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Sam Posten

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I'm a huge fan of Time Lapse photography, going back to Koyanisqaatsi and similar, and even bigger fan of Philip Bloom's current work. I've been experimenting with it on my own with very limited success, it seems some of the tools that Quicktime Pro used to have to make assembling these easier have been removed in the move to Quicktime X, so I've basically sat on a few of the ones I did in the past until I could see what I've got and where to improve.

Thanks to @lightroomblog & @vbampton I learned that the video export features in Lightroom 3 beta make this easy as pie. So I ran through their tutorial and came up with my first little attempt and a whole lot of lessons learned:


Here's the instructions:
http://lightroom-news.com/2009/10/28/direct-timelapse-video-export-from-lightroom/

Next time I'm going to do the following, for stars at least:
-Put some landmark in for spatial reference
-Put bigger chunks of time in between my clicks
-Let it go longer
-Try to avoid airplane flight paths (heh!)
-Get a recognizable constellation, preferably Orion, which has always been my favorite

I'm going to try doing some daytime events too after that. Love this stuff!
 

Sam Posten

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Ok, I'm learning =)

Here's a MUCH better TimeLapse: Snowmaggedon and Icepocalypse!

Music is "Ice and Chilli" by _ghost, creative commons licensed from here: http://bit.ly/937Hoq
 

Bryan X

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Great "Snowmaggedon" Sam. What is the actual time elapsed in that video?
 

Sam Posten

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About 3.5 - 4 hours at 1 frame every 20 seconds replayed at 24fps 720p

It's done in Lightroom, which has VERY limited video editing capabilities right now. Basically all I could do was put a watermark, a title slide and end slide on it. I will put some better 'padding' on the next one I do so it doesnt seem so abrupt at the start and end.
 

Bryan X

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OK, stupid question. You don't actually sit there and manually snap a picture every 20 seconds for 4 hours do you?
 

Sam Posten

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No, there is a built in intervalometer on my D300 which does the clicking for you. Lower tier DSLRs do not have this feature, its one of the bennies of buying an enthusiast class camera.

You could also buy one of these to do it for those cameras that do not have them:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-TC80N3-Remote-Control-Cameras/dp/B00009XVA3

http://www.amazon.com/NIKON-MC-36-Multi-Function-Remote-inches/dp/B000BY9CUY

Sam
 

Bryan X

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Apparently, none of the Canon bodies have it built-in. Not even the 1D series.

However, the Canon EOS Utility software allows this to be done by tethering the camera to a computer. I may have to try it sometime.
 

Sam Posten

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Oh that sucks, but yeah, can do it with even entry level cams and a laptop. you can even control it via an iphone if you want to go that route =)
 

Scott Merryfield

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Snowmaggedon was cool, Sam, but the changes in color temperature were rather jarring. Any way to make them blend better?

I've always loved time lapsed photography, but have never tried it myself.
 

Sam Posten

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Probably, if I had spent the time to go in and individually correct each frame in Lightroom. On my next one I'll try to do better on that =) Thanks for the feedback Scott!
 

Cees Alons

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You probably already did this, but when shooting sequences like that (or any other type of shots where pictures form a combination of sorts, e.g. panoramic or stereo), you have to switch off any "auto" setting on the camera. That even goes for focussing, but certainly auto hue (white balance) and auto WB.
In fact even any form of an auto exposure setting is tricky already, but I'm sure you already knew al this.

In any case, it will help to diminish the need for photoshop adjustments/fixing.


Cees
 

Sam Posten

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The only TV show I watch regularly is Survivor, and I have to admit that it is one of the biggest influences on my wanting to get more into timelapse (as are Chronos and Koyanisqaatsi). Doing a search today I tracked down one of the guys who does the Timelapses for Survivor, you can see some of his stuff here:
http://www.reelearth.ca/reelearthtimelapse/The_Technology.html

Pulau timelapse:
http://vimeo.com/epictimelapsehd/videos

More here:
 

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