Using Your Tools (or Obama Time Lapse)

Obama Election Night Time-Lapse HD.

When you are a photojournalist, what is better than having a camera at a major event? Having 2 cameras!



November 3rd 2008 I sacrificed a couple hours sleep because I knew the next day would be historic. Win or lose, Obama was in my home town and I had a press pass.

I had read up on the Canon Hacker's Development Kit (CHDK), but had been unsuccessful in the past trying to play around with it.

That night I had better luck. In only a couple hours I was able to turn my Canon A460 PhD (Press-here-Dummy) into a powerfully customizable camera in an unassuming package.

Pretty much after you get CHDK working, your camera will turn to you and say "I know Kung-Fu."

I installed an intervalometer script onto my camera and set it to snap a picture about every 15sec. I then attached the camera first to the tripod while setting up our riser space. A short while later I moved the camera on top of our main camera. While the second placement of the camera gave a better view, it also meant that whenever we panned or tilted the DVCPro HD camera, the Canon camera also panned or tilted.

A couple days later after recovering from the election madness I put the gigabytes of photos together to form the time lapse video. I added George Winston's "New Hope Blues" off his "Ballads And Blues 1972: The Early Recordings" album, uploaded the video and e-mailed it out to a few friends and family members.

While this video was never meant for any newscasts, it was a good field test of using a consumer product as a professional tool.