My First D-SLR Timelapse Video...

[Remorhaz]

Something new to try - I decided to make a timelapse movie with my D-SLR - it's not fabulous but it's given me a start to work from

My aim at the outset was to try and capture motion in the moonrise and in the clouds in the sky, in then end the very heavy cloudcover obscured much of the moonrise but after the moon was high in the sky the moonlight lighting the clouds from above made for interesting pulsating cloud formations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIAjSBth838

NB: I don't know why the encoder (Quicktime or iMovie) or YouTube have corrupted the first few seconds of the movie (the source movie works fine here and I have retried the encoding & youtube upload a few times with the same results)...

For those interested the technique I used to create this first attempt is as follows:

- Tripod - I'm going to be taking lots of exposures over time and I need them all to be taken from the same position (plus in this case they are going to be long exposures so I need a stable platform)
- Turn all the Auto functions on my camera off - this means:
--- Frame the scene and set the focus and then set the Lens to Manual Focus and turn off VR - I don't want the focus to change between shots and I don't want the power drain of VR for every shot
--- Turn off Auto White Balance and set the White Balance manually - you don't want it to change drastically between frames - in my case I chose Cloudy
--- Turn off AutoISO and set the exposure manually - in my case I tried a few test shots and opted to use 13 second exposures at f/8 with ISO 400 - in reality you want the Aperture to stay constant (so DoF doesn't fluctuate) and you want the shutter speed to remain relatively constant (stay shorter than the interval time but not so short as to create blippy effects with moving objects) - if the scene had a large change in exposure over time (e.g. start during the day and then move into night) I'm wondering how to achieve this with more subtle changes in exposure over time (if you used auto exposure you could have radical shifts in overall frame brightness/exposure from frame to frame (e.g sun or moon move in and out from behind clouds)
- Set the camera to shoot JPEGs - whilst you can shoot RAWs since I was going to take many hundreds of images I didn't want to waste storage space or bother post processing them so I simply chose JPEG Normal at Small Size (which is still massive resolution for a video)
- Turn off the Image Review function - to conserve battery
- Use an Intervalometer - this allows you to program a sequence of images to take - in my case I simply set it to take an image every 20 seconds for a unlimited number of images (till the battery drains, the card fills or I turn it or the camera off). My Nikon D7000 has an intervalometer function built right into the camera but as I shot this with my D90 I used my $20 eBay programmable wired remote

Some other tips include:

- The factors which relate say the (S)hutter speed, (I)nterval between shots in seconds, (O)verall time in seconds, movie (F)rame rate in frames per second, movie (L)ength in seconds, etc are that... S should be less than I, and O = L * F * I, and the number of shots required to be taken will be L * F, and the apparent time speed increase will be I * F
- in my case the just over 30 second movie (L) at 25 frames per second (F) required 770 images which when taken at 20 second intervals (I) took just over four and a quarter hours to complete with an apparent time speed increase of 500x
- Use an Interval suitable for the type of thing you are shooting - object which change/move slowly over time (e.g. stars, moon, clouds, etc) can be shot with longer intervals but scenes with faster moving objects (people, vehicles, etc) will need much shorter intervals
- Drag the shutter - basically don't use really short (e.g. much shorter than 1 sec) shutter speeds when there are moving objects expected in the frame - this is because shooting with short shutter speeds will lead to objects appearing as blips in the movie rather than smoothly or blurily moving through it
- Battery - make sure it is fully charged before starting - you're taking a lot of images which will chew up a lot of juice
- Card Space - make sure you've got enough memory card space to store all these sequential images

I then just loaded all the images into QuickTime Pro (the older version) and used the Open Image Sequence... function and selected the first image from the sequence which created the Quicktime movie at the frame rate I selected in the wizard.

[biggerry]

not bad for a first crack and a good write up

[photohiker]

Good effort.

I've taken a few sunsets with 15 second intervals. Its quite challenging to get the exposure sorted between daylight and night without too much variation in density, had the best results with auto and AV, but have had to step in and alter aperture at some point as the exposure time starts to approach the interval time as night falls.

I know someone who shoots these for a living, so I asked what he does about exposure balance between frames and he replied that he lets his post production team sort that. blah!

Good and interesting results can be had if there is a busy airport in frame.

As far as the youtube distortion is concerned, I have had that when uploading from quicktime or some other editor. If I save the movie and upload it to youtube as a separate operation it seems to solve that issue for me.

Michael

[Remorhaz]

I've taken a few sunsets with 15 second intervals. Its quite challenging to get the exposure sorted between daylight and night without too much variation in density, had the best results with auto and AV, but have had to step in and alter aperture at some point as the exposure time starts to approach the interval time as night falls.

Yep I tried that too - it started at around 1/80th before sunset and moved to the max of 30sec at night (underexposed a lot) which effectively meant dropped frames (movie gets faster and slower) and then as the moon came in and out behind the clouds the frames get bright and dark leading to pulsating brightness in the movie. I tried adjusting exposure a little on the fly but it's too hard to monitor and the frame brightness jumps too much at those change points.

I know someone who shoots these for a living, so I asked what he does about exposure balance between frames and he replied that he lets his post production team sort that.

Great - I think not

However I was thinking of trying with AutoISO as the main variable but set it to allow the camera to go down to say 5 or 10 secs only to prevent it going past the Interval (and perhaps even make manual use of the variable ND slowly over time) and that way I can keep the Aperture steadyish and the shutter speed in a reasonable range. It probably won't help with sudden light/dark shifts but if I don't actually include the sun or moon in the shot you could probably do a day to night sequence without having to resort to PP.

As far as the youtube distortion is concerned, I have had that when uploading from quicktime or some other editor. If I save the movie and upload it to youtube as a separate operation it seems to solve that issue for me.

Yep - thats basically what I did - created the movie with Quicktime 7 and tried encoding and uploading with Quicktime X and iMovie (both of which have the built in Share to Youtube menu option) (iMovie gave the worst results because it did a disaster job transcoding on import) but all ended up screwing up the first few secs in Youtube.

Thanks for the excellent info and affirmation

[ATJ]

I did a few time lapse sequences with my D70 and Nikon Capture some years back and they worked quite well. They were of corals feeding and I used manual exposure and flash. I didn't think of converting them to a video but rather wrote some javascript to play them. Perhaps I should go back and convert them.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-05/atj/index.php

[photohiker]

My best results to date has been a sunset sequence interrupted by an incoming thunderstorm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvSM6AXqExE

I've got a larger version, just not handy, but you get the idea.

ATJ, those coral sequences are remarkable.

Michael

[Remorhaz]

I did a few time lapse sequences with my D70 and Nikon Capture some years back and they worked quite well.

OMG! the poor shrimp - I'm scarred for life!!

[petermmc]

I really liked your timelapse. Especially that moon trying to weave its way thought the clouds and evenetually the clouds exploding. Nice work.

Peter Mc

[photohiker]

Hope this is not taking the threat too OT...

After posting my sunset storm timelapse to youtube so that I could share it here, I found a message from a mob called 'weathernation' in my youtube inbox:

Request to use timelapse footage
Hi there, I represent WeatherNation, LLC, a company that distributes weather information for use and broadcast by a wide range of individuals and news organizations. I recently viewed some of your impressive videos on -line. Congratulations on your excellent work.

Like you, we are passionate about meteorology, storm photography and videography, and providing the public with such images. After viewing your videos, WeatherNation would like to give your videos a wider audience.

We would like you to agree that WeatherNation can use and distribute your weather-related video, photos, audiovisual combinations, and other materials you have posted and will post to websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Flickr, etc. (in short, what we will refer to as the "Content").

If you are willing to permit us to use and distribute your Content, we ask that you agree to the following terms:

I won't post it all, but you can probably imagine the one-way terms...

Not sure how they hooked onto it so quickly, its only had 10 views...

Michael

[surenj]

Rodney this one is great! How long did it take to process it?

We would like you to agree that WeatherNation can use and distribute your

Goodness, they want your stuff and don't give a damn about being polite etc... At least they asked Were there any dosh involved or they assumed that it would be free?

[photohiker]

Goodness, they want your stuff and don't give a damn about being polite etc... At least they asked Were there any dosh involved or they assumed that it would be free?

Yea, you're right, at least they asked. There seems to be a lot of arguing on youtube about people 'pinching' videos.

They didn't mention payment of any kind. I'm guessing that if payments are not mentioned in the agreement, then it will be the last thing they would do. The one good point in my admittedly casual look at the agreement is that they don't appear to be trying to grab the ownership rights to the material, but they want everything else:

By agreeing to the terms of this communication, you hereby grant WeatherNation a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use the Content for any purpose that WeatherNation chooses.

Guess that confirms they're not offering to pay for it, but they're also not excluding charging for it themselves

Kinda glad I uploaded the low res version now...

Michael

[Remorhaz]

Rodney this one is great! How long did it take to process it?

Thanks Suren I've already got some ideas on doing some "proper" ones in future

If you mean to load all the still images into Quicktime and produce the movie - a couple of seconds - I do have a new Macbook Pro (with the new Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM and SSD drive) but I don't think it would have made that much difference.

[surenj]

a couple of seconds

The next step will be do use a slider for some camera movement as well... DIY slider?? Maybe Robotic??

[zafra52]

Interesting, you must spend hours...

[Remorhaz]

The next step will be do use a slider for some camera movement as well... DIY slider?? Maybe Robotic??

I know - the movies shot with them do look very cool but I think that's just a bit too hardcore for me at this stage... so many different things to try - so little time

[Mr Darcy]

SSD drive)

That will make it fly.
I put one into Pam's ancient Macbook (2002 Core Duo) & it made a world of difference.

[colin_12]

Pretty awsome footage for the last half thereRodney. Love the cloud motion.

[aim54x]

Cant wait to see more from you....if this is your first attempt your going to do an amazing job with practise