Time Lapsed

Hello, Web

Today, I made my first time lapse. Here in my city, the night sky is a starless pink. So it's not a video of the stars seemingly revolving around the Earth. Instead, it's a video of the sky turning from bluish white to a dull pink. I started at 5:05 PM and finished at 7:05.

I started off by setting my Nikon D7100 on my tripod with the 35mm f/1.8 lens. I placed it next to an open window and got a good frame with a little bit of window, a little bit of a tree and a lot of the sky. Next, I set up the interval shooting mode. I chose a frame per minute. 120 frames over 2 hours. However, while choosing the focus field at f/6.3, I left the autofocus on. Furthermore, I forgot to switch off auto ISO too, which capped out at 3200. The last debacle was an accident bump into the tripod, which knocked it off by a few millimeters.

I used a software called Time Lapse Assembler for Mac on my MacBook Pro. It's quite straightforward. You select the source folder (I was shooting JPEGs, by the way), select the encoding (I chose the default h.264), and set the framerate (I went with 24). For dimensions, I chose to resize while keeping the original ratio. However, forgetting that I was shooting in portrait, I chose 1920 pixels for width. There are four quality settings; I chose the 2nd highest.

After around 8 minutes of processing, I had the "small" 50MB .mov video file ready. I'm not sure whether it was worth the 2 and a half hours but I suppose that there has to be a first time for everything.

I look forward to future time lapses that will hopefully yield more favourable results.

Revensburger 18,000 piece 4 Historic World Maps Puzzle

Hello, Internet

Before I purchased the 3,000 piece world map puzzle, I had been hunting for the 18,000 piece 4 Historic World Maps puzzle. The hunt was long but fruitless. Having almost given up all hope, I checked on eBay last year, around March. I found one listing. Opened and slightly damaged box, but unopened bags. I had purchased it within an hour. I started it last year, but had to pack it up due to a lack of space.

This summer, I started it again. After reaching my previous point of progress and crossing it with relative ease, I entered a dry patch on the ocean of the first map. A few weeks ago, I finally pushed through and am now left with just a few hundred pieces of two different shades: cream with dots and golden. I hope to make a final 10 hour push soon and finish it off.