I’ve been meaning to experiment with time-lapse photography ever since I picked up a cheap Yongnuo intervalometer off eBay a few months ago, so over the past couple of days I set-out to learn the craft. If you’re a semi-competent photographer you should have no problems in setting up the basic shots. Just compose the shot and set up your camera as you would normally. There are however a few things you should consider.
It’s common practice to “drag” your shutter to create a smoother looking video. To do this you just need to decrease the shutter speed so moving objects have a motion blur. The blur duration is up to you, based on the desired effect you want to achieve. For the video below I used exposures from half a second, to three seconds.
One thing you will need is patience. To create a 20 second video with an exposure of 3 seconds you will be waiting for around 25 minutes if you intend to output Pal at 25fps. Once you get into the way of it though, it seems to become less of a chore, being able to catch up on work etc. while waiting for the time lapse to finish.
For all of my clips I had the camera on Manual mode but there are different techniques out there. Timescapes.org is a good resource for learning and includes plenty of examples.
Workflow
I took all my shots in the lowest resolution RAW setting on my Canon 7D. This low resolution still offers a way higher pixel count than needed for 1080p HD, plus gives you the option to pan and zoom across your rendered time lapse. To process the raw images I imported them into Adobe After Effects as an image sequence. Upon import you can then tweak the RAW file which has an effect across the complete video. The After Effects sequence is then exported to be finished off in Final Cut Pro.
This was my first experimentation with creating a time lapse video with my DSLR camera so there are obviously many improvements that can be made. Check out the video below. Music from the Life Cycles soundtrack by Data Romance
http://www.vimeo.com/20044856
Great stuff Andy! Would love to see more of this! I’m a big fan of the timescapes.org stuff!
http://timescapes.org/
Cheers Neil. I just need to find the patience to do more!
Very nice work here my friend, I do the odd timelapse my self when I get the time to commit to the cause. Weapon of choice is the old obsolete Nikon D200.
Thanks Samuel. I’d like to have another camera to take the shots on and save my 7D!