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Lesson Info
10. Motion Timelapse
Lessons
M0 - Introduction
1An Introduction from Alex
01:25 2Coffee Q&A with Alex
09:26 3Introduction to the Workshop
01:51M1 - Timelapse Basics
4What is Timelapse
04:48 5Camera Gear
06:05 6Timelapse Gear
06:49Support Gear
03:14 8Field Essentials
03:46 9Key Takeaways
01:01M2 - Shooting
10Motion Timelapse
11:11 11In the Field: Manual Exposure Ramping
06:31 12In the Field: Shooting Waterfalls with Motion
07:55 13Astro-Timelapse
08:47 14In the Field: Shooting Moonrise
09:07 15How To Do A Lens Twist
03:17 16Day-to-Night Timelapse
06:42 17Day-to-Night at Tunnel View
05:01M3 - Editing
18Import Structure
10:37 19Basic Timelapse Editing
21:40 20Advanced Timelapse Editing
19:58 21Outro to Editing
00:56M4 - Developing and Planning a Project
22Seeing Life In Timelapse
03:57 23Finding Purpose In Your Timelapse
01:43 24Mood Boards & Shot Lists
08:39 25Production Schedule
02:55M5 - Outro
26Q&A with Alex
20:14Lesson Info
Motion Timelapse
(dramatic music) All right, let's work on motion time lapse. So we've got one set up right here, in front of me, and we're gonna do a motion time lapse that uses all three axis of motion. We're gonna be sliding it, we're gonna be panning it, and we're gonna be tilting it. So the camera is currently set up over here on my right. And we have two tripods and a slider. And, the weight on this slider is distributed on the right side right now. But, as the camera shifts over to the left side, we need make sure that these, this whole system is very stable. So we're gonna push on different points of the tripod and on different parts of the slider, to make sure to make sure that everything is, nothing's rocking around, that could possibly tilt the camera, and ruin the frame of our shot. So we need to make sure that our whole system is very stable. And once we've got that all set up, and the place where we wanna shoot our motion time lapse, we're gonna turn everything on, so we're gonna turn t...
he genie on. We're gonna turn the two minis on. And, the screen will come on the genie. On the genie mini, you'll have these two green blinking lights to indicate that they're both on and they're waiting for a signal. And we've got the app here in front of us. And so I'm gonna plug in, this is a cable that will connect the genie to the genie mini. So I'm gonna plug into the plus sign on the genie mini, into the input out, or the output port on the genie. So right now the genie mini that's right here on top of the genie, those two are too communicating. Now, we're gonna take our shutter release cable. We're gonna plug that into the camera symbol, on the genie mini, that is the panning genie mini. And we're gonna take that camera shutter release cable, and plug it into the camera. So next, now that we've got all our systems on and ready to connect, we're gonna go in, and we're gonna connect to the genie mini for tilting and the genie mini for panning. And now you actually have seen, you'll see that the genie tracking just came up as I connected to the genie pan mini because those two are connected to each other. So the genie mini is gonna be communicating all the motion information to the genie. And so this whole system is now synchronized for time lapse. So let's go on to composing and exposing our shot. And setting up all the motion. There's a few things to go over here. So we're gonna open up a new time lapse, and, I've already got this one set up. We have some settings to go over first. We have our motion settings. So we have pan, and for pan, we're gonna do a 45 degree pan. Right now the camera is angled off to the left, and we're gonna have it pan clockwise towards you, and have the camera end up pointing directly at you. (spinning sounds) So I can move it left. (spinning sounds) I can move it right. And I can see how the movement will look, throughout the course of the time lapse. So I can do that with each axis. This one, is gonna come, right now the time lapse is pointing up and we're gonna tilt it down. So I've set up a 20 degree angle, (spinning sound) and we can just visualize that. Make sure that everything looks good, and the framing's good. After that, we're gonna move on to tracking the shot. So we're gonna track it for about two foot, seven inches. That's gonna go from here to here, and that's roughly two feet, seven inches. And we're just gonna make sure that it goes all the way to the end. And if we need to extend it further, or make it go shorter, we can do those adjustments, after previewing the movement. You can see that the camera has now reached the endpoint, indicated by the icon on the app. And you can see the icon moving over to the dark green icon, indicating that the light gray one, the light gray camera icon is where it is right now. And the dark green icon is where it's moving to. So that looks good. It's gonna move the whole length of the track, which is great. So now we've got all those settings previewed. We're gonna see how they work together. And this play button on the left, the bottom left, is gonna give us a preview of the whole shot. All right. So that looked pretty good. The motion didn't look too fast, and I think that that's what we're gonna want to use for this shot. Now, a good tip for previewing your shot, is when you do that whole preview of motion, you want to see what it actually looks through the camera's lens. So, if your camera has a video setting, switch to that video setting, and set up your composition or expose your scene, so that you can watch the time lapse as it would look when it's fully compiled into a time lapse. So, I would do that again and record video. (spinning sounds) If I were going to preview my shot and just assure myself that it looks good. Okay, now we're gonna go over the settings for our time lapse. So that means we're gonna go over event duration, the clip length, and the interval. And CERP uses a few different terms for these. We're gonna start with what they call play time. That would be the clip length. So that's just how long in your video, when the time lapse is compiled into a video. How long it will play for. So we wanna have our video play for 10 seconds, and, we want to record for an entire hour. So that means that when we multiply 10 seconds, times 24, that we're gonna get 240 photos. And, if we wanna record for one hour, we're gonna divide 3,600 by 240. Now, that's kind of a lot to think about if it's not such, if the numbers aren't that simple, there's another way of doing this. And it will really speed up the process for you. So I'm gonna leave the app, and I'm gonna go to this app called photo pills, and I've already got the same shot we're doing right now, already entered into the values in this app. This app gives you a lot of different tools for planning time lapses around many, just different aspects of planning. This particular tool within photo pills allows you to enter in all your values. So we've got the shooting interval set to 15 seconds. We're gonna go out of there. We're gonna go now into record time. So, the event duration is one hour. And we have a frame rate of 24 frames per second. So that tells us that we're gonna have a total clip length of 10 seconds. We're gonna have 240 photos. And because we've entered in the number, the space that each photo will take, it says that if each photo will be 30 megabytes then the total space that will be used on your memory card will be seven gigabytes, and 7.03 gigabytes. So, we have 128 gigabyte card in our camera. That's more than enough to capture that time lapse, and we're shooting 240 photos. So that means that, with one battery, we should easily capture that time lapse. If we're going closer to 600 or 700 photos for one time lapse, then we should think about getting a battery grip, to capture the whole time lapse. We don't want the time lapse to die, or fill up the memory card before it finishes. Okay, so now that we've gone over the time lapse motion and we're happy with that, and we've gone over the time lapse settings, and those are working for us, we're just gonna move on to camera settings. Now, this is variable depending on the situation, but we're gonna pretend like the shutter speed we're using for our camera right now, is gonna be 13 seconds. So that's gonna give us two seconds between when the shutter opens and closes, to, when it starts the next photo. So we're gonna start our time lapse, and just make sure that every time the camera triggers, that it doesn't miss a shot. If it does miss a shot, we would want to extend the interval to be, not 15, but maybe 16 seconds. So that way we can give the camera a little extra time to save each photo. One last thing that we're gonna do before we start our time lapse, is we're gonna go into advanced settings. And, I wanna direct your attention towards where it says movement type. So movement type has move, shoot, move, or continuous move. And because the camera needs to be stable in between each shot, we need to have move, shoot, move. And, along with that, we wanna look at move, shoot, delay. So, because the camera's moving first, we wanna make sure that the camera fully moves before it shoots. So, if it's really windy, we might want to increase this value, to allow the camera more time to settle. But 200 milliseconds should be more than enough. So the camera's gonna move, wait 200 milliseconds, and then shoot. And then, we're gonna leave. Hit record. You can see, on the top left corner how many seconds have passed. When it says 15, or 13, first exposure will finish. Two seconds will pass and we have another time lapse, or another image. When we get to 30 seconds, we should have the third photo starting. So now that we got the time lapse going, I just want to go over one thing that could interfere with your time lapse triggering, and that's live view, and also shoot a preview image. So every time your camera takes a picture, you have the option of having a preview popup of that image for two seconds or four seconds, or however much time you wanna choose for. And also live view. Those two things will delay the time it takes for the camera to trigger again. I've had bad experiences with using those. So I will turn off preview, image preview, and I'll turn off live preview. Those two, without those two, you'll have better luck getting your camera to trigger. (dramatic music)
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Ondrej Dvorak
I have seen tons of timelapses, but there is no other timelapse film that touches my soul as much as Project Yosemite 1 I never forget the moment when I saw Project Yosemite for the first time! That moment I knew that that’s what I wanna DO! Colin is the reason that I bought my first DSLR! Thank You Alex for getting together with my hero and make this awesome idea happen!
Bryce Lord
Clear and concise workshop to understand the process of Time-lapse photography Being new to this aspect of photography, I found this workshop informative and directional. If I were to give a critique, it would be regarding equipment choice for the entry level bridging to pro-level for the introductory student. Otherwise, it lays a nice foundation to build from.
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