I finally did my first time lapse video. Time lapse is a short video, which is made of still pictures merged to a fast moving video. Making time lapse video is fun but also it takes time. You could take as many pictures as you want, only limitations comes with battery life and memory. This time I took 450 still pictures, which took with my camera and quality settings 15.8Gb of memory, one picture in every five seconds. It took totally about 30 minutes, so you just have to wait while your camera is taking those pictures, remember to keep your self warm. A final video using 24 frames/second, will be only 18 seconds long. For example if you want to shoot a sunset, you could take one picture in every one minute, because there's not much movement. Ok, if you want to make a very long sunset time lapse video which will be 30 seconds long, you have to shoot 12 hours :-). There is also easier ways to do a time lapse video. One way is just simply to shoot a long video and with computer and video softwares make it to go faster. In many cameras, like also in my Nikon and Olympus, is a shooting mode, which will do atomatically a time lapse video, but a quality of that video is not that good.
And because this was my first time, of course I did some mistakes, but next time I know better.
And because this was my first time, of course I did some mistakes, but next time I know better.
Few things to remember:
Location
Maybe one of the most important thing is to find a good and interesting location, there should be some movement like sunset, sunrise, water, clouds, people, cars etc. My mistake was, that in my location there wasn't much movement and I also started a little bit too late, so there's too much dark time in the end of the movie. Practicing time lapse in situation where day is turning into night is not the easiest situation because the brightness is changing.
Tripod
Use a tripod, because if your camera will move between the shots, it won't look good in final video (moving time lapses are a different story).
Timer
In my Nikon camera is a possibility to set a timer. I can set how many pictures I want to take and how long is the pause time between each photo. Usually shorter pause between the photos will give you a smoother video. If you don't have that timer function in your camera, you can buy an external timer, intervalometer.
Manual focus
Use manual focus, you don't want that your camera will focus every time when it's taking a picture. And in the dark situations it might be that your camera can't even focus, and then your final video is ruined. So use auto focus to focus or focus manually and set auto focus off before you start to take photos. I used my camera's live view and magnification option to focus manually.
Manual settings
Shoot in manual mode, so you can control everything by your self.
White balance
I'm using RAW format, so white balance setting is not that critical, because you can change white balance in post processing. Auto white balance option is not a good choice in time lapse, because your camera might change white balance between pictures, and that effects to your final video.
High depth of field (Aperture)
Use high depth of field, so as much things are in focus as possible. This time I used F10 but it could be more if other settings allow you to do that. You can use also smaller F-number if you want that kind of effect to your video.
Low ISO less noise
I tried to keep my ISO setting as low as possible, so the noise will be minimal. In this video I used ISO 80. In the future, I will also try ISO AUTO setting and look how it works in time lapse.
Shutter speed (exposure time)
That was a little bit tricky. Faster shutter speed will freeze the action and slower shutter speed will give a motion blur. Basically it means that how long your camera will take a picture. Big boys are saying that in time lapse you should give a little bit blur, longer exposure time to your pictures, because it will look smoother in the final video. I set my exposure to 2.5 seconds.
Set your screen off to save battery.
Set your image stabilisation function off, if you have one.
Set your auto power off setting off just in case, you don't want that your camera will automatically shut down after some time.
Don't kick your tripod :-)
I did some post processing in Lightroom CC. And I also created this final video in Lightroom, using a free time lapse plug in.
So here's my very first time lapse video. In YouTube.
Location
Maybe one of the most important thing is to find a good and interesting location, there should be some movement like sunset, sunrise, water, clouds, people, cars etc. My mistake was, that in my location there wasn't much movement and I also started a little bit too late, so there's too much dark time in the end of the movie. Practicing time lapse in situation where day is turning into night is not the easiest situation because the brightness is changing.
Tripod
Use a tripod, because if your camera will move between the shots, it won't look good in final video (moving time lapses are a different story).
Timer
In my Nikon camera is a possibility to set a timer. I can set how many pictures I want to take and how long is the pause time between each photo. Usually shorter pause between the photos will give you a smoother video. If you don't have that timer function in your camera, you can buy an external timer, intervalometer.
Manual focus
Use manual focus, you don't want that your camera will focus every time when it's taking a picture. And in the dark situations it might be that your camera can't even focus, and then your final video is ruined. So use auto focus to focus or focus manually and set auto focus off before you start to take photos. I used my camera's live view and magnification option to focus manually.
Manual settings
Shoot in manual mode, so you can control everything by your self.
White balance
I'm using RAW format, so white balance setting is not that critical, because you can change white balance in post processing. Auto white balance option is not a good choice in time lapse, because your camera might change white balance between pictures, and that effects to your final video.
High depth of field (Aperture)
Use high depth of field, so as much things are in focus as possible. This time I used F10 but it could be more if other settings allow you to do that. You can use also smaller F-number if you want that kind of effect to your video.
Low ISO less noise
I tried to keep my ISO setting as low as possible, so the noise will be minimal. In this video I used ISO 80. In the future, I will also try ISO AUTO setting and look how it works in time lapse.
Shutter speed (exposure time)
That was a little bit tricky. Faster shutter speed will freeze the action and slower shutter speed will give a motion blur. Basically it means that how long your camera will take a picture. Big boys are saying that in time lapse you should give a little bit blur, longer exposure time to your pictures, because it will look smoother in the final video. I set my exposure to 2.5 seconds.
Set your screen off to save battery.
Set your image stabilisation function off, if you have one.
Set your auto power off setting off just in case, you don't want that your camera will automatically shut down after some time.
Don't kick your tripod :-)
I did some post processing in Lightroom CC. And I also created this final video in Lightroom, using a free time lapse plug in.
So here's my very first time lapse video. In YouTube.
