November, 2021 - David Mathre Photography

Thursday (25-November-2021) — New Jersey

Happy Thanksgiving.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Continuing to learn how to use the Labpano Pilot EE 360 camera. This time I set it up to record me cooking a duck for my Thanksgiving Dinner. The time-lapse was set for 20x (0.6 seconds/frame) @ 4K (3840 x 1920). The battery ran out at ~99 minutes, even though I had the USB-C connected to an external battery. When I checked online, it appears that the USB-C power source needs to be a USB-PD fast charger. The 4K equirectangular video was processed using Premiere Pro with the GoPro FX Reframe plugin for the rotating Little Planet video. Since the time-lapse video stopped recording before I finished cooking, I’ve provided a still image of the Thanksgiving Roasted Duck Dinner for One. Beets and Onions from Clifford Family Farm, Duck and Mushrooms from Zell’s Farm, Brussel Sprouts from Whole Foods, Wild Rice from Minnesota.

Thanksgiving Duck Dinner. (David J Mathre) — Thanksgiving Dinner. Image taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 24-90 mm lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/2.8, 1/40 sec). (David J Mathre)

Daily Electric Energy Used (65.9 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (25.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny, some clouds, but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 40.0 kWh.

Wednesday (24-November-2021) — New Jersey

Working on RedRover and New 360 Camera.

Previously, I had to remove the mower deck on the John Deere lawn tractor. I still have lots of fallen autumn leaves that need attention. I decided to attach a leaf vacuum adapter to Red Rover. I recorded the project as a time-lapse video using a Labpano Lab Pilot One EE 360 camera. This camera does not have interval photo mode, but does have a time-lapse mode. Rather than two fish-eye lenses, it uses four 185° wide-angle lenses. The images are combined and processed in-camera to an equirectangular view (up to 8K, 7680×3840). The camera has a relatively large battery that took images for ~80 minutes. I had an external USB-C battery attached, but it didn’t seem to continue to provide power while the camera was recording the time-lapse video.

The 47 seconds of the 8K (7680 x 3840) video file was 2.49 GB. The time-lapse setting was 100x (3.3 fps) for the 47 seconds of video which would correspond to ~ 78 minutes of recording. I was not able to use the GoPro FX Reframe plug in for Premiere Pro to convert the 8K equirectangular image into a Little Planet view. First needed to convert the video to a 4K (3840 x 1920) video then process in Premiere Pro with the GoPro FX Reframe plugin. [Note – Next time record the time-lapse video at 4K or 2K].

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 kWh.

Tuesday (23-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Blue Jay.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

The Opossum is back.

My main 360 camera a Garmin VIRB-360 is getting old and has been discontinued by the manufacturer. The one lens has a scratch, and a battery failed. I’ve started looking at alternatives. I did this once before, trying out the Nikon Mission 360 (discontinued), Ricoh Theta, Insta360 One 4K. Each had issues. Later, I found the Ricoh Theta Z1 16-GB model then 64-GB model to be useful. But with idiosyncrasies. They have an interval mode, but with a minimum interval of 6 seconds (jpg) or 10 seconds (DNG). I decided to look at some of the newer 360 cameras. Insta360 One X2 and Labpano Lab Pilot ERA.

The following night time-lapse video was taken with the Insta360 One X2. I set the camera up outdoors connected to an external USB-C power supply to take raw (DNG) images every 30 seconds. With the external battery, the camera continued taking images all night, even though the temperature dropped below freezing. Processing the raw images was a bit of a problem since the raw image is not the standard equirectangular format. You need to convert the images via the Insta360 Studio 2021 program (batch mode) to generate a standard equirectangular image. Adobe Photoshop doesn’t appear to make time-lapse videos with DNG files, so I also had to convert the images from DNG to TIFF (using Capture One Pro) before making the time-lapse videos. With this camera I will need a better workflow.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Autumn Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Insta360 One X2 camera. ISO 504, f/2, 2 sec. Insta360 Raw (DNG) format. (David J Mathre)

Time-lapse Video (Little Planet View).

Time-lapse Video (Tunnel View).

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 kWh.

Monday (22-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, European Starling, American Robin, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Daily Electric Energy Used (57.9 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (11.1 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy. Deficit of 46.8 kWh.

Sunday (21-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, American Robin, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Daily Electric Energy Used (56.1 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (23.1 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sun and clouds. Deficit of 33.0 kWh.

Weekly Electric Energy Used (380 kWh) from Sense. Weekly Solar Electric Energy Produced (169 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Deficit of 211 kWh.