Ecology

Ecological Society of America – Has content for a range of audiences regarding the scientific study of Ecology. They maintain a professional listserver (Ecolog-L) that often includes discussions on a broad range of topics, has job listings, funding opportunities, etc. (I opt for the daily digest version). This website also contains information on careers in Ecology and educational content relevant to the study of Ecology and relevant environmental concerns (e.g. invasive species, carbon cycling, global change, etc.) for all levels.

Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) contains a wide variety of learning and teacher resources relevant to Biology/Ecology.

BBC Growing Plant – Besides producing incredible documentaries, the BBC website has some pretty fun interactive learning exercises for different age groups. Some examples include the growing plant exercise for 5-6 year olds and food web interdependence for 10-11 year olds.

On the Prairie – This is another fun website where you can attempt to build prairies and learn about invasive plant species, local adaptation, food webs, etc. Have fun building a prairie!

Online Nature & Science Documentaries

BBC produces incredible science and nature documentaries and many can be found on Youtube.

Life on Terra – is a great source for finding short (5-30 minute) Nature and Science Documentaries that can be viewed for free. You can signup to receive updates when new content is available. The site is maintained by the Department of Science and Natural History Filmmaking at Montana State University.

Scientific America – has sections on Biology and Environment includes podcasts and video podcasts

General photography

Digital Photography Review – provides great camera reviews and good discussion forums on photography techniques, gear, etc. I really like its reviews and general discussions; however, I prefer more specialized forums for learning about more specialized techniques and equipment relevant to panorama and time-lapse photography.

Outdoor Photographer Magazine – a great resource for learning about digital and nature photography

Tripod overview – A tripod is essential equipment for panorama and time-lapse photography. This site describes tripods and comments provide some ideas on tripod leg and head combos for Nature photographers.

16-9 – has some great lens comparisons/reviews

SLR Gear – pretty nice lens reviews

David Clapp – Landscape photographer David Clapp has some instructive articles on equipment and techniques relevant to landscape photography.

Manual Focus Lenses – There are lots of good reasons for landscape, panorama, and time-lapse photographers to use manual focus lenses (and adapters) and this site will help you on your way.

LDP LLC – Is an interesting company that sells modified digital cameras that shoot IR only, plant stress NDVI, etc.

The Photographer’s Rights – Describes your legal rights as a photographer (PDF file). Helps to clarify what types of photography are lawful without a release.

Dan Heller Photography – Site has a good discussion and examples of model and property releases as well as general discussion concerning legal issues associated with photography.

Panorama links

Where to start

Max Lyons Forums – discussion forums covering panoramas, software, equipment, etc.

The Luminous Landscape – “Getting Started with Digital Panoramas”

Panoramas.dk – numerous examples of panoramas and QuickTime Virtual Reality and instructional content

PTAssembler Tutorial – PTAssembler is one of the most widely used programs for stitching pictures together and creating panoramas. I use this program but know many others people are having great results with other programs.

QTVR tutorials – explains how to make QTVR

Panorama tripod heads

The Panosaurus – I have had great experiences using this tripod head.

Nodal Ninja – This looks like a great product but I haven’t used it.

Gigapan – Carnegie Mellon, NASA, & Google worked together to develop a relatively inexpensive robotic panorama head and software system for creating huge panoramas. Some are starting to use this to make high resolution time-lapse sequences.

There are numerous panorama heads. Explore Max Lyons Forums to learn about other brands, performance, and cost.

Time-lapse links

Plants-In-Motion – plant and insect time-lapse movies, scientific content, and DIY information

Chlorofilms – a website featuring a variety of botany related movies including time-lapse

Peter Kraph – Peter has done time-lapses for the Blue Planet series. Follow this link to see his show real with some great underwater time-lapse sequences.

Cornell Plant Pathology Photo Lab – has DIY information on various photography techniques including time-lapse and also has some excellent time-lapse sequences of fungi

Timescapes.org – has a great forum with entry- to professional-level information on all aspects of time-lapse related topics (e.g. techniques, cameras, motion control, lighting, postproduction, etc.)

Science Friday – has a lot of science content including some archived time-lapses of fungi, etc.

Kinsman Physics Productions – DIY information

Fisheye View – reef aquarium time-lapse movies

Haworth Village – range of random time-lapse movies

Nature Footage – commercial source for various nature related time-lapse videos

Flight laboratory – For scientific purposes, this group has produced a variety of videos of birds in flight inside a wind tunnel. Instead of condensing time, they slow time down using high-speed video. At one time, they had some amazing high-speed x-ray videos showing how the skeletal structure of birds moves during flight. Pretty amazing stuff! I am sure that if the movies are not listed on their website that they will gladly share them.

Time-lapse movies are increasingly being created and posted on the internet. They are often posted on places like Vimeo (e.g. Time lapse in HD), Youtube, and also in online supplemental materials as part of scientific journal articles.

Time-lapse controllers (hint: verify compatibility with your camera)

Harbortronics – Maker of the Digisnap series controllers which are small and versatile. You will notice that I shot several sequences using Digisnap 2000s.  Harbortronics also has a housing kit which includes a camera, controller, and solar panel so you can have a camera doing time-lapse photography out in the elements. Great product support.

The Time Machine – maker of Time Machine camera controller and motion control device. I have not used any of this equipment but know others that are having great success using this professional gear.

Pclix – maker of a small and affordable controller

Garden cams – a variety of relatively inexpensive time-lapse cameras and housings are available at BirdCam – I have used the PlantCam and am not real impressed with the image quality.

More time-lapse controllers are continuely becoming available–check forums and ebay.

Assuming you do not mind having your camera tethered to a computer then a number of computer programs are available that can control digital cameras to shoot time-lapse sequences.