Overcranking / Undercranking / time lapse

T

tomadamreece

New member
First post, just found the forum which is really interesting, so hi to all.

The company has just bought a few HPX500's and just starting to get used to all the functions and settings that the camera provides. Really like the camera so far and have noticed a big difference in picture quality to our old Panasonic DVC Pro cameras, so happy with the choice!

I'm going out to film some time lapses and was wondering if anyone has any tips using the interval recording setting in the menu. I will be recording at 720/25p (I'm from the UK). Roughly I will intend to film around 1 hour / 30 minute time lapses providing around a 15 second clip in total. What do you suggest i should set as my fps? Or is it just a case of experimenting?

Also do the various scene files i.e cine add much to the shot in your opinions or is it best to add colour corrections etc in post?

Thanks and I look forward to any tips.....

Tom
 
There are 3600 seconds in an hour. If you want one hour's footage to play back in 15 seconds, the ratio of 3600 (source seconds) to 15 (destination seconds) is 3600/15 = 240:1. So, simply put, you'd want to shoot one frame every 240 frames. Since there are 25 frames per second, 240 frames = about ten seconds, so you could set your camera for one frame every 10 seconds and it'd probably be about right.

Figuring it another way: if you want to shoot at 25fps and end up with a 15-second clip, that means you're looking to make (15 * 25) = 375 final frames. There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so 3600/375 = 9.6. Meaning, one frame every 9.6 seconds should give you 15 seconds of runtime after an hour.

For wanting to shoot 15 seconds over the course of 30 minutes, obviously you'd want to double the interval between frames, so one frame every 20 seconds.
 
tomadamreece said:
...

Also do the various scene files i.e cine add much to the shot in your opinions or is it best to add colour corrections etc in post?

Thanks and I look forward to any tips.....

Tom
Click to expand...

Hi Tom,

I use some 'homemade' settings which I use for achieving the biggest latitude in post. Therefore I created a setting for specific weather situations. As you're based in the UK, you have the same weather as in the Netherlands, but I have three specific settings for complete overcast, sunny spells, and full blue sky. And a standard setting for indoor (controlled lighting) These settings are mainly different on the Master Pedestal and Gamma parameters. I do my own Color Grading so I don't care that sometimes my footage doesn't look 'pretty' straight from the camera, but I know exactly what I can obtain in the post. (I use FCP/Color/Magic Bullet for grading)

Hope this helps

PS. Also I do use a Polarizer in 99% of my outdoor shooting and in some cases graduated and/or soft contrast filters.
 
Thanks for the replies. They have been a big help.

Ive noticed the link to the downloadable scene files. I'm interested in downloading these to an SD card to experiment and was wondering as its US Panasonic website are they set to scene files which work only at US rates or they are universal to work at 50i or 25p?

Thanks
 
You can change (with a text editor) in the scene files, the system freq to 50 Hz, and the frame rate to default, then they are ready to use for 50i or 25p in your HPX500
 
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