McNabb talks with teammates before the game.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 400)

I have sold quite a few of these of Haynesworth since he’s big news lately.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 560 mm, 1/640, f/4, ISO 400)

Yeah, Deloitte.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 200 mm, 1/1600, f/3.2, ISO 400)

Anthony Armstrong seemed to stare right at me as he caught the ball.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)

Shanahan talks to McNabb between plays.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1250)

Harbaugh yells across the field.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 1250)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 1250)

McNabb makes a hand-off.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 1250)

I loved the emotion on Heap and McIntosh’s faces.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 2000)

Pitta went sideways after he got the ball.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 2000)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 2000)

First, start by downloading this excel file that I have created. Download here.

Because I only cover local games, this file contains the Ravens and every home game it will play. Don’t worry; you can add other teams in seconds. You will end up with a new sheet in this workbook with a custom alias (i.e. p81) and the value (i.e. Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Anquan Boldin (81)) for each player. Keep reading for the following steps.

Step Two:
Create a new Sheet in the Workbook by clicking on the New Page button along the tab bar at the bottom.

Once you have created a new page, you can rename it by double clicking on it.

Step Three:
Find the roster. I based the spreadsheet on NFL.com’s rosters for standardization purposes, but it can be easily adapted for other sites. Pull down the roster, by selecting everything from the beginning of team name to right of the last player. Copy that to your clipboard.

Step Four:
Go back to the new sheet you created in Excel. Click on the top left cell and paste the roster in.

Now, it looks all weird. Simple fix: on the Home ribbon, click Clear>Formats.

http://www.maxwellkruger.com/?p=1354&preview=true

Then, delete the extra columns you don’t need.

Step Five:
Now we’re ready to make magic. Go to another sheet, highlight, E3 and F3, and copy them.

Now go to your new team and paste into E3 and F3. Voila! If everything went right, you should have the first player’s name and position. If not, you may have done something wrong. Check to see that the team name is in A1 and starting at row 3 are Number, Name, and Position of the players. (Of course, this will likely not be the case if you get the rosters from another site. We can customize the formulas to fix that. More on that later.) In cell G1, put in what you want the prefix of the alias to be (i.e. “p” for p51).

With E3 and F3 highlighted, click on the bottom right of the selection, and drag down through all the players. Boom.

Step Six:
If you are satisfied, simply highlight E and F columns and paste into notepad. Load these into Photo Mechanic and enjoy some code replacement bliss.

Step Seven (Optional):
If you want to customize the format or if you prefer to get the roster from a different website, you will have to modify the formula. This isn’t an excel formula tutorial, but I will go through the basics of the formulas that I have written so you can understand how the current spreadsheet works. If you want to learn more about writing formulas, there are tons of other websites who will do a much better job.

The first formula that I have written generates the alias (i.e. p51). This one is simple.

It simply puts the contents of G1 followed by the contents of the A column (number). If you want to change the alias, just change the contents of G1. The $ makes the cell reference absolute so it doesn’t change when you copy it to other cells.

The second formula is where the magic happens.

Let me break this down step by step.

Obviously, you can go crazy customizing this by moving things around and adding whatever you want. I kept it simple and built it to the standards of the company that I shoot for. The best part about this is that what used to be a 10 minute tedious process of creating these spreadsheets is now 10 seconds and it only took me a half hour to build the spreadsheet the way I wanted. Hopefully, this can save you time, too.

Email me at maxwell@maxwellkruger.com if you have any questions.

I bought a Macro Ring Flash (MR-14EX) which works wonders at adding some fill flash because apertures have to be so high.

Here are some recents.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/80, f/11, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/80, f/10, ISO 500)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/125, f/14, ISO 500)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/160, f/13, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/160, f/13, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/125, f/6.3, ISO 800)

From what I’ve learned in the hour spent with Macro photography, is that it’s incredibly difficult.  Depth of field is SO shallow that you have to shoot at high apertures to get anything in focus. Shooting at those apertures requires low shutter speeds which means both you and the subject need to remain still.  In addition, most tiny critters don’t like to stay still for very long.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/100, f/8, ISO 400)

This guy was less than 5mm long.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/100, f/9, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/400, f/5, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/500, f/5, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/500, f/6.3, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/500, f/6.3, ISO 640)

I don’t know what this insect is, but it scares me. Also, I didn’t notice when I took it, but it looks like eggs to the right.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/500, f/5, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 100 mm, 1/250, f/5, ISO 640)

These are shot with my 1D Mark IV and a 24-105 f/4. I hooked up a cable release and shot on Bulb most of the time and timed the exposure for the beginning and end of each firework. I wasn’t in a great location to get a good scenic background of the city or something that was lit up enough.

To add exposure to the city backdrop, I exposed fora  longer time (while maintaining clarity in the fireworks), but that resulted in messier looking photos with multiple fireworks in each exposure.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 58 mm, 1″, f/5, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 80 mm, 2″, f/7.1, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 24 mm, 4″, f/5, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 85 mm, 2″, f/5, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 80 mm, 4″, f/5.6, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 24 mm, 1/1600, f/4, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1600, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 105 mm, 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 105 mm, 1/50, f/5.6, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 105 mm, 1/800, f/5.6, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 105 mm, 1/80, f/5.6, ISO 400)

Update: Here is a photo taken from the plane on an earlier flight. Click here for full resolution.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 70 mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)

After a late night covering the rain-delayed Oriole’s game and hanging out with friends, I had to wake up early to set up remotes at Preakness.  I got rid of most of my extra cameras after college, so I only had one extra to use as a remote.  The other guys covering the event for US Presswire were already setting up remotes under the rail, so I decided to stick my 40d with a 50mm f/1.4 lens on a close-by ladder to get shots of the finish line.  The remotes had to be in by 10 so that they could be checked for safety.  The rest of the day was sitting around waiting for the big race.

Here are only a few of the dozens of remote cameras that photographers set up.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 100)

I had my 400mm f/2.8 to cover the race as it turned the corner for the final straight.  I was going to switch to a borrowed 70-200 on another camera body once the horses got close enough.  This is what it looked like shooting down the track with the 400. Pretty cool stuff.  This shot is from an early race.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 100)

When it came time to shoot the race, I was ready with all my cameras.  The horses were let off and I aimed my camera with the 400 down the track.  All of a sudden it wouldn’t focus.  I missed the horses coming around the first time because my lens wouldn’t focus.  I had just a minute or two to fix it.  I fidgeted around with it and couldn’t get it to work by the time the horses came back around.  I switched to the 70-200 and covered the finish as much as I could. I later found out that the focus limiter switch had moved to only focus the lens from a close distance.

Lookin’ at Lucky made a last minute move to secure a first place finish.

Here he is pulling ahead.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 200 mm, 1/1600, f/2.8, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 190 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 400)

Crossing the finish line.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 70 mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)

I was excited to see my remote images.  When I pulled my remote down, for some reason it had missed the finish.  It got the horses the first lap and about three horses back from the finish. That’s what you get with remotes; it’s hard to depend on them.

This one is from the first lap.  Pretty cool shot had it captured the finish.

(Canon EOS 40D, 50 mm, 1/1600, f/4.5, ISO 640)

Lookin at Lucky jockey Martin Garcia gives a thumbs up after the race.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 200 mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 400)

A lot of my images were picked up following the race.  Click the jump to see a few clippings from the weekend.

This post is written for anyone interested in what it takes to make a time lapse film or is looking for time lapse tips and guidance.  I couldn’t find all of this information in one place so this is my attempt to put it together and reduce the spin-up time for those getting started in time lapse photography.

I was planning on shooting a short time lapse film so I needed a lot of equipment.  I packed up a few days earlier so that I could head straight for State College.  Some of the equipment that I took is below:

2 Bogen Magic Arms and Super Clamps, 2 Tripods, 1 Milapse rotating telescope mount for sweeping time lapses, 3 Canon dSLR’s and a bunch of lenses, and 2 Canon intervalometers.  These are just the basics.  I obviously brought a lot of support equipment like batteries, power strips, pocketwizards (to daisychain intervalometers), laptops, card readers, etc.

Hit the jump below to read.

We’ll start off first with mounting basics.

Mounts

Magic Arms and Superclamps

A 1D Mark II clamped to a beam with a Magic Arm and Super Clamp.  Note the safety cables.

These are great camera mounts.  Every photographer should have a couple of these.  They are super sturdy and you can clamp your camera just about anywhere with one.  Very useful when you are trying to get your camera somewhere new or out of reach.  I used these all weekend to hang cameras above the arena in the catwalks (with safety cables of course) and other places where a tripod would have been inconvenient such as above the concourse.

A shot from a fish eye from a camera hung high above the concourse in the Bryce Jordan Center.

Where to buy: Super Clamp, Variable Friction Magic Arm

Safety cables

Used anywhere you are hanging a camera above people. I used to make these myself by creating a small loop on each side of a thin steel cable from the hardware store.  I stopped doing this because it’s much easier to buy them from your local theater supply store, and they aren’t much more money.  Also, I got some coated ones which are a lot nicer because they don’t get caught on your skin or prick you with the ends, both of which are excruciatingly painful because the steel strands are so thin and sharp.  Then, I got some keyrings to attach to the camera strap mounts to loop the cables through. Get a variety of sizes (especially small ones) because different cameras have different size strap mounts that are smaller to use.  Never use the camera strap itself as a safety restraint because it won’t hold in the event of a fall.

Where to buy: Theater supply store or hardware store (if you want to make yourself)

Tripods

A sturdy tripod is key for good time lapses.  If the camera moves the slightest amount during capture, your film will look bad.  Look for a solid Bogen tripod, the sturdier and heavier, the better.

Milapse

Milapse with 40D, Irwin QuickGrip (blue), and TC-80n3 Intervalometer.

Recently, I’ve done some timelapses with panning cameras.  This offers a really cool look because you can have an extremely slow moving camera that looks like it’s moving much faster when you create the film.  It’s crucial that the camera pans smoothly, so you will need to have a motorized tripod head.  I’ve been using something called the Milapse, which is a converted telescope mount that has a motor in it used to follow the motion of the earth.

You can select different speeds of rotation.  My suggestion is that slower is better.  If I could do the above film again, the biggest change I would have made would be to slow down the panning shots.  I’d rather see less angle of rotation than a faster pan covering more of a rotation.  Fast moving time lapses, in my opinion, take away from the feeling of the shot.  Remember: slower is better.  This is not a shoot-move-shoot type of rig where it stops when a photo is taken.  Those rigs are much more expensive.  This continues to move at all times, so if you are using a really slow shutter speed, you can get some blur in your shots. This may actually be a good thing, because it will smooth the frames together, if that is the look that you are looking for.  Below is a general guide for how long it takes the Milapse to rotate certain amounts at different speeds.  I pulled this chart from the Timescapes forum linked below.

I use an Irwin Quickgrip (from hardware store) to clamp down on the buttons in the direction that I want it to rotate.  Here is a video from the creator of the Milapse.  If you want to really get into this, you can even use a computer to control the Milapse.

Here is a forum link about the Milapse.  http://www.timescapes.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=17

Where to buy:  Telescope Warehouse

Shooting

Intervalometers

Intervalometers are the key to shooting a time lapse sequence.  They allow your camera to take photos at specified intervals so you can stitch them together to form a movie later on.  For Nikon users, most of the newer cameras have an intervalometer built into the camera.  I’m not a regular Nikon shooter so I can’t verify this, but I’ve been told you can only take up to 999 photos with it, which is often a problem.  Both Canon and Nikon make dedicated intervalometers, for around $135.  I bought one of these years ago and more recently got an EXACT copy (down to the model name) from a Chinese manufacturer on ebay for $25.  It works exactly as the real Canon one, except that my 1D Mark II had a problem recognizing it.  Luckily, I could use the real Canon model on the 1D and the rip-off intervalometer worked fine on my other cameras (1D Mark IV and 40D). Whatever you get, make sure that it works with your camera.

Where to buy: Canon TC-80N3, Nikon MC-36, Ebay for much cheaper

Memory Cards

I use 8GB Lexar Pro and Sandisk Extreme cards, mostly because I need fast cards for shooting sports.  However, you don’t really need super fast cards here because you aren’t shooting at a very high rate.  You just need the cards to be fast enough to keep up with your shooting rate to keep your buffer clear.  This is often the case if you are shooting RAW.  After a while (could be 10 or even 30 minutes), the buffer fills up and then you aren’t shooting photos at a consistent interval. That makes the video look a bit weird if the speed is changing at a random rate.  Neither my 40D or my 1DII can shoot RAW for very long (even at large intervals between frames) without hitting the buffer.  Newer cameras have less problem with this.  Just remember, the key is to keep the file size down, so shooting at sRAW or a lower resolution helps if you don’t mind losing the ability to crop and pan the video in post production.

The most important thing about memory cards is capacity over speed.  Big memory cards are key because you can’t switch them during a shot for fear of moving the camera.  Also, you often want to leave a camera shooting for a while in a place that you don’t have great access.  8GB cards are not big enough for me.  In this last shoot at THON, I filled up cards on several different occasions.  I came back to the camera dissapointed that it hadn’t captured everything I was hoping.  An 8GB card on my 40D will fill up in about 1800 shots on jpeg fine (more on why I shoot on this setting later).  That is about 30 minutes when you shoot at 1 shot/second; not much time.  Of course, you can always decrease quality or resolution (after all, HD video is only 2mp), but I like to keep it up so that I have latitude in editing the files and to pan, zoom, and crop the video.

Where to buy: B&H Photo, Adorama, Calumet

Cameras

Remember that SLR cameras have a finite number of shutter actuations and that shooting time lapses use a lot of those actuations. Keep that in mind when you consider using your multi-thousand dollar camera.  You are not only hurting the life of the camera, but also the resale value.  I suggest picking up a cheaper SLR (like a used or damaged 30D or 40D) to dedicate to time lapse shoots.  That way, you don’t have to worry about losing too much money on a camera.  High ISO capabilities are usually uneccesarry because I usually find myself shooting between ISO 100-400 in order to keep the shutter speeds slow to create a more fluid video.

Where to buy: Fred Miranda Forums, Ebay

Another tool that I used was GBTimelapse. I used this for my THON 2009 time lapse video.  This program allows you to hook certain Canon SLR’s and point-and-shoots up to a computer.  This program is great.  I used an old point and shoot and got a power adapter for it.  I left it on for almost a week.  I programmed GBTimelapse to start and stop at certain times and it captured directly onto the computer, so I didn’t have to worry about memory.

Laptop running GBTimelapse set up in the catwalk above the arena last year.

Camera Settings

Shooting handheld from the catwalk above the arena.

Shutter Speed:1/15-1/60

I like to shoot at a slow shutter speed to blur the motion in the video.  This usually makes the video look much more fluid and it tends to blend itself together really well.  Also, it lets you shoot at much lower ISO settings which helps reduce noise.

Aperture: Wide open

To reduce flickering, I shoot wide open. When you stop the camera down, you can sometimes run into exposure inconsistencies, even if you you have locked your exposure down.  This is because when the mechanical aperture isn’t perfect and there is slight variability every time you take a photos.  It’s not significant, but to just not worry about it, I just shoot wide open.  If you need to stop down to increase your depth of field, there are tools that you can use, such as GBDeflicker, to reduce the flickering in post-production.

White Balance: Preset

This is hugely important.  You MUST set your white balance to something other than auto.  If you leave it on auto, there WILL be variations in the color cast between each frame, which will make your video look very bad.  I usually bring a gray card with me to set the white balance, because it is often hard to get it right indoors because light temperatures vary so much.  Also, auto white balance isn’t usually very good, so it’s a good idea to do this anyway (unless you are shooting RAW and feel like going through each frame).

Exposure mode: Manual

I try to keep my camera on manual mode as often as possible. That way, there won’t be small variations in exposure which will cause flickering of the video.  Sometimes you can’t set your exposure to manual because the light is going to change a lot, such as if you are shooting from day to night.  In these cases, I shoot Aperture Priority.  However, you will notice in my THON video, there is a shot of the sunset.  I shot this HDR and AV mode, and almost nothing changes in the shot, so keep that in mind, if you are trying to show the light changing.  If you have to shoot on an automatic exposure mode, there are tools such as GBDeflicker which can help reduce the flickering in post-production.

Files and Resolution: JPEG Fine

Since I can’t usually shoot RAW because it fills up my camera buffers, I still want some latitude to edit the files with, so I shoot JPEG as high quality as my camera can go.  I also shoot at full resolution so that I can crop, zoom, and pan the video in post.  1080p video is only 2 megapixels, so think of the room you have to crop in on later in post.

Post processing

Quicktime Pro

There are many ways to stitch together still photos into a movie, but the by far and away easiest way to do it is to use Quicktime Pro 7.  This works on both Windows and Mac version of Quicktime Pro 7.  Just go to File>Open Image Sequence and select a folder with all of the images in a sequence, and select the first photo.  Then, select a framerate (I usually do 30fps to start with and go to either 60 or 15 if I want to speed up or slow down the video). Then I save the video to be imported into an editing program.

On Macs, of course, they got rid of Quicktime 7 with Snow Leopard.  There is a way to get it back though!  All you have to do is download a quartz file and try to open it.  Google a .qtz file, download it, and try to open it.  It will prompt you to update your computer, and it will install Quicktime 7 in your Applications/Utilities/ folder.

As I said, I usually render my files initially as 30fps because that is a good general framerate to work with.  Feel free to choose any speed you want.  Just remember that if you want to slow down or speed up specific shots to do it by even multiples as the speed of your whole video (e.g. 60 or 15 in the case of 30fps).  If you don’t, you will get video that looks very jumpy and bad.  Just don’t do it.

You can also import your stills directly into your editing program of choice by setting the default still frame time.  If you set it to 1 frame, your video will play back at the framerate of your project.  I don’t suggest doing it this way because importing that many files into your editor and trying to work with them can get hairy.

Adobe Premiere

I use Adobe Premiere because I work in both a Windows and Mac environment and Final Cut Pro doesn’t work on both platforms. I hear that if you use FCP, there is a great intermediate codec, which you can use to edit videos.  For those using Windows, we are left with nothing.  The best solution, which my good friend Ian Jefferys has discovered, is to edit by proxy.  By using the MPEG Streamclip program, which is totally awesome by the way, you can render much smaller versions of the video for use in editing.  I just load a whole batch in at once, set to 720p (make sure the aspect ratio is the same as your source or you will get stretched video) and H.264 at around 40% quality and let it go.  You have to make sure that your filenames, including the extension is exactly the same as the source video.  That way, when you’re done editing, you just switch folders and the videos will automatically update themselves.

If you do it this way, which is how I suggest, you have to remember that you can’t do any cropping, panning, or zooming until you switch out the files.  So wait until you are nearly done to do those things.

Other Tips

Shooting intervals can vary.  My general guideline is shoot at a smaller intervals for a longer time than you think you will need. This has saved me many times. For example, if you need a 5 second shot over a period of 10 minutes,  you need to shoot one photo every 4 seconds (10m*60s / 5s*30fps).  You can always reduce the number of shots you need, but more is always better for safety sake. You can never go back and add to a shot and I CANNOT tell you how many times I’ve wanted more footage or the video to play slower or more smoothly.  My general rule is to just double everything; so double the amount of time you are capturing, and shoot at half the time interval to get twice as many shots.  If you have the space to do so, it can never hurt to shoot at 1 photo per second.

Make sure you plan out your shots before you start shooting.  Shooting time lapse is no different than shooting a regular film, and I like to storyboard, or at least create a list of shots I want before hand.  This helps tremendously in planning and your film will come out looking much more put together if you know what you’re going to do first, rather than figuring it out as you go.

Remember that if you want to shoot 1080p, the standard aspect ratio is 16:9, not the 1:1.5 ratio that most dSLR’s shoot.  Keep that in mind when framing shots because you will have to crop some off the top and/or bottom of every shot that you line up.  An easy tip is to just shoot a bit wider than you normally would to give yourself room to crop.

HDR Time Lapse

I’m pretty well known for my HDR landscape photographs.  Just look here.  I tend to think of HDR as another tool to expand the range of a sensor and to enhance detail, and sometimes to give a dramatic look.  I usually try to make my images look gritty and I don’t usually like the “typical” HDR look that’s super overdone and cheesy all over the internet.

Something new that I tried was an HDR timelapse.  It didn’t work out as well as I had hoped because I shot a sunset that was kind of lame and the auto exposure mode made everything look almost the same.  However, there is some potential for HDR timelapse.  If you are looking for a way to create an HDR look in your timelapse, it is definitely doable.  There are a couple of things that you have to overcome to shoot an HDR time lapse.

First, you have to figure out how to trigger your camera to take bracketed photos on an interval.  I figured out that on my Canon 40D, this can easily be done by turning on bracketing and the 2 second timer.  If you don’t have the timer on, the intervalometer will just take one picture at a time. When you put the timer on, the intervalometer triggers the timer, which, 2 seconds later, triggers all three photos to be taken. You have to be very mindful of your shooting interval because you are taking 3 times as many photos.  It will have to be much longer because you are taking more photos, which takes more time, fills up more buffer, and includes one photo (the + exposure) that can have a very long exposure time (like 1s).  I shot my sequence at 8 seconds between shots which was about as short of an interval that I could go before missing every other camera trigger.

Then, you have to stitch the photos together.  I picked one set of 3 photos in the middle of the sequence, and did a standard Tone Mapping HDR process in HDRSoft Photomatix.  Without saving the actual final file, I saved the settings that I liked, and then ran a batch process on all of the photos.   I let this go overnight.

Then, I opened the outputted photos in Photo Mechanic.  I didn’t know if it would be a problem to stitch them together in Quicktime Pro because their filenames were 3 apart, so I used Photo Mechanic to rename them sequentially, sorted by capture time.

Then, I followed the rest of the standard process.  My final output wasn’t stunning, but it was neat nonetheless.  I’m sure future explorations into this technique could turn out really well.

Finally,

A good place to start is the Timescapes forum.  Tom Lowe has some absolutely stunning time lapse nature films (here, here, and here) and has created a very helpful community.  I suggest going over to this forum if you are at all interested.  You can learn the basics and more advanced stuff like computer programming the Milapse.

Well, THON 2010 came and went.  I took off from work early and drove through 4 rush hours (DC, Baltimore, North Baltimore/PA, and Harrisburg) to get there in time to photograph it.  My main objective this year was to improve upon my time lapse film from last year’s THON 2009.  The plan was to create more of a short film this year composed of numerous time lapse angles of different things.  I purchased a bunch of equipment, including a new rotating tripod head to be used for slowly rotating time lapse shots.  I will go more into detail about the behind-the-scenes of this shoot in a future post. I captured over 13,000 images that I stitched together in the film below.

I have to thank Scott Lukas for being such an incredible help to me all weekend.  I could not have made this film without him.  He helped me position cameras, started cameras for me when I was sleeping, and coordinated his whole stage crew to aid me.  The crew was awesome and they did a great job not only helping me, but working behind the scenes at THON.  At the end of THON, I had two cameras set up in remote, hard to get to, positions.  Of course, things also got crazy for them at the end of THON with everything else that was happening on the floor.  Within 10 minutes, I had to position a camera in the catwalk, start it, move it once everyone sat down, and then rush down to the floor so that I could shoot the end with a handheld camera.  At the same time, another camera that I had positioned 10 feet above the concourse had to be started with a ladder that we had hid on the other side of the arena.  Without a LOT of planning and the crew’s help, shots like that could never have happened.  I had three cameras going at the same time at TOTALLY different locations very far apart from each other in the arena.

Thanks to my friend and film editor, Ian Jefferys, who did a fantastic job editing the film.  Thanks to my friend Jason Davoli for providing me with his music from his new CD for the soundtrack.  You can check out his new CD at www.jasondavoli.com. You can actually see Jason and Dan (who plays the fiddle in Free) and their band, Lowjack, performing at THON at 1:37 in my film. If you watch closely, you can even see me shooting them up close halfway into the shot.

I also took some stills.  Please go to photos.maxwellkruger.com/events/thon10/ to see the whole gallery and order prints.

(Canon EOS 40D, 18 mm, , f/2.8, ISO 100)

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(Canon EOS 40D, 16 mm, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 40D, 135 mm, 1/160, f/2, ISO 400)

I stitched together a few images to create this panoramic image.  Funny enough, I didn’t even remember this, but when I was zooming in on it, Tucker Haas is performing on the stage.  You can see the photo bigger here.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 4 17mm images, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 29 mm, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)

I thought it was cool that they created a heart.

(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)

The final line dance.

(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)

I was one of the few people to know that there was going to be confetti shooting off during the announcement of the total because the stage crew was helping me with my cameras all weekend. I know they worked hard to create the confetti shooters and were excited about it. I thought it went really well and looked good.

I had to be up in the catwalk above the BJC so that I could move one of my cameras after it captured the sit-down to a different position to capture the final announcement. After everyone sat down, I quickly (but very safely) moved my camera to the other side of the catwalk and rushed all the way down to the floor (which included multiple ladders, a lot of stairs, and several crowds to wade through) to get in position to shoot the announcement with my handheld Canon 1D Mark IV. I didn’t have enough time to get through all the people to the back so that I could get a straight-on shot, so my shot sucks. But I knew I had the backup shot from the top of the catwalk (see first image in this post), so I didn’t feel too bad about it because I knew no one else had that shot.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 31 mm, 1/100, f/2.8, ISO 800)

The mass of people trying to leave the Bryce Jordan Center.

(Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 15 mm, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 100)

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Stay tuned for upcoming posts.  This weekend is THON and I have been planning something very new and exciting for it for weeks.

Check it out!

I’ve been shooting with the 1D Mark IV for a little under a month now and I have to say that I really like it. It’s a huge improvement overa all cameras that I’ve owned. My biggest gripe is that I’m unhappy with the ISO performance as I was expecting a performance boost over the 5D Mark II that I loved and instead experienced a downgrade. I have noticed that the files are considerably noisier than the 5D – where I wouldn’t hesitate to go up to 3200, I now think twice about going to 1600 on the 1D.

See the gallery here.

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, 1/15, f/2.8, ISO 200)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, f/5.6, ISO 200)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, 1/100, f/2.8, ISO 200)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 35mm, 1/2000, f/2.8, ISO 200)

In total, I shot 5,366 photos, 70 videos, totaling 143GB.

All photos are available to see in this gallery.
The photos are geotagged and you can see them on a map by clicking on the “Map This” link above each photo or view all of them here.
New Feature: you can now order prints of the photos right from within the gallery!

I also shot some video directly on my still camera.  The Canon 5D Mark II captures really excellent video and, although none of it is production quality because I didn’t have the right supports and wasn’t there to capture video, it’s very interesting to watch nonetheless.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/640, f/2, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/4000, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/30, f/2.8, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/5000, f/2, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/640, f/4.5, ISO 640)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 19mm, 1/200, f/9, ISO 50)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)

Update: Here are two photos of me in action.

I’ve recently purchased a SmugMug account and am going to begin selling photos through the above URL.  Check back in a week for my most popular photos now available for purchase online.

Also, you might have noticed that some of the photos are starting to say Canon 1D Mark IV.  I’m now shooting with one and love it.  I sold my 5DII and now shoot with just 1D’s.  I wish I had the 1DIV for my Kenya trip, but it came in the week that I returned.  Speaking of Kenya, I’m now editing my 150gb of photos and should have them up within the next few weeks.

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, 1/8000, f/5.6, ISO 400)

(Canon 1D Mark IV, 16mm, 0.04, f/2.8, ISO 400)

View the full gallery here.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, f/5.7, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 20, f/2.8, ISO 6400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, f/8, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/1000, f/4, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 35mm, 1/1600, f/3.2, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 30, f/2.8, ISO 6400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, f/5.7, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 35mm, 1/8, f/4.5, ISO 1600)