Time Lapse

Wheels

Wheels

Julian Keeler
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Julian
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Just tinkering with camera, and came across the time lapse setting, what would you try it out on? Clouds? Traffic? Trees blowing in the wind? How long would you set it for and how often should it take a photo?
 
Wheels said:
Just tinkering with camera, and came across the time lapse setting, what would you try it out on? Clouds? Traffic? Trees blowing in the wind? How long would you set it for and how often should it take a photo?
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The time would depend on what you are taking pictures of. If you were doing a time lapse of say a banana decomposing over 4 days you might set it at 30 minutes.
 
It depends what look you're after really, and other settings on the camera.

To not get annoying, I generally set my D300s on quiet mode, and I turn on the exposure delay setting on, so that it locks the mirror up before taking the actual exposure in order to prevent any camera shake from "mirror slap".

With these settings turned on, the minimum interval you can use is 2 seconds (with an exposure time of up to about 1/15th of a second or so).

I find 2 seconds is great for clouds (or landscape scenes with clouds whizzing by), played back at 24p, and you can always speed it up if it's not quite quick enough for you. If you shoot with a longer interval though, you can't really slow it down if it's too quick.

With regular single shot mode, and the anti-mirror-slap turned off, then you can get your 1 second intervals no problem depending on shutter speed. For long exposure timelapse (like 10-30 second exposures), I don't bother having the mirror slap delay turned on, as it really doesn't make any difference, and I'll set my interval to whatever my shutter speed is + 1 second.

Obviously, taking images at shorter intervals fills up your card faster. 2-4 seconds though should be good depending on the focal length you're using (the shorter your lens, the longer you can get away with).

I generally tend to shoot a sequence of 360 shots. This gives me a 15 second clip to work with at 24p, and fills up a 4GB memory card just nicely (shooting RAW) for burning out to DVD backup.
 
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i havnt got this on my camera but had it on a camcorder, great fun?
had it on 15 mins, and shot the activity of a day in my garden, really interesting
 
I couldnt leave my camera 4 days without picking it up.
 
Wheels said:
I couldnt leave my camera 4 days without picking it up.
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I couldn't either, not with my D300s, heh. So, I picked up three little Canon Powershot A460 cameras for £8 each on eBay specifically for timelapse.

RAW file saving, full manual control, intervalometer, and all kindsa other goodies thanks to CHDK. With an 8Gig card, I can fire off about 4K images at the highest JPG quality setting (which, if your white balance and exposure are all set right is all you need for a lot of stuff). They should go the full 4K images on a fully charged pair of GP2700mAh AA batteries with the LCD turned off. :)
 
My friends and I have used time lapse to good effect for a couple of projects. We vinyl wrapped a White car 'kermit' green over 3 days, and shot that throughout, then we timelapsed our day in a studio on Friday while we were shooting 2 cars that belong to customers of mine. I'll find some links out.
 
Hi Julian

I know you wanted to try Moon Shots why not combine the two Moon Shots/Time lapse, say take a shot every 2 mins in total 1hr, or maybe try some star trails theres free software for combining them just a thought, Clicky Linky Star Trails De, loads of other ideas on there too.
 
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Just Dave said:
I know you wanted to try Moon Shots why not combine the two Moon Shots/Time lapse, say take a shot every 2 mins in total 1hr, or maybe try some star trails theres free software for combining them just a thought, Clicky Linky Star Trails De, loads of other ideas on there too.
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I wouldn't go as far as 2 minutes, probably 30 seconds tops if he's playing it back at 24p. He can always speed it up if it's too slow, but you can't slow it down if there's too much movement between frames.

If you're doing it with a longer lens (like a 200mm or longer) to really try to get some detail in the moon, I'd probably shoot at as short an interval as every 2-4 seconds.
 
Here's a few test sequences I've put up on Vimeo recently.

This first one was just to test some different deflicker applications in post caused by aperture flicker at the time of shooting. This was my original test render for this sequence, and I've figured out a MUCH better deflickering solution (although I don't need to worry about flicker any more with the M42 lenses).

http://vimeo.com/12603680 (wtb [vimeo] [/vimeo] tags)

This one was just a test using one of the M42 lenses I picked up recently. These have a manual aperture, so that it's constant throughout, and no need to deal with aperture flicker in post (as it never changes during the time of capture). Boring subject, but proves the point. This one was shot on my aging D100 with the Yongnuo MC-36R wireless intervalometer I picked up about 3 weeks ago.

http://vimeo.com/12880912

And this is a quick test with one of the Canon Powershot A460 cameras I picked up on eBay for 8 quid. Again, another crap boring scene, but just to see how well it coped shooting for extended periods of time (my record so far is about 11hrs on a pair of fully charged GP2700mAh AA batteries with the LCD turned off - was around 5,000 shots, or a little over 3 minutes of video played back at 24fps).

http://vimeo.com/13180271

I need to build up some kind of case for the A460s that I can slot a couple of ND filters into so I can leave them unattended doing some long exposure timelapse, with room for an external battery pack so I can leave it running for a few days.

It's a fun experiment, and there's a lot of thought that goes into it to do it right. I'm hoping for a motorised motion control dolly and pan head for my birthday in a few short months (or at least the components to build my own) so I can do stuff like this...

http://vimeo.com/3101098
 
Kaouthia, that first link is really, really good. I love the lighting transitions as the sun passes behind different densities of clouds. I'm definitely going to give this a go at some point!
 
Kaouthia said:
I couldn't either, not with my D300s, heh. So, I picked up three little Canon Powershot A460 cameras for £8 each on eBay specifically for timelapse.

RAW file saving, full manual control, intervalometer, and all kindsa other goodies thanks to CHDK. With an 8Gig card, I can fire off about 4K images at the highest JPG quality setting (which, if your white balance and exposure are all set right is all you need for a lot of stuff). They should go the full 4K images on a fully charged pair of GP2700mAh AA batteries with the LCD turned off. :)
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Not wishing to hijack Wheels thread but how do you do timelapse on the A460.

Dave.
 
I've got an A590 and I use the CHDK hack. Very simple to use, installs on the card in the camera and Canpn have agreed it doesn't invalidate your warranty. I'm guessing Kaouthia does the same? It's well worth a look at CHDK if you have a Canon point and shoot.
 
Yup CHDK's the way to do it. :)
 
Kaouthia said:
I wouldn't go as far as 2 minutes, probably 30 seconds tops if he's playing it back at 24p. He can always speed it up if it's too slow, but you can't slow it down if there's too much movement between frames.

If you're doing it with a longer lens (like a 200mm or longer) to really try to get some detail in the moon, I'd probably shoot at as short an interval as every 2-4 seconds.
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Hi John, that time was just a suggestion, think Jules would have to experiment, anywhere from the 30 secs to 2 mins suppose it depends on how fast it actually moves, and how much of the sky can be seen, some good links there also (y)
 
Yeah, it definitely depends on your focal length. The wider your lens, the less it's going to move relative to the field of view.

But, like I said, you can always speed up slow footage, but you can't slow down footage that's too fast.
 
One thing I actually do sometimes is shoot way faster than I know I'll need (especially if I'm forced to shoot at a fast shutter speed).

Ultimately all my final video projects for the web end up at 24p. So, what I'll sometimes do is shoot, say, 4 or 5 times faster than I really need to. If I should be shooting at one frame every 8 or 10 seconds, I'll shoot one frame every 2 seconds.

I'll then load the final processed images up into AfterEffects as a 24p sequence, but then when I stick it on the timeline, I'll enable time remapping to make it run at 400-500% speed, then put a "Force Motion Blur" effect on there.

Now it'll use those in between frames (that it would otherwise skip completely) to generate some motion blur giving some quite neat effects sometimes and giving a smoother flow of motion, especially if you have to shoot at faster shutter speeds.

I always tend to speed up in increments of 100% increments to try to guarantee that each actual frame in the sequence ends up on a "real" image. If you're doing odd things, like shooting with 50p in mind, sticking it on a 24p timeline, and speeding it up 230% (for example), you can get some odd undesirable ghosting, jittery footage and other issues.
 
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i have just set my camera off on a two hour lapse. intervals every 2 mins and takes 2 shots each time. shall see what the end result is
 
This chap is pretty much as good as it gets with dslr time lapse photography, some pretty amazing stuff. look at his website/forum for info on the matter.

Good luck with yours, Ive been dabbling with it for ages needs lots of patience.:)

http://vimeo.com/10859897
 
Nikon Man said:
This chap is pretty much as good as it gets with dslr time lapse photography, some pretty amazing stuff. look at his website/forum for info on the matter.

Good luck with yours, Ive been dabbling with it for ages needs lots of patience.:)

http://vimeo.com/10859897
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Thats amazing, great link. Thats the sort of thing that I would love to be able to do. I really like how the stars look on these sort of shots. Any tip on that sort of thing?
 
Nikon Man said:
This chap is pretty much as good as it gets with dslr time lapse photography
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Aye, that's the fella I linked to in my earlier post. Some very very good stuff.
 
John -

and the D100's poor buffer couldn't save any faster shooting uncompressed RAW

isn't it because of the CF card ?


back to topic - how do you guys put the pics together ? windows movie maker or something ? would that be enough ?
 
Well, it takes about 4 seconds to write out a NEF file to compactflash (I used 30MB/sec cards, so the card speed wasn't the limiting factor).

When you're shooting continuously for half an hour, or even a couple of minutes, if you're shooting faster than 1 frame every 4-5 seconds, your buffer's going to fill up, and the camera's going to start stalling until it's saved it out.
 
I'd have thought for this type of thing it made more sense to shoot in a small size jpeg (still high quality but smaller size) as the end output is presumably video which the current max is 1080p. That way you can shoot using continuous and pretty much disregard the buffer because the card is being written to as you're firing.

I just tried this to make sure I wasn't talking rubbish and I got 100 shots shooting jpeg fine (the highest quality jpeg) small which is still greater than 1080p at 5fps before the buffer filled but I was able to continue at around 2fps there after and that could be kept up indefinitely. That's on a D200 and the write speed and buffer size has been far exceeded with later camera models.
 
Here's a pretty handy tutorial that suggests the same smaller image size amongst a lot of other helpful techniques - clicky
 
I did a test earlier I set it to go off every 3 minutes for 2 hours and 2 shots per time, results??? Naff
 
Starastin said:
John -

and the D100's poor buffer couldn't save any faster shooting uncompressed RAW

isn't it because of the CF card ?


back to topic - how do you guys put the pics together ? windows movie maker or something ? would that be enough ?
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Shoot time-lapse sequences in highest quality jpg I do. :p

Have a look at this they do a free trial to play with. :)

I use Quicktime Pro (£35 from apple online shop) to stitch all the images and it will render to various formats which I forget at the moment. rendering can take an awfully long time. :)
 
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Kaouthia said:
I couldn't either, not with my D300s, heh. So, I picked up three little Canon Powershot A460 cameras for £8 each on eBay specifically for timelapse.

RAW file saving, full manual control, intervalometer, and all kindsa other goodies thanks to CHDK. With an 8Gig card, I can fire off about 4K images at the highest JPG quality setting (which, if your white balance and exposure are all set right is all you need for a lot of stuff). They should go the full 4K images on a fully charged pair of GP2700mAh AA batteries with the LCD turned off. :)
Click to expand...



I have just been and installed CHDK on my powershot and I must say, after thinking about this since I got my camera I had heard about it and thought about doing it. Now I now how and am MEGA pleased.
 
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Pb1of6 said:
I hope he doesn’t mind me posting this link but Richard Peters posted a wonderful Time Lapse from Istanbul on his blog

Richard's Time Lapse
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Many thanks :)

Kaouthia said:
Well, it takes about 4 seconds to write out a NEF file to compactflash (I used 30MB/sec cards, so the card speed wasn't the limiting factor).

When you're shooting continuously for half an hour, or even a couple of minutes, if you're shooting faster than 1 frame every 4-5 seconds, your buffer's going to fill up, and the camera's going to start stalling until it's saved it out.
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Maybe you need faster cards? I use a D300 and D3 for my timelapses and shoot in RAW and have done a couple of shots that were an image every 2 seconds. In fact, most of mine are a shot less than every 5 seconds. I use UDMA cards though...certainly shouldn't take 4 seconds to write and RAW file! Have you got long exposure noise reduction off?

EDIT: Sorry, just re-read whole post and see you are talking about the D100. In which case, bugger :( but 4 seconds a RAW seems a bit slow still?

:)
 
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TriggerHappy said:
I'd have thought for this type of thing it made more sense to shoot in a small size jpeg (still high quality but smaller size) as the end output is presumably video which the current max is 1080p. That way you can shoot using continuous and pretty much disregard the buffer because the card is being written to as you're firing.
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I'm not bothered about the fact that it's such a slow write speed & small buffer. If I need to shoot faster, I'll just use the D200 or D300s. It's that I prefer to shoow RAW.

If you're shooting a scene with a rapidly changing sky for a couple of hours, your light could go up or down by 3 or 4 stops, and shooting RAW gives you the versatility to be able to recover that, as well as white balancing tweaks, etc. as the sun goes across the sky and the day's white balance shifts, and such.

I can even shoot every 3 seconds on the little Canon A460s in RAW. :)

Starastin said:
how do you guys put the pics together ? windows movie maker or something ? would that be enough ?
Click to expand...

Because I shoot RAW (either NEF, or I convert the A460 files into DNG), I'll load up Bridge, and do my basic editing in there with Adobe Camera Raw on the first image in a set. Then any changes I make I'll apply to every image in the sequence. I just do my curves adjustments, brightness, contrast, clarity, saturation, vibrance, etc. I don't do any cropping or adjusting of horizons at this point.

Then I load up the RAW sequence into Adobe AfterEffects, interpret it as 24p and bring it into a 1920x1080 24p project and render it out using the DNxHD codec as at 10Bit to give a bit more editing capabilities.

Then bring all the rendered sequences back into AfterEffects for editing, which ultimately gets rendered out as a h264 HD file for either burning out to disc or uploading to the web.

But yes, you could use Windows Movie Maker if you're shooting JPG or convert your raw files to JPG. :)

Richard Peters said:
EDIT: Sorry, just re-read whole post and see you are talking about the D100. In which case, bugger :( but 4 seconds a RAW seems a bit slow still?

:)
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The D100 is painfully slow. I was using 8GB Extremes (60MB/sec) and 4GB Extreme III (30MB/sec) so card speed definitely wasn't the issue, lol. The D100 lets you shoot 2.5fps at full whack in RAW (until the buffer's full, then you wait for it to save out all the files and the buffer to clear), and if you want to shoot compressed NEF, forget about it, 30 seconds to compress the file before saving it out.

I only use the D100 when I know the intervals are going to be at least 4 seconds.
 
Kaouthia said:
Because I shoot RAW (either NEF, or I convert the A460 files into DNG), I'll load up Bridge, and do my basic editing in there with Adobe Camera Raw on the first image in a set. Then any changes I make I'll apply to every image in the sequence. I just do my curves adjustments, brightness, contrast, clarity, saturation, vibrance, etc. I don't do any cropping or adjusting of horizons at this point.

Then I load up the RAW sequence into Adobe AfterEffects...
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You may well know this already, but you can open up camera raw in After Effects and make all changes to the images directly in your project. Handy if you have a wide range of light change and want to get an average for the important part of the scene because you can jump to that image in the timeline, open camera raw and then make the changes there and then which will then apply to all images in the sequence automatically and in a few seconds.
The D100 is painfully slow.
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Yeah I vaguely remember from when I had one back in the day lol
 
Richard Peters said:
You may well know this already, but you can open up camera raw in After Effects and make all changes to the images directly in your project.
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Yeah, but AfterEffects can start to get real sluggish when you're working away in 12 or 14Bit RAW files directly within AfterEffects, so I try to do as much as I can before I import, then after resizing & straightening (if required) in a 1080 project in AE, I export right out to DNxHD.

It's purely to save time more than anything else.

Richard Peters said:
Yeah I vaguely remember from when I had one back in the day lol
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For what they sell for, compared to the $1750 I paid brand new, another piece of archaic kit I couldn't bear to part with. ;)
 
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