Reviewed: Fujifilm FinePix XP30

Fujifilm FinePix XP30

 

Photography Blog has a review of the Fujifilm FinePix XP30, a rugged pocket digital camera with built-in GPS. The review cites some problems with both the camera’s ruggedness and its GPS. “Putting GPS on the camera is a great idea, but living in England as we do, we couldn’t get it to work because of the bad weather we experienced at the time of testing. There are good GPS systems on the market that can get a signal when indoors and in tunnels but the XP30 can’t even get through clouds.”

City Skyline Day and Night – Single Timelapsed Photography

Mixing day and night images with the technique in astrophotography known as ‘star trails’ it is possible to capture a single image detailing both day and night activity. In the photograph below to the left is the moon streaking across the scene and the lights of aircraft at night, to the right is the sun with traffic captured below. Depending on your location the technique can create some interesting timelapse single views photographs, below we detail how to create your own.

You will need:

1 x Timelapse System, you can use a simple webcam as per our previous Tutorial: Torch + Webcam = HD Timelapse System a DSLR such as the Canon G9 with CHDK , a iPhone with the free Gorrilacam app or any camera that can take photos at regular intervals. We used a Go Pro HD camera in timelapse mode, taking a picture every 5 seconds.

1 x Copy of Photoshop, you can download a 30 day trial.
1 x Photoshop Stacking Action (thanks to Deep Space Astrophotography

Time Taken, 4 to 12 hours to capture, 2 to 6 hours to process.

The concept is simple, set up your camera, webcam or iphone at a suitable location, and capture an image at regular intervals, for our example we captured an image every 5 seconds pointing at the skyline of London. Capturing an image at least every 5 seconds is vital for star/aircraft trails as it allows for closer spacing between the lights in the final image.

We left the camera running for approximately 12 hours capturing 8000+ images, saved into a folder on our computer. Ours captured covered both day and night time, resulting in the following timelapse:

The next step is to open up photoshop, chose the images you want to use, and start stacking.

Image Stacking in Photoshop


The images will be stacked onto of an intially blank image via a simple automated action:

1) Create a new blank black image the same size are your captured photographs.
2) Load the action into the action windows in Photoshop and load the action Startrails.atn.


3) In Photoshop click ‘File’, ‘Automate’ and ‘Batch’. Select the action you have just loaded and choose your directory with the images as source and make sure you select ‘None’ for the output directory.
Click ‘Ok’ and leave it running, our Mac laptop took around an 2 hours to stack the images – resulting in the Star/Aircraft Trail’ below:
The line across the centre is a star and the bright line on the left is the moon coming into shot. The rest of the lights are aircraft in the sky above London. If you use a complete day/night sequence then you can create images of stars/activity in a blue sky, as in our first photograph.
You can view higher resolution versions via our Flickr Photostream.

Kite Photos of Tikehau Island Now in Google Earth

Tikehau motu kite aerial photo in Google EarthWhen Google updated its imagery last week, my latest set of kite aerial photos went live from our Tahina Expedition. This time a small motu island in the Tuamotus atoll of Tikehau, in French Polynesia is now visible in very high resolution. The photos were taken last June when we visited the island on our sailboat Tahina.

One day, during our week long explorations, we had a chance to take some kite photos. I had found a small motu that looked like a good candidate. Jason, one of our temporary crew, helped fly the kite. I drew “TAHINA” in the sand hoping it would show up in the pictures (read more about that day). Jason was holding the kite string while wading in the shallow waters upwind of the island so we could capture the entire island with the camera dangling from the kite string a 100m in the air. I was standing on the beach holding the remote to control the camera, and my image was captured in several of the straight down photos. Weeks later, I managed to upload all the photos to our server. My friend Stewart Long, of GonzoEarth, is a professional at processing aerial photography. In his spare time, Stewart worked over the imagery and, a couple of months later, we sent it to Google. Finally, the imagery went live in Google Earth early last week. So, now everyone can see it!

Kite Aerial Photo of Tikehau motu with Tahina on beach

I was pleased to see our name TAHINA showed up clearly, and not only that – because of the way the imagery stitched – pictures of me ended up showing up twice on the beach! (No, that’s not my twin – just Frank twice!) If you visit this place in Google Earth , you can see the rest of the motu in ultra high resolution (much higher than most Google Earth imagery, you can even zoom in further than seen above). Or try visiting the location in Google Maps.

This is the fifth set of kite aerial imagery we have had published so far. For some other examples check out: Manihi village, BBQ Island, and Petite Tabac. If you’re interested in how we take the photos, read this post and view the photo album to see how its done.