Dynamic Timelapses with a Syrp Genie

I like shooting timelapses. It compliments my love for landscape photography. Timelapses help me show how dynamic nature can be over a short period of time.

But shooting timelapses of nature is hard work. Adding motion – linear or panning – to a timelapses is not only more hard work, but even heavy on the pocket. I am learning the video side of things – which is what most timelapse equipment is based on – after I purchased the Syrp Genie.

Wait, who?

The Syrp Genie is a device that helps you pan your camera when mounted on a flat surface, or move your camera in a linear direction when mounted on a slider. It uses a rope and pulley system to move in a linear direction. A slider is a track for the camera to move. The distance that the genie can travel is limited by the length of your slider or length of the rope that you have.

I just got the Genie and tried out a panning timelapse. I don’t own a slider yet. Looking up sliders online is making me sweat – they are mighty expensive! Plus, sliders are not very portable. And in India, you need to travel long distances or hike for days, to shoot nature in its purest form.

Today, I tried out the Genie to capture a panning timelapse. It is easy to shoot a panning timelapse, because all you need is to mount the Genie on a tripod. The genie connects to the camera via a cable. It controls the panning movement, and triggers the camera as per your settings. Because the Genie is in control, the camera will not fire when the Genie is moving. You will not have blurry photos. This way, you can use the Genie to take timelapses of celestial objects at night. Something that I have been dying to do ever since I got into night scapes. I have tried static time lapses of the stars at night. Now, I want to take it one step further and add a panning or linear motion. For inspiration on the possibilities, check out this tutorial from Syrp.

Here is my first timelapse that I shot with the Syrp Genie, today:

Equipment used:

Syrp Genie with Photo Clam Gold ball head
Feisol 3441T Tripod
Canon 6D
Irix 15mm f2.4 lens

And oh! Found some interesting places to shoot the Milky Way today. Looking forward to next week.

A Group for Landscape Photographers

When I started photography, JJ Mehta Photograpy Forum (JJMPF) was a great place to hang out. Along with Bangalore Photography Forum (which is now extinct), JJMPF was where many of us used to post photos for critique. After almost 10 years of interacting with members there, I finally met a few of them today. The meeting was planned on a Whatsapp group. We visited a beautiful lake off AH 48. I had previously visited a hillock near the lake on Jan 31st for a super moon/lunar eclipse shoot (video here).

The idea of forming a Whatsapp group for nature and outdoor photographers occurred to me when a post of mine on JJMPF saw queries about locations to shoot around Bangalore. These days here in India, WhatsApp groups are where the action is, albeit mostly the spammy kind. Unfortunately many of the photography groups have too many members with various agendas. I wanted to create a group for only like minded photographers. Having visited numerous lakes and hillocks, I have a fair idea of places for landscape and nature photography within 100km from the city. So after the interactions on JJMPF, I created a WA group and added photographers with the intention of planning and going on shoots together.

Now, unlike regular photowalk groups, were a bunch of people get together and walk the lanes of Bangalore and shoot street photos, nature/landscape/outdoor photography is a different ballgame. For one, it involves heading out for shoots at unearthly hours (I was up by 3 am today). Since we go far away from the city, transport is something each person needs to have figured out. Lastly, it is difficult to shoot photos of nature when in a large group. Outings I have been on have always been in twos, threes or fours at the most.

Today for the first time, I was part of a larger group. We first did some planning on Whatsapp using Google maps. After checking out the blue hour and golden hour timings, we met up on the highway after the Tumkur Road toll booth. We were 7 of us in two cars, coming from different parts of the city. After chai on the highway and quick introductions, we continued to our location, even overshooting a right turn and missing our intended route. After making a U turn, we were back on track and at our destination by 6 am.

It was a rather quiet and uneventful sunrise. I got to test the 6D which I have in mind as a second body (last week, I tested the 6D Mark II with my Irix 15mm f2.5 lens). I used the A7rII for shooting a time lapse.

Here are two photos from today.

Personally, I am quite pleased with the results from the 6D. I even got a chance to fly my Mavic. One of the photographers in the group was shooting with an IR modified camera.

Unfortunately, summer is almost here. The transition from night to day and vice versa will only get increasingly quicker. The skies will mostly be boring. The next three months are not going to be conducive for landscape photography. Our only option would be to shoot the night sky. Places such as the one we visited today are potential spots for future Milky Way shoots. Let’s see if forming a group is going to help in going on more such fruitful trips. Definitely safer to be at remote locations at odd hours when in a larger group!

My Experience Shopping and Returning on B&H

B&H PhotoVideo is an online e-commerce websites with a physical presence in New York. They have been in the business of selling photo and video equipment since 1973. Although I live in India, I have been a happy customer of B&H since 2013. Over the years, I have purchased photography gear worth several lakhs from them. I generally request someone traveling to India to carry my orders.

In all these years of shopping purchasing remotely from them, I have never had a problem. My packages have always arrived when they were supposed to. I don’t have that confidence with any Indian e-commerce website yet. But things did not go right with the latest order that I made this month. The mistake was mine – I ordered archival paper of the wrong size. I needed 13×19″ sized paper but I incorrectly ordered 17×22″.

The ease of shopping online is only as good as the ease of returns. B&H has a simple 3o-day return window. They have a 3 step process for returns. I just had to request an RMA for the product that I no longer needed and ship it back to them. They require you to pay for return shipping. I was fine with that because the mistake was mine. But how would I to ship it back? My contact in the US was staying in a hotel and did not have the time to visit a post office. The product was 17×22″ and not easy to carry around. It was certainly going to be a bother to have someone coordinate returns.

Nevertheless, I wrote to B&H and waited for an RMA authorisation. Meanwhile, I started looking up USPS and UPS for mail pick up options. I knew this service existed, but I had never used it before. From Wikipedia, “United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States.” I presumed that they would have the best rates and coverage.

My contact in the US was checking out on a Friday, and I started looking up USPS and UPS on Wednesday morning US time. Here is a brief summary of my experiences:

USPS

Easy to sign up. Could provide my Indian address for signing up.
Confusing mail pick up options. Their website had a different page for Click-N-Ship® and Schedule a Pickup. I couldn’t tell the difference. My best understanding of it is that you can use Click-N-Ship® to print pre-paid shipping labels and then schedule a pickup.
Scheduling a pickup was extremely confusing. The online wizard kept telling me that my address was invalid because I had provided an Indian address while signing up. I tried providing the US hotel address but the error message didn’t go away. Finally I changed my default address to the one in US and deleted my India address to make it work.
After spending nearly an hour scratching my head on their website, I arrived at the final screen of the Schedule a Pickup wizard. My options for payment were credit card and PayPal. I first tried PayPal and didn’t succeed because PayPal showed me a message that said USPS only accepted payments from US PayPal accounts. I tried to use my card, but couldn’t give an Indian billing address. I tried with the US address and my bank declined the payment.

By the end of this exercise I was pretty frustrated with USPS. So I checked UPS.

UPS

Sign up was easy
Pickup terms and conditions were simple. But I could not easily find the rates for pickup.
I started the process to schedule a pickup. On the payment screen, I was told to pay an additional $6 for a pickup. On USPS, pickups were free. If I did not want to pay for pickup the only option was to drop off the package at one of the UPS stores. This would not have been possible for the aforementioned reasons.

I closed the browser in exasperation. Just then I received an email from B&H saying my RMA was authorised. The good news was that they had included a prepaid shipping label in their email. If I chose to use the prepaid label, the cost of shipping ($11.08) would be deducted from my refund. The fact that they would provide a prepaid shipping label was not mentioned on their website. If I had known before, I would have not spent time on the USPS and UPS website.

At least the problem of not being able to pay on USPS was solved. So I went ahead and scheduled a pickup for Thursday US time on the USPS website.

The Catch

My friend left the package at the hotel reception and left for work on her Thursday. USPS was supposed to pick it up from the reception during the day. On Thursday evening US time, I heard from my friend that USPS had not picked up the parcel. I checked the status online and it said pickup was successfully completed.

By then I was clueless what to do. Why did the USPS website say that the pickup was complete? How would I get the parcel across to B&H? My friend was checking out and leaving the next morning. I had just my Friday morning to find a solution and I had to do it by evening my time.

That is when it struck me. My palm and face met each other.

The return label that B&H provided was for FedEx. This was not mentioned either in their mail or their website! In all likelihood, USPS did come for the package, but refused pickup because the prepaid label was for FedEx. At least if the USPS website mentioned that the pickup was refused, I would have understood what was going on.

Yes, it was my carelessness that I did not check the return label to see the shipper. It was also silly on my part to assume that the returns could be done by any carrier in spite of having a prepaid shipping label. Nevertheless, by stating all details clearly, either on the website or mail, B&H could have saved me a lot of problem.

Long story short, my return is on the way to B&H via FedEx. It should reach them on Monday and I should hopefully get my money.