Stop Motion animation.

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KC Leblanc

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Sorry, I'm sure I should be able to find an answer to this without bothering you lot, but my google powers are weak today.

I'm looking for a camera with built in and relatively easy to use stop motion animation function.

I know Nikon dSLRs do this, but I'm after something a little cheaper. I understand it's fairly easy to do this with any camera by stitching the frames together. But it's for use in a school, so it's much easier if it can all be done in one process.

If not can anyone recommend an easy to use package for stitching the frames together.
 
you don't need a function, i remember doing lego stop motion when i was 10 with a cheapo point and shoot. if it was me i would go for sony a100/200 which are around £200 if not less off ebay, i also remember doing the pp in microsoft movie maker or you could get cine paint which is a free movie version of gimp.
 
I've just got a D300s and tried the interval function out yesterday which makes it really easy.

I previously used my D80 with a remote shutter control pressing it roughly every second to make this: http://www.vimeo.com/10697550 At some point I intend to go and take some more and finish it off, but it was fun doing this, despite the rtediousness of standing there pressing the shutter release every second.
 
I also upgraded my copy of quicktime to quicktime pro as it automatically stitches together image sequences to make movie files. I cant remember how much it was, but as I'm a tightfisted b****r, assume it was quite cheap :)

This was the tutorial that got me interested in trying timelapse: http://www.vimeo.com/3340273
 
Auwyn said:
I've just got a D300s and tried the interval function out yesterday which makes it really easy.

I previously used my D80 with a remote shutter control pressing it roughly every second to make this: http://www.vimeo.com/10697550 At some point I intend to go and take some more and finish it off, but it was fun doing this, despite the rtediousness of standing there pressing the shutter release every second.
Click to expand...

I like the way the boats wiggle :D
 
KC Leblanc said:
I'm looking for a camera with built in and relatively easy to use stop motion animation function.
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Stop motion or interval timer shooting?

The two are similar, but no the same. Stop motion animation doesn't necessarily have the same time interval between each frame of the animation.

KC Leblanc said:
I know Nikon dSLRs do this, but I'm after something a little cheaper.
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Nikon DSLRs do interval timer shooting. This means you set a pre-determined interval, and it will continually take a shot (or up to 9 shots) every interval.

KC Leblanc said:
I understand it's fairly easy to do this with any camera by stitching the frames together. But it's for use in a school, so it's much easier if it can all be done in one process.
Click to expand...
For proper stop motion animation, it may take anywhere from a few seconds to possibly a couple of hours between each frame in your animation, and it will probably vary from frame to frame.

Whether you're doing timelapse with the interval timer, or shooting stop motion and manually hitting the shutter each time (hint : use a remote trigger if you don't want odd camera movements between each frame), you're still just going to get a sequence of images that you'll have to load into something like VirtualDub, After Effects, or whatever.

KC Leblanc said:
If not can anyone recommend an easy to use package for stitching the frames together.
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VirtualDub.

As an aside, I've quit using my D200 & D300s built-in interval timer in favour of the Yongnuo MC-36R 2.4Ghz wireless Intervalometer (45 quid on eBay, 8 days shipped from Hong Kong to my front door).
 
Kaouthia said:
As an aside, I've quit using my D200 & D300s built-in interval timer in favour of the Yongnuo MC-36R 2.4Ghz wireless Intervalometer (45 quid on eBay, 8 days shipped from Hong Kong to my front door).
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What is it you prefer about using the Yongnuo over the built-in system?
 
TriggerHappy said:
What is it you prefer about using the Yongnuo over the built-in system?
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There's two main reasons.

The first is that I can set the shutter speed on the remote (in 1 second incrememnts).

So, if I just want to shave off or add a second on one of the "standard" shutter speeds for a bit of fine tuning, I can do so, or if I need exposures longer than 30 seconds, I can do that too.

The other thing is that it'll let me shoot an unlimited or random number of images in a sequence. Basically you press the button to start, then press the button to stop. So, if the weather or view suddenly changes, I don't have to turn the camera off, back on again, and reset the interval timer settings to have another go.

Also, it means that if I'd originally planned to do a sequence of 360 images for a 15 second sequence @ 24p, if it's getting close to the end of those 360 images and suddenly the sky or my subject suddenly does something to look absolutely fantastic, I can have the thing keep going. I don't have to rush to dive back into the camera's menu and get it going again quickly (risking slightly moving the tripod, or causing an odd stutter in the video playback due to the time it takes to do that).

And as a non-timelapse advantage, it works as a regular wireless shutter release, either using the shutter speed set on your camera, or for long exposures up to 99hrs, 59mins, 59secs. I was using my RF-602 triggers as a wireless shutter release, but now I use this since I got it.
 
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