Sunday, June 15, 2008

Viddy this

viddy this


I remembered the other day that the mini-DV video camera I've had for years (the catchily-named Sony DCR-TRV22E) can do both time-lapse, and frame-by-frame.

I remember reading it in the manual when I first got it - god knows where that manual is now, but after a bit of searching through the (touch-screen) menus, I found both.

So, I decided to play around with it. Here are the results:

First thing I did was a time-lapse. The default setting is half a second of video taken every 30 seconds. You can set it to take longer amounts, and at longer intervals, but I left it at this for now.

I have been pruning fruit trees all weekend, so I rigged the camera up in the garage window, and filmed myself pruning the peach tree, grapevine and rosebush (and answering a phone call from Rach:



This came out better than I'd hoped, so once I was tired of pruning, I tried a bit of frame-by-frame animation. This is one of those toys where you push up the bottom and its legs collapse. I'm particularly proud of the headspin followed by body turn in the middle:



Again, I'm pretty happy with that for a first go. For my next attempt, I wanted to do the classic "bumcar" animation, where a person (Ella in this case) "drives" along the floor on their arse:



Last of all, I thought I'd do another time-lapse, this time of Ella eating her Macaroni Cheese. I told her I was filming her (she signed a release and everything), but I think she forgot straight away, and the massive range of faces she makes is purely coincidental:



I'd love to see your efforts at time-lapse or frame-by-frame animation!

2 comments:

That'll do said...

Cooooooooooooool.

And yuuuuuuuum - macaroni cheese.

I'm sure we've done a few of these but just with still pictures and with playdo or something. Although I'm sure Haszari will be inspired - hopefully it'll stop him taking pictures of corners of blocks and tables.

Must remember to show the kids when they get home....

That'll do said...

F-i-n-a-l-l-y showed the kids some of these videos and Millie lost control laughing when she saw the one of Ella zooming around on her bum. I love it when she laughs that much.
PLUS I managed to set up the subscribe thingee for you blog and the computer didn't crash! So I should be able to keep up to date with your posts now....