Go, Fog, Go!

The timeless and epic battle between Sutro and fog has been especially dramatic this week.  During lunch, I broke out the iPhone and zoom lens I caught a couple of rather noble timelapses. (Sorry for no loop, but I’ll be damned if I can make Vimeo do that.)

From Mission Bay, near the ballpark:

(Laminar flow!)

Atop Potrero Hill:

(Not so laminar flow)

From Mariposa & Arkansas:

(Note the Anchor Steam, um, steam.)

From 21st & Sanchez:

For some reason Vimeo didn’t like this closeup from 21st and Noe so I sent it to the Burrito Justice labs over at Tumblr.

Production notes, for those interested:

A total iPhone production.

• iPhone 4
• Photojojo zoom lens
• iMotion HD app
• VideoStiller app
• Rotate Video app
• Gorillapod

Sorry for any bumps — that was basically the wind shaking the camera and my car.  All were shot at one frame per second, and are playing back at 15 to 30 frames per second.

It does seem to sometimes accelerate or decelerate – not sure if that’s iMotion HD struggling to keep up with shooting a frame a second, or when it jams the pictures into the movie.

The interesting warpiness in the Mission Bay video is an artifact from an iPhone app called VideoStiller. As I’ve previously noted it does an admirable job – here’s the raw video where I gorillapodded it to a chain link fence, so I’ll put up with the warpiness.

But fluffy fog confuses the hell out of it, and the result looks like something out a Battlestar Galactica dogfight (tumblr).

What I’d REALLY like to do someday is get 360 cameras in a two-mile radius circle around Sutro shooting a frame a second from sunrise to sunset, and turn that into a flyaround immersive video.  Who’s with me?