The usual summer view on the webcam mid morning:
Dramatic scenes were spotted on the other day when this action
was caught live by an eagle eyed viewer:
The horror! As Kitten Kong (aka Jess-the-cat) spots what could
be a giant ball of wool to play with... or maybe it's a conservatory.
Viewers will be relieved to know that kitty came down and returned to normal size when she got hungry and wanted her tea... Phew!
On the 9th November 2005, a new weatherproof camera was installed outside to give a better view with no window reflections! It's a CCD video camera so you should see a large improvement in the quality of the picture as well as better night vision. If you look at a lot of webcams it's difficult to get a decent shot of half sky and scenery as one half ends up too dark or too light. This is where a graduated neutral density filter is required to drop the brightness of the sky a few stops so the auto levels on the camera don't bleach the sky white. But have you tried getting a filter for a webcam?! I have experimented above with
Lee neutral density lighting filter, using a section cut and inserted into the lens of the camera. It seems to do the job and doesn't need to be graduated as the edge is out of focus anyway. This should enhance the visibility of clouds and sunsets. The only problem it is shows up quite badly when it's foggy!!!!
Images from the new camera:
Winter in Wrose:
The fog rolls in from the valley below (Spot the ND filter on the top half of
the shot, visible as a darkened line on the second image):
A clear winter sunset on one of the shortest days (The camera faces East)
Night time over Wrose (the streaks are caused by a combination of compression
and the trade off between noise and a viewable image)
Morning has broken....
The moon rises on a clear night:
Scattered clouds
The shots below were taken with the
original webcam, blu-tacked to my
study window frame....
fortunately since this shot was taken I've got double glazing and a decent
camera! The new camera sits outside in the worst of British weather and manages
admirably! I now use a proper CCD security camera. This captures images to the
PC via a USB adaptor.
The original cameras was a cheap CMOS which made the computer processor do all the work. It's was only a laptop device designed to plug straight into the USB port on the end of a gooseneck. You can't get them from Maplin anymore they've been discontinued. You may notice the images produced are in widescreen. This is because I have cropped them so as not to infringe on my neighbours privacy (and you'd also end up with an even more boring shot which was mostly sky and patio!). Now that the new camera gives a much better quality picture, you can make out the sky properly and so it has been converted back to 4:3.
Some of the original webcam images
On A clear (but dull) day this is what
you'd normally see.
Caught one morning, a weird site - it's a
clear but wet day where the camera is,
but the top of Wrose hill is shrouded in mist rolling down into the valley which
was
also very foggy. Usually mist would roll down the lower lying points into the
valley,
the scene was more reminiscent of low lying cloud even though there wasn't any
around.
And a bit more fog......
Sunset over Wrose Hill on a chilly December
afternoon (to the top right is the moon).
Quarter of an hour later the same evening:
And the scene at night! Yes it's a bit
dark, but you may be able
to spot the Christmas lights twinkling (The bright red spot right in the centre
of the image).
If you look closely you can see the snow
falling! OK so I cheated
this is actually with a digital camera, but the snow wouldn't show up on the
webcam!
And then a day later, the weather's lovely!
New Look... new webcam with a bigger CMOS chip hence better
colour and sharpness (This one didn't last long though!)
