Over the last few months I’ve shoot some long bits of video. I’ve pulled together some of the better shots and sped them up a load. So you can see the clouds racing across the skies and accelerated movement of the things in the scene.
I’m currently looking at planning attachments so in the future I can have these planning across the landscapes over time.
Here are a few pictures I’ve taken recently
I decided to go and visit the Waterhall dew pond but rather than going there directly I jumped on the 46 bus to Hollingbury and walked down via Withdean Park. As it was autumn there were some lovely colours in the suburbs, parks and surrounding area.
The hill up from London road was quite steep, as was the hill down from the bridge over the motorway. If you don’t like high bridges over many lanes of fast moving traffic then this is probably best avoided.
When I got to Waterhall the sun was starting to set and I almost had the place all to myself. So set up the camera and let it roll for a bit. Then did the same at the Green Ridge dew Pond on the way back. Though did not have that all to myself but got a nice shot between people passing.
The other dew ponds are as follows and I must check them out.
Bevendean Down, Ditchling Beacon, Foredown Ridge, Hangleton and Wild Park
A dew pond is an artificial pond usually sited on the top of a hill, intended for watering livestock. Dew ponds are used in areas where a natural supply of surface water may not be readily available.
Shoreham harbour to Devils Dyke
This trip was quite an endurance exercise in this direction. Almost all up hill for 9km. I imagine it’s much easier the other direction. Would make a good day out getting the bus to the top of the dyke (mostly only runs weekends and holiday) and then walk back to Hove. You can jump on a bus once you get to Mile Oak area or wander all the way down to Hove Lagoon.
The route start seems to be a bit inconsistent depending on where you look. Either at the coast by Hove Lagoon or at this corner of St Richard’s Road and Wellington Road.
If you want a nice cuppa before heading off there was a nice looking cafe next to the station just up the road. Though I did not try it this time as I started later in the day than I would have liked.
The first leg of the path is a rather nice walk out of town up a footpath alley with plenty of trees, hedges and walls that provide cover on a blustery day. The main roads you have to cross have fairly good crossing points. The local shop over the bridge from the station will be the last shop you will pass for a while, so grab anything you need here.
Towards the top of the path before hitting the open countryside it can get a bit muddy underfoot if there has been rain recently.
As I burst out into the countryside by the electrical pylons all you could hear was the chatter of the small birds perched along the wires. This is one of my favourite walks as the views of Mile Oak on the right and the rolling hills towards Shoreham never seem to fail to make stunning vistas.
Once again can get a bit muddy in places if it had rained but mostly fairly easy along this little hill… Though you do have to watch out for rabbit holes as there are quite a few around here. Also watch out for slugs as I’ve seen some quite large ones around these parts. As well as plenty of birds, mostly pigeons, crows and gulls but there are a few birds of prey too.
If you stick to the trail it will take you down a fairly steep and sometimes slippy bridleway down to just above the farm. Though you can also take a slight detour from the path down a very short but steep hill down to the cafe for a pit stop. As the next leg is quite gruelling this could be worth the detour.
The path up from the farm starts off very steep and it’s a bit of a slog but if you run out of breath just stop for a bit and take in the stunning views. After the initial steep bit the path levels off to a more easy climb up the hell… But the climb is fairly continuous all the way up till you get near Fulking Hill.
There was quite a puddle next to the gate at the top of the path. At this point the path once again bypasses the pub at the top of the dyke and caries on to Patcham but for me I called it a day and headed toward the pub for refreshment and calling it a day as the sun was setting within the hour. So I took the old railway route back to Hangelton and jumped on a bus back to town.
My thoughts on this part of the route is that I think it would have been a lot easier in the other direction as you would have instead been going downhill most of the way. Also there are not many places to stop and rest except the farm cafe and pub at the top of the dyke. Though if you do try it this way then at the top of the steepest hill up from the farm, if you turn right there is takes you back down to Foredown tower. After that you are fairly committed to pushing on to the dyke.
Was most certainly a good workout and took me a good 4 hours to get to the top and another hour to walk back to the nearest bus stop… Though there is a bus that run up to Devils Dyke but it mostly only runs on weekend and bank holidays. So you can catch that back.
If you want the easiest way to do this walk I would say get the bus to Devils Dyke and walk down to the coast. It will be an easier walk but you will have the sun in your face most of the way down, if the sun comes out that is. Also remember the weather at the top can change quickly and can be quite different to what it feels like at ground level so make sure you have the right clothes with you and plenty of water if it’s hot.
Next part I will attempt to do the bit between Devils Dyke and Ditchling
To complete my trips around Brighton I walked from Falmer stadium to Rottingdean. This means I have now walked all the way around the Brighton metropolitan area from the costal path between Rottingdean and Shoreham, From Shoreham inland to the South Downs way. Then inland from there over the top of Southwick, Mile Oak, Devils Dyke, Patcham, Stammer, Falmer and now finally back to Rottingdean.
Not in one go mind you. Mostly in 2-4 hour chunks.
On the way I found some public footpaths that were almost impassable, some very steep hills, amazing views and got to explore regions of Brighton I had not visited before even after living here for about 20 years.
There is one tool that made this much easier and that is Open Street Maps, along with the spin offs Open Route Service and OsmAnd the mobile app version. These tools help to plan my routes and keep me on track.
The next plan is to put together some guides with ideas, hints and tips about getting around the area. I’ve started with the area I’ve explored the most in the Shoreham area. As well as hopefully getting out and about a bit more.
All Things Fungi Festival 2024
This was my first trip out of town with the new camera in a lovely location the Chiddinglye estate just south of East Grinstead. Hopefully I’ll get to do a lot more of this sort of thing next year. Here’s some footage of the festival and the lovely area.
For this day out I headed from the Aldrington Station area and cut across to Benfield Valley Nature Reserve. Up a short but steep hill to Foredown and over the A27. Up here I saw the birds in the field you can see in the video. Started down the main path towards the Dyke but it was fairly busy as it was the weekend.
So doubled back and explored down the path running along the top of the A27, quite close at times. This path was had a lot less foot fall. It takes you past some farm buildings that don’t clearly show the route but the obvious one is usually right. There are a few underpass’ that you can use to cut back to town along the route but I stayed on the path until the tunnel.
At the tunnel you can climb another short but steep hill that takes you up onto the Downs. Once that road is underground you suddenly realise how loud it is! Quite a feature round the outskirts of town. Must explore more up in that area.
From there I walked downhill all the way to Portslade and then jumped on the bus back to town.
Shot on the 2nd August 2024.
It’s always windy on the beach so as it had been quite still all day… I headed down at sunset to see how the camera feels in those conditions. By the time I got there the wind had picked up again, hey ho.
I’m still finding my feet with how to get the best results but I’m a firm believe in trial and error with a little outside help only when needed.
Some came out better than other and all have a slight grade applied to them to bring out some of the detail,
After having to go near Stanmer Park I decided to head into the woods and see where it took me. Ended up walking all the way to bottom of Patcham. About 8km over a leisurely 4 hours with a few stops to take photos and video. Did not bother with the audio as it was mostly wind and car noise.
I love the streets around Hove at the moment. The council decided to save money and not cut the grass around the trees a while ago. I believe some of the schools got children to adopt some of these little nature reserves and plant things. There are quite a variety around town and I think it’s so much nicer than boring green grass kept artificially short. I’ll try and capture more as some of them are stunning little spaces.
New camera time, got a Panasonic S9 as a lighter version of roughly the same camera as the larger S1. It’s about 1/3 the weight but also light on features. There are the things you can appreciate are good for size and weight reductions like lack of viewfinder and second SD card slot. The screen was reasonable at framing shots but hard to check the focus. Now the auto focus is great on these camera and I’m sure with a bit of playing I’ll get the settings and experience to nail it right most of the time.
The harder restriction to understand is the time limit on recording video. You get between 10 and 20 minutes max recording depending on the settings. It really feels like it’s put in there just to make you consider one of the more expensive models. Not seen anywhere yet that explains why they have this limitation. Though they do stress that the camera might stop sooner if it overheats so I would presume there is overheating issues if used for too long. After all I think about 1/3 of the weight on the S1 is the cooling so you can use it continuously. It would have been nice if they could have at least had one video setting that would let you record as long as you want, even if it was 720p or ultra low colour depth to minimise heat generation. I guess they could add something like this with a firmware update…. But I doubt they will as they will be much more likely to do the S9 v1.5 in a year or two and hope people buy the upgrade.
If I read the manual right you can monitor the video via HDMI for about 10x the time. So am wondering if I throw a Raspberry Pi and video capture card into a box, can I record the video for longer? If so it really seems like a made up limit. Will certainly be investigating that a bit more.
Still as my plan is mainly to do little clips put together and I have the S1 too, it’s not too much if an issue for me. Still has the great image quality and is relatively easy to use. Will be my throw it in the bag ‘just in case’ camera for the near future. Still need to get a low profile lens to make it really portable.
So to test it out I took it to the seafront and headed down the England Coast Path which runs from Shoreham by Sea to Eastbourne. Not so much wildlife as it was the end of one of the hottest days of the year and I just missed low tide when the bird come down to feed. One day I want to jump on a bike and do the whole trail from Shoreham to Eastbourne.
On the video there are some nice shots of boats coming back to the harbour and some of a nice fat bee gouging on the sweet pollen. Shot quite a bit more but a lot of it did not hold the focus on the bee most of the time. Need to play with the focus setting for this sort of macro stuff. I love that the auto focus has detection for humans, animals and cars. Though it would be nice to tag a point and have that keep in focus. Maybe it has that already and I need to discover it.
The photo on the website were shot as jpeg and untouched off the camera. Though scaled down to more web friendly sizes. I’ll typically shoot on RAW + Jpeg so I can tweak them if needed or just post them up if the jpeg is fine.
Short one this week as I went down with summer covid…. Fever during the hottest few days of the year is not fun. Did feel well enough to pop down the local parks and do a bit of filming.
First up is Wish Park aka Aldrington Recreation Ground, no idea why it has two names, as it’s on Wish Road most call it wish park but apparently it’s proper name is Aldrington Recreation Ground.
Then I move down to Hove Lagoon, less than 5 minutes walk away. The two make a lovely refuge for birds and wildlife. All shot hand held as I did not have the energy to sort out the whole kit. Which is not one of the my strongest skills. Also playing around with a few post production tricks which work so differently with a better camera.