Amazing - Moosehead Lake, Maine "ice-in" time-lapse from Dec 16, 2010

Hey everybody, over here, free food !!

Hey everybody, over here, free food !!

Waiting for the lake to freeze-up

Waiting for the freeze-up at Sebec Lake. A big storm is forecast late this weekend and then next week will see some very cold temperatures. Maybe next week...

Dressed for winter - Cardinal

New Webcam at Moosehead Lake, Maine

Last weekend we setup a new webcam at Moosehead Lake in Greenville, Maine. High on a hill overlooking the lake and with Squaw (Moose) mountain in the background. It's a beautiful view and better to be there but a live picture is nice too.

Looks like he's all dress up for the photo

Salmon Jumping Early's Falls, Sebec Lake !!

Salmon Jumping Early's Falls on 9/25/2010
Video 58 sec

CLICK TO PLAY THE SALMON VIDEO

Fast Action

Cardinal pair from this morning

Click for the big picture

Day/Night Time-Lapse

Time-Lapse of the day and night sky. Watch the stars, a planet (Jupiter?), moon and sunrise. Using an Olympus SP500 UZ 6MP camera and SebecTec software. Automatic long exposure kicks-in at night. Switches to normal exposure during the day. Recorded by Rollin at wooden-canoes.com

Maine Bear Attack

MAINE BEAR ATTACK
www.pressherald.com/news/bear-attack-all-kind-of-a-blur_2010-09-15.html

Greenville, Maine seaplane "Fly-In". Sept 11, 2010

I'm ready for my close-up

See www.SquirrelCam.org

Loons and Rainbows

Ten loons showed up yesterday in front of our camp (actually 14 were counted but didn't all get in the frame). Then two rainbows - the first seems different as it is not so much a bow. It's more flattened. The second is very bright.

Birdcam

I recently set the birdcam/squirrelcam to 1600x1200 resolution with 15 second update. That makes a nice picture. See www.SquirrelCam.org

Loon at sunrise - from webcam Sept 1, 2010

Cam of the month

Hey, we made cam of the month - that's something :) AnimalCams.com

China T-Shirts

Maybe I was getting a little bored but I began to notice and photgraph the many varieties of English language t-shirts while in China this summer. Some are interesting, some are amusing and some...I don't know what they mean - enjoy!
T-SHIRTS

Visit Tibet

We visited Tibet in July. You can have a look at some photos from our trip here.

Hiking Borestone Mountain

We hiked up Borestone Mountain last weekend. Here is a short video of our trek.

Fishing on Sebec Lake at sunset

Watching Humminbirds

You can watch hummingbirds via this link For a short time I have setup a motion sensor activated camera that will take pictures when the hummingbird is present.

Lake Level Monitor

I'm trying out an idea. I wanted to find a way to measure the lake level in real-time. Here's how it works. I use a range sensor, the kind that measures distance using an acoustic pulse (from Vernier). The sensor is mounted several feet above the lake and pointing down to the water surface. The range measurement to the surface tells you the lake level. I average several readings to try to smooth out the effects of waves.

The lake level is about normal level right now. Shorter readings indicate a rise in the lake level and longer readings a drop in the level. I wrote a gui in microsoft c# that takes the readings, plots a graph and sends it up to the web page server. Well, we'll see how it goes... See www.SebecLake.net for the chart.

Climbing Mt. Katahdin, Maine

You can climb Mt. Katahdin as a dayhike from Sebec Lake, Maine

High quality ice-out video available

If you don't mind downloading a large file (285MB) you can watch a high quality time-lapse of Sebec Lake ice-out 2010. The video is 4 days long and begins 2 days before ice-out which was on April 3, 2010. VIDEO

Please be patient as it may take a while for the video to begin.

Quite a nice sunset - Sebec Lake and Borestone Mountain

Some Birds

Tulipcam back by popular demand

Sunrise at Sebec Lake

This is what came off the camera. Taking a picture every 20 seconds you're bound to get a good shot at some point.

Big waves through The Narrows

Moatcam in the White Mountains

Have a look at the webcam with a view of the Moat Mountain Range in The White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. It is truly a great location and presents impressive time-lapse videos at the close of each day. See www.moatcam.com

A word about the webcam

I thought some might be interested to see how the web camera is setup. Below is a photo showing the feeder and the webcam - feeder on the left, webcam on the right. I'm using an Olympus SP-500 6MP camera mounted inside a weatherproof NEMA box. The camera is controlled by USB and powered by a 6v power converter. I have it set to 1024x768 resolution and snapping an image every 12 seconds using SebecTec.com software. The day's images are saved and automatically made into an flv or avi file. As I play them back for review (at 100 image/second) and see something interesting I will note the time and go back and get the original image.

The feeder is located partway inside a lilac bush which I think makes the birds more comfortable by giving them branches to approach the feeder and cover from predators.

I have an acoustic motion sensor that I would like to tie into the process so that when a bird or squirrel shows up I can have it automatically process an image at that time.

The cameras have proven to be very robust outdoors in the cold of winter and heat of summer. I enclosed a small brick of silica gel in the box so that there will be no condensation on the glass when it gets cold.

Some nice bird images from this morning.

Click the images below to get a full size view of the detail.

SebecTec Webcam

Would you like a webcam to watch the animals in hi-def? If you have a nice view get a cam here: www.SebecTec.com -Mike

Cardinal

Time-Lapse Tulip Flower

Below you will find a time-lapse video of a Tulip from morning until evening. An image was captured every 20 seconds throughout the day at 1920x1080 image resolution (HD 1080p). The camera and software are by SebecTec.com (that's me). This size image is the HD mode that will look very good on a widescreen HD tv. All that needs to be done is to burn it to a DVD using AVCHD encode mode using Roxio or Nero.

Tulipcam now online

Just what you were waiting for...Tulipcam now online. Watch the flower grow and endofday time-lapse too! Tulipcam

Ice-out April 3, 2010 5:05pm

Ice-out was on April 3. Check out the time-lapse video from three locations on Sebec lake.

Ice-out Kayak

Ice-out very soon

Watching for ice-out. I think certainly before Sunday and my guess is Thursday or Friday this week. Temps in the 70's are forecast for Friday and Saturday. How can ice stand up to that?? April 1 is the earliest ice-out recorded for Sebec lake since 1880. If ice out is tomorrow, March 31 it will break the record.

Katahdin Cam

This image is from the webcam at 5lakeslodge.com - a SebecTec webcam

Sebec Lake Sunrise

Nice sunrise image this morning.

Time-Lapse

Now time-lapse is generated for each of the three Sebec Lake webcams. Time-Lapse

Software updates

What I've been doing lately is working many hours to improve the camera control softwawre - SebebTec. I am making it more reliable, and adding more features. Next on the feature list is a Starlight mode. Really it is just a long time exposure that will engage when it detects the scene has become dark after sunset. Now we can watch the moonrise and see the stars track along the night sky.

I can hold the camera eye open for 60 seconds. I'm working on setting the ISO to 800 which for some reason doesn't seem to 'take'. So more experimenting is needed. It does do a pretty good job though as it is. Soon we can see how well it works.