Time Lapse Photography

So for a really long time now I've wanted to get into Time Lapse Photography. After spending an afternoon reading up about it, checking out some tutorials and videos I decided to give it a try and get some test footage.

I used a Canon 7D that I am testing out, a 24mm f1.4 lens. Canon EOS Utilities hook up via USB for the intervalometer side of things and just let the camera go on it's own.

ISO: 1600
Shutter Speed: 1 sec.
Aperture: 5.6
Shot in RAW
WB : Set in PS

I took 500 shots @ 5 second intervals

Video post processing done in Premiere CS5. I thought for sure I was going to get flicker but I got some really good smooth shots. I am going to try some daytime stuff tomorrow! Let me know what you guys think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcQuQiOvgBk

 

Time lapse take some patience man. I do one second intervals for an average of an hour to two hours and you get a decent amount of footage. 5 seconds is too long unless you're gonna do a whole day in a minute.

I'm just doing them with my phone and getting decent results. I'll share a video from a project I'm doing, its gonna be raw and unedited, but when I get everything together by the end of this year, I should have a nice production

 

Youtube absolutely butchers the quality from my phone... the real thing is pretty crisp. Like I said, its raw, so nothing special, but you get an idea of what I'm trying to create

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7BTC9I_x_o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1synd8BzJNk






I'll be doing more with the GoPro later. I can't work with my car mount anymore because its hard to get the base out of view.

 

5 Sec is the lowest you can go in EOS Utilities. I don't have an actual intervalometer so I couldn't take them faster. But it's on my to buy list now for sure. The one thing that is hard to do is not get any flicker in your videos, I notice your videos have a bit in them.

Not sure how you are doing them, but the number one way of getting rid of that is making sure you manually set your WB so all the frames match. I didn't get a chance to shoot anymore video today because I was busy but I def want to get more into this. I'll try some daytime stuff soon.

I set the Meter to only take 500 shots and it took about 45 mins to do that and I ended up with about 16 seconds of footage. It's still pretty fun, and as far as patience goes...I was born a patient man lol

 

Cool shots! Subscribed to see more

 

This is something that I would lite to try sometime

 

brian how did you do that with your phone? thats pretty cool

ive always liked time lapse but never tried it really

 

Well, they're taken with a cell phone number one. The flickering you're speaking of is not the WB, its the exposure.... which cannot be fixed, and definitely should not be in my case. The difference in light between the first half of the video and the second half is pretty much night and day. Going from a stormy scene to bright white puffy clouds... I can't lock that exposure. I don't have the tools or the room to setup the dslr in the plane, at least not at this time. I would have no idea how to set it up inside the plane without taking up too much room anyways.

Never have picked up an intervalometer..... I should. I'd like to get some shots with a sunset.




113Tac, I used a program called LapseIt. It supports up to 1080p resolution but I had to drop mine to 720p because the phone could not store the photos fast enough for 1 second interval at 1080p

 

cool. ill have to check it out thats pretty cool that you are able to do it on your phone

 

The beginning of this vid was a gopro on a 1 pic every 2 secs, the only thing I don't really like about that part is the harsh adjustment to the different lighting. It almost looks like I spliced two different series of pics together.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIe0uk7B7xE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

I've been screwing around with TL over the winter and been pretty lucky so far. If you haven't, check out timescapes.org. There are a lot of really cool things happening there.

I am using both the Canon intervalometer and Dynamic Perception motion controller to do move the camera and as an intervalometer. I want to add a Merlin tracking mount to the rig to get pan/tilt. There are a bunch of other motion controllers and rail systems as well. By itself, the Merlin will also let you do star tracking (if you set it up correctly to begin with).

The Holy Grail of timelapse seems to be transitions from light to dark/dark to light and this requires you to be able to better control exposure using bulb ramping. You can do this with a tool called "Little Bramper" or with "Trigger Happy". Little Bramper is a PC board, batteries and keypad. Trigger Happy is an iPhone app and uses the headphone jack to control the camera.

I need to work out power for a few hours of shooting

There's a pot load of software (most of which runs on Windows (ugh)) to help plan shoots with too.

Pretty cool stuff. I have nothing to share at the moment but now that I have the basic stuff, I'm good to go and will probably start a project soon.

 

I've been trolling that forum for days now...I've been reading up on the whole Dark to Light transition. I've been wanting to do a whole night/Day time lapse in Johnson valley so I am reading up and testing as much as I can!

As for power. What I am thinking is an Optima hooked up with an inverter and use the AC adapter for the camera. The optima should have enough juice for the whole cycle.

 

I think the power thing is DC for me. Of course, the camera is one thing you can swap batteries for. If necessary, you can charge the depleted battery.
Not 100% sure yet.

The transitions are going to be interesting

 

Looks like a pole that sticks out of the side of the bed. Some folks have used a clear lexan tubes with the GoPro tripod mount or attached the camera to a telescoping ski pole (same tripod mount).

 

Get a battery grip... I can put two batteries in mine....pull one out at anytime to charge...but chances are I could last a whole day on the two.

 

1D body.

The extra battery isn't so much for the camera as for the rail and for multiple passes so you do have time to swap. I figure if my passes are a couple of hours each, I could probably manage 2-1/2 with what I have now. Add a motorcycle sized battery and I'd probably be good to go.

 

I wouldn't want to change the battery on the grip if the camera is in the process of shooting...that's why I was thinking just hooking it up with a AC/DC power cable to an inverter and a car battery No worries or so I think! Hahaha

 

That definitely works. I guess the key is not to start with a depleted battery

 

Yeah that is probably a good idea! lol