UKC

What advice or tips would you offer to somebody who has never done time lapse photography before?

In reply to The Lemming:

Worth bearing in mind that time-lapse obviously needs a lot of shutter actuations, so your shutter count will soon be massive.

You can get cheap (~£15) Chinese intervalometers off of ebay for a quarter of the price of the Canon/Nikon varieties, that do exactly the same thing.

In reply to The Lemming:

Agree with Tom Last about the cheap intervalometers being good. I had one for my last camera, and found it easier to use than the built in one in my d7000.

For daytime shooting I have found Aperture Priority mode to be a good choice, as I find DOF changes more noticeable than exposure changes. Having said that, manual is best if you can be confident that the world will remain within the dynamic range of your camera.

For night time shooting you are almost always better off with manual. It's worth making sure that your interval accounts for any extra noise reduction steps, as these can be time consuming. If you do have something like Nikons auto dark frame stuff then it may be worth switching it off.

Night time/long exposure timelapse seems to eat batteries like nobodies business. Consider getting an external power supply or battery grip.

In all cases (day or night) you need to check and double check that you have the framing and focus you want, as if not you could end up with a few hundred frames of it.

Finally, if all you want at the end is a video then switch to jpeg only and maybe even reduce resolution a bit. Nothing worse than coming back and finding a full card.

In reply to The Lemming:

Thanks for the replies. Before I buy an Intervalomiter, I'll play with the on-board feature first to see if I like the idea.

Not too sure if I should shoot JPEG or RAW. Is this a really important consideration with RAW giving more options in the editing stage, especially if I fek up the white balance?

Also I'm hoping to produce a Hi-Def production either 1080 or 720 resolution. With this in mind, do I really need to have max file sizes and max out an 8Gb card before the project is shot?

Not too sure what I should practice on but I think I will head off to the Prom and see what inspires me

In reply to Tom Last:

For a similar amount of money another option might be to pick up a cheap Canon point-and-shoot camera and install CHDK. That way the massive shutter count would be going onto what's effectively a disposable camera.

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

In reply to The Lemming:

You certainly do get more editing options with raw, but running out of space is a real problem. For a good looking animation you want an absolute minimum of 20-30fps, so the space adds up extremely quickly.

In reply to The Lemming:

I would shoot RAW for sure as it gives you heaps more options in post (although i mean more options to tweak dynamic range, just get WB right in camera!) however think about processing before shooting RAW, as 10gb odd RAW sequences makes even high end servers chug so depends on what your editing on. If you get it all right in cam then jpeg is fine, and if you dont get it right in cam, you really want to tweak 240 images?!?!

That extra size in terms of image vs hd video is useful IMHO to allow u to pan and crop in post afterwards though and create a few interesting effects etc

a lot of DSLRS allow you to shoot both raw and jpeg, so you if you use something like adobe after effects you can use the jpeg sequence as a proxy for your RAW, edit tweak and then render the raw (which takes ages!!)

re: intervalometer is essential if you DSLR cannot do it in Cam (most canons can take advantage of the magic lantern sd card hack if you need it and worth a play)

I would shoot all manual but take other posters point about aperture priority mode, but still pick your time and light well and shoot all manual if u can to avoid flicker etc! LRT timelapse is a cool bit of software that allows you to blend frames and deflicker if it gets too bad

Critically though use an ND filter if you can during daylight....those gorgeous time-lapse you see are usually always filtered and dragging the shutter with longer exposures for the aperture (longer u can expose for whilst not blowing things out, is my personal preference and gives motion blur rather than stop start animation )

use a tripod and remember at 24fps you need at least 240 frames to make around 10secs of footage at 30fps of course higher (seriously this is what most ppl under estimate esp at night as takes forever and you can be out for hours so frame it well, dont rush the set up and have fun!!) heaps of good info here http://timescapes.org/

Oh and shameless plug whilst we are on the topic, I shot this in peru a while ago on a little trip vimeo.com/70253164 heaps of time lapses in the evenings, and was fortunate to be out there when we had that super moon a while ago! enjoy!

In reply to The Lemming:

Here's my first attempt at Time Lapse and I'm quite sure that I can make improvements in both technique and choice of subjects. I tarted up the images, JPEGS, in Lightroom and used Windows Movie Maker to publish my project.

The reason I used JPEGS was because I forgot to change the settings. Everything else was manual.

I'd very much appreciate constructive criticism and such like.

Be gentle with me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVqmbzRfLP4&feature=youtu.be

In reply to The Lemming:

For some reason I can't edit my last post with the broken link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFRZRRoeAAM&list=UUr7dMldhojjSW2fCGvprs-...

In reply to The Lemming:
This is a useful tute.

youtube.com/watch?v=TM7EJZ-8HWw&

led to my doing this...

youtube.com/watch?v=sxVA-QYEmZg&

ignore first 15 seconds

In reply to stroppygob:




Nice

Where was it taken?

I'm guessing not in the UK

In reply to The Lemming:

Thanks. It was taken here...

http://www.nationalarboretum.act.gov.au/

In reply to The Lemming:
Anybody seen, used or heard of triggertrap, if so what do you think of it?

http://triggertrap.com/products/triggertrap-mobile/http://triggertrap.com/p...

In reply to The Lemming:

Lemmo, you said up the thread you used Windows Movie Maker - where do I set how long each photo displays for? It's defaulted to 5 seconds each and I can't find where to change it!

In reply to Alyson:


Morning.

I manually punched in the interval. The smallest amount is 0.03 but I went for 0.04.

Personally I think that I screwed up on my first attempt at 5 second intervals for such a fast moving subject as waves. Today I think I'll have a pop at 1 or 2 second intervals.

Let me know if you still have probs, and I will fire my computer up to check exactly how to set the timings.

In reply to The Lemming:

Cheers my dear! I'll have a look at lunchtime. I'm putting together a video of the growth of my bump!

In reply to The Lemming:

I use triggertrap, very handy bit of kit and good range of timings and modes in it.

In reply to Removed User:

I've just ordered one off Amazon and hope to get it in a few days. I was going to buy a gizmo but for this price it would be rude not to.

I think that I will look into time lapse for my tablet too. I'd get more storage and would save on shutter clicks too.

Should be fun duct taping a tablet to my tripod

In reply to The Lemming:

I'd second the Trigger trap option. Nice bit of kit and small to carry about as the main controller is your phone.

In reply to The Lemming:

I had a play with a new cheapo Chinese intervalometer today... I stuck the camera out of the bedroom window and pointed it at Moel Famau:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1473887106173138&l=823724346685920...

In reply to richprideaux:

Apart from a shot of Wales, that's impressive.

May I ask what timings you used and what software you used to render the movie?

In reply to The Lemming:

4 second intervals I think - about 1400 exposures.

I use Premiere Elements to edit and render... I made a classic mistake of not knocking down the jpeg size before shooting and had 16GB of data to try and work with! The laptop managed it, just!

In reply to monkey_moves:
Very good, I enjoyed that , any more?

In reply to richprideaux:

I know what you mean with the JPEG size. My first stab was with Max resolution JPEGS on my SLR. I have since discovered that the final product is just as good in lower file sizes.

I will check out Premier Elements, though a few years ago I found it very complicated and my brain hurt.

Cheers

In reply to Jim C:

Cheers Jim, re: any more, ummm not climbing related like the last one, but some cool timelapses I shot a while ago down in here in south wales if your interested?
vimeo.com/55340339

In reply to The Lemming:

Timelapses are cool, but it won't take long to wear out your shutter!

In reply to The Lemming:
How do you make the camera move like this?

youtube.com/watch?v=_zo5L_O2QIs&


And like this, but you have to go 1min 56 in first.
youtube.com/watch?v=TrxAdFFw7iA&

In reply to The Lemming:
You use a device called a camera slider

http://www.kesslercrane.com/camera-sliders-s/49.htm

In reply to stroppygob:

Having small pockets, and a 'She who must be obeyed', can this be done on the cheap?

In reply to The Lemming:

Cheap(ish) but a bit of DIY
http://petapixel.com/2014/03/19/diy-tutorial-cheap-way-motorize-slider-add-...

I've not done this but aim to shortly.

You can also zoom into and pan across the image without moving the camera.

LRTimelapse lets you do this fairly easily. Its great if you already use lightroom, although a touch complex for some, I highly recommend it. The free version lets you make timelapses of up to 400 images for non-comercial use.

My efforts, (cumulative image stacking timelapses) are here, 2nd vid down.
http://www.shaff.co.uk/about-shaff/festival-trailers/

In reply to Dan Arkle:

That's an interesting little project, which looks within my capabilities.



Thanks for the link.

In reply to Dan Arkle:

I found this link that says '10 things you should not do', and I've broken most of them but I'm confused by number 2.

Does it sound right to use longer shutter speeds, even in the day?

http://www.enriquepacheco.com/10-things-you-should-not-do-in-time-lapse

In reply to monkey_moves:



Just had time to give this a couple of runs in peace and quiet , excellent stuff.
I particularly like the old industrial stuff.