An architect friend of mine needs some long (30 minutes) time lapse pieces to play on flat screen high def monitors in an installation his company is doing. They want three things, a sunrise, clouds flying over some trees, and water. Nothing too hard could probably be done in a day of shooting if the weather cooperates. My question: when it comes to shooting the sunrise and clouds is there a way to account for the change in light levels over time without standing by the camera for hours on end and manually adjusting the whole time? Also if I'm forced to rent a camera which would be the best for the job?
Long Time Lapses
- Thread starter mjvolzer
- Start date
Joshua Provost
Veteran
This may be the one time when putting the cam on auto iris is the way to go. I did an hour time lapse at one point trying to manually adjust and it's just frustrating. Since the end result will be speeded up considerably, technical precision isn't all that important (usually).
It all depends....
If the actual time-lapse is 30 min you are talking about shooting anywhere from
60 min (50% time-lapse) to all-day. You would need to go out and catch some light readings to figure out the best exposure. Weather will be the biggest factor of course. You need clouds to do a cloud timelapse (Duhh) and typically you want to do a manual exposure for that. The water ? Typically again at the beach you would want a sunny clear day with as little clouds as possible. Sunrise is the hardest. Typically what I do is reverse a sunset, and flop the image. You have to basically go out the day before with everything and find a spot and do a wider shot where you can see the sun popping up. Then after it is up about 10% degrees take a meter reading. Then go back the next day with the correct framing and exposure. And the HVX with 2 - 8 gig cards will probably be the easiest solution.
If the actual time-lapse is 30 min you are talking about shooting anywhere from
60 min (50% time-lapse) to all-day. You would need to go out and catch some light readings to figure out the best exposure. Weather will be the biggest factor of course. You need clouds to do a cloud timelapse (Duhh) and typically you want to do a manual exposure for that. The water ? Typically again at the beach you would want a sunny clear day with as little clouds as possible. Sunrise is the hardest. Typically what I do is reverse a sunset, and flop the image. You have to basically go out the day before with everything and find a spot and do a wider shot where you can see the sun popping up. Then after it is up about 10% degrees take a meter reading. Then go back the next day with the correct framing and exposure. And the HVX with 2 - 8 gig cards will probably be the easiest solution.
quenchstudios
Member
If you can catch a day with highly transparent clouds, that's ideal because you get the blue sky, cloud motion, no distracting shadows on your subject/s & no need to adjust exposure (assuming the sun doesn't get in your shot).
May I ask what body of water you plan to timelapse?
We shoot royalty free clips & we have a bunch of sunset & clouds shots if you're interested?
May I ask what body of water you plan to timelapse?
We shoot royalty free clips & we have a bunch of sunset & clouds shots if you're interested?
triplej96
Veteran
Question about the long time lapses for example a plant growing how would one go about that? I've shot sunrise and cloud time lapses but never a growing plant how do they do this on discovery? Real expensive cameras and a lot of time or CGI? A 30 minute time lapse could take some time for sure the sun rise and clouds I did were about 15 seconds to 45 seconds.
Vern
Active member
i've done a couple of sunrises for tv and each one that i did was different. If you have an ND Grad filter (matte box or ghetto) that will help keep everything else (not sun) exposed.
With the auto iris, it will adjust itself to the light, so it'll give you a "big ball of fire" look. I could be wrong, but this is what i've got from my limited experience.
With the auto iris, it will adjust itself to the light, so it'll give you a "big ball of fire" look. I could be wrong, but this is what i've got from my limited experience.
filmmaker58
Well-known member
With time lapse, the frame rate changes depending on what your subject is. These days with video it's easier because you can pretty much decide your frame rate in post. For instance, shooting clouds, 1 frame every 5 seconds is a good rate. For plants growing, a few frames a day might be adequate. I think that a lot of time lapse photography is done with still cameras these days, especially for the things that take a really long time (buildings, plants growing etc.) The iris thing is always a problem. But auto may be the best solution. You don't want the iris fluctuating because it will cause a flickering effect when sped up, yet the same thing will occur with lighting changes. I think that great nature time lapses happen with a bit of luck to go along with the technical knowhow.
quenchstudios
Member
triplej96 said:
We've done a few plant growing timelapses & it does not require expensive cameras or CGI, just a DSLR camera that takes a photo periodically (depending on the speed at which the plant grows). Combine that with consistant light and you should get a good result.
I have done some flower opening and building timelapses. DSLR camera on fixed iris and auto shutter, connected with a laptop. Even the lowest quality JPG is good enough for HDTV (at least with Canon EOS-1D mkII).
Problems: wind with plants (plant shots should be done inside a glashouse or something). Fluctuating exposures, apparently because the iris does not close exactly the same for each exposure, and old lens with true manual iris would work better. Fastest speed is one frame every 5 seconds, which is too slow (fast?) for some applications.
Another problem: expencieve camera tied up for months or even years (building sites).
One solution would be to use cheap video camera and DVRack software on laptop to record single frames from camera straight to AVI file. Very large adjustment range for frame intervals and the result is ready to view. The problem is the limited auto exposure range of the system.
Problems: wind with plants (plant shots should be done inside a glashouse or something). Fluctuating exposures, apparently because the iris does not close exactly the same for each exposure, and old lens with true manual iris would work better. Fastest speed is one frame every 5 seconds, which is too slow (fast?) for some applications.
Another problem: expencieve camera tied up for months or even years (building sites).
One solution would be to use cheap video camera and DVRack software on laptop to record single frames from camera straight to AVI file. Very large adjustment range for frame intervals and the result is ready to view. The problem is the limited auto exposure range of the system.
I would seriously consider buying timelapse stock footage.
tjseiler88
New member
this might sound dumb but wouldnt adjusting the iris on a sunset time lapse make it look less of a sunset? i mean yeah u adjust the colors in the very beginning but as the sun starts setting dont mess with it so it will look like a sunset?
Joshua Provost
Veteran
Kind of, but not quite. People are in auto-iris mode all of the time... our eyes adjust to changing light. If you set the camera's iris when the sun was out, and then left it while the sun set, it would be a very quick sunset due to the limited dynamic range of these cameras. It would go very dark very fast. If you let the camera auto-adjust, but limit how much gain it can use, you'll get a better range of light to dark, and still be very dark at the end of the time lapse.