It is common practice in sociophonetics to measure vowel formants at one (monophthongs) or – for diphthongs ­­– two time points, the so-called target approach. It should be noted that even diphthongs are often measured at one time-point. First, I will present a study of regional vowel variation in Standard Dutch and compare the target approach with two dynamic approaches for investigating regional patterns of variation (Van der Harst, Van de Velde & Van Hout 2014) . Second, I will show some preliminary results of the first phonetic studies of (West-)Frisian, revealing dynamic aspects of long vowels that have not been observed before in phonetic and phonological studies of Frisian (Sloos, Van de Velde & Demolin, fc). Third, I will present a beta version of Visible Vowels (Heeringa & Van de Velde, fc), an internet tool for the plotting and normalization of vowels and the analysis of variation patterns in vowel systems, incorporating the dynamic aspects of vowels.