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Posts Tagged ‘time-lapse’

There are very few cameras that have an onboard time-lapse feature and I’ve never really understood why manufacturers don’t just start incorporating this. It shouldn’t be hard to implement, but I guess there is more interest in decent HD video than time-lapse, so much so that while the Canon G9 had this feature (well a dumbed down version anyway) the more recent G10 doesn’t.

Back when I started this blog I’ve written about a simple way to turn your TI83 graphing calculator into an time-lapse remote for the Canon xxxD series cameras (click here to go that post).  The way this works is that the remote jack for the camera is the same the TI83 uses so you can program the calculator to send out signals to the camera at regular intervals.

Things to think about:

Steady the camera: Depending on what type of scene you’re shooting you could use a tripod. Nobody likes Mr. ShakyCam videos. Also if you’re using the TI83 method a tripod gives you something to strap your calculator to so you don’t have to hold it.

Set up your focus: If you’re shooting a still scene (or at least one that’s far away) and your camera is on a tripod use AF to set your focus and then switch the focus to manual. If all the AF points are selected and AF is left on the camera will start picking what it wants to focus on if your subjects starts to move. This results in totally random, rapidly changing focus in the video. If you’re shooting hand-held and you’re tracking a moving subject select the AF point you’re going to use to track your subject. Make sure that you that AF point then aligns with the subject and that the tracking motion is as smooth as possible. Using a high frame rate for moving subjects also helps.

Lock your exposure: The camera will meter the exposure for every shot unless you take a test shot first and then use that exposure setting for the rest of your time-lapse. This will result in an even exposure throughout the video.

Set your image quality: This should be set to low jpg. The images you get from the camera are still going to be high-res enough make a good video. Unless you’re using a blazing fast memory card your camera’s buffer will fill up very fast and this will result in an uneven time interval between shots. The post processing time will also be longer (depending on the computer you’re using) if you shoot full-res images.

All of this will inevitably drain both your TI83′s and the camera’s batteries so use a battery grip on the camera and 4 fully charged AAAs in the calculator. You’re gonna be shooting a lot of images so batteries are important.

All this said, there’s one more thing to consider. A DSLR mirror and shutter mechanism is made to handle a finite number of actuations. Your camera will die on you a lot faster than normal if you run the shutter as much as you need to for time-lapse movies. Use an old backup camera unless you can afford a new body every six months or so.

So what do you do when you come home with a few thousand images for your time-lapse video? Import them into Lightroom. After doing basic color correction on them (saturation and clarity) export them all using the “sharpen for screen” option to a single folder.  You can also resize all your images on export. Then use Apple Quicktime Pro to create a video out of your stills. To do this click on file > open image sequence. Pick the first image in your folder and QT will automatically create a movie from the sequentially numbered images. Think about what frame rate you shot at and what frame rate you want your video to have. On export, click file > export, play with the controls, AVI or Quicktime Movie formats worked best for me. The resulting movie can then be imported into any video editing software, I used Imovie on the Mac.

Here is video I shot today:

Gone swimmin’ from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.

That’s it for today, go out and try this, it’s great fun….