Lets talk Timelapse

J

jsauce

Active member
hey guys
so im about to take the 7d on a production trip to costa rica. very excited to NOT be bringing my hvx!!!
just bought the zoon h4n for sound. got my lenses. working on a ispy or zacuto or something for handheld work and im bringing a glidetrack.

one thing i have no idea bout handling is timelapses. i love them and took advantage of the hvxs intervelometer to shoot a lot of them in the past.

whats the best approach with the 7D??? I've read somewhere that they make intervolemeter add on remotes that can be pretty expensive. should i just roll a lot of footage. should i stand over my camera and pop off a still every 5 seconds???

im intrigued with the second option--just taking the stills myself and then stringing them together in final cut. that said, if i do, is there a particular format i need the stills in? is Large okay? or do i need to shoot raw?

thoughts???
 
Buy a remote to avoid shaking the cam

You don't need intervalometer but it's easier with it

You don't need to shot RAW but you you'll have better post control over your footage

If you don't have a lot of space I recommend taking medium jpgs or whatever is closer to 1920x1080

Don't forget to set the cam all manual. You don't want your stills to change ISO or white balance in between

Take a look at this for easy workflow and tips
http://philipbloom.co.uk/2009/10/18/tutorial-on-how-to-turn-your-dslrs-stills-timelapse-into-video

And finally do some tries before leaving
Have a nice trip
 
Buy this for a cheap yet reliable Intervalometer/ remote shutter release. This is pretty much the same one you will see that Canon has for $140. The Phillip Bloom tutorial is the easiest workflow I've seen lately.
 
Mig, how could you shoot a timelapse without an intervalometer?

JPJ, nice find! Are those always available or is that an uncommon offer?
 
That "Aputure" intervalometer in the link above does the job. If you set the long exposure mode long enough to cover three shots you can do bracketing as well if the cam is in continous drive mode, which gives better results for sunsets or sun lit clouds where you need more dynamic range.

I've been experimenting adding three exposure sequences together in AE with a 32 bit project, then using HDR compander to bring the levels back into 8 bit range. Gives you a massive dynamic range, and the massive res of still shooting. Very cool. Without the crappy look of photomatix HDR :) Only drawback is you can't do long exposures which look better for motion blur, but the effect of the three exposures gives a kind of faux motion blur so it's not too bad a trade off.

I've been experimenting with day to night too - you can go from bright sunlight to stars in the sky using A mode plus some deflicker in post, fix iso at 640 and exposures stay under about 10 secs at f4. Higher iso keeps exposures shorter and saves battery, you can get up to 5 hours on a full charge at iso 640 compared to 2.5 hours iso 100, for 30s interval.

RAW is handy for removing hot pixels. I had a stationary star in my jpegs :)

Heaps of info on timescapes.org

Another good tip is put it in live view to keep the mirror raised, then plug the USB lead into the video out and this saves a bit of battery life by turning off the LCD.
 
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I bought the intervalometer that JPJ listed after reading about it on Philip Bloom's twitter account and it seems to work great. It came from Hong Kong to Canada in 16 days... no shipping costs.

Mark
 
I did my first stop frame animation video a few years ago with the original 5D. http://vimeo.com/6847043 It's time lapse but i wanted something original so I shot using a combination of motion and tripod. Most of it was by standing over & being button pusher but also used the canon software off laptop to run the timelapse for one night... It was my very first video and to date still my most successful, a finalist on several film festivals, exhibitons & it is in 2 art collections. I used proshow producer and i still find that prog to be the best at building photo based animations. I'm on a mac now and I'm seriously missing it!
 
USLatin said:
Mig, how could you shoot a timelapse without an intervalometer?
Click to expand...

You do it the hard way.
With a remote and a watch.

The TC-80N3 didn't fit my Rebel XT so i picked the little RS-60E3. If I knew at the time you could convert the TC to fit my Rebel I may have bought the TC with adapter (with 100$ more)

You never need fancy gadgets when you have patience and no money.
 
Mig said:
You do it the hard way.
With a remote and a watch.

You never need fancy gadgets when you have patience and no money.
Click to expand...

Yea I agree 101% :) But can you imagine the patience needed for sunrises, sunsets, long cloud formations, long astro photography, long whatever... And slight inconsistencies in the speed of the subject if you are careless. I mean, if it costs $30 it is a solid investment, just for the ability to get a cabled trigger really. Too bad they are not wireless though but no biggie really, not a big feature, and batteries are annoying. I will surely pick one up for this winter.
 
JPJ Studios said:
Buy this for a cheap yet reliable Intervalometer/ remote shutter release. This is pretty much the same one you will see that Canon has for $140. The Phillip Bloom tutorial is the easiest workflow I've seen lately.
Click to expand...

I second this option, just got mine in the mail and did my first time lapse last night and it looks amazing. It ships from the other side of the world so it takes a week or more to get it, but well worth it.
 
Thanks Guys

Thanks Guys

I went ahead and bought the slightly more expensive Canon version. Calumet had one for 90 bucks used. Its easy to use. As soon as I'm out of LA and can actually see the stars Im going to do some timelapse tests
 
Guys i need to film a timelapse within the next 10 days for a project and the Intervalometers i found were quite expensive, ( $120 for some brand $200 for a canon one )

wanted to know what your thoughts are for hitting the record button on movie mode and jus filming for on hour,

given the fact I won't be filming a night timelapse so i dont need a slow shutter speed, I have 16gb memory cards so I can film for about 50 minutes, whenever it stops filming after 12 minutes i can hit the record button again no?
 
I would argue for shooting stills. The quality is just miles beyond what the video mode gives you. And if you're finishing in HD, you have the ability to push in on the shot, reframe, etc. and still have the quality.

Finally, I suggest doing some tests with shutter speed. I've found most of my timelapses look best at around 1/4 or even 1/2 second exposures--even during daylight. That allows for some nice motion blur on moving objects.

Best of luck--

Mark
 
It's sooooo much better using an intervalometer. There are affordable ones on ebay ($30, I just ordered mine yesterday!) But the turn around time would take too long for you. Perhaps there is a list member in your are who would let you use theirs. I'd loan you one if I had it. It's not like they are easy to break or anything...

What area are you in?
 
thanks a lot J but I live in Dubai, I fully understand that the benefits of filming pictures over video, but in a not so ideal situation i don't see why shooting video then speeding it wouldn't work
 
It's all in the motion blur. For anything you shoot, you want to be close to a 180 degre shutter angle on flim camera to get a credible motion blur for the speed used. That's means that the shutter speed must be at least half the delay between stills. If you want to accelerate 24 times, you need to take 1 frame every second, with at least 0.5 sec of shutter speed. It's not a rule, of course, but the movement and speed better matches this way.

You can do this when you just speedup the video. You end up with not so smooth movement, the same way as if you shoot at normal speed with the shutter set at 1/4000.

This piece: http://www.vimeo.com/7688244 was shot with 1 stills every second, exposed for .5 sec each. Look at the motion blur, you can,t acheive this with video.
 
Most important kit for timelapses, besides lens, body and intervalometer, is a flask of hot coffee/soup, a comfortable place to perch and a good book.
 
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