And vote this one UP on Reddit here.

One year in 2 minutes from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Link to video on YouTube. Visit The Philter Lounge to download and listen to more amazing music by Magnus Gangstad.

Update: By popular demand. Both from the comments and from twitter. The version with no zoom-effect.

Link to video on youtube.

The story

Since 2005 I have done different projects documenting the change of the seasons outside our living room window. The first project was a couple of stills taken with a compact camera. The video I made got nearly 100 000 views on YouTube. Not much today, but this was in 2005…

The next video I made was done in 2007 and with a Canon 400D. Based on stills shot at irregular intervals. That video got more than two million views on YouTube, one million on Vimeo and was featured on CNN, The Weather Channel, NHK in Japan and countless other TV stations, web sites and exhibitions.

In 2009 I documented the changes with video clips shot with my Canon 5D Mark II. The three videos I made are closing in on one million views and have also been featured on TV, in commercials and music videos.

But none of these three projects have been a true time lapse. They’re not videos based on a camera that has snapped images at regular images all through one year.

The true time lapse

I placed my old SLR in our window in january last year. Hooked it up to our home server and gave it power through an adapter. Then I used software to control the camera. It has snapped one image every 30 minutes for one year now. Both the Mac and the Camera was hooked up to a UPS as well. I have lost a couple of images due to some computer crashes and camera crashes. But in general the system has been remarkably stable and given me more than 16 000 images to play with.

The first thing I did was to make a still image showing a whole year.

The system

The camera was my trusted old Canon 400D with an EF-S 10-22. Used for several years before I bought my 5D Mark II. I mounted it on a special shelf and covered it with black cloth to avoid reflections in the window. I actually glued the camera to the shelf to make sure it wouldn’t move for a year. Then I did some test shots and ended up with ISO400 and f6,3. The exposure time was set to auto along with the white balance.

I decided to shoot both RAW and high quality JPG. The only problem I’ve had with the camera is a couple of crashes while it was transferring the image to the computer. Something that could only be solved with a complete reset of the camera. Not turning it off and on again. But cutting the power completely and power it back on.

And at this point it’s time to thank my family and all people visiting us during this year. We’ve had an SLR in our living room making a clear shutter release sound every half hour for a year…

How I made the video

One of the things I wanted to do was to make a true time lapse. The first video is the two minute version that you saw at the top of this post. It’s made of images shot during the day all through 2010. First I added all the images to Apple Aperture. In general I prefer Adobe Lightroom, but I couldn’t do all the time based selections and searches I wanted in Lightroom. So, I used Aperture to select images. I exported all images taken between 0900 and 1400 because I wanted daytime images only for this video. Then I imported them to Lightroom to do some adjustments. Better white balance, some sharpening, lens correction etc.

Then I exported all the images as TIFF to a folder. To make a movie of all the stills I imported them to MPEG Streamclip and exported a QuickTime using the lossless Apple Intermediate codec. That huge 3888×2592, 30fps video went into Adobe Premiere CS5 for finishing. That’s where I added the music, text and slow zoom. Because the original image is very high resolution I could do a digital zoom even on the 1920×1080 video I wanted to make.

The downloads and commercial use?

You can download the full quality video on BitTorrent on Mininova.

It is licensed with a creative commons license. Meaning that you can use it for whatever as long as it is non commercial, you give me credit and you share any alterations with the same license.

I’ll also make a full quality version with no eirikso.com-logo available for purchase to the people that want to use the video commercially.

What about the night shots?

I am working on a video based on all the images. Nine minutes in total. The geek version. That will feature images from both day and night.

How can I support your work?

Register at flattr.com and push the button at the bottom of this article.

Or send me something on my wish list:
- a Canon EF 100mm F2.8 L Macro IS
- a Fujifilm FinePix X100
- or maybe a Canon S95…

Hahahaha. That last idea was kind of stupid. Can’t think of anyone that would do that, so even better: Spread the word and protect the environment. If we destroy mother nature she will stop producing wonderful stuff like this.

And follow this blog, @eirikso on twitter and my YouTube channel to see what projects I start this year.

Update: the videos I made from the same footage is here.

I’m currently working on a new time lapse project. Not a sort-of-time-lapse. But a true one. To put it short: I’ve had an SLR camera in my window at the same spot for one year. Snapping an image every half hour. Resulting in some pretty nice time lapse videos I’ll post here in a couple of days. But first a still image.

The resolution of the 16 000 images I now have from 2010 are 3888×2592 pixels. So I selected 3888 images snapped during the day. Then I got some generous help from my blog readers and twitter followers. To make a script that would take one line from the first image, the next line from the next image and so on. Jo Christian Oterhals, Nikolai Kristiansen and Aslak Hellesøy provided complete code for the solution.

I used the script from Aslak and made the following image:

You can click it to make it bigger.

It shows one whole year. January at the left and December to the right. You can clearly see that we have a pretty long winter and a decent summer here in Oslo, Norway.

The spring and autumn are both quite short.

It would have been nice to make an interactive version of this image. Where you could mouse over and get info on exactly when the image providing the line was taken. And maybe also bring up a thumbnail of the complete image. Maybe I’ll post all the 3888 images and hope that someone will make a solution like that…

Update:
I have now posted the full 3888 resolution image on flickr.

The diversity

Light and timing are some of the most important factors in an image. I have huge amounts of images snapped at the exact same spot. With the exact same focus point and the same f-number. The only thing that have changed is the season and the light. Bringing diversity like this:

But now I have some amazing videos to finish…

Link to the video in HD on YouTube.

If you like these videos then follow me on twitter: @eirikso – and you’ll be the first to know about other projects that I might do.

The story

All through 2008 I snapped still images from the same spot on my balcony to make a sort of time lapse video showing one year passing by. The video was hugely successful and has close to two million views on YouTube in addition to about one million on Vimeo and hundreds of thousands of views and downloads from other web sites.

Last year I bought a new camera. The Canon 5D Mark II. In addition to excellent quality stills you can also shoot HD video with that camera. So I decided to do the same thing all over again. But this time I recorded 30 second video clips each time. My idea was that it would be possible to dissolve between the videos to get the same kind of time lapse effect, but this time with motion all the way. Snow falling, wind blowing etc.

2009 is over and I have now put all the clips I recorded through the year into a couple of videos.

I recorded clips with a 15mm fisheye, a 24mm wide angle and a 50mm lens. I’ve made three different versions. The first one is the one at the top of this article. Shot with the 15mm fisheye and “defished” using Fisheye Hemi in Photoshop. To do that I exported the video as an image sequence and did a batch job in Photoshop to run the fisheye hemi filter and some cropping.

The 50mm gives a closer look at the trees and I decided to make a longer video that gives a better view of how nature evolves with that footage. I ended up with 120 seconds.

Link to the video in HD on YouTube.

The last video is a version from the 24mm footage. That’s the short one. One year in 60 seconds…

Link to the video in HD on YouTube.

Download the full quality versions through BitTorrent:

All the videos are available on Mininova for download through BitTorrent in HD:

24 mm – One Year in 60 seconds (1280×720 30P)
15 mm – One Year in 90 seconds (1280×720 30P)
50 mm – One Year in 120 seconds (1280×720 30P)

How To-video (english) (1280×720 30P)

How did you do it?

The way I did it is actually quite simple. I found a spot on my balcony where I could place the camera in the exact same spot each time. Then I recorded video clips at irregular intervals. More or less once a week all thorugh 2009. More often during spring and autumn and not that often during summer and winter. All the videos are then put together using lots of dissolves.

It’s easier to explain the process in a video, so here it is:

Link to the video in HD on YouTube.

The audio

The sound was simply recorded with the Canon 5D Mark II as well. And left as it was recorded on all the clips in the video.

Can I use the videos in my projects?

Yes. All the videos are licensed with a Creative Commons License. To be exact: by attribution, share alike, non commercial.

This work by Eirik Solheim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Norway License.

But what about commercial use?

If you want to use the video commercially I’ve decided to test a feature called Files Forever. At my hosting company, Dreamhost. You can buy a royalty-free, eirikso.com-bug free, totally clean full quality version of the file. It’s a ridiculous $99,- and the money will cover parts of my hosting fees for this website. Buy the files here:

One year in 60 seconds (24 mm)
One year in 90 seconds (15 mm)
One year in 120 seconds (50 mm)

Yeah. But I want to buy the original footage. The files directly from your 5D. I want to edit this myself. No problem. Please contact me at:
eirikso (at) eirikso (dot) com

Where was this filmed?

In Oslo, Norway

I don’t believe you, this is fake.

If you think the video was made in post production using fancy graphics software… Well, that’s your problem. Not mine.

I want to make something amazing from the raw clips

Contact me, and we’ll see what we can do.

I have other questions

Use the comments, so that I can answer to all the other people with the same questions.

…and by the way: if you’re into geocaching I’ve actually placed a cache in the area you see in the videos.

Per Erik Sviland just published a video that combines the stuff. Timelapse and HDR. That high dynamic range effect usually just add an intense feeling of something kitschy. But because it really enhance the clouds it works well in a video like this.

Gruda/Ullandhaug HDR Timelapse in HD from Per Erik Sviland on Vimeo.

Per Erik has also been kind enough to include a nice how-to explaining how he made this video on his blog.

I am doing some tests with BitTorrent distribution through Amazon S3. The file I just made available is the high definition version of my seasons time lapse. It’s H.264 and no sound.

You find the torrent here: Seasons720.torrent
Please comment on how it works.

I am working on a new version of the video as well. That one includes professional quality optics. 10 megapixel resolution and HDR on all images. Unfortunalety you’ll have to wait about one year before it is finished. Here’s a quick preview so far. A tiny bit of autumn.

Same forest. New camera…

Now leave it in your window and make stuff like this.

Again and again. I always forget. Many RSS readers don’t show embedded videos. So here they are, links to the two videos that was embedded in my article about time lapse photography:

Road – Stop motion experiment
Time Lapse experiment with Nokia 6630

Sorry. I’ll try to remember next time.

The people that are lucky enough to run around with iPhones in their pockets probably wonder what to do with their old phones. Here is a suggestion. Regular readers will know that I like photographic experiments. So first, the ones that just retired their Nokia N95. It has built in time lapse photography. Something called “sequence mode”. Simply choose what kind of sequence you want, click the trigger and let the camera snap an image at the selected interval.

I did an experiment and placed my N95 in the window of my car while out driving. It happily snapped an image every 10th second. Giving a stop motion movie of my short ride.

Very short and very useless.

The problem with proper time lapse photography is the fact that it takes time. I am not the happy owner of an iPhone, so I can’t just place my N95 in a window for a couple of weeks. So I decided to put my old and trusted Nokia 6630 into duty. You know, the phone that survived the 20 meter drop. It has no proper time lapse function built in. A little searching around the net and I found a solution. One involving a Java application and one involving a Python script. I decided to try the last one.

First you install Python on your phone. That involves installation of two applications. You find them here. You need the versions that are right for your phone. For my 6630 these are the files I installed:

1. PythonForS60_1_4_0RC1_2ndEdFP2.SIS
2. PythonScriptShell_1_4_0RC1_2ndEdFP2.SIS

You find some help installing Python on your phone here.

When these are installed your phone will start running “.py”-scripts

The script on Foozia’s blog mentioned earlier was made for Nokia N80, so I had to do some modifications to make it work on my old 6630. You can download my 6630-version here: 6630Timelapse.txt

Before you install it on your phone you need to remove the “.txt”-extension and replace it so the file name ends with “.py” and only “.py”. In other words, the file you send to your phone should be named “6630Timelapse.py”.

Before you run it you also need to make a folder on the memory card of your phone. Use the built in file manager and make the following structure: Memory Card (e:): python/timelapse/

Your images will be stored there.

Then you start Python and select “Run Script” from the menu. Give the project a name, decide a number of images and an interval. Note about the interval, choosing anything less than 5 seconds might cause problems. The phone needs some time to store the image on the memory card.

Time to test it. I simply put it outside our window facing the sky. Snapping an image every 15th second during the evening until the sky went dark. My experiments indicates that the phone can snap about 500 or 600 images on one charge. Of course depending on the time interval. If you connect a charger you could leave it until the memory card is full.

And here’s another one. A couple of hours outside the window at work.

And how I made the videos? Install QuickTime and choose “File->Open Image sequence” on the first image of the sequence that your phone just made. Or just google “software make time lapse video from image sequence” or something like that…

I’ll bring that phone when travelling. Leave it in my hotel room to document the cleaning process. Leave it on stage while speaking, to document how many people left during my presentation… Endless possibilities.