2010 Winter Solstice Eclipse

2010 Winter Solstice Eclipse

It's not the best shot we'll see of tonight's eclipse, it's not going to win any awards and it's not going to make it onto Gothamist (is NJ eligible anyway?). But it was worth 20 minutes of standing on the sidewalk in front of the house for 20 minutes, fingers going numb, eyes watering, wind cutting through my jeans. We had a perfectly clear night for the event, which is no guarantee (sorry, Midwesterners). This chance might not come again and I was awake anyway, so why not take advantage?

Christmas lights time-lapse, December 2010

Christmas lights time-lapse, originally uploaded by DC Products.

My first time-lapse! I've been dying to try this and decided that putting up the Christmas lights was as good a subject as any. Now I'm hooked.

It's 729 frames, at 2 seconds per exposure, taken every 10 seconds and put together at 18 frames per second. I doubled up (by 10) on a few frames (you'll notice them) for the heck of it.

But here's the lesson to learn: Be sure to check your photo applications thoroughly before buying software. I missed that Picasa -- the awesome free photo editing software -- has a "time lapse" setting in its movie maker and it allows for several speeds of frames per second. So I went and bought QuickTime Pro, which wasn't as flexible (or as easy to add music to). It was a not-cheap (but not outrageous) $30 (anything more and I wouldn't have bought it; if only it were $35). Oh well. Just gonna have to sell some things on eBay.

At least I'm happy with the end result.