Stills from GS400, 23rd April 2005 and another day.

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Wed 20/07/2005 22:22

Steven W (and others), here's some stills from my GS400 video camera.

Most are from the 23rd April 2005 when we had those storms go up the east coast of the South Island. The other one is of an isolated Cb that popped up behind Bank's Peninsula one day (second post), can't remember date but you'll know the day I'm talking about when you see it.

Now, the thumbs are just simply screen captures with the frame size of the video halved. This helps to deinterlace the image and give a good quality capture. Where the thumbs go to are full sized captures (720 x 576), first i capture these and then deinterlace them in Coral Draw which intorpolates some of the image to get rid of the lines in it. This must be done to get quality stills for a computer screen which works in a progressive mode if you get what I mean. Video that moves slowly though like slow panning for e.g. almost doesn't really need deinterlacing for reasons which i can't think how to explain right now but hopefully you understand what I mean. On to the pictures!

I've got better lightning shots on tape but just quickly put some clips on the comp to try it out. Hopefully it gives you an idea of what we saw on the night aswell as the Still quality from the GS400.

Cheers

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 21/07/2005 13:20

Here's the other still's. As above, smaller still is just the video frame half sized and the other a full capture deinterlaced and intorpolated.

Also, these stills are compressed JPG's, a setting of 30 (out of 100) for compression and a setting of 10 for smoothing (whatever that is?). I don't think it makes much difference from the original stills but there may be some slight loss of quality. I can post up some originalls if someone want's a look.

Cheers.

tich · Unread post by **tich** » Thu 21/07/2005 14:30

The other one is of an isolated Cb that popped up behind Bank's Peninsula one day (second post), can't remember date but you'll know the day I'm talking about when you see it.

Reminds me of 16th November last year, except it wouldn't have been an isolated cb - several thunderstorms affected BP that afternoon, though none reached Chch. (but the cbs were spectacular)

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Thu 21/07/2005 14:31

Wonderfully fine day again with light S. 14c

Cu bubbling up quite nicely, 3rd day in a row

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Thu 21/07/2005 16:33

Thanks for that information Aaron.
You have taken some good lightning shots.

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Fri 22/07/2005 11:17

Thanks Spwill, here's some quick Vid's from that night:

Vid1_230405
Vid2_230405

I've got some bigger ones but ran out of time at work last night! Will try to get them up soon.

They're mostly just black clips with a flash each and me and Steve saying stuff, I should learn to be quite next time when filming! lol. They're atleast under 450Kb each so not big.

Cheers

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Fri 22/07/2005 11:44

I really should shut up when you turn the camera on Aaron

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Fri 22/07/2005 18:49

Thanks for the info on the video stills Aaron. Some good footage there.

I have a bit of a learning curve to go through before I make a purchase.

I photographed this set up in a storm chase vehicle in Kansas.

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Fri 22/07/2005 23:50

Awesome footage guys

What do you guys think would be better, stills from Video camera or digital camera still?

Are there any cameras on the market that can recognise lightning and take a picture of it?

Or is it just easily changable with the exposure setting?

My sony dscp-2 digi cam is getting a bit boring and i'm readily eager to invest in something decent for storms etc.

Michael · Unread post by **Michael** » Sat 23/07/2005 00:05

Just think at the time we were looking forward to Anzac weekend and some settled weather and remember on the Wed of that week it was forecasted to been like that

Fujita Phil · Unread post by **Fujita Phil** » Sat 23/07/2005 00:27

Foggy Hamilton wrote:Awesome footage guys

What do you guys think would be better, stills from Video camera or digital camera still?

I'm assuming a still from a digital camera would be far a superior picture than from a frame captured from a video.

Are there any cameras on the market that can recognise lightning and take a picture of it? Or is it just easily changable with the exposure setting?

And I want to know where you can buy one of these lightning predicting cameras?

Day photography of lightning most people would agree with must be very difficult to capture. Night on the other hand should be a lot easier as you can open up the lens for long periods of time. I've posted this pic before but it is a great few nights to go up a hill and practice night shots...

Skywatcher · Unread post by **Skywatcher** » Sat 23/07/2005 10:46

Fujita Phil wrote:I'm assuming a still from a digital camera would be far a superior picture than from a frame captured from a video.

Are there any cameras on the market that can recognise lightning and take a picture of it? Or is it just easily changable with the exposure setting?
And I want to know where you can buy one of these lightning predicting cameras?

Day photography of lightning most people would agree with must be very difficult to capture. Night on the other hand should be a lot easier as you can open up the lens for long periods of time. I've posted this pic before but it is a great few nights to go up a hill and practice night shots...

A captured frame from PAL digital video is only 720x576 but that's interlaced so it's really 720x288. As Aaron has mentioned the 'de-interlace' filter in graphics apps will interpolate to give a sensible aspect ratio. I suppose HD video cameras will help in the future.

I managed to take a photo of lightning in daylight last year (http://www.weatherforum.org.nz/forum/do ... php?id=478) but it was pure luck that the flash was strobing for long enough - I used ISO100, f/8 which gave 1/5s on aperture priority. Increasing the f-number to make the exposure longer means you lose contrast between the sky and the lightning which is why you can hardly see it.

I also built a lightning flash trigger based on this circuit: http://www.solorb.com/elect/lightning/ It seemed to be working when I used the flash from another camera for tests but when I tried it on 24th April it kept taking pictures continuously

There's an expensive commercial version from: http://lightningtrigger.com/

Even if it works, digital cameras have a delay before they take the picture so you'll only see the strobed return strokes and not the forked leaders which only occur at the very start of the flash.

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Wed 27/07/2005 20:53

Hail! Not the best but ok'ish.

Another video from that night on the 23rd (4.5mb, 25 seconds long (I think!)). Just some hail on the ground and some commentary by me and Steve. Yes I was focusing at some point! Rick click "Save as".

Divx encoded. Seems to work better in Media Player Classic or the Divx player than the new windows type player or is that just me? Say something if your having problems. That would be great.

Cheers

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 28/07/2005 13:39

Another video! Some hail falling on the car, 3.26MB, 19 seconds long. Looking over Oamaru from a lookout above the town.

HAIL IN THE CAR

This is a pic of the lookout at day I believe:

http://www.freewebz.com/oamaru/28LookoutPointL.jpg

Cheers

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Thu 28/07/2005 13:47

Aaron J Wilkinson wrote:Another video! Some hail falling on the car, 3.26MB, 19 seconds long. Looking over Oamaru from a lookout above the town.

HAIL IN THE CAR

This is a pic of the lookout at day I believe:

http://www.freewebz.com/oamaru/28LookoutPointL.jpg

Cheers

You know something's funny when it's fine in Oamaru!

Did you get a chance to go inland to the Mackenzie?

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 28/07/2005 13:55

LOL

Maybe I should've worded that a bit differently.

We didn't go into the Mackenzie that day as the storms were coastal, I haven't been down that way for a long time! Will be good to go back some time soon for some summer thunderstorms perhaps?. Last time I passed through your way Gary was when I was around 9 or 10. So that was 10 years ago!

Cheers

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Wed 03/08/2005 15:39

Finally, I've found a great way to compress vid's getting quite a small size yet retaining good quality and very resonable sound. And I'm using the wmv encoder that was allready on my computer! Anyway! Here they go. All are 384 x 288 (lines), I did this to also help in terms of getting the file size down but you can double the frame if you want and still have larger video to look at. Despite some of the small sizes they last around a minimum of 8 seconds each!

Video 1! 230405 (2.44mb)
Video 2! 230405 (224kb)
Video 3! 230405 (205kb)
Video 4! 230405 (183kb)
Video 5! 230405 (205kb)
Video 6! 230405 (165kb)
Video 7! 230405 (151kb)
Video 8! 230405 (931kb)
Video 9! 230405 (4.54mb)
Video 10! 230405 (201kb)
Video 11! 230405 (205kb)
Video 12! 230405 (214kb)

And one more Vid which is just me mucking around (shaky hands Aaron!) filming a small Cb. I was also trying to focus at one point to!

Video 1! 300505 (7.73mb)

Cheers!