LA Traffic Time-lapes

Drew599

Drew599

Veteran
Camera - Canon Digital Rebel

Okay so here's some new stuff I just did tonight with my Canon Digital Rebel. I really like the way this turned out. I would like to get a 20D so it could do more frames in a row. It was kind of a pain in the ass to try and find a good spot so I could get the city and the freeway in the shot. Also while I was out there shooting my stuff there was some guy shooting some time-lapes stuff with a 35mm motion picture camera. I would have gotten a shot of that also but he left before I could. So here it is and ready for all you QT 6 users.

http://599productions.com/LATraffic.html
 
What was your camera settings? Seriously you can sell this stuff as stock footage.. Yeah, the Rebel is limited when it comes to rapid shooting. The D20 is nice and easy to use. I thought about getting it but I went with the Nikon D70. That camera is bad ass!

Good stuff man!
 
Thanks for the comments. It would be nice to sell this stuff as stock footage...except to DVXusers. I'll give you guys a 99.9% discount on it. Here are the settings I used for the first shot of LA. The others were very similar.


File Name
IMG_4679.JPG
Camera Model Name
Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Shooting Date/Time
05/29/05 22:38:46
Shooting Mode
Manual
Tv(Shutter Speed)
2
Av(Aperture Value)
4.0
Metering Mode
Center-weighted averaging
ISO Speed
200
Lens
18.0 - 55.0mm
Focal Length
18.0mm
Image Size
2048x1360
Image Quality
Fine
Flash
Off
White Balance
Auto
AF Mode
Manual Focus
Parameters
Contrast +1
Sharpness +1
Color saturation +1
Color tone Normal
Color Space
sRGB
 
that gives me a good idea....plus I have the same camera with the same and another ultra wide angle lens.

Hopefully I can put this together effectively if I do do it.
looks great.
 
I wish I lived out in the sticks because then I could get some really good time-lapes of the stars. That's going to be one of my next things when I go back up to Tahoe. Later on this week I'm going to try and get some more stuff like this but over at LAX. There's still some more shots of LA that I'm going to do when I have the time. I'm also doing some test shooting for an action short, which I will more than likely use this stuff in. Some of it at least. Thanks for all the comments.
 
Hey Drew that's awesome. My mom has the D20 (20D?) and I had no idea you could do stuff like that with these digi-cams. Are there any websites you would recommend that would teach how to do that? Also I would have thought stars couldn't be captured with these cameras but if they can, how is the quality? btw my mom mainly uses her camera for hockey photos :).

Edit: Was this all done with the Rebel or was there some use of the DVX as well?

-Evan
 
wow I never knew you could put the pictures together like that in motion and have them look so seammles. That is truly beautiful footage. I've got a canon 20D with a wide angle lens and was wondering how you did this? You used a tripod of course, so did you just hold the shutter down and get a whole bunch of 1/2" pictures? About how many pictures for each sequence and how fast did you speed it up in the software? What software did you use? Thanks a ton!
 
Evan Clare said:
Hey Drew that's awesome. My mom has the D20 (20D?) and I had no idea you could do stuff like that with these digi-cams. Are there any websites you would recommend that would teach how to do that? Also I would have thought stars couldn't be captured with these cameras but if they can, how is the quality? btw my mom mainly uses her camera for hockey photos :).

Edit: Was this all done with the Rebel or was there some use of the DVX as well?

-Evan
Click to expand...
To capture stars you would need really long expoures and an aperature of like 4.0-5.6 to let in the faint star light light I assume (I have never attempted this digitally, so it might be different.) If the exposures are hours long you can get long star trails which look really cool if composed properly and have an interesting foreground element.
 
Evan, this was all done with the Canon Digital Rebel. That's funny that your mom has a 20D because I just ordered one online tonight so I could do more stuff like this and to take some better photos. I've grown out of my Rebel and I'm sure in a couple years I will grow out of the 20D. It would be nice just to have one camera for years and years but it is so cool to buy new toys. The quality of the star pictures kind of depend on where you are. But I've seen some done with a digital camera and they look great.

There really isn't any website that I can kick you in the direction of to learn how to do this stuff. I can give you the jist of it so you can go out and do it yourself. First off you need to have an editing program of somekind, I'm sure there's other ways to do it but this is how I did it. Final Cut Pro really works for me. You said that you have a 20D at your disposal, assuming you can get it away from your mom long enough to go out and do this. A tripod is a must to do this with because the camera can't move or it breaks the effect. Unless you have it on a motion control rig of somekind but lets keep it simple for right now. Then you need some kind of control that hooks up to the 20D. I'm using a little wireless remote for the Rebel and its okay, if you want to feel like your doing something the whole time your out getting the pictures. I just bought Canon's Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3 with my 20D, which can do interval time recording. So that should save me the workout on my thumb. The other thing that you might want to get is a larger battery depending on how long you want to do this for. Or have it pluged in to a outlet. Then once you have found what you want to get, setup the camera do a test shot to see what one frame will look like. Once you found the setting you like and have the camera in focus and stuff like that. Then you can start taking the pictures. Also do it on the medium quality setting because you could use the extra room on the memory card and at the medium setting it has a greater resolution than HD. If you need a referance as to what settings to use you can look up towards the top of this post and see what I used for the clips I did. So once you start taking the pictures keep doing it for a little while. For that first shot of LA I took 180 pictures for it to only be a couple seconds long. If you would like to figure out how many pictures you need to take for a set amount of time use a base of 24fps, just like the DVX.

Okay, now after all those pictures you want to make a file and import them into it. Then what I do in Final Cut Pro is import the pictures into my project bin as a folder. Now before you do this you need to go into the preferences and change the freeze frame duration to 1 frame, which would look like 00:00:00:01. Then make a 24p timeline as you would normally for the DVX footage. Select all the pictures you took and drag them into the timeline. You might have to render it depending on your system. That's how you do it.
 
Well Drew congratulations on your purchase of the 20D :). I appreciate your comprehensive response, as I didn't think I'd get the answer till tomorrow at least. I think I'm gonna go ahead and buy that timer remote and start experimenting with this as soon as possible.

One more thing: I would guess that the time intervals between shots would affect the speed of the "animation", so how long did you wait in between each shot. 15 seconds/1 minute/etc?

Keep up the good work man, I know you'll pump out some awesome stuff with the D20!

mehnkle said:
To capture stars you would need really long expoures and an aperature of like 4.0-5.6 to let in the faint star light light I assume (I have never attempted this digitally, so it might be different.) If the exposures are hours long you can get long star trails which look really cool if composed properly and have an interesting foreground element.
Click to expand...

Hey mehnkle I'll have to check out that star trails effect, as I plan on going camping where there are billions of stars in the sky (unlike the city here where I only see hundreds) :).

-Evan
 
awesome, I cant wait to try this out. Thanks a ton! As a side note, Tim Burton's new claymation movie was shot all on a Digital SLR. Not sure what camera though.

This Website has great examples and explantions on star trails for anyone else interested.

More trails Hope this helps!
 
Evan, the time intervals between shots were as fast as I could take them. The picture would expose for about 2 seconds and as the shutter closed I would take another. I think that's the reason why it looks the way it does. Now if I was doing something that took place over a longer time period then I would wait longer between pictures.

Glad I could help you out a little mehnkle. That's cool that Burton is using these kind of cameras for his movie. I'm sure people have used a digital SLR for something similar but not on the scale of a major Hollywood film.
 
Thanks for the links mehnkle, I'm addicted to those star trails now :). I am definitely going to incorporate those into future dvx projects.

And Drew, now I see that if something is going to look fast the pics have to be taken closer together, and for slower things such as sunrises the pics would be further apart.

Thanks guys!

-Evan
 
Evan, you have the right idea for the speed. Just at night you also have to watch how long you expose the frames for. I like to have the light soak into the frame. Makes the colors come out more. Later on this week I'll post some more stuff, hopefully from the 20D. It was just sent out today. Should be here by Friday. LAX is going to be the next location for this little project.

Mehnkle, those star trails do look kickass. When I have the time I'm going to use my method and get them moving along.
 
Can't wait to see those planes comin down fast :). Man there's so many things to try out now, like sunsets and stars and traffic and and and! I was checkin out that remote at b and h photo's site and I'm wondering if I should order it online or see if any photo stores here in Edmonton have em. :)

-Evan
 
B&H has never let me down and their prices are good. I know what you mean though. I would rather go into a store and pick it up instead of waiting for it to get here. Plus you save on shipping...depending on how far you have to drive to get what your looking for.
 
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