Dolores Park

I was in the city this afternoon after a number of errands on the peninsula and figured I would visit one of my favorite spots in the city.  At the top of Dolores Park, there is this amazing view of downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge.  With the park sprawling out over 2 city blocks, it provides this unobstructed and spectacular view of the cityscape. 

The correct intervalometer arrived earlier this week, so I was finally set to do my first timelapse.  I brought my camera and gear along on my errands in the hope that I could kinda scout out a few areas, and hopefully actually get my first series out of the way.  Unfortunately, I did not adequately prepare for the weather when embarking on my little escapade.

It was still light when I set up my camera and tripod on the south end of Dolores Park, but with typical San Francisco summer weather, the temperature and wind were definitely on the cooler side.  I had two spare towels in my car, and took them along...one to sit on and the other to wrap around myself to stay warm.  I had my laptop with me, too, so I sat there for a little over an hour and a half reading.  I got up more near the end of the shoot...mainly to stay warm and stretch out a bit.

I had looked over some of the camera controls before tonight, but I had heard that shooting from light to dark is considered the holy grail...mainly because it is hard to have constant settings that maintain a great picture with ever changing light.  Since it was my first time out, I decided to put the camera on almost automatic settings.  I knew that there would be lighting issues, such that it would never really appear to go from light to dark, but I thought it would be interesting to see how things looked during the sunset.

The camera takes great photos, but I think I had my interval set too high.  I shot one picture every 20 seconds, but with the wind and clouds/fog moving so fast, I probably should have shot a picture every 3-6 seconds.

I still need to assembled the pictures into a movie, but hope to do that with Quicktime Pro soon.