Video Log

For the past few weeks I’ve ventured over to Lake Casitas to do a daily on their Astronomy Night program they have going on. Over the course of the summer, Ernest Underhay leads a program about the stars, the moon, planets and everything else that’s found in our night sky. Open to the public, the two-hour gathering is informational, funny and a chance for those in attendance to look at the stars through a telescope, provided by the lake. Last night was my second night filming, I believe my last. I cut this trailer this morning just to get something done and over to my contact at the Lake, in case they wanted to use it on their Website. In the next week or so I’ll cut the full version.

This video came out of a request from a friend to shoot the full moon since it was in perigee this month, and a close one at that. Well not being one to just shoot a picture of the moon – been there, done that! – I decided to shoot a time lapse instead. The problem was the first night, the real night of perigee, I screwed up the focus and the images were useless. However, I did manage to shoot a full moon shot after the spoiled time lapse that night. The time lapse portion of this video comes from the next night. At that size (I used a 70-200 at about 100mm on the D200), you can’t really see that it’s not quite full. Nonetheless, I perhaps more fun with the credits then I did with the actual rise since time lapse is passé for me now. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy doing it but this entire process of learning video is just that; learning. Anyway, it’s fun and my friend loved it.