Sweep Panorama Trip with RX100

Munich - Warsaw

Star-trails, first attempt

Approximately 1.5h, 240 shots, 20sec exposure taken every 22 sec. ISO1600, Sigma 10-20 @10mm, f4. Canon EOS 600D. Stacked and edited in Photoshop half automatically.

The Routine

Morning experience with Sony RX-100!

Actually it was not that easy as I expected. Overall I like this small beast very much. But there are some quirks inside of this camera. First is (was) my struggle with maximizing dynamic range in video. Having read some suggestions over dpreview forum I have set it to Portrait creative mode and lowered the contrast to the maximum to obtain the flattest "picture style". After some shooting I discovered awful colour noise in video footage. Is my camera faulty? JPEG in Aperture priority also looked the same bad. Not in auto modes. Not in RAW. Weird. After some discussion however I have come to conclusion that lowering contrast, especially in portrait style emphasizes noise horribly! Again strange! I always considered the high contrast to be the reason of excessive noise, not low. OK, got it. I will never repeat the mistake again. Other: it is very easy to cover one or both mics while recording. Wide end very fast, long end very slow. External charger has some unexpected behaviours - sometimes charges the camera, sometimes not. Overall I am very happy with it. It is always in my pocket :-D and ready!

Grafting Weronika

Yesterday may daughter got a little caugth by analog photography. The topic has been brought from Palace of Youth where she spends time during winter holidays. Wow, how glad she was to know I have all the equippment in the basement, unused for years! Yesterday we played a little with the enlarger, today I must run and get B&W chemicals and paper :-D

 

Outside the Window

Balcony impressions during grey, snowy day. Shot entirely on EOS 600D ML. Song by Rue Royale “Snow on Snow (The Bleak Midwinter)”, used with permission.

Sony RX100 timelapse solution

Recently I have purchased this little yet powerful compact camera. It is great, flexible, with tons of features, has decent image and video quality and possibility to bring into play shallow DOF. All in small pocketable package. But this is not another review.

Having heard many wishes that RX100 would have intervalometer built in to shoot timelapse I came to an idea that a continuous shooting mode would give a simple replacement for this feature. And: voilà! It works! Just set drive to continuous, file quality to RAW, press and hold shutter button and after some approximately 10 shots it will slow down to more or less 1 shot per 1.5sec. Pretty usable interval, at least in my case. I usually shoot timelapse on 2 or 3 second intervals. But hold on - how to lock the shutter button? Some research in the drawer and grabbed a key/mobile rubber leash. Scissors + acrylic glue + some bur tape and the tool is ready. The job is done by two square pieces of rubber glued together as a thrower of the shutter button. Check this out below:

A small opening is made for zoom manipulator. The rubber band does not interfere with any of the camera buttons or rings. It also does not cover the LCD. You can make your copy in 15 minutes :-D



Hopefully now more shutters of RX100 will be abused for timelapse ;-D !