I’ve put together a tutorial on how to shoot a timelapse using a DSLR and intevelometer. The tutorial covers everything from settings you should use to making the time-lapse video in quicktime.
Let me know if the tutorial was useful. I’ll try and do some more tutorials if this one is recieved well. Also, if you’ve made a time-lapse, post a link to it in the comments.
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@dsollero Show de bola este tutorial de time lapse que vc passou http://tinyurl.com/776n3z
O melhor tutorial de time-lapse photography que j? vi: http://tinyurl.com/776n3z
![Photo: [LENS] (aka Lens) Launches](http://digitalartwork.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/lens_thumb.jpg)
tnxs, seriously. well done.. more more more……
Zach:
great stuff. I agree : more!
great stuff. i’ve seen everyone of your shows. Are you using After Effects for the “Ken Burn” moves?
Richard,
No I’m just using FinalCut Pro and using the motion/zoom curves. They work a lot like After Effects in that you can ease and keyframe etc.
thank you for the tutorial. i will post a link to one when i make it! i’m getting started this week….
This is great, thank you. I have been taking some test runs — when I get a good one indeed I will post. I have a question though — If when doing something like a sunset, how can you keep the speed and f-stop the same? The scene goes from light to dark… Whats the trick? I am actually doing one right now, and just sat there and slowly increased the exposure time but I am sure when I compile the sequence there will appear to be sudden changes in the light. Have any pointers?
THANKS!!!
Ok, compiled two of my sequences into one, posted here:
http://corneveaux.com/gallery2/v/Time_Lapse/Experiments+in+Time+Lapse+%231.flv.html
As you can see in the 1st video, as it got darker I had to go from a 1/200 exposure to a 20 second exposure — and it shows. So then, whats the trick?
For anyone curious, this is shot with a Canon XTi using the same remote Zach mentioned and the sequences were rendered in Sony Vegas 7. I was only able to get ~600 shots for each sequence before the battery died. Have a plug -in power supply on the way (Canon ACK-DC20 AC Adapter Kit).
Thanks!
I think the best way to handle going from day to night is to keep the exposure and f-stop the same and let the frame go dark. Then stop the intevelometer and set your exposure for night. Then in FinalCut or any other video editor, do a cross dissolve to make the transition from day to night.
Here is an experiment I did awhile ago, but I haven’t done the transition.
DayNight
I’m interested in giving this a try. I’m hoping to use the EOS Capture utility (part of the Digital Photo Pro software from Canon) that came with my EOS 20D on a Mac Laptop (at least as soon as I get an AC adaptor for my EOS). I’ve also had success with using my Sony HDR-HC1 HD camcorder using the time-lapse mode in iMovie. Of course the problem with both these techniques is that you have a lot of hardware outside for a long duration, and the need for an AC power supply.
I am very interested in the zoom and pan effects that I’ve seen in some time-lapse videos. Particularly at this site here: http://www.sandboxla.com/
Are these all created using FX in editing software? Or is there a way to creep the zoom. I’m thinking that a slow pan could be accomplished with a telescope drive motor or some equivalent.
Any thoughts appreciated. And thanks for the great tutorial! It’s inspiring.
this is maybe the most useful photography tutorial i’ve seen. wow.
Excellent tutorial!
I’ve never known about the shutter drag before.
Thank you very much!
Hi Zach, I hope you don’t mind, I’ve uploaded the video to Stage6.
http://www.stage6.com/user/yunir/video/1931207/
Thx!
Thanks so much for the great tutorial.
At the moment I can only afford one camera so I went for a video camera.
I have been making timelapse using sped up video but I am now really keen to get an SLR and start making timelapse this way. (I’m going through too much video tape my way)
Here is a link to one of my timelapses for anyone who is interested.
http://www.stage6.com/user/ThrashingMarlin/video/1930694/Sea-Of-Tranquility
Thanks
David
VERY helpfull..
thanks
Thanks for the great tutorial here is my effort:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RUCOTcnDsQ
Awesome tute! Would love to see more!
Used my 40D, Tamron 17-55mm 2.8, and a Canon TC-80N3.
At work one day at the local airport I set up the camera inside to protect it from flying debris, and from ‘walking away’. Spots are not sensor spots but dirt on the window I shot through.
.8 second exposures, F32, every 5 seconds. Cokin P154 ND filter to cut down the amount of light to get a slower ss (darn lens is too fast! – Never heard anyone complain that their lens was too fast!)
In my video program, I believe I set the rates at slides on screen for .2 seconds, and transition of .075 seconds.
Added a few frames of text so if you view the vid, wait until at least half loaded before pressing play. Quicktime viewer 7 required to view.
link
I’ve made a couple of attempts to get a working time-lapse system. First with a home-wired intervalometer and a p&s camera, and most recently with the Canon controller and a 10d slr. In both cases, I’m having issues with missing frames. For some reason, when I get down in the 3sec interval range, I will miss a frame every 30 or so.
Have you experienced this? What camera are you using?
Zack, great tutorial. Did my first time lapse today on Canon 5D and TC80, I have a few questions.
1. Is there anyway to globally clone the dreaded dust spots off the sensor, because they stand out a mile on a time lapse with clouds rolling across a sky? And to clone numerous spots off 300 frames would be a pain in the a&*.
2. Same goes for correcting a converging vertical, basically I have a building in the foreground and lots of clouds rolling over it, looks great for my first attept but would like to correct the verticals if possible.
I did manage to open the Quicktime in Photoshop CS3 cloned and sharpened, then tried exporting. It worked but only on the first frame, and the playback of this exported file stopped and jumped erratically?
Thanks again
Graham
Thank you for such an great tutorial. You really seem to have a talent for this sort of thing.
I did have one question. When capturing for example, a sunset or night falling on a city, and you’ve got your DSLR all manually locked down clicking away with the Intervalometer, how are you compensating or changing the exposure as it gets darker?
Thanks,
Rod
Nice tutorial. How do I get a folder of vertical images to stay vertical in the image sequence???
Once again like I said before you make a great work.
Congratulations,
António Chagas.
Thank you for posting this. I know how to shoot a time lapse, but I could never find a good program to compile the video. Thank you very much for making this available.
Zach – as for shutter speed…do you think you can ‘over’ drag the shutter? What’s your experience been with exposures longer than 2 seconds per frame?
Thanks,
TOR
I’m sure in certain situations you could ‘over drag’ the shutter, depending on what you’re trying to capture and the frame rate you play it back at. For the most part though, I think you want the camera to be exposing as much as possible leaving little time in between frames captured.
Nice work. Thanks. FYI I found this on a general google search for making timelapse movies.
I had to look up what you meant by shutter drag. If anybody else stumbles upon this tutorial and needs a reminder, from what I gather it involves narrow aperture (ie f22) to get a nice long shutter speed. As shown in the tutorial, that will cause motion blur in the still images, and it will also yield a desirable exposure length relative to interval length.
Did I get that right?
p.s. Graham: Lightroom is the perfect software for editing images before assembling them as a movie because it makes batch operations, such as spot removal or straightening, relatively easy. You just “copy” the relevant settings from one photo to the rest of the batch.
Yesterday I made one time lapse video.
Today I watched your grat tutorial.
Tomorrow I’ll make a better time lapse video than I did yesterday
Thank you.
Zach,
I was viewing your tutorial and I’am a little confused by the term “Dragging the shutter.”
nevermind, ha i read the previous post!
Excellent video. Thanks for the tutorial.
Around 11 months ago I read that tutorial, since that I had made around 20 differents timelapses and I had created a french blog about timelapse… I LOVE your tutorial !!!
Guillaume from http://www.time-lapse.fr
Thank you for your tutorial.
I have been looking for the basics on time lapse and your video is great.
But, Imagine my surprise, sitting in California, watching the traffic at the corner of Court and Union.
As an Architecture student in the late 60’s, I started taking my first serious photos with a borrowed Minolta shooting B&W shots of the back alleys and buildings of Athens.
Glad to see photography is still is still alive and well at OU.
Well done tutorial…You have a great voice for this kind of thing…It doesn’t distract at all from the tutorial..That’s a great asset. Enjoyed watching!!
Thanks for the tutorial. Lots of ideas to think about and lots of stuff I learned.
Would you be able to let me know what is the flash player you use on your ‘video’ page? It has a great interface for posting videos.
Thanks!
Kudos! Fantastic tutorial! Keep on!
Thanks for the tutorial, Zach. I’m curious what your sequence setting are in Final Cut? Do you do HD and clip the top and bottom of the images to fit the aspect ratio? Thanks
My sequence settings are usually 1080p (1920×1080) at 24fps using the ProRes Codec. I usually fill the frame with the image.
Thanks for your exellent tutorial
I have a problem – when I installed quicktime pro it has caused my image database – Iview Media Pro to act strangley – changing file names etc and so i had to unistall quicktime pro – is there any other way to put together the time-laspe? – I have an older version of Adobe Premier – version 6 would I be able to use that? or is there any other software I would be able to use?
I would be so grateful for any advice
thanks
Jane
THANK YOU. That is a great tutorial. I like not getting bogged down in excessive detail, but getting right to the pertinent info and just go out and shoot. I’m going to try one today.
Thanks.
Great tutorial! Thank you very much!
May I ask you the settings for the time lapse you did with the stars?
Does the intervalometer work with Av or Tv? I don’t understand if you set the shutter speed from the camera or from the intervalometer…
Thank you again!
I don’t remember what the exact settings were but I think it was something like 3sec/f8. “AV” and “TV” mode are not good for time-lapse since the exposure shift can cause inconsistencies that lead to flicker in the final playback.
Great video!
May I ask you the settings for the stars time lapse that you showed during the tutorial?
Thanx!
sorry for double posting…
Zach, what would you recommend to do if i needed to do a time=lapse video that would need to be shot over three months time? Im concerned about batteries and the elements damaging the equipment. any help would be highly appreciated!!
You should consider building a weatherproof box made of lexan (bullet-proof glass). Depending on the location I would also consider getting a small solar panel and ac/dc battery pack to plug in an ac adapter to the camera.
My first attempt after reading this tutorial.
http://www.vimeo.com/7049500
I’m also trying to figure out how to do a sunset, when it goes from light to dark. I tried once by locking the shutter and letting the speed vary but that doesn’t work well.
I’ll be glad to hear your opinions.
One way I found to adjust to changing light in time-lapse is to change the settings gradually between frames. It helps if you have a light meter but basically I would change the ISO in 1/3 steps once the light starts to fall in between frames gradually. This can work better than aperture or shutter priority because those modes can jump back and forth depending on cloud coverage etc causing a flicker in the final piece.
Zach,
Awesome tutorial! I’m setting up a timelapse shoot for a client. An industrial assembly facility, so the shoot is two months (indoor, luckily). Any advice on what camera I should go for? I have a Nikon D80 SLR, I could set up – would that work with the Canon controller? And can all the equipment be plugged in with an AC adapter?
what recording rate would you suggest?
my calculation is: the two months should be a clip of no more than 45 sec max. So. 5 working days a week for 8 weeks is 40 days, and a framerate of 25 fps X 45 sec is 1125 frames. So, that means roughly 28 frames a day or 1 frame every 20 minutes (8 hours a day, not shooting at night). Is that too slow, with the risk of only getting short fragments of ‘action’?
Do you have any experience with the Time Machine Camera Controller? (www.bmumford.com/photo/camctlr.html)
would really appreciate your thoughts.
thanks once again,
Karl
Wow, this sounds like a fun challenge.
I would personally choose a canon SLR with the canon intevelometer since the intevelometer is basically a simple computer in which very little can go wrong. The canon intevelometer is proprietary to canon cameras though.
Either way, definitely plug it in to AC and I would go as far as to add a UPS battery system to plug in to, since it is a construction site, you could lose AC power from time to time.
The Time Machine Camera Controller looks like it would work fine since it is just as simple as canon’s intevelometer.
As far as frame rate goes, I would overshoot. Maybe you should quadruple your calculation. You can always speed it up in the edit using final cut etc.
Hey Zach
I followed your tutorial and created my first time lapse video
I plan on buying a neutral density filter to get rid of the flicker this is the link to my first attempt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTyMWqYkLXE
I think the flicker might be coming from the camera not being in total manual mode or auto white balance. Interesting none the less. Love the guy leaning against the wall as people speed by.
Thanks so much you have been a great help. I’m glad you like my time lapse yours are truly amazing!
I realize that I left my camera settings on shutter priority and that might be where the shutter flicker is coming from.
Quick question I was told to shoot using shutter priority or aperture priority modes when I was doing a time-lapse from night today what are your views on this?
Definitely use manual mode for night time-lapse.
Thanks my friend I will do that from this point on.
I will do that from this point on.
Hi, like everyone else I thought your tutorial was great.
Elsewhere on the web I read a suggestion to use Automator actions to resize images for timelapse, but in your tutorial you recommend changing the image size when you export from Quicktime… do think one way is better than the other or is it just personal preference?
Thanks!
bob ladd
either way works. I generally do it full size so I can choose to pan and scan on the image if I want to later.
Thanks! I did my first experiment two nights ago and it worked great! The only problem is i used a cheap kit lens (Canon) which is my only wide-angle lens. The manual focusing is so bad that I messed up and the whole thing turned out slightly out of focus… I really need to get a decent wide angle zoom lens!
Did you have the lens stopped down to give you depth of field? Usually its not hard with a wide angle (assuming your kit lens is an 18mm) 28mm equiv, to get most if not all of the frame sharp. This will also help in dragging the shutter. Manually focus one third into the frame, and try stopping down to F11-F22. That will get most if not all of your elements sharp (with a wide angle) the close you get to telephoto, the harder it’ll be to get it all in focus. (You also don’t want to be extremely close to your subject. Your kit lens should suffice, they are usually not bad.
Great tutorial. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
I made some time-lapses:
http://arne.delaat.net/timelapse.html
How do you “drag your shutter?” Could you elaborate on what it means to drag your shutter. Thanks for the great tutorial. I’m a freshman in high school and finally saved up enough money to get a good digital camera for laps photography. By the way I really like your site. It has motivated me to get serious about my craft. I hope to one day become a respected professional photographer.
Dragging the shutter means to use a slower shutter speed.
http://vimeo.com/3773267
not done with a DSLR but hope you guys still enjoy. this was the first one i ever did. from my hotel room in dillon, colorado.