Sweet video....but how?

[TJKLECKNER]

I have never seen anything like that before.
It looks too good to be true.

http://youtu.be/aYasC6tbQX4

 

[Skip Talbot]

That is extremely cool. Stephen can tell us how he did it if he wants to share his secrets. I'm guessing he setup his still camera on a tripod and was shooting long exposures at a regular interval. The long exposures capture all the lightning strikes that happen while the shutter is open. You can then add all the frames together and make a movie out of them. Shooting high resolution stills lets you do the neat camera movement effects. Instead of panning the camera while shooting, you zoom into the still image sequence and pan across it within the video editor. Its the same effect you see on TV when they pan across still images to make them more interesting with a little motion, rather than just showing a single still image. Here we're panning across a video though, which makes it even more interesting. Awesomeness.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Time lapse photography. It's real.

 

[James Langford]

Yeah, this type of photography is really taking off. It involves combining many still images together to create a time lapse. In this case, he also added another dimension of movement by using a automated panning head, similar to what is found on telescopes. More elaborate setups can add several dimensions of movement using rails and lifts. It's really amazing what can be put together. He did a great job on this one.

 

[Brett Nickeson]

It's a stunning video, and one of the more unique timelapses I've seen. I've done a few but never one of an electrical storm like that.

And James, I don't want to speak for Stephen, but I had the same thoughts you did about the dolly for the movement, but he said it was just zooming/shifting within the video processing program. Almost a Ken Burns effect, it really lends itself well to this video.

 

[TJKLECKNER]

Yeah, its one of the best lapse videos I have seen. I love the pan across effects.

 

[Robert Edmonds]

Believing it's timelapse photography, I've seen allot of other artists/photographers trying out this technique. One of my favorites I've seen is:
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/23205323?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/23205323">El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/elcielodecanarias">Daniel López</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
Lots of great clouds which form from mountain waves in the video...

 

[Skip Talbot]

Here's another great collection of sky timelapses that does make use of dollies and rails:
Watch video >

 

[Jason Foster]

Yeah...you can get deep into this stuff. Sliders, follow focus, etc. all add to some interesting shots. Dito Gear is a site folks might want to check out. Shooting with an HD-SLR is pretty much required. The cool thing is....because you're using the photo image side of the camera, the video is 10x better than even the on-board video of the HDSLR. You basically are shooting 2k or 4k (depending on your camera). However, I suspect (because I have yet to accomplish it myself), the processing power of your computer is needed to be up there.

Search "Time Lapse" "5D" "7D" (and similar terms) on vimeo and you can find just ridicously awesome videos. YT sucks...and the pros are on Vimeo.

 

[cdcollura]

Awesome!

I remember writing a VB program that takes each frame and "discards" those with "no lightning" in them, and assembles those with the lightning in them into an AVI.

Produced similar results...



A similar example of the lightning time-lapse explained above (using software) is towards the end of the video (near 3:59 and on).