Time lapse video of orchids

[Laserbeak]

Has anyone here had much success? I want to capture a flower opening, and I finally have everything together and it's been running starting today. I have a paph that has a short "War of the Worlds"-looking flower coming up -- it'll probably take at least two weeks to open. I'll have to carefully remove the memory card and copy all the pictures off of it to my computer and erase it and put it back in ASAP at least once, I figure the card will last about 6.5 days at the settings I have it on.

It's in a light tent with two halogen tripod lights on either side and a black background. The camera is the GoPro Hero 3+ black. I just hope I can keep it all together without disturbing it for the two weeks or so it'll take! Things around here tend to get jostled around a lot!

[WhiteRabbit]

Cool project!

I remember some time ago, a member posted time lapse video, or photos of an orchid opening.

I look forward to seeing yours!

[RosieC]

I remember seeing one some time ago as well. Never tried it myself.

Good luck, it should look really cool if it works.

[awest]

Sounds like you're ready to go! I don't have much experience with time lapse plants, but I do with other stop motion video. You're using a GoPro. Do they have a stop-motion feature? How cool.

I'd recommend in the future using a photography camera with an intervelometer. GoPros as far as I know all have a serious fisheye effect, which might distort your flower. If you have a digital SLR camera it will also give you specific controls for much better light control. Since the camera's not moving and the light doesn't change you can do all kinds of things with aperture and shutter speed without making any compromise in the ISO settings.

Of course the GoPro has the advantage of being small for nestling in with plants as well as being water resistant. Plus, I imagine they have a better battery life if an outlet's not near by.

If stuff gets moved during it might be better to switch completely to a different angle rather than try to recreate the exact image. If possible though fix anything and everything in place with screws, duck tape, sand bags, whatever you have. In my experience anything that can move, will.

P.S. I'm a little jealous. I can take stop motion and grow plants, but can't grow plants were I can take stop-motion. Best of luck. I'm excited for the results.

[My Green Pets]

There's a YouTuber called 'Bill Taylor' who has made several very nice ones, but my favorite is by Johan Ho of a phalaenopsis spike from beginning to flower, a total of over three months of time lapse.

Whenever I get the chance, I will be making a video of pseudobulb development from teeny growth to bloom. Talk about ambitious, but part of the lure is that I've never seen it done before. Seeing orchid growth in fast-forward like this is in my opinion so helpful for understanding them.

[Laserbeak]

Originally Posted by awest

Sounds like you're ready to go! I don't have much experience with time lapse plants, but I do with other stop motion video. You're using a GoPro. Do they have a stop-motion feature? How cool.

I'd recommend in the future using a photography camera with an intervelometer. GoPros as far as I know all have a serious fisheye effect, which might distort your flower. If you have a digital SLR camera it will also give you specific controls for much better light control. Since the camera's not moving and the light doesn't change you can do all kinds of things with aperture and shutter speed without making any compromise in the ISO settings.

Of course the GoPro has the advantage of being small for nestling in with plants as well as being water resistant. Plus, I imagine they have a better battery life if an outlet's not near by.

If stuff gets moved during it might be better to switch completely to a different angle rather than try to recreate the exact image. If possible though fix anything and everything in place with screws, duck tape, sand bags, whatever you have. In my experience anything that can move, will.

P.S. I'm a little jealous. I can take stop motion and grow plants, but can't grow plants were I can take stop-motion. Best of luck. I'm excited for the results.

The GoPro is pretty good, but obviously not as good as a Nikon would be, of course it's a lot cheaper too! I have a fake battery that has a cord coming out the skeleton back and into a AC/DC converter into a wall plug. Note, a long USB charger plug with a skeleton case works too, but creates a lot more heat and can cause the camera to turn off by itself due to overheating (I had this problem myself), hence the fake battery solution that generates far less heat.

This is infuriatingly slow and I've had to move things around because the flower was pointing the wrong way, I had to put a stake in it with a clip, a light bulb broke, etc., etc., etc.

But it looks like it's about to open, so once in starts, then it will go fast. I don't know what I'll do with the rest of the footage since it will be quite uninteresting and disjointed.

As far as stop motion, not sure exactly what you mean, it can do time lapse and the software can turn it into a movie. I guess if you mean manually pressing the shutter button when you want to take a frame that would work the same way. And the software that comes with it de-fisheyes it pretty well, so that's not too much of an issue.

---

Oh, by the way, I made this little snippet within 24 hours of opening the GoPro box with just the GoPro and the included free software. I've since learned how to make it look much better, but it's pretty good for just less than a day of playing with it!

New York City Subway Time-lapse - YouTube

---

Oh, I almost forgot, I did this one too:

Upper West Side Broadway Traffic - YouTube

[Orquiadicto]

Good job. Very interesting project. Please upload the time lapse as soon as you can.

[awest]

Sorry to hear you've hit snags. The test shots look good though. I don't even notice the fish-eye in the second one.

Stop-motion and Time-lapse as far as I know mean the same thing. At first I though the GoPro might be taking video and speeding it up rather than taking stills since I didn't know they had that function. Those cameras are pretty cool. Can't wait until next christmas.

[My Green Pets]

Fun but a question...the ads on your vid...did you monetize?

[Laserbeak]

Originally Posted by CambriaWhat

Fun but a question...the ads on your vid...did you monetize?

Yeah I figure why not? I made like $500 last year just from some clips from the news.