LAX Time Lapse - 20D

Sirius, I didn't think you would have skipped out on a good lens. I'm glad to see that you are, I guess now, one of the many people that bought the 17-85mm lens with their 20D. It looks like this thread is going to end because I'm going to post some new stuff in a little bit...before I go to bed.
 
WOW! nothing else can describe it but WOW! any chance you might be able to post a "how to" I am using a D-70 with fcp 4.0
Thanks!!
 
Joe - I don't have quite the expertise as Drew but here's the basic steps.
1. Find appropriate scene with action
2. Camera on tripod. Preferably with a remote cable release. (not sure what's available for the d70)
3. Set camera to manual exposure and shoot test frames to get best exposure. The faster the shutter speed the better. If you have long shutter speeds you will not be able to maintain a fast frame rate.
4. shoot 1 frame per second if your camera can maintain that rate.
5. Optional - Batch process all of your images down to the resolution of your NLE timeline ie 720x480 for a normal DV timeline or 1920x1080 for an HD timeline
6. Import images into your NLE as 1 frame tiffs or jpgs (whatever works for you)
7. Add all images in a sequence on your timeline. (my termanology may be diff. since I use PremeierePro.)
8 Voila - export as movie and there you have it.
Here's an example I did as a test in my backyard. 1080p 13meg WMV9 file
This sequence of daytime clouds was taken every two seconds. The nighttime stuff was every 5 seconds.
You'll notice the first shot with the tree in the foreground looks jerky because the wind was really blowing hard and the shots are every 2 seconds. The clouds look ok though.
 
Sirius, that's a pretty good description on how to do the time-lapse footage. I did post earlier on how to do this in detail. If it isn't in this post I would say its in the LA Time-lapse post I did a couple weeks ago. The one thing you did leave out was to change the resolution settings in the camera. You should really set them to at the most, to the medium setting. You could go lower but it would be a good idea to have it a little bit above HD resolution. Once the HVX comes out you'll want time-lapse footage that matches it's resolution. Also it gives you more room on the memory card. Once you start doing this a lot you realize that you need all the storage you can get.

Joe, here's what I posted originally.

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. 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.

If you run into any problems just post here. Or the newest clip I have posted.
 
Thanks a lot fellas for taking the time to reply!!
I really appreciate it, This site really is about all of us trying to get it done, and learning along the way! I'm gonna have a go at it this week!
Jb
 
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