Time Lapse 2

All right, here is how to do a time lapse. You'll need a few things, most of which you'll already have if you're a still photographer. You need a good, sturdy tripod. This is key because any small movement of the camera will be perceptible in the finished project. You need a still camera with either good battery power, an external battery pack or the AC power insert that comes with professional Canon cameras. Lastly you'll need a intervolometer. If you have a pro Nikon, you're good to go, they are built in. Canon makes the TC-80N3, I've included a picture below.

In my opinion, this is one of the few situations where Canon has nickel and dimed the user by not including a basic function that is present on many lesser consumer cameras and its Nikon competitors. It sells for about $135 and doesn't do a terribly wide range of things other than send a small signal to the camera to fire at one of four predetermined interval settings. I suppose $135 is pretty cheap by pro camera standards and it can be a pretty powerful image making tool when used correctly. It is unlimited in its frame rates and exposure count unlike some of the built-in meters which can limit both the rate and count. It uses a pretty efficient little watch battery and will shoot for days without draining the camera's power source. 

When setting up your camera there are a few factors which are pretty important to consider. First and foremost, the camera is going to be there for a long time; usually four hours or more... sometimes much longer. How are you going to protect it from the elements, thieves and curious bystanders? I tend to stay with the unit and just pull up the tent stakes when it gets too hairy weather-wise. It gets pretty boring but you can monitor the cameras functions, drive off chuckle-heads who get too close and nobody steals your 5 grand worth of camera equipment. I realize this isn't always possible due to the location of your placement and the fact that you might be shooting elsewhere. The best way to protect your camera is probably with a small pelican case with a plexiglass window cut out and a ball head mount. It takes a little skill and a few tools to create but everything is waterproof, self-contained and lockable. I'll do a future post solely on the creation of one of these units. 

The second factor is placement, in addition to proper composition in the present you need to be cognizant of the future action and how it will affect your composition and all the action in between. The action that takes place in the frame will hopefully be dynamic and exciting but it has to happen in the confines of your predetermined frame. There's no following the action like with a video camera so you have to do a little planning and some research. If it's a situation that typically happens everyday like traffic or a sunset, check it out and find out the best place to be when the peak action happens. Figure out what the light will be like and where it will fall. If it's a special event talk to some of the people involved and find out what is going to happen, where and at what time so you can anticipate the action rather than letting it happen to you. This holds true for any situation but particularly when you're about to blow six hours standing next to a camera doing nothing and then doing post-processing on 1000 images.

Once you are assured of a safe camera location and a good solid angle from which to capture the action you have to figure out what you want the end result to look like. The rate at which you capture the frames over a given period will directly determine the final "look" of your piece. This is where you have to take post-processing into account. 

Television and video basically plays at 30 frames a second which is a derivative of U.S. alternating current (A/C) power which cycles 60 times a second or 60hz. Back in the day when television was first emerging, engineers took this cycling period, cut it in half and we got the frame rate of 30 fps. When color television was introduced they had to alter the rate because the added color signal screwed up the picture (this is the simplified version anyway). They changed it to 29.97 and that is what we have now and that is generally what you should use in your time lapse unless you are doing some kind of special purpose output or you want a distinct look.

Now, using 30 frames a second you can figure out what your film is going to look like and how long it will be based upon how many frames you shoot and what period of time you shoot it over. For example, if your doing a scenic of clouds and mountains and you want the clouds to rapidly fly overhead in your final product then you need a long interval between frames. This is where it gets a little tricky because you have to do some math. 

Anyone one will tell you that I'm no mathematician (I barely passed college math) but you can figure out how long your end product will be by using a basic equation that divides the total number of frames shot by the frame rate you use (29.97). If you want 30 seconds of footage you have to shoot 900 frames. 

Next you have to figure out what time period you want to cover and what you want it to look like. Back to the flying clouds, clouds move slow (depending on the wind speed) so if you want them to look fast you need a long interval. Shooting one frame every 30 seconds or even one a minute will get them moving really quick. At one frame every 30 seconds you will be covering about 15 minutes in one second of your time lapse, one frame a minute you'll cover about 30 minutes in a second. With a bit of wind, this will have your clouds really hauling ass. The drawback is that to output 30 seconds you will have to capture 15 hours of footage. 

Luckily you usually don't need this much footage or you don't need this kind of interval. I have made pretty nice time lapses over the course of about three hours doing one frame every 10 seconds which yielded about 35 seconds of footage. It depends on your subject matter and what you want to do with it.  

Post-production is the next step, I am aiming this mainly at photojournalists so I'm going to give you the quick and dirty of post. This is also by far the cheapest solution. There are a bunch of companies that make software for creating time lapses; Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Affects, BTV Pro, GBTimelapse etc... but for the money and simplicity of use it's pretty hard to beat QuickTime Pro. For an additional $30 bucks you can upgrade the installed QuickTime Player on your Mac to Pro. If you do any sort of video or sound editing you should have already done this, it's invaluable. 

All you have to do to create a time lapse with QuickTime Pro is simply have all your images in one folder (they will already be chronologically ordered by you camera's numbering system) File>Open Image Sequence>Click on first image>Open>Choose the frame rate (29.97). That's it, you now have a fully functioning time lapse ready for use.

I do need to back track here a little. When setting up your camera you do need to make a couple of considerations based on how you will be using your end product. Since still cameras shoot at such a higher resolution than video cameras it's really easy to make a super High-Definition movie with your still camera. 

I use the M2 (medium small) jpeg setting on my Canon EOS 1D Mark II for time lapse work because by still camera standards it's a pretty small file but by video standards it's huge. Its 2544 x 1696 pixels is way more than even the best modern High-Def televisions can register yet the each individual file is only 1.3 mb (12.3 open). When you're dealing with nearly a thousand images size adds up quickly (about a gig) although this is still miniscule amounts of data compared to a time lapse done with a High-Def video camera which could be hundreds of gigs.

If you are only going to display the end result on the web, use your camera's smallest jpeg setting, but know once you've shot it small it will always be small.  

If color and post production image values are critical, you might even shoot RAW. If doing work for Hollywood or broadcast you are going to want the most creative control possible. I'll tell you right now that I generally try to stay away from doing post color or exposure by getting it right in the camera before I start. If for some reason you have the need or desire you can easily create an action in Photoshop to suit your needs and batch process the whole lot. It does however take time and/or a fast processor. 

That's about all it takes really, you will need to tweak the process to suit your own needs as you go and can figure out the nuances of the process with a little practice. This piece is one that I did on Clearwater Beach's Pier 60 around sunset. The interval was one frame every 10 seconds for a little over three hours. I set it up while fishing and the end result was much better than my catch that day.