July 4th, 2014

Washington D.C Fireworks - July 4th 2014 from Steve Ellington on Vimeo.

The fireworks display in the nation's capital.
Music is Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Souza performed by the Marine Corp Band.

If you liked this video, consider leaving a tip on the Vimeo page

From the 38th Floor

Last thursday was a night of fortuitous accidents. While scouting music video locations with StraightValue, a series of one-time opportunties lead us to an outside balcony on the 38th floor of the Cathedral of Learning. While, unfortunately too dark to shoot a scene for the video, I seized the moment to take some time-lapse footage and put together a short video. The view from there is incredible.

Music courtesy of StraightValue

Intervalometry: Family Wii Bowling Tournament

Over the holidays I discovered the app iTimelapse Pro which seems to be the best timelapse applications in the app store to date. As a quick test of its capabilities I placed my iPhone in front of the TV and recorded my family's post-Thanksgiving Wii Bowling tournament:

The low light makes for some compression artifacting, but it is altogether very impressive for an iPhone.

Intervalometry: The Beginning

I love time lapse photography. For several months now I have had the ability to create high quality time lapse footage due to my CHDK hacked Canon G9. For some reason, I have not been taking full advantage of this. That is why I am starting this semi-regular series called Intervalometry, where I will post time lapse video -- semi-regularly. Without further ado, here is some footage shot out of the window at Image Engineers:

Here are a couple of timelapses I did previously: Zürich Timlapse and Infrared Timelapse

Infrared Timelapse

I have wanted to play around with the Infrared sensitivity of my Canon G9 for a while. Since I now have timelapse capabilities, I thought I might as well experiment with both:

HD Timelapses FTW!

Shortly after I bought my Canon G9, I learned about the CHDK firmware hack for Canon point and shoots. I was instantly Look Out!excited by the possibilities, especially the timelapse capabilities. Unfortunately, the CHDK hack did not work on the G9 -- until a couple of days ago. The hackers over on the CHDK forums finally made a working version of the hack for the G9 and I am loving it. I have been playing with the ultra high shutter speed along with motion detection to take pictures of my cats middair. Timelapse, however, is the best part. The G9 is a 12 megapixel camera. That means I can make timelapses that are well over HD quality. Even the medium JPEG setting (2592 x 1944) is larger than HD video (1920x1080). I did a quick test yesterday at sunset. Here is the result:

is

Steve Ellington

an independent filmmaker based in Washington D.C.