time lapse on 5d?

Danny1280

Well-known member
I'm renting a 5d for the weekend to get some atmospheric b-roll for a doc I'm shooting. I've rented one a few times before, but still pretty new. Dumb/naive question: Can you do time lapse on a 5d? Wanted a shot looking up with buildings and sky and clouds moving. Thanks,
 
Yes just a series of still's the 5D is primary a stills camera.
You will need an intervalometer to plug in to the cam

Derek
 
Thanks, Derek. Can you briefly explain how the intervalometer works? Generally something I can rent along with the 5d?
 
Just saw the rental house (Adorama) has a Nikon intervalometer. I assume that will work with the 5d? Thanks again.
 
I think not, as the connectors are different (?).

Two ways to take timelapse with EOS-5Dmk2: With intervalometer (Canon also has one model that fits 5D). With laptop connection to Canon EOS utility software. Third: press the button manually...

Any digital stills camera can be used for this, no video capability needed.
 
An intervalometer is just a fancy remote release with a clock. Basically, you tell it how often to trigger the shutter on your camera.

Some higher end cameras have this built in but I haven't seen any of the built in ones with a simple to use interface :( I don't understand why they make it so confusing. 99% of the time the intervalometer will be used for timelapse so anything not to do with timelapse can be hidden in the main intervalometer UI. I have a Nikon D700 with a built in intervalometer but I still use an external one because when I have to get up super early to shoot a timelapse after hiking for hours to get to a good spot I don't want to fuss with the built in one especially trying to start-stop the built in one with new settings.

/end rant
 
This is the intervalometer I am using on my 5D Mark II for timelapse: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13892

It ships from Hong Kong so it takes a few weeks to arrive, but works great, and well worth the savings over the Canon branded unit.

Before this I would simply do it the manual way, using the Canon wireless remote. Just count down the intervals in your head and press the shutter release. Little bit more work, but results are about the same.

Pressing the shutter without any sort of remote will likely not produce good results. Even the slightest movement, wind, or physical interaction with the camera can disrupt the timelapse.
 
Thanks for help everyone. Adorama had the canon intervalometer (I love saying that word), so I'm going with that for now.
So...a couple more "dumb" questions:

1. I'm just taking regular jpg stills and adding them to the timeline later?
2. What's a good rate to get that fast-forward clouds moving in the sky look?
3. Is there some easy way to add them to the timeline without having to import all of them as stills and make them 1/24 second long in the timeline? (I'm using FCP)
Thanks again!
 
1. You can import a series of images at once (preferably RAW). I prefer to use After Effects to import the series, then export that clip into FCP for editing. If you don't have AE, you can also use Quicktime Pro or Quicktime 7 to assemble a clip from an image series (File - Open Image Sequence). Note that the newer Quicktime player on Snow Leopard does not have this feature, but you can install the older Quicktime from your Snow Leopard install disk.

2. You'll have to experiment with the time intervals to get the look you want... I generally end up using something between 4-10 seconds between each shot depending on how fast you want the movement.

3. See #1
 
1) medium quality mid-size JPG:s work just fine. FCP does not understand Canon RAW format. For experiments having to do RAW conversion is just an extra chore.
2) try somehing like one picture every 10 seconds or so, easy to speed up later 200 or 400% in FCP. I set the camera to aperture priority mode, manual focus, to keep the DOF constant. Set white balance to some "right" value, not auto.
3) in FCP you can just choose the first file in a series in a folder and FCP pulls all stills to the timeline, one picture per frame, and turns is into a movie. This is somewhere in the menus and manual. Does not get any simpler than that.
 
I shoot my timelapses RAW and process them with lightroom. Its pretty simple. I just process the first frame, and copy the settings to the last frame. If it looks good on the last frame I copy settings across the whole series and export. If it doesn't I compromise between the first and last. Hopefully, in the future, we'll have key-able Adobe Camera Raw adjustments in After Effects so I won't have to do this step outside of AFX/Premiere. Or even better, make it key-able in Lightroom and do everything there. Slap on titles and other stuff when you're totally done with color correction.
 
Petrus, you answered all my questions!
And even some I didn't ask (but needed to know) like white balance settings.
Thank you!
 
Back
Top