World Cup Timelapse

So more from the World Cup in South Africa, well I was out there for the best part of a month, thanks to that volcano ash cloud......

I shot this time-lapse of the Green point World Cup stadium at quite a distance, from Lagoon Beach while enjoying a rather excellent meal at the Wang Thai restaurant

Shooting time lapse is one of the easiest and most satisfying routes into moving images as viewers of my latest DVD 'Stills in Motion' will know

Time lapse Cape Town World Cup Stadium from drew gardner on Vimeo.

This sequence was shot on my Canon 550d (or as it is known in the USA, the Digital Rebel T2i) with a Canon 'L' series 300mm F4 lens (so much smaller and lighter if you are travelling than than the F2.8 version) the beauty of using this camera over the Canon 5d MkII is that as well as not wearing my shutter unit out quite so fast on the more expensive camera it has the advantage of a 1.6 x crop factor sensor which means my 300mm becomes the equivalent of a 460mm lens, making an exposure every 5 seconds using the Canon intervalometer TC80N3. There are other cheaper alternatives out there but the slightly more expensive model from Canon really is worth the price differencial as the user interface is SO much easier to use than anything else I have encountered.

I mounted the set up to my Gitzo tripod using the tripod mount on the lens, not the camera baseplate, remembering to turn OFF the IS (image stabilisation)
If you keep it on while mounted to a tripod it can actually blur the images as the internal gyroscope fights to control movement which just is not there.

The finished result is short and sweet, do watch for the blurred seagulls and the passing ships.

A beautiful evening to savour, happy memories indeed