Stop motion tips?

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John
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Anyone have any? Tried it yesterday, got around 72 shot's, made just over 3 seconds of footage that im not happy with. Well, i am as a first attempt.

Just currious if someone has any tips?
 
I've only had a dabble with it, though I plan to try and get more into it before I go on holiday at the end of October.

How are you triggering the camera, manually? I'm lucky in that my camera has Interval shooting built in. I had planned to shoot RAW but on the camera I plan to use, the D200, the buffer fills up too quickly and then slows down. :(

I've played about with an image every 2-30 seconds and every minute, but what I'll choose eventually will depend on the subject, the camera, the speed of the memory card, the frame rate I choose and how fast I want the timelapse to play back. And I'm still figuring that out. ;)

I used Quicktime Pro to animate my timelapses.

I was inspired to try it out by this timelapse by Sam O'Hare, and it just blew my mind. I particularly liked the effect of the boats on the water. He combined it with the tilt shift/miniature effect to great effect. I don't plan the to try the tilt shift. The timelapse is going to be difficult enough to start off with. ;)

I plan to try it first on the river in Liverpool with the ferry, and then hopefully get the technique right to try it on the Grand Canal in Venice.

What are you planning to do a timelapse of?
 
Hey redhead, the op is taalking about Stop Motion which although the processing side is the same the execution is slightly different. Stop Motion is how they do the like of Wallace & Grommit. Youre taking multiple shots but physically moving the subjects before you take each shot. The end result can still be stitched together in QT Pro as you would with a TL but you have a much lower frame rate. When i did mine i used 6fps...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkrSzQuNhXk

Ive only tried one stop motion but from what i learned you have to think in advance what you want to happen in your movie and try and plan it out before hand.
Heres a tutorial..
http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/stop-motion-digital-camera/

Check out this one then theres a making of also....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

BTW Redhead, thanks for the link to the timelapse... Ive got my shots for a timelapse on a beach and have learned how to add a tilt shift effect in PS5 so here goes.....

Hope this helps, Phil
 
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Hi guys, I'm sorry, I got my stuff mixed up, I Ment time-lapse. But I plan to fire the camera manually using a cable trigger at the moment.(me and a friend have a project were going to try)And I'm not sure just now about things to shoot, considering doing Glasgow streets.

Sorry all for the confusion.
 
That Sam O'Hare vid is incredible. He got some great vantage points and the night shots are epic!

How regularly were those images taken? It would seem there wasn't a massive gap in between each.
 
Well if it's stop motion sorry for my mistake. :bonk:

If you meant timelapse then you may get a jerky final vid if you're not spot and consistent with your timing.


The Sam O'Hare vid is amazing. He gives a bit more detail here about how he did it. He says 4fps for most of it.

His other vid, Coachelletta, is very good too. :)
 
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There are some very good tutorials on the Vimeo site (there is a tutorial section to the site).

I've dabbled a bit which has included a few errors!

If you are doing Glasgow streets I'm guessing that includes people and transport?

I'd look to do about 1fps with an exposure of 0.5 second - play around with these settings to see what works for you in the area you are doing the video. The thinking behind this is that you get a floaty, ghost like effect which is smooth.

If you have the interval too long then people/ cars will be in one frame and not the next. If the exposure isn't long you will get a 'blippy' effect of people jumping all over the place - some people like this, I don't. Experiment to find the effect you are after. You may need some ND filters for the long exposures and/or a small apeture.

Set the focus to manual. You don't want the camera focusing on everything that goes past your camera.

Use the lowest quality jpg setting - this will still be greater resolution than HD video.

If your camera allows then set the jpg size to the same dimensions as video. If it doesn't then be aware that there will be some cropping post production to create the widescreen video dimension.

Play around with the frame rate in post processing. Whilst the typical frame rate for videos is 24 - 30 fps try going outside these boundaries for creative effect (provided that a low frame rate doesn't screw with the quality too much).

That's all I can think of based on my experience.

Good luck, Phil
 
Are you using the Canon EOS utility to shoot this? Thats what ive used in the past and got some pretty good results with it.
 
Cheers Phil for the tip's.

And no, i wouldn't want to take my laptop and camera to the street's, so it's going to be shot manually untill i get a cable release with a timer.

The Sandpit vid is a really good vid, ive not seen it before. I was more inspired by The Mountain
So all my experiments are to get to this one day :)
 
Cheers Phil for the tip's.

And no, i wouldn't want to take my laptop and camera to the street's, so it's going to be shot manually untill i get a cable release with a timer.

The Sandpit vid is a really good vid, ive not seen it before. I was more inspired by The Mountain
So all my experiments are to get to this one day :)

My bad, ive always used the eos utility as ive been indoors.

Good luck with your project though. :thumbs:
 
No worries, I used it once on holiday to capture star trails :)

And thanks :)
 
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