering self-portrait balancing flash vs ambient ala Strobist.
(Click through and view the high quality version if you want to read the text!)
Equipment used:
- 1 x SB-600 at camera left set at manual 1/4 power with a folding paper grid spot on a bamboo light stand
- 1 x SB-800 at camera right, also manual 1/4 power
- Nikon D300 with a 18-55mm
- Pop-up flash on the D300 is the trigger for the flashes
- Long USB cable, plus a USB extender cable
- Thinkpad X31
I cover the use of the remote shutter release, combined with shutter, aperture and ISO controls to take and download images as well as using Bridge to view them.
What I ran out of time to do before the YouTube 10 minute limit was tethered shooting from the camera, and external viewer push. Perhaps I’ll try to do another short video covering those, but I do really want to work on the next features!
While doing this demo I also noted some odd slowness of the script in some situations, particularly M vs P mode that I’m unable to explain at the moment, so will spend some time to investigate that and hopefully speed the whole thing up.
YouTube vs Vimeo?
I uploaded my HOWTO videos to both YouTube and Vimeo — the exact same file — and the quality is so much better on Vimeo. Check out the difference:
Why? Obviously YouTube is compressing it more and making for a fuzzier image. But they CAN do higher quality, so don’t they? Well it turns out that YouTube can serve you up a better quality video — they just don’t by default.
Here’s how:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHYw_u5OLY – This is the normal video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHYw_u5OLY&fmt=6 – This is the better video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHYw_u5OLY&fmt=18 – This is the best video
See what I did? Added a parameter to the end of the url with fmt=6 or fmt=18.
So why isn’t there a user interface to let you choose this — yes I know occasionally you’ll see a link for “view this in high quality”, but only occasionally — or better yet why doesn’t YouTube detect your connection speed and adjust the format appropriately.
I guess saving bandwidth is more important than viewer experience — but if that’s true then people in my position are liable to just move to alternatives like Vimeo!
Windows Remote Shutter Release HOWTO
I explained before how my remote shutter release script was actually redundant, because Windows has a built in feature that does this. Of course I did then go forward and make the self-portrait script which does do something more useful, remote shutter release combined with immediate download and viewing, but the original idea of a simple remote shutter is still useful.
So I thought a better explanation of how that Windows feature works might help, and it’s good practice for me making videos as well:
Via YouTube:
Via Vimeo:
Having found the RAW/JPG limitation though I’ll be taking a look to see if I can script my way around that. Stay tuned!
Tethered Shooting Script — a HOWTO Video
Since I first posted my free script that allows Nikon DSLRs to be shot tethered I’ve been very pleased with the response, it seems to have been helpful to many people. However I’ve hardly been very good at documenting how to use it. So in an attempt to fix that I’ve made this little video which shows how to use it.
Or view high quality YouTube version
This is my first video attempt so it is pretty basic — but it took me all afternoon to put together, so please excuse the rough edges. Hopefully I’ll work out how to do this better and perhaps make some videos explaining my hardware DIY projects which would also benefit from this type of explanation.
If you’re not sure about tethered shooting then ProPhotoLife has just released a great video
, as usual, explaining all about it – using Canon as an example. I particularly like his safety tips regarding long USB cables.