Nesting Coal Tits
Posted: Sun May 10, 2020 12:39 pm
We have a nesting box attached to the wall at the back of the house. A pair of Coal Tits have now begun the onerous task of feeding their newly hatched chicks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_tit . Interestingly, the Coal Tits only use the nesting box every alternate year.
Each GIF comprises 44 frames. The incoming GIF has been produced at 3 frames per second, the outgoing at 7 frames per second. The captures were at 29 fps. Each GIF covers around 1.5s of elapsed time, demonstrating the bird's flying skill at its approach to the box. Because of the speed it was impossible to react to an approach or departure, I set off sequences of 10,000 frame SER files and used astronomical software to process.
The boring stuff:
Altair 66ED refactor, Altair 1.0x flattener, QHY5lII-C (to get the frame rate).
Captures were 10,000 frame SER files 8-bit colour, 1280x960 at 29 fps.
Software SharpCap 3.2, FastStone Image Viewer, PIPP.
FastStone: used to batch convert sets of 44 images to reduce size to 10% of original frames.
PIPP: split 10,000 frame SER file into 10,000 individual PNGs. The selected reduced images were brightened with a gamma of 2.5 and combined to produce the GIFs.
An interesting exercise showing the application of astronomical software to wildlife photography.
Dave
Each GIF comprises 44 frames. The incoming GIF has been produced at 3 frames per second, the outgoing at 7 frames per second. The captures were at 29 fps. Each GIF covers around 1.5s of elapsed time, demonstrating the bird's flying skill at its approach to the box. Because of the speed it was impossible to react to an approach or departure, I set off sequences of 10,000 frame SER files and used astronomical software to process.
The boring stuff:
Altair 66ED refactor, Altair 1.0x flattener, QHY5lII-C (to get the frame rate).
Captures were 10,000 frame SER files 8-bit colour, 1280x960 at 29 fps.
Software SharpCap 3.2, FastStone Image Viewer, PIPP.
FastStone: used to batch convert sets of 44 images to reduce size to 10% of original frames.
PIPP: split 10,000 frame SER file into 10,000 individual PNGs. The selected reduced images were brightened with a gamma of 2.5 and combined to produce the GIFs.
An interesting exercise showing the application of astronomical software to wildlife photography.
Dave