Timelapse

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Tim
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Quick couple of questions. I am thinking of doing a week long time lapse, out of my window.. My question is, which setting is best to use. Led to believe that manual is best, but I'm wondering, as it turns to night, surely I would be best to have longer shutter times, for better exposures?

Also, as week long, what do people think that the wait between photos should be? 5 mins? 10? Shorter?
 
If you use manual you will either over expose or under expose a lot of photos.

I'd use aperture priority so I'd know how much of the the scene will be in focus, but manual focus, so the AF does not lock on to something you do not want.

Every ten minutes for a week is over 1000 photos - do you have a large capacity card?

I tried a time lapse a few days ago when the first of the snow arrived. The result was OK, but as the snow started when it was almost dark it was not as good as I'd hoped for and I also had problems with snow on the window which obscured the view a bit.

Good luck

Dave
 
There's an excellent turorial by Timothy Allen, he has done a lot of the timelapse work on the BBC natural history programmes.

http://timothyallen.blogs.bbcearth.com/2009/02/24/time-lapse-photography/

There's lots of information on timelapse and a superb demo film, to be found at

http://www.timescapes.org/

Apparently if you are really serious about getting the exposure right as day changes to night you have to ramp the shutter speed, using one of these devices

http://www.thewhippersnapper.com/LittleBramper/Site/Home.html

I am fascinated by timelapse, but have yet to get beyond the research stage and have a go.

I would be interested to hear about your project, are you planning make a film of your garden developing in the spring?

Chris
 
nothing too exciting.. Its just I am moving to the states in a few months, so thought would make a movie of things that i have grown to love and will miss :)

thanks for the links, they'll be a great help :)
 
I've just been playing around with time-lapse, piecing them together in Final Cut Pro. The piecing together isn't hard (although it does take she processing power), it's just working out the frame rate/duration when you come to to piecing it all together.

I shot some in work and set the interval time to two seconds and then pieced them together at intervals of 0.02secs in FCP, which gave the impression of life being speeded up but without it becoming a blur.

I've also done one of a road (check my flickr) that I shot at one second intervals of moving traffic. On reflection, that kind of duration is too short for what i wanted, although it's quite smooth. But 545 frames for 22-point-something seconds meant some serious shooting to get several minute's worth.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/patmacinnes/6851776853/

I shot in manual mode because I wanted any change in light (i.e. sun breaking through cloud) to really impact, although it didn't happen as we'll as I wished at the time. I've read that Av is a good mode - set the aperture and forget, providing the shutter speed isn't longer than the interval between shots.

BTW, once I'd done the image adjustments (LR3 makes this a breeze) I exported the frames as 720 pixel along the short edge - mono shots came out about 400k, colour shots about double that. It's worth bearing in mind the size of files you import into software, as this will dictate how easily your software renders everything.

There's some real maths to be done regardless to work out how frame rates dictate your shooting interval and the length of the film - good luck :)
 
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Haha had me stumped to! Turns out there birthday cake candles that burn up the wax so it doesn't get on the cake. Never knew they existed.

Love time lapse's need to get some proper video editing software though.
 
The last time lapse I tried, I set camera in manual but put ISO in auto, the D5000 then adjusted exposure correctly:), but the EV didn't change much anyway.

Common mistake it to leave VR switched on:bang:, the images will jump around as the VR kicks in.
 
mata.morrison said:
Haha had me stumped to! Turns out there birthday cake candles that burn up the wax so it doesn't get on the cake. Never knew they existed.

Love time lapse's need to get some proper video editing software though.
Click to expand...

Ah right, thanks. Didn't know they existed either.
 
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