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Time-Lapse Photography – Beyond the Basics

30 Jul

Time-lapse photography is a different way to show the world around you. They are videos which are made up of a serious of still images and combined to look like a movie. The frame-by-frame gives a sped-up view of the world. People find them interesting to look at and if done well they are fascinating.

Time-Lapse Photography – Beyond the Basics - sunset and lighthouse

One of the hundreds of photos taken at Point Lonsdale while trying to get a time-lapse there.

There are a few ways of making time-lapse videos The obvious way is to do a video and speed it up, however, most are made from lots of individual still images. Using special programs, you can put them together and set the time for the video to run.

In this article, I’ll share my experiences with you testing out some time-lapse gear and settings so you can learn along with me.

Basic Time-lapse

Doing time-lapse photography is relatively simple. All you really need to do is set your camera up on a tripod and get it to take a photo every few seconds. Put the images on your computer, batch process them if you like, then run some software that will allow you to make them into a time-lapse. Here is an example.

That is a very simplified way of looking at it. Of course, there are many other factors, like what is moving in the scene, how quickly it is moving, etc.

As you experiment more you will learn how to work out what time is best and how many images you need. On average, you will need 30 images for every second of video you want. So if you want a one minute video you will need 30 x 60 = 1800 images.

Adding panning to your time-lapse

Over the years I’ve played around with doing time-lapses, such as I just described. It didn’t seem hard and I thought that adding some new equipment would be fine, That it would just work. I was wrong.

Recently I was loaned quite a few products from Syrp here in Australia to try out. It seemed like the ideal time to step up what I was doing with these. Perhaps get more serious about doing time-lapse photography.

I was loaned enough gear to do panning, tilting, and sliding. In the kit were two Syrp Genie Minis, the tilt bracket, the Genie and the magic carpet rails.

Time-Lapse Photography – Beyond the Basics

Photo by Syrp showing a kit with the magic carpet rails, Genie, and tilt bracket.

Initially I decided to try just the Genie mini. Start with the easy one.

One of the stills from the first attempted time-lapse.

Syrp Genie Mini – first attempt

My first attempt was at the Tesselaar Kabloom Flower Festival. There were fields of flowers and lots of clouds, the conditions were perfect time-lapse photography. For a successful time-lapse it is best if there is something moving in the image.

I moved around a bit to various places, but the very first series I shot had to be deleted. The exposure was okay, but none of the images were in focus. It was my first big lesson with doing them this way. I learned that you have to focus the image and then turn off autofocus, otherwise, the camera will attempt to refocus for each image.

The Genie and Genie Minis are all controlled by an app on your phone. It is fairly simple to use, but the arcs for shooting can be confusing.

Next, I worked out how panning worked and wide it should be. Several different arcs were attempted and when I got home and loaded the photos, the problems were clear to see.

The first one was okay, but that was probably more luck than skill. I didn’t really know what I was doing and just let it go for ages, with the camera taking a photo every two seconds. There were around 450 images total.

For the next few, I told the Genie Mini to run for 6 minutes, and for the camera to shoot an image every two seconds. This time it took 360 images. The area it was panning over was increased. When converted to the time-lapse it was jerky and the panning was too fast.

Solutions, if you are going to do a wide pan, you need to take a lot more photos than you think you will need.

Another one of the stills from the flower center.

Next attempt

I went down to a local area to try it out again, this time giving it more time. Unfortunately, I made a similar mistake.

As I was setting up, I had it in my head to do an image every 5 seconds and to set the pan to last for 20 minutes. This only gave me around 240 images for the video. It wasn’t enough, and the same problem occurred. Next time if I only want to do 20 minutes I should take a photo every two seconds. That will yield 600 images, which should make it a better time-lapse. That is what will be attempted next time.

A couple of other problems happened as well. While panning, the camera was not level for the whole scene. So, I need to work out how to make that happen. Practice will make it easier.

All the tutorials I’ve been watching say to use manual mode for exposure. However, this really only works for constant light. If you are shooting a scene where it is variable, then you may need to use aperture priority.

Working it out

There did come a point when I realized the smaller the arc the better. Not covering such a wide area was better. Making sure there was something interesting in the image as well, something moving.

The number of images and how far apart they are shot is another aspect that can be hard to work out. Taking a photo every 2 or 5 seconds is good for some scenes, but not others. However, it is a good place to start and as you do more time-lapse photography you will begin to understand what settings you need.

Most time-lapse series will result in a video of around 5-10 seconds. When you are compiling it, you need to think about how many images you will need.

As a general rule most are done with 30 frames per second, or 30 images per second. In theory then, for a 5-second time-lapse you will need 150 images. However, if you are adding panning to that, then it will depend on how far you pan. If you are covering a really wide area you might need a lot more images.

You have to make sure there is something interesting in the scene, and that there is movement.

Adding Tilting

Once you think you have worked out how to pan you can try tilting the image up and down as well as panning. I only tried this a couple of times, as the biggest problem I had was my camera is very heavy and the tilt bracket struggled with it. You could see that it was too much weight for the system.

I found that using the Genie Mini with it was a bit tricky and it would tilt the wrong way. The lens would hit the bracket if it went the wrong way. It was the most frustrating aspect.

Again, you have to be careful what you use this for. There needs to be a reason to tilt up or down. Waterfalls are a good choice for tilting. Maybe looking up at a building. Think about why you would do this beforehand.

Gliding along the Magic Carpet with the Genie

The magic carpet rails with the Genie on top will glide the camera along in a straight line. It can add a small amount of movement to your video to make it appear like the camera is moving.

The Genie was very complicated to use and after doing so once, I really didn’t want to use it again. It wasn’t as easy and intuitive to use as the Genie mini. I had been shown how to use it, but when I went to do it myself, I had trouble working it out. In the end, I only used it once.

It does add a nice effect to the final time-lapse, but I’m not sure it is worth the aggravation. Perhaps, if you really wanted to get into doing time-lapse photography seriously it would be worth spending the time learning how to get the best results.

However, Syrp have now upgraded it to the Genie II. It is supposed to be easier to use and can do a lot more. Though at $ 1599 USD, the price will put it out of the range of many photographers, myself included.

Syrp gear

For most of the time that I had the gear on loan, I used the Genie Mini the most. It was small enough that I could carry it around in my bag most of the time and it was easier to use. Using the phone to control it was never a problem.

It is something that will take a lot of getting used to, but for anyone starting out doing time-lapse photography it would be enough. The Genie Mini is what I would recommend. It isn’t cheap, for what it is, but not that expensive that if you really wanted to do time-lapse. The Syrp Genie Mini sells for USD$ 249.

In the end, by the time I had to give the gear back, I knew I wanted to do more time-lapse photography. So I have since purchased the Genie Mini. I like what I can do with it, it’s simpler to use and the price-point is doable for most people.

Storage and processing the time-lapse

Everyone recommends you take raw images for your time-lapse series, that way you can process them in Lightroom. The biggest problem is the size of the raw files. My D850 has raw files that are approximately 50MB each, so when you are taking a few hundred images, that requires a lot of space.

Thankfully, the D850 has the ability to change the size of the raw files, so I can use smaller ones for time-lapse. If your camera has this feature, then I suggest you do so. Once the images are processed and the time-lapse is done, you can delete the raw files as you will be unlikely to use them again.

Princes Pier is a popular place for photos, so it seemed like a good idea to try a time-lapse. This is one of the still images from the series.

Using Lightroom to process the images is good as you can edit one image, then sync the rest of them. This will help give all your images the same look. You can then export them to make the time-lapse.

I used Photoshop to build the time-lapse. However, there are many different programs available to try. Some will give you more control, however, Photoshop is quite basic. It’s a good place to start.

If you have trouble getting Photoshop to work it could be the sequence of images you are using. They have to be consistent, or Photoshop won’t load the images properly.

Getting into time-lapse photography

If this is something you want to try, then start with your camera on a tripod. Take photos every few seconds.

However, if you want to get some camera movement, then I would try the Syrp Genie Mini. Learn how to use it completely to get the best videos. If you decide to add more then you can look at doing tilting and gliding. Don’t confuse yourself by trying to learn it all at once.

Read more on time-lapse photography here:

How to Shoot and Create a Time-Lapse Video Using Lightroom
How to Shoot a Pine Cone Time-lapse: A Mini Tutorial
Time-Lapse Photography Equipment Guide to Getting Started
Discover the Wonder of Time-Lapse Photography
10 Pro Motion Control Time-Lapse Tips
Time-Lapse Photography – a Quick Guide to Building Your Movie

The post Time-Lapse Photography – Beyond the Basics appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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This 7.3-gigapixel panorama ‘timelapse’ of London is made from 6,240 D850 pictures

18 May

Photographer Henry Stuart has created a 24-hour panoramic timelapse image of London that combines 6,240 raw photographs to form a picture that contains over 7 billion pixels.

Captured through a Nikon D850 and AF-S Nikkor 300mm F2.8 lens using a robotic mount by Nikon-owned robotics company Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), the 155° view presents the city in an incredible amount of detail, with Nikon claiming that you can read signs up to 5 miles away from where the image was captured.

The full frame

A fully zoomed-in frame from the center of the picture above

The Twenty Four Hour London project was taken on by Visualise—a company of virtual reality filmmakers—in partnership with Nikon UK and MRMC. The camera was supported and moved by MRMC’s Ulti-Head robotic camera mount, which allowed Stuart to repeat the exact shooting position—to pixel level, according to the release —for 260 shots per hour over the course of the 24-hour sequence.

Once processed and stitched together, the resulting image allows viewers to pick the time of day and to zoom into the image to see the details of distant buildings—and even people relaxing inside their apartments!

The concept was a commission for Lenstore, a UK vision-care company, to promote eye health. To see the full 7 gigapixel ‘timelapse’ for yourself, and explore London in all its glory, head over to the 24 Hour London website.

Press Release

World’s first 24-hour Gigapixel time-lapse panorama, captured with the Nikon D850 and MRMC’s robotic Ulti-Head

24 Hour London is a unique collaboration between Lenstore, Nikon, Visualise and the Nikon-owned robotics company MRMC. Together they have created the biggest ever time-lapse of London’s skyline, taken from the roof of Canary Wharf’s One Canada Square.

In total, over 6,240 photos were taken across a 155-degree view over 24 hours, and subsequently stitched together to create an incredibly detailed panorama, and the first gigapixel timelapse of London. This level of detail was achieved by combining a Nikon D850 and AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8 lens with MRMC’s robotic Ulti-Head to precisely repeat the same pattern of detailed photos 260 times an hour for 24 hours. The finished product allows you to see London change colours across the hours, from sunrise to sunset, with all the shades the capital has to offer in between.

Commenting on the collaboration, Jeremy Gilbert, Marketing Director for Nikon Northern Europe said:

We’re thrilled to be involved with this unique project. The Nikon D850 captured London in incredible detail in challenging conditions. Finding the best combination of camera, lens and precise motion-control was essential for this project and we are proud to have been integral to its success.

The project was shot by Henry Stuart from Visualise, he had the following to say:

Shooting gigapixel photos is hard – we have been shooting them for the Olympics, the World Cup, for events and places all around the globe. Each panorama is so large it needs specially built computers to process it. In this case, we had to build a special server system and network all of the workstations in our studio to the content so that we could stitch five of the photos at a time.

To capture a photo like this you need a really capable camera – we used the Nikon D850. It has this beautiful big sensor and captures a huge range of light and dark (large dynamic range). This is so important when shooting panoramas where one part of the image is bright, such as towards the sun, and another is dark such as over the Thames. We shot everything on the camera’s ‘RAW’ setting, which keeps loads of extra information in the shots that you would usually lose.

The 24 Hour London ‘Gigalapse’

The image is 7.3 Gigapixels (7,300 Megapixels or 7bn pixels), which is over 1000x more powerful than the camera on an iPhone X.
The Nikon D850 and Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8 lens combination delivered phenomenal detail – you can even read signs which are up to 5 miles away in the photo!
The robotic motion control technology using the MRMC Ulti-Head used to create the pinpoint accuracy of images, leading to every single pixel of every point in the panorama being the exact same position as the photos 24 hours earlier.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Rylo update adds 180° mode, bluetooth capture and motion blur timelapse effect

19 Apr

Credit: Rylo

The popular Rylo 360° camera—a camera we called the “360 degree camera done right” in our review—is receiving a major update today. The update adds two new features for both iOS and Android users of the Rylo camera and app, with a third feature available only to iOS users for now.

Let’s take them one by one.

180° Mode

The new 180° video mode shrinks the field of view, allowing you to capture 180° video at higher resolution and better image quality than 360° mode allows. According to Rylo, 180° mode “is especially useful for chest-mounted shots or activities/scenarios in which one lens is blocked.”

Bluetooth Remote Capture

The name kind of gives this one away. Remote capture lets you sync your phone to the Rylo camera via bluetooth, which allows you to: switch between recording modes, start or stop a video, and snap a photo, all from the app on your phone.

Obviously, this feature will help if you’ve got the camera mounted somewhere hard to reach.

Motion Blur

A new feature for timelapse shooting, Motion Blur adds a ‘cinematic’ motion blur effect that is actually synced up to the speed of your timelapse shots (more speed = more blur). The effect doesn’t show up while shooting, but will be viewable upon export.

All three features ship today, although Bluetooth Remote Capture is currently only available for iOS, with Android support “coming soon.”

If you own a Rylo 360-degree camera and want to try these features out, all you need to do is update your Rylo app via the App Store or Google Play, then update your camera’s software through the app. And if you haven’t heard about the Rylo and want to know what this camera is all about, check out our full review at the link below.

Review: Rylo is a 360° camera done right

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Composite timelapse combines Death Valley’s night sky with New York City’s streets

14 Apr

In honor of International Dark Sky Week 2018—which will run from April 15th to the 21st—timelapse filmmakers Gavin Heffernan and Harun Mehmedinovic decided to create an interesting composite. Using their ample post-processing skills and footage they’d captured across the country, they replaced the light-polluted skies over New York City with long-exposure footage captured in pristine locations like Death Valley and Grand Canyon National Parks.

The whole thing is part of the duo’s project Skyglow: an ongoing quest to raise awareness about and examine the dangers of light pollution. The project features a 192-page hardcover book and blu ray video series made up of footage and photos captured all over the United States, but it was also the impetus behind an inspiring series of Skyglow timelapses. The project began three years ago with another composite timelapse—in which they ‘darkened’ the skies over LA—so Heffernan and Mehmedinovic decided they would cross the country and do it again, this time in NYC, for Dark Sky Week 2018.

You can learn more about the Skyglow Project at this link, watch the new New York City composite timelapse above, and scroll through some stills from the project below.

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Video: 360° 8K timelapse of the aurora borealis during a lunar eclipse

15 Mar

Photographer William Briscoe captured this spectacular 360° 8K timelapse on January 31st near Fairbanks, Alaska. He shared the video on his YouTube channel and Facebook page a few weeks ago, alongside this description:

Here is a 360 video of the Lunar Eclipse, Alaska style, which I filmed on January 31st near Fairbanks. Lady Aurora, being the Diva she is, just couldn’t let the moon have all the attention that night, so she made a nice showing as well.

If you have VR glasses of some sort, by all means slap them on! If not, simply drag the video around until you spot the moon, then watch as it disappears and becomes a black disk by about 30 seconds in, allowing the aurora to cover it entirely for the duration of the eclipse.

The full video is only a minute and ten seconds long, but that doesn’t mean it was easy to shoot. Responding to a comment on YouTube, Briscoe revealed that it was -31°F (-35°C) out that night, so just getting his 360° rig (a custom-built array of numerous 35mm DSLRs) to work was a challenge.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Behind the scenes: Shooting a motion time-lapse in the Canadian wilderness

17 Feb

Back in summer 2017, I went on a six week adventure to British Columbia and Alberta in order to capture Canada’s beautiful landscapes in the most impressive way possible. I wanted to make a time-lapse film that raises more awareness of our planet and our environment.

Planning

When it came to logistics, I tried to be as prepared as possible for this 6-week trip, and did tons of research ahead of departure. I knew I probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of internet (or time to waste on the internet) in the Canadian wilderness, and wanted to be prepared to just take things as they came. So I collected locations that I discovered on Google, on Instagram, or on other photographers’ portfolios, and created a long list of spots that were worth checking out.

I didn’t have a specific shot list. I just tried to capture the most beautiful scenery and moments that I could find along my adventure. However, I paid a lot of attention to interesting details around me instead of going for spectacular vantage points only. That’s how the whole moody intro sequence was conceived. By stepping closer to the subject, I tried to approach time-lapse in a slightly different way than you see in your typical, ‘epic’ time-lapse films online.

Challenges

I guess my biggest challenge with shooting this project was my own safety—doing all of alone, in an area packed with grizzly bears, was pretty scary.

Hiking alone comes with a risk that I always had to bear in mind. I carried bear spray at all times, and tried to let the bears know that I was there by creating a lot of noise on the hiking trail (they can get really dangerous when they’re startled). When I set up a time-lapse shot, I always had to have an eye on my surroundings and make a lot of noise by singing or talking to myself. Over the course of my trip, that risk was something I got used to.

Being all alone also didn’t make it possible for me to camp out on location. Obviously because it is very risky, but most of all because I simply couldn’t carry camping gear along with my camera gear and slider all by myself.

As a result of this, I had trouble getting to the best possible location at the best times of day. In order to shoot at sunset or sunrise, I either had to find a location that was fairly close to the parking lot, or take the risk of hiking up or down in the darkness with my head lamp as the only light source.

This is all of the gear I brought with me into the Canadian wilderness

Gear

Since I was all alone on this mission and wanted to hike out to locations a lot, I had to keep my gear package as compact and efficient as possible. I packed my Sony a7S II and Nikon D5100 (as backup camera) together with a newly purchased Canon 16-35mm F4 and Rokinon 14mm F2.8, as well as two cheap vintage lenses: an SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7 and an SMC Pentax-M 100mm F2.8.

As you might have noticed, my camera package was pretty humble. That was all I had and all I could afford, and honestly—that was all I needed.

A great Sony camera with only 12 MP paired with a sharp Canon wide-angle lens that could almost do anything on location. This lens is my absolute favorite due to its great flexibility for wide three-dimensional time-lapse movements. The Rokinon lens is well-known for its night- and astrophotography abilities, as it has just little amount of coma and is wide enough to capture almost the whole night sky. The Pentax lenses are actually my first lenses I’ve ever bought. Obviously, they’re old, cheap, and not the sharpest; they’re also small, light, and capable of projecting an image onto my sensor I was totally happy with.

In contrast, my time-lapse gear was downright extravagant thanks to a sponsorship from the innovative company eMotimo. They gave me a loaner for a great package for the duration of my whole trip: The spectrum ST4 is a newly designed 4-axis motion control system that, combined with the iFootage Shark Slider S1, simply can do it all—slide, pan, tilt and even pull focus in video or time-lapse shooting mode.

Using a Playstation Controller, I could easily set up literally any shot I wanted, and the ability to set keyframes in between the start and end point of my programmed shot gave me ultimate control over my composition. Additionally, an innovation that I’ve never seen before is a mountable extra motor to automatically pull the focus as the time-lapse is running. There are many ways to mess around with that: one I used was to shift focus from an interesting foreground to the revealing scenery in the background.

Another great feature worth mentioning is the ability to repeat a programmed movement at different speeds. This allowed me to record shots at different frame rates, but still have the exact same camera movement in each.

Since I couldn’t get the idea out of my head to combine a moving time-lapse shot with a real time video, with both shots having the very same camera movement, I did exactly that in the final shot of ALIVE. I recorded the whole scenery in dynamic time-lapse except for the person (me) being recorded in real-time video 25fps. Even though it took a lot of time perfectly masking out the person in post production, this shot probably wouldn’t have been possible without the spectrum ST4.

With all the flexibility of the motion control devise I felt an enormous freedom as a time-lapse photographer and could explore further ways to creatively make use of its features. However, this turned out to be a weakness as well, as I often found myself tempted to design way too sophisticated time-lapse shots. In this case, the inorganic/mechanical camera motion often drew way too much attention when watching the processed time-lapse sequence making the scenery appear surreal.

So in the process of my trip I learned that less is more in this case. It is way more important so be at the right spot at the right time—which is ultimately what I was seeking for my whole adventure.

Editing

In the editing process of ALIVE it was certainly very hard to come up with an edit as I had to choose the best among 149 time-lapse shots I recorded on my trip. Since I wanted to keep my film under 4 minutes, I forced myself to make some hard decisions. That turned out to be a pretty emotional process because every shot has a background story that connects to me personally.

It just often felt super frustrating to kick out a shot for which I woke up at 4 a.m. and hiked up a mountain for two hours in order to be there for sunrise.

A Story

Let me conclude my little behind the scenes tale with a story from Lake O’Hara, one of the most captivating landscapes I have ever experienced in person, and the final shot of the film. I decided to hike up to this incredible viewpoint for sunset and kept shooting until there was no light left to work with. That was the moment when I found myself alone in the darkness on the edge of a cliff.

The final shot of the film, captured above Lake O’Hara at sunset.

Should I take the risk of hiking down the steep and forested trail in the darkness potentially ending up as grizzly bear food? Or should I rather just stay up here all night and do another time-lapse of the milky way? Without camping gear and food, I stayed and spent another 5 hours in the cold darkness until the sun came back up.

Even though this shot of the milky way didn’t even make it into the final film, there is nothing I regret about staying up on this mountain all night all alone without a tent in bear territory… simply because it was one of these adventures that made my trip so unique.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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This stunning timelapse captured SpaceX’s glowing Falcon 9 launch

27 Dec

Last Friday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Airforce Base on the California coast. But the light show it created in the evening sky looked less like a rocket launch and more like an alien light show, stopping traffic on the highways as people pulled over to take cell phone pictures and video of what they thought might just be the beginning of an alien takeover.

Fortunately for all of us, it wasn’t just bystanders with smartphones who pointed their cameras skyward on Friday the 22nd, photographer Jesse Watson had already prepared to capture the launch, and came away with this stunning timelapse of the entire thing from Yuma, Arizona.

As he explains in the video’s description, this was actually the first rocket launch he’s captured:

I found out about this specific launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base a few days prior to the event. I wanted to capture this amazing spectacle in a fashion that I haven’t seen previously, as most of what I have seen is cell phones video or news reels.

[…]

I have never shot a rocket launch before, so I did not know exactly what to expect as far as exposure or precise location of the rocket in the horizon. I wanted to be prepared to capture comprehensive coverage of the spectacle. Therefore I packed four cameras and five lenses, to cover wide to telephoto details of the scene. Three of the cameras were rolling time-lapse and 1 was setup for telephoto video.

That’s how he captured the 40-second timelapse above: using two Nikon D810s, a Sony a7S II, and a Sony a6500 sporting a Nikon AF-S 14-24mm F2.8G, Sigma 85mm F1.4 |Art, Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 |Contemporary, and a Veydra Mini Prime 25mm T2.2 for Sony E-mount, respectively.

Check out the results for yourself up top, and then head over to the Vimeo page for a full gear list in the description.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Watch Drew Geraci’s latest time-lapse masterpiece, shot with Sony a7R III

27 Nov

Drew Geraci is a master of time-lapse photography. His work has taken him all over the world, and his client list contains some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment. Even if you don’t know his name, if you’ve ever watched ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix, you’ve seen his work.

Drew has been using a Sony a7R III for some time, and prior to its official launch last month he spent some time in New Zealand, to see what the new camera could do. We caught up with him recently to ask about his inspirations, workflow, and tips for successful time-lapse photography.

What first got you interested in time-lapses?

The real reason I became interested in time-lapse photography wasn’t because of anything ultra profound or mind-blowing. It was because someone I looked up to (as a pro-photographer) looked at my early time-lapse work and told me that it was, bluntly, garbage.

Since that day I’ve channeled that negative energy into something positive, which has lead me down an incredibly successful career path which I’ve very thankful for.

Why would/should you shoot a scene using timelapse techniques rather than a conventional single exposure?

Timelapse tells a story that a single frame or even series of video frames can’t. The passage of time is something that you can’t really ‘see’ normally, and this is why timelapse photography is so useful – it showcases short or long passages of time which can show the grandness of an event or place in a unique way. Timelapses always seem to dazzle and amaze audiences.

How is the process of planning a timelapse shoot different to a conventional landscape shooting session?

Planning a time-lapse shoot can be quite difficult depending on where and when you want to film. You have to think of all of the elements of motion that will be in your scene and how light will effect the scene over time. There are so many random variables that most photographers/videographers don’t have to worry about, but for time-lapse it’s different.

You really have to be aware of your scene, to an even higher degree than normal. You need to make sure there you account for things that could destroy your shot like birds, people, or lights. You have to work all of this out before you start shooting.

What’s the single most important factor to consider when making timelapse movies?

For me personally, it’s about creating something that’s going to wow your audience and keep them entertained for the few seconds or minutes that you get their attention. I want to shoot scenes that are unique, vibrant, and invoke some type of emotion to really draw the viewer in.

Music is key as well. Selecting the wrong music can be fatal. As a case in point, there’s an M83 song that has been used so many times now on timelapse videos that it’s getting ridiculous. I always try to find something original to use instead of mainstream music.

What does your workflow look like when planning and shooting a time-lapse movie?

The workflow is chaos. It usually consists of a shot list, scouting notes and it’s all subject to change when I get to the location. I make sure (most of the time) to do a 2-3 day scout visit to each location before the actual shooting occurs. This gives me a better idea of what to expect when I shoot it for real. I look at the lighting, the atmosphere, and all of the elements of motion, because I want my shots to be as dynamic as possible.

What was your big break?

For me, my big break was the title sequence of Netflix’s House of Cards. I had lunch with David Fincher to discuss a new project and it turned out to the the intro to his new show. Completing that sequence was a fun and grueling 6 months of shooting but the end result is something that 100’s of millions of people have viewed – which is quite humbling.

I’ve had some other big name clients before this, like the NFL and Apple, but shooting the intro to House of Cards pushed things over the top. It’s fun being known as the guy who shot the intro to a now iconic (and infamous ) show but I want to continue pushing boundaries and exploring new techniques to keep things fresh.

How do you control the camera trigger when you’re shooting?

My personal preference is a manual, external intervalometer because it provides the fastest method for setup and shooting. Internal intervalometers are great, but they can be limited and awkward to use – especially if you have to adjust the interval or number of shots. I use the JJC micro-USB – it’s cheap, and it’s reliable.

Can you give us 3 top tips for photographers planning on getting into timelapse shooting?

Turn off anything automatic on your camera (Auto WB, ISO, Aperture, Shutter… even stabilization – turn it off!)
If you’re not using a manual aperture lens, make sure to “lens twist” or detach your lens from the body, just enough so the connectors that send data aren’t touching. This will ensure that the aperture blades don’t change position from exposure to exposure and it will reduce the amount of flicker in your footage substantially.
Always shoot Raw!

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Pursuit: A spectacular storm-chasing time-lapse made from 90,000 photos

27 Jul

Storm chaser and award-winning photographer Mike Oblinski has done it again: he’s created a time-lapse that will blow you away. Captured over the course of three months, across 10 states, and involving 28,000 miles of driving and over 90,000 time-lapse frames, Pursuit is the result of utter determination.

Oblinski tells the story behind this time-lapse in the video’s description, explaining how this season of storm chasing nearly broke him.

After 12 straight days on the road and away from his family, he left once again, just 24 hours after getting home, to chase another storm on June 12th. But doubt got the better of him, and he found himself 80 miles away from the spot he needed to get to.

“I got back in the car and as I drove, the pain got the better of me and the tears came,” he writes. “It may not be easy to understand why, but when you work as hard as I did this spring, a moment like that can break you. I felt like I let my wife down. But mostly I let myself down. I forgot who I was and that’s not me. Or it shouldn’t have been me. I failed myself. And it seemed like the easy choice to just give up and head for home.”

But he didn’t head for home, he decided to keep going, got out ahead of the storm, and captured one of the best structures he’d seen all spring.

The result of that decision not to give up, to keep on going even when it seemed like he had utterly failed, is one of Oblinski’s best time-lapse films yet… and that’s saying something if you know his previous work.

To see more from Oblinski’s portfolio, head over to his website or give him a follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Time-lapse captures thousands of fireworks going off over LA on July 4th

10 Jul

Photographer and creative director Dylan Schwartz may have shot the viral fireworks time-lapse of the year this July 4th. Over the course of three hours, Schwartz captured thousands of fireworks going off above LA from his vantage point at Mount Wilson Observatory.

Schwartz shared the story behind the timelapse with Time, telling the magazine, “Everything is spread out in L.A. To really see what L.A. does for the Fourth of July, you have to see the whole thing.” Even with this wide shot captured from 5,700+ feet above LA, Schwartz still says he only captured “a slice.”

According to Time, the final time-lapse is a composite of nearly 250GB of stills and video shot with 4 different cameras. Schwartz used a Sony a9 (he’s a Sony ambassador) with a 70-200mm lens to capture both video and stills of the widest perspective, another camera for video exclusively, and two more were shooting stills of various key locations.

Six hours of editing later, the time-lapse above was ready for posting on social media, where it immediately took off. Here’s an even closer crop posted to Schwartz’ Instagram account. Enjoy.

A post shared by Dylan Schwartz (@dylan.schwartz) on Jul 5, 2017 at 9:07pm PDT

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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