Timelapse Help!

J

jsauce

Active member
hey guys. i love timelapses and seem to shoot them quite well with my hvx200 and other cameras. that said, im having a hard time getting good ones with my 7d. i have the intervelometer from canon and i set up on a tripod at one frame every two seconds or whatever (depending on the shot) but every sequence ive tried comes out shaky. i believe this has to do with the shutter from each still frame shaking the camera but im not sure. is there something im missing???
on a seperate note, resizing is a *****.
any and all suggestion and notes on how to shoot a good timelapse with the 7d and intervelometer would be awesome
thx. j
 
I can only think of a couple of things that would make your footage shake, especially as you have it mounted on a tripod.

1) The tripod is being buffeted by light winds or passersby.

2) The tripod is sitting on an unstable surface which is gradually settling (sand, gravel, etc) or moving (floating dock, etc).

3) The tripod and the camera aren't securely connected, leading the camera's shutter to cause slight adjustments in the images.

Exactly how were you shooting? What tripod? Inside or outside? On hardwood floors? Carpet? Dirt? Was it breezy or gusting?

Is the footage consistently jittery, or is it only apparent in some instances?
 
Thanks for the response michael. this last timelapse was indoors at a metro stop and the tripod was secure as far as i knew. there are only a few bumps which happen intermittently. i think the thing is that the 7d is so light and small that even the slightest bumps or shakes on the ground can cause a shake. im gonna keep trying until i get it right.

how are you shooting the picture format. large? medium? 5k is so damn big
 
jsauce said:
Thanks for the response michael. this last timelapse was indoors at a metro stop and the tripod was secure as far as i knew. there are only a few bumps which happen intermittently. i think the thing is that the 7d is so light and small that even the slightest bumps or shakes on the ground can cause a shake. im gonna keep trying until i get it right.

how are you shooting the picture format. large? medium? 5k is so damn big
Click to expand...

At such a high resolution, if you view it at 100%, you'll pick up the smallest of shakes. I wouldn't rule out the metro stop itself as unstable.

My personal workflow for timelapses is to shoot RAW and load all the RAWs into lightroom. Then I process the first frame and apply the same settings to the rest of the frames. If lighting changes throughout, I try to keep it as even as possible and I'll try to tweak it later in After Effects. I then export the entire sequence as either jpeg or tiff with the final frame size (720p or 1080p). If I need to remove shake in post, I export as full original size and let the compositor resize for me so I have the most pixels to work with. I haven't had too much trouble with this method.
 
Turnoff image stabilization. If you have it and its on the lens is probably "searching" trying to stabilize.
 
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