Our Camblock motion control system completes its first series for the BBC NHU in february after 6 months of constant work across the middle east for a major three part series - Wild Arabia. Pictured here camerawoman Sue Gibson lining up a tracking sunset to stars timelapse. We look forward to seeing the results...

Some eye-popping night time lapse by Tom Lowe over at Timescapes.org, some great new techniques to try out including boat-lapse, car-lapse and crane-lapse. Look out for the motion control shots done using the Camblock system...

http://timescapes.org/

TimeScapes 4K from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.

We have a new logo for our cameras...

TShed and seasoned underwater cameraman Doug Anderson (Blue Planet, Frozen Planet) are currently developing a new underwater housing to take our Starlight cameras underwater for the first time. We don't quite know how it will all look until we test it, but the plan is to devise a system for filming in darkness underwater using our cameras lit with invisible infrared lights. Using this technique we hope to open up a new area to wildlife filmmakers to explore previously unseen nocturnal behaviour in the open sea. No one quite knows what many species do in the sea at night, with our new housing we hope to start finding out. We'll keep you posted once our first tests are underway...

Treeplay was a great success and we all thoroughly enjoyed working with the kids down in Somerset early in the Autumn looking for the creature in the woods. We got some enthusiastic feedback both from the kids as well as parents and teachers. The weather was unusually idyllic for late september, it was great fun for us to work with eager and enthusiastic young filmmakers. We hear plans for a a longer extended residential workshop next year to include extra filming techniques, nighttime stakeouts and more...here are some pics from the week...enjoy

Stargazing Live, broadcast this month on BBC2 saw a big rise in viewing figures over last year beating the Royal Bodyguard over on BBC1 with nearly 4 million viewers tuning in. Nick and Ted from TShed crewed the UK live stargazing sequences with presenters Dara O Brian, Brian Cox and Mark Thompson. Over in South Africa with Liz Bonin was wildlife cameraman and amateur astronomer Mark Payne Gill who shot some great material of star formations, galaxies and the Milky Way with the Lunax Starlight HD. All in we really enjoyed it, shame the Dulverton big light switch off was a wash out but thats the British weather for you. We look forward to Stargazing Live 2013...

Tshed acquires a complete Camblock motion control system, available for hire from February 2012.

"The camBLOCK™ motion-control system leap frogs several generations of motion-control and time lapse technology, offering extremely advanced key-frame-based, non-linear motion control at a tiny fraction of the price size and weight of traditional professional moco systems."
– Tom Lowe,
timescapes.org

For more info on the Camblock system visit:

Camblock

After the success of last years BBC Stargazing Live with Brian Cox and Dara O Briain it's back for a second year once again featuring the TShed Lunax Starlight HD, this time in two countries broadcasting live simultaneously...more news to come.

Tshed kit ventures into the middle east and the night for two new commissions for BBC Two promising to open up worlds that have previously remained unexplored. Wild Arabia takes viewers on a romantic journey into the very heart of a lost world – one of virtually impenetrable wilderness and unimaginable landscapes. The series also features the first ever wild Arabian leopards to be captured in crystal clear high definition.

The Dark, also on BBC Two, reveals a nocturnal land of terrifying creatures by harnessing the latest in military night filming technology. Bringing viewers an exciting new perspective on the nocturnal activities of animals (over 60% of animals are nocturnal), the team venture deep into the unknown, becoming creatures of the night themselves – wading through piranha-filled rivers, braving shark-infested waters and squeezing into the narrowest, snake-ridden caves.

Explorium, a new social enterprise dedicated to bringing educational adventure into the lives of young people, is launching an ambitious and highly original event called Tree Play in conjunction with T-Shed, a Bristol based company of award winning natural history filmmakers. Pupils from Rode First School and Christchurch First School in Frome are among the first children in Somerset who will venture into some of Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Great Breach Woods to become natural history filmmakers.

Their mission is to find and capture on camera the elusive creature rumoured to live in the woods. They will gather crucial evidence about where the creature might live, how it might behave and what it might eat, before getting out the camera traps, constructing a rope dolly to film up in the tree canopy and waiting patiently, and hopefully quietly, in a film hide.

Will they get the footage they need? To make sure they do a team from T-Shed are on hand to teach them all the skills they may need. Carolyn Tommey, Head Teacher of Rode First School, says of the project: “We do learning through play well now and this takes us onto the next step which is learning through adventure.

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