A Complete Guide to Timelapse Photography

pleat guide to time-lapse photography where I will teach you how to capture and create your own amazing time-lapse videos today I will be broadly covering time-lapse photography teaching you how to capture your first time lapse in a professional way this video will be in four parts explanation gear shooting and pros processing and production let's deconstruct what a time-lapse really is time lapse is strictly defined as a cinematography technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured the frame rate is much lower than that used to view the sequence in short we are manipulating time events that take minutes hours days or even years can be sped up by factors of tens or factors of millions letting you see the progression of time while not actually having to wait through it time-lapse photography can be broken down into two flavors video and photo the types don't refer to the final time-lapse project which will always be in video format but how the sequence is captured the first method video involves taking a prolonged video of a subject with a camera than speeding it up later this method is very simple and can be great for recording something on the fly and post-processing is a breeze but there are better options the second method photo involves taking a sequence of images usually with a fixed interval and stitching them together to create a movie this method offers some significant advantages over video one of the main advantages is the amount of light photos can capture a mention of video camera as a camera that takes pictures very fast because it needs to capture real-time movement and play it back at the same speed it needs to shoot at least 24 frames per second this means no exposure could be longer than one twenty-fourth of a second which severely limits the environments the camera can capture photos don't have any limit on exposure allowing for the capture of virtually any scene another advantage over video that photo has is the physical resolution of the image most video cameras only record up to 4k footage which is the equivalent of 8.25 megapixels most cameras can record images of at least 20 megapixels over twice the size of 4k foot leaving room to crop and introduce post-production panning and zooming motions finally the photo method is the industry standard when cinematographers create time-lapse videos for anything professional they always use a still picture camera because it is better in almost all aspects with the photo method however there are a few items you will need in order to create your first time lapse and countless others that can take them to the next level to do any type of photography including time lapse you will need a camera and surprisingly you don't even need a DSLR many newer phones are releasing with manual options for their cameras and built-in time-lapse functionality however many of these implementations are just glorified video cameras so make sure that the time-lapse is actually taking individual pictures cameras that don't have a manual setting will make capturing time lapse much harder and most point-and-shoot cameras will probably not work well for this once you have your camera the next thing to secure is a high-capacity memory card the size of camera RAW files by themselves do not equate to much but after a time-lapse marathon you suddenly may have thousands of photos amounting to tens of gigabytes of memory and you don't want to cut your session short because of something as trivial as a full memory card I recommend at least 32 gigabytes and you can find them for as little as $15 which is a small price to pay for such an invaluable tool next you will need to pick up an intervalometer an intervalometer will function as the camera shutter button and with a little programming you can set up the intervalometer to fire the camera shutter with a specific interval resulting in pictures that when sped up will produce a smooth time lapse the intervalometer can either be connected to the camera with a cable or wirelessly and are relatively cheap some cameras may even have built-in intervalometer x' which may work as well as an external device but if yours doesn't you may be able to download an app for your camera like the Sony time lapse app or install magic lantern a free firmware add-on for DSLR and mirrorless cameras that unlock some additional features including in Colonel intervalometer 'he's the final and most important necessary piece of gear is a tripod because a time-lapse is essentially stream together hundreds of photos any small variations in camera alignment will show strongly in the final movie long exposures also require a tripod to keep the image pin sharp without any motion blur from camera shake for time-lapse the biggest and heaviest tripods are best since you are trying to minimize camera shake as much as possible now let's briefly cover some optional gear items that while not strictly needed for capturing time-lapse and expand your options and make the entire process easier if you have any extra money buy an ND filter an ND filter is the equivalent of sunglasses for your camera screwing on to the front element of the lens allowing you to use long exposures during the daytime which are great for blurring the motion of people or cars that is so commonly found in time-lapse polarizing filters are also great to have polarizing filters reduce reflections and glare which is particularly useful in scenes with water they also help increase the vibrancy of the sky by cutting through haze and make green foliage more dramatic buying a bulb Rampur or Bramber works when your camera is in ball mode controlling the duration the shutters open down to the millisecond it is a fairly advanced technique but produces the best results since the adjustments the camera makes are much smaller leading to less flicker finally motion control devices like this SERP and dynamic perception kits introduce physical motion to your time-lapse the devices operate on a shoot move shoot format or the camera takes of photo and the slider moves a fixed amount keeping them movin in between shots these devices are fairly expensive but can provide a unique look that can't be reproduced with artificial panning and zooming in post-production as long as you have the four necessary gear items a camera large capacity SD card intervalometer and tripod you should be well-equipped for photographing most scenes ND filters Bram pers and motion control systems are not required but they can improve the quality and customization of your time lapses allowing you to better tell your story now that you know the gear you need how do you set up your camera to capture the stunt I'll apps you dream of [Music] you may think that setting up a time lapse is as easy as plugging in your intervalometer and letting the camera roll but even though you may be able to produce a tie laughs from those pictures the resulting video will not look good time lapses often cover conditions with rapidly changing lights and with every picture the camera's computer needs to decide the correct settings for the shot and often the camera doesn't make the right decisions when we compile the pictures from the time lapse the tile ass-lickers why does this happen essentially instead of the camera settings between shots remaining perfectly constant or purposefully changing in a slight and gradual way large in attendant exposure jumps occur in a few of the frames which create images that look out of place when compiled with others there are two ways to fix us the first way is through camera settings and configuration and the second is through post-processing let's find out how to reduce flickering in camera first to decrease our work later besides auto mode there should be three other shooting modes on your camera shutter priority aperture priority and manual these three modes keep one or more camera settings free to change by you the user before we continue I always recommend leaving auto ISO off if your camera has it for most time lapses it's important to dial an ISO before you start so you don't have to worry about it shutter priority as the same suggests allow you to set shutter speed manually while leaving aperture up for the cameras computer to decide in time-lapse this is seldom used aperture priority however is a great tool for capturing drastically changing light conditions by keeping aperture constant and letting the camera determine the correct shutter speed sunsets can be easily photographed by setting your aperture and ISO to the value of your ending exposure and letting shutter speed girl longer as dusk turns tonight the only trouble is if your shutter speed becomes longer than your interval you may run into problems so make sure your interval is long enough and your initial shutter speed is fast enough that you will be able to cover up to ten stops of light change in your session manual mode is also crucial for time-lapse creation and is the most popular method for controlling exposure manual mode gives you full control over both aperture and shutter speed so this is great for time lapses that need to maintain the same exposure throughout the shoot Milky Way time lapses for example need to have the shutter speed and aperture set to specific values to let as much light into the camera without causing star trailing from too long or shutter speeds so with the knowledge of aperture and manual mode let's break down setting up a time lapse in two steps the first step is to scout out a good location this really depends on what you want to be capturing but just remember to include foreground mid-ground and background elements to keep the picture interesting and to incorporate the basic artistic principles of photography the second step is to set up your tripod make sure the tripod is secure any small shakes will ruin your time-lapse X turn on the camera and put it in either aperture priority or manual mode make sure to set the cameras white balance and focus manually as well as make sure you are shooting in RAW picture mode dialing your aperture and ISO and if you are in manual your shutter speed then set up your intervalometer be careful to set an interval that is appropriate for your shutter speed or predicted shutter speed if you are photographing a complete day to night transition your interval may have to be 20 or 30 seconds to compensate for the drastic shutter speed changes finally sit back and relax while you take in the environment as the camera captures it if you are in manual mode you may have to adjust shutter speed once in a while to maintain a proper exposure but otherwise just soak off the beauty of your scene once you're finished capturing your images we can transform them from a series of photos enter the traditional time-lapse video format with time-lapse there are many programs that can handle photos and turn them into video clips blending to many workflows that you could pursue but today I'm going to cover one of the most popular methods which is to use programs LR time-lapse and Adobe Lightroom LR time-lapse is a program that helps you process time lapses it allows you to choose keyframes in your time lapses that you edit in Lightroom and animate sent together to create smooth transitions between each one let's start launch LR time-lapse and import your images into the program I am importing a day to night sequence I shot on manual mode manually ramping the shutter speed to adjust the darkening sky while the image is load you can scrub through and get a quick preview of the time-lapse and the blue curve that appears on screen represents the luminance of the time-lapse as you can see the luminance curve of my tile maps is very jagged because I manually adjusted shutter speed as the sky became darker if you shot an aperture priority mode this line may look smoother but with tinier spikes we will be using the visual workflow in LR time-lapse which works from left to right first I want to click on keyframe wizard this will create keyframes which are displayed as small blue diamonds you can adjust the amount of keyframes you want and I'm gonna go at 12:00 just because I have a huge change from the bright evening sky to the Milky Way next I'm going to go to the Holy Grail wizard and adjust the level with the sliders so it matches with the blue line now I'm going to press save which will save that metadata to the files and allow us add at the keyframes in Lightroom make sure you are in the library tab with the grid view then drag the button that says drag to Lightroom into Lightroom and click import go to the filters tab and only select the keyframes this will only bring up the raw files at the keyframes that you set an LR time-lapse and you want to edit them so that the colors flow from one key frame to the next allowing LR time-lapse to fix all the exposures in between once you're done editing the keyframes go back in the library tab highlight all the photos go up to the metadata tab and click Save fetta data' to files back into LR time-lapse click the reload button bringing those Kiefer back until our time lapse in the Auto transition which will smooth all the frames in between the edited keyframes click visual preview once it finishes you can actually scroll through your corrected time-lapse with the pink curve representing the new luminance profile you can see that the curve is still a little jagged II so I'm going to click visual D flicker and try to have the new green curve follow the trend of the pink curve being careful not to completely smooth it out once it's applied go back to Lightroom clear the filter select all the pictures go up to the metadata tab and click read metadata from files this will bring all the metadata from LR time-lapse into Lightroom export the photos either as JPEGs or TIF files now we are going to create the actual movie and while I'm going to use Adobe After Effects for this part other video editing software may work similarly open After Effects go to the file tab click import and navigate to the folder you just created select the first photo of the sequence and click import create a new composition of your preferred size and framerate I will be creating an 8k time-lapse at 24 frames per second drag the photos into the timeline and scale them however you want I am also going to add a subtle zoom to the movie which I will do by creating some scale keyframes once you're done doing any final edits or move into the After Effects export the time-lapse by navigating to the composition tab and clicking on the add to render queue button the render might take a while but afterwards you should be left with the professional high quality time-lapse but you can use in almost any film setting I hope you enjoyed this comprehensive beginners guide to everything time-lapse subscribe to Apple apps for more videos like these every month I'm a one-man team so supporting the channel through patreon would be very much appreciated rate the video and leave a comment with your feedback and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Apalapse

Views: 81,292

Keywords: timelapse, photography, guide, tutorial, how to, photo, camera, video, dslr, mirrorless, settings, sunset, holy grail method, manual mode, aperture, iso, shutter speed, day to night, transition, editing, after effects

Id: 2cTGHumRg_o

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018