# The Blizzard of 2013 Time Lapse



## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

https://vimeo.com/59278065

I did a time lapse of the effects of the blizzard at Lechmere Station in Cambridge, MA from 10am to 6pm. 

This was done using relatively short exposures taken every 30 seconds. Normally i'd try and stick to a 180 degree shutter angle, but to do so in this situation would have blurred the scene because of the sheets of snow. 

I used a 5D mkii shooting sraw on a 100mm 2.8L Macro. Iso ranging from 100-3200, F-stop: 11-7.1 . I exported the video from Lightroom 3 using custom slideshow preferences. 

Feel free to offer constructive criticism (or even just S___ talk since i'm usually hypercritical of everything). 

Note: you should download the original MP4 to get the preferred viewing experience.


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## kennephoto (Feb 10, 2013)

Cool time lapse, but where's the blizzard? I wanted to see snow plows struggling but the roads were only wet  I'm in Minnesota and I've seen reports of 6-10 inches of snow and ice maybe I should try a time lapse. How did you set everything up?


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

Thanks for the feedback!. Regrettably the crazy snow didn't hit till the middle of the night, and they pretreated the roads to melt the early snowfall. In spite of this, i tried to capture the chaos of the scene.

Normally i'd use a different setup for a time lapse, but the conditions presented some novel challenges. For example, I had to hang halfway out of my window to wipe the condensation off the glass every 5 minutes. I also didn't have a timer, so i had to manually hit the shutter every 30 seconds ( i had a remote, but no automatic timer). 

It was a fun project and i definitely learned a lot. Shooting in raw was essential, because the the footage required a lot of tweaking in post just to make sure everything didn't look like a grey blob.


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## jdramirez (Feb 10, 2013)

No offense, but that was boring. Snow by itself makes a boring subject and snow falling is hard to capture the magic of. 

Having said that... I kinda was hoping for action. It was just traffic and like gentrification (white taking over a formerly black area). 

Though... if something did happen like a car accident... a story being told... that would have been more intriguing. I guess you can blame the drivers for not giving people something to look at.


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## jdramirez (Feb 10, 2013)

http://www.amazon.com/NEEWER-LCD-Shutter-Release-Control/dp/B003QA0MWW/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1360470723&sr=8-16&keywords=wired+shutter+release+canon

I haven't done time lapse, but I bought this and it should work well with that. It's cheap but works great. I'm not sure if it is compatible with the 5d... though I think it is.


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

jdramirez said:


> No offense, but that was boring.



Lol, i think that's why i kept it so short! That being said, I like the transition of light. And, like i said, i think the exposure was pretty good given the hectic conditions. The dynamic lighting conditions and the bad weather made it a real challenge. 

Coincidentally, i think i Amazoned that same timer (albeit forlornly) while i was doing the shoot. It's a definite must have (or something equivalent).


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 10, 2013)

If possible, post some stills of the Snow tomorrow. How much did you get in Cambridge? I hope that you and your family are all safe, don't do anything foolish. I've seen two feet of snow in 12 hours in Seattle a few times, but not 40 inches!


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

The perspective doesn't really show it, but that's apparently 22 inches+ on the ground. As you can see, they did a good job plowing the street and the sidewalks.


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## TexPhoto (Feb 10, 2013)

Did you take the video down? I get nothing.


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

It's transcoding again, i wanted to upload the 1080p version. You can still down load the original 90MB while it is transcoding. I recommend this anyway because the compression takes its toll, especially in SD.


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## Rofflesaurrr (Feb 10, 2013)

I was just checking the weather for tomorrow and I stumbled upon this video. It's a much different perspective, but it turned out pretty good I think...

http://www.weather.com/video/time-lapse-watch-the-snow-rise-34231


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

I saw this too. I really like the end (seeing the snow creep up the lens). But this is essentially a closeup (as are most time laps in snow, and for good reason). It's a lot harder to shoot stuff in the distance during the snow with a time lapse because all of the snow in between you and the subject is effectively running interference.


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## bycostello (Feb 10, 2013)

excellent...


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## FatDaddyJones (Feb 10, 2013)

cool


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## Jesse (Feb 10, 2013)

I think I'll go with shit-talking. No time-lapse where the camera gets moved that much will ever be taken seriously. Good luck next time.


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

Jesse said:


> I think I'll go with S___-talking. No time-lapse where the camera gets moved that much will ever be taken seriously. Good luck next time.



That's good, because I hope i never create art that gets "taken seriously". That sounds dreadful. 

But I did try and minimize the camera movement. As i said before, conditions were far from ideal. In the end i tell myself it makes it look like film jumping around in the projector gate .

https://vimeo.com/59278065


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## FatDaddyJones (Feb 10, 2013)

Don't listen to all the rude and obnoxious posts (which seem to be a large percentage of what you find on this forum). You video took a lot of effort in adverse conditions and turned out well. My only advice would be to try shortening the interval between shots for moving subjects such as traffic so the overall video appears smoother. I, for one, enjoyed your video. Thanks for posting it.


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

FatDaddyJones said:


> Don't listen to all the rude and obnoxious posts (which seem to be a large percentage of what you find on this forum).



To be fair, I kinda asked for it. 




FatDaddyJones said:


> You video took a lot of effort in adverse conditions and turned out well. My only advice would be to try shortening the interval between shots for moving subjects such as traffic so the overall video appears smoother. I, for one, enjoyed your video. Thanks for posting it.



Thanks, and this is good advice. I struggled with trying to get the interval right. I wanted a short clip that covered a lot of time, so i had to make a compromise. I think if i could do it over again, i would have cut the interval to every 12 secs, but with longer exposures (i was at 1/50 for much of the time). 

But i kinda like the jumpiness too, and to some extent it was intentional. I'm a big fan of stop animation, so i kind of like the look of time lapses that don't try too hard to be video. Does that make sense?


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## FatDaddyJones (Feb 10, 2013)

HurtinMinorKey said:


> But i kinda like the jumpiness too, and to some extent it was intentional. I'm a big fan of stop animation, so i kind of like the look of time lapses that don't try too hard to be video. Does that make sense?



If that's the look you're shooting for, it looks great.


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## RS2021 (Feb 10, 2013)

Nice. Doesn't look like much snow accumulation within the time frame though. I was thinking people would be walking on narrow paths on the sidewalk.


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## Rat (Feb 10, 2013)

Just a quick question: did you use auto white balance or was the light really that inconsistent? If the first, you might want to stick with a fixed value next time, makes it easier on the eye


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

^Manual white balance, but it was shot in raw so i tweaked it in post. I think the phenomena you're talking about was caused by the varying degrees of snowfall.


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## Rat (Feb 10, 2013)

Note to self: only go out to shoot when snowfall is of consistent density and texture :


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## emag (Feb 10, 2013)

For your dedication and push-the-shutter-every-30-seconds efforts I give you two thumbs up and a virtual beer, amigo! I enjoy doing time lapse also, although on the day of the storm I was outside in 70 degrees and sun in the Florida Panhandle taking (camcorder) video of fire ants. I grew up in snow country and have friends and family digging out - I no longer recognize a snow shovel. I shoot many of my TL's in MRAW and find that Lightroom's 720 resolution is just fine. I found full size RAW and 1080 to be overkill for this application. Just my opinion. Processes fast and for video the quality is fine. I recommend a timer remote from GadgetInfinity or some such, I have both wired and wireless, although on my 60D I use Magic Lantern exclusively. For astro lapses, I shoot three per minute, 15 second exposures, ~1000 frames for six hours and 45 seconds at 24fps. Sunrise/sunset stuff I use ML's Bulb Ramping. Daylight just pick an appropriate interval, sometimes using ML's fps override and saving shutter cycles. Lens twist method for constant aperture or an adapter and a manual M42 lens.


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## distant.star (Feb 10, 2013)

.
I remember seeing this one a few years ago. Still my favorite:

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse: Mike Black on Vimeo


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

emag said:


> For your dedication and push-the-shutter-every-30-seconds efforts I give you two thumbs up and a virtual beer, amigo! I enjoy doing time lapse also, although on the day of the storm I was outside in 70 degrees and sun in the Florida Panhandle taking (camcorder) video of fire ants. I grew up in snow country and have friends and family digging out - I no longer recognize a snow shovel.



^ thanks amigo. I envy your latitude right now. If i ever make enough money to retire, you'll never see me outside the tropics again!



emag said:


> I shoot many of my TL's in MRAW and find that Lightroom's 720 resolution is just fine. I found full size RAW and 1080 to be overkill for this application.



I used sraw to keep the files to 10MB, but i needed the Raw because i knew the exposures were going to be extremely flat, and i'd have to pull out lots of detail. 



emag said:


> Lens twist method for constant aperture or an adapter and a manual M42 lens..



Can you explain "Lens twist method"? I think i know what you are talking about, but i'm not sure.


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## HurtinMinorKey (Feb 10, 2013)

distant.star said:


> .
> I remember seeing this one a few years ago. Still my favorite:



That's amazing. I love the way how the scene was modified throughout, with things like the clock appearing, and the yardstick. Pure genius.


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