Seems like lately I've either been asked about timelaps photography or I've seen questions on Flickr about it. I know when I did my first (like I've done a lot of them) one I looked for a good resources that talked about how to do them but I never really found one. I had to get a bit of info here and another bit over there and put them together. So I might as well share what little knowledge I've got about the subject.
General Idea Behind Timelapse Photography:
The general idea is take a series of photographs of the same location (without changing your frame) within a consistent interval. For example every 2 seconds you would take another picture. Once you've taken all of your shots you would put them in sequence using a variety of different programs to set the pictures into motion. Keep in mind to make video out of pictures (which is what video is) it takes a ton of pictures. Typically the industry standard is either 24 fps or 30 fps (actually 29.97 if you want to get technical about it).
Programs, Equipment, & The Shots:
There are a few things you'll need to execute your shots for your timelaps video. I highly recommend using a tripod. Is it necessary, well I guess not and heck I've taken shots to be in a timelaps video without using a tripod, so I've already ignored my own recommendation. I'm off to a great start. If you don't use a tripod you'll need to find some kind of sturdy surface. I've used the ground before. Hand held would be totally out of the question.
Enough rambling on about to tripod or not to tripod. Another very handy piece of equipment would be a wired remote that allows you to take continuous shots in a defined interval. Not all remotes have this functionality so be sure to check for that before you make your purchase. An alternative is to hook your camera up to your computer and use software (trust me pressing the shutter each time is just not an practical option & yes I've tried that). Honestly I'm not Nikon hater, I actually like Nikon and have used them before, but if you are a Canon EOS user you should have got for FREE the EOS Utility program with your camera. You can use it to make your camera continually take pictures at a defined time interval. The smallest interval is 5 seconds with the EOS Utility. Nikon users you can spend about $80 to get a similar program. Things to keep in mind if you go the software route is to make sure you keep close to a plug in to power the laptop or have a amount of battery life.
If you go the remote route then be sure to have a large card in your camera. If you use the software route you can have the pictures saved to the hard drive, the camera's card, or both so you've got options.
That reminds me be sure that your are well charged on your cameras battery as well and take a note from the Boy Scouts and bring a back up. The other equipment requirements would of course a camera and a lens might be handy as well.
So once you've got your camera on a solid surface, you've got your remote or computer set up, you are ready to start taking pictures. If you are wondering how many pictures you need to take to make a scene last a specified period of time just do some math. Grab a calculator just be on the safe side. So if you wanted the scene to last say 30 seconds and you planed on doing a video at 24 fps you would need the following equation to find out how many shots you need.
30 * 24 = 720 (number of necessary shots)
Yikes! That's a lot of shots. Which is one of the reasons I have big respect for anyone brave enough to bite off this large task.
I mentioned above about being sure you have enough space to save all of your shots, but another thing to consider is to maybe change the quality of the images you are recording. This could show benefits when you go to process your work if you have a computer that is not quite so fast. I would recommend changing to medium fine jpg format. Be sure that whatever quality choice you go with (if it is a jpg) that you choose fine for the highest image quality.
As far as camera settings go, I tend to like to shot in Aperture priority mode; that would be AV for Canon's and A for Nikon. That way my depth of field (dof) doesn't change through the video which would just look weird and that the exposure remains basically the same throughout all of the shots.This is more important if you are shooting in conditions where the light may change on you; such as a sunny day with the sun passing in and out of clouds.
In choosing your time frame interval for the shots to be taken, keep in mind the larger the time intervals the choppier the video will be. So a video down with shots being taken at 2 seconds apart will be much smoother than a video done with shots taken 10 seconds apart.
Converting Stills to Motion:
So now that you've burned though hours of your life taking shots for a video that will last a few short minutes you are ready to start putting your stills into motion. Now there are numerous programs that you can use to put your timelaps together so I'm not even going to attempt to cover all of the steps for all of them. I am going to attempt to cover at least the basics though.
If you are going to go with a 24 fps video you'll need to be sure to set the duration for each picture to 0.0416666667. To figure this out I just divided 1 second by 24 to find my answer. So use some math to find out what your duration needs to be.
Final Thoughts:
Now you can get all kinds of crazy with timelaps such as doing an HDR timelaps which does look really cool, but is beyond the scope of this tutorial. In the video below I did a section to which I applied a tone map to each picture. One think to keep in mind with doing timelaps photography and that it really is a big undertaking so be prepared for the work. That being said, it is soooo worth it!
No comments:
Post a Comment