Timelapse Movie of the Crumpler Shop in Shop Stand at PMA 2008

A Nikon D2x has a built in intervalometer, so why not make a movie of stand traffic at on of our busier trade shows? Because if I didn't I wouldn't be making full use of the awesome equipment at hand! Plus, there may be some madcap data miner out there who can provide fresh insights into the mystery of the booth...

I began the sequence around 8am topped out at around 2pm, after 600 or so hi-res jpg's had captured in 1 minute or 30 sec intervals (I forget :-P). In either case neither battery or card was at fault, definitely operator error, as spares were in abundance! In fact I had set the maximum number of shots to 600 or so and forgot to reset this on re-card and re-power - there you go, know thy menu!

The D2X, Hoodman 4GB RAW card and 10.5mm fisheye lens were set atop one of our castular towers attached via Joby GorillaPod SLR, a Manfrotto QR plate betwixt. I retained the initial files in the animation so you can see me framing it up, before getting to work on the 'floor'.

I crunched the files using DXO V.5 which allows for diverse corrections and resizings within a batch and (after a coupla hours) then imported the 640 x 480pixels files into Windows Movie Maker (I'm on PC - go figure:-) after putting the default frame rate at the very lowest setting. I also batched the files at 1080 HDTV kinda size which might look interesting on DVD, maybe a job for Final Cut?

At any rate I was somewhat buoyed by the results, it looks passable on YouTube, the equipment also really delivered for hi-res, and the software was easily mastered, with a little n00bing around. So much so, I have a couple more on the way, both booth setups!
And, most importantly, I had long been looking for a bullet-proof excuse to acquire a second body (generally it's really only possible to use one at a time anyway :-) and as such I'm looking forward to a time when I can enjoy shooting, whilst , aaah, being shot (by myself)...