Day 117, Year 4 - Time(lapse) With The AirBox by stevecameras

Day 117, Year 4 - Time(lapse) With The AirBox

Best viewed large on black if you have time :)

This is one of the stills taken in London of a new product my company has made - a small, highly portable and super-functional television recording unit known as the AirBox. It does basically everything that one of our Outside Broadcast trucks do but in a much smaller set of boxes.

The company wanted some stills and some time-lapse sequences and asked me because they have seen pics on Facebook of some of the shots I put on here such as the traffic light trails and the landscapes and said to me that 'you can do photos!', and it from then on it was something I was tasked with even though doing stills photography isn't part of my day job. It felt the same as when a relative thinks you must be able to do a full wedding because you can do the odd landscape or two...!

I haven't done anything commercial, or anything that would appear in a commercial publication such as a trade magazine, and I haven't done any time-lapse sequences before so was a bit apprehensive but decided I should give it a go rather than insist they get someone else to do it.

So with all the gear piled into a large van I set out with 3 other colleagues late afternoon into London and headed for Olympic Park to the structure you can see in the picture, one of the first I had spotted on a recce day a few weeks before. We spent a couple of hours here before moving just round the corner under a bridge, still in the Olympic Park site. We worked until around 2.30am before deciding to head home. And after we managed to get the broken down van up and running again we did head to our beds as the sun was on its way up...!

The final images and time-lapse sequences can be viewed on the website at www.ctvairbox.com

Another shot of the AirBox take after midnight can be seen here:
http://365project.org/stevecameras/365/2016-04-27


3 good things:

1 - Smooth journey down to base in the car
2 - Fun doing timelapses in London during the night of the AirBox
3 - Getting the broken down work van up and running again at 4am, and then finally getting into bed at my colleagues' house at 5am
The shot looks really good Steve, I hope your company is pleased with the results you got. How did you take the time lapse photos? I have just been given an Intervalometer and need to do some research on how to use it.
May 16th, 2016  
I just looked at the website and I really like the selective colour shot.
May 17th, 2016  
Very nice.
May 17th, 2016  
what a night. Looks fabulous on black.
May 17th, 2016  
Great result Steve
May 18th, 2016  
@nicolecampbell Thank you Nicole. They are happy fortunately. I am my own worst critic so I have ripped holes in a lot of it but actually it's OK - especially given I don't do product/advertising type stills, have hadn't ever really done time-lapse sequences.

My Fuji X-E2 has an in-built intervalometer which is a great thing as it means no remote, and I had it set up for around 1 second exposure with a 1-2 second intervals (1-2 seconds in between each shot).
The remotes like yours (I have one and have had a few over the years) are very easy to use.
You can shoot in Aperture mode with the remote, and have each of the numbers on the display set to zero, except the interval time which lets you set how much time between each frame. You set up the camera and the exposure as normal and fire away.

The traffic sequences under the bridge and on the motorway bridge were shot at around 1 second, enough to get the light trail/motion blur, and shot with a 1 second interval so 1 second in between each frame.

You then compile the frames in Quick Time Player 7 as an Image Sequence. You can Google that last bit to see how it's done, very easy to do.
May 20th, 2016  
May 20th, 2016  
@stevecameras - thanks so much for the advice Steve. I am hoping I will have more time in a month or so to start using it. There is always something to learn.
May 20th, 2016  
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