Activity

Time Lapse

I have always thought time lapse photography to be a daunting endeavor. Apart from a few parameters, it is actually more simple than we think.

There are plenty of online tutorials to walk us through the process. Most people use Mac’s Quick Time Pro. I am cheap and did not wish to pay for the upgrade so I am using Picasa.

Two essential items are needed…besides the camera. A tripod and timer switch /intervoltometer if your camera is not set up for this type of photography. I know Canon does not have this feature, some Nikons do. Pro Master is less expensive than Canon’s timer switch. ND filters may be necessary during peak daylight hours.

To begin with; your camera needs to be set to manual mode. Set the white balance to the proper balance, not auto. Set the ISO to 100, aperture and shutter speed accordingly to the exposure desired. Exposure should be roughly half that of the interval. Focus on your desired subject then switch to manual focus to keep that focus setting. Also, shoot in jpeg, not RAW. No need to complicate the post processing.

In my videos, I chose a 3 second interval. After each image capture, the timer counts 3 seconds then captures the next image. The shutter speed was 1.6 seconds and I stacked a series of ND filters. Any faster and the video will look choppy rather than a smooth transition. Rule of thumb is to have the shutter speed roughly half that of the interval.

Movies are shot at a frame rate of 20 – 30 frames per second so I chose a frame rate of 24 to closely match our TV frame rate. I shot 240 images divided by a frame rate of 24 = a 10 second movie clip.

The 240 images were uploaded into Lightroom to batch process the files to enhance them a bit and to eliminate all the pesky dust spots adhered to my old XTi’s sensor. I then exported the images – uploading into Picasa.

I found an informative tutorial on creating time lapse videos using Picasa here, http://timelapseblog.com/2011/06/30/how-to-make-a-picasa-time-lapse/

Next time, I will import audio into my time lapse video clips.
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