Lessons
Lesson Info
Timelapse
time lapse is a huge animal in and of itself. And I included it into production and creative production ideas in production tools. Because one I didn't have any other place to fit it. Um, and to I couldn't do a 90 minute segment on it because it would take ah, 190 minutes even more. Okay, so time lapse is a great way off getting a visual effect. I love it. If you watch the breaking bad or you watch house of cards breaking bad uses it as transitional house of cards uses it as introductory. Okay, time lapse is really, really cool. And it's fun to shoot. And really, you're just taking pictures, aren't you? You're just really just taking pictures. So here's an example of time lapse. Wow. Okay, Okay. So when I watch it again without sound, we're gonna talk through it because I know the first question people are asking is Victor. It's moving. Did you have some motorized system? Did you have a motorized system? And I know I did it. I can't set the camera up in one position. I shot my time lap...
se, and all the motion shot was in post Let's think about this really quickly, guys. Let's think about this really quickly. What frame size are we shooting on? A five D mark? Three reshooting full frame 35 millimeter. Which means the longest pixel dimension is 4000 pixels. What's the frame of the video? We're playing back 1920 by 10 80. So we're literally almost twice the size in terms of image space. Then we are playing back. So if I have a full rest photo at 4000 pixels at print rest, which is 300 p, I do you think I can actually just move it and have it kind of feel like it's actually moving? Absolutely. Okay, I'm gonna let that marinate really quickly. I want to make sure you guys got that because we are all being pushed to thinking about time lapse in a way that requires tons of equipment. And it doesn't require tons of equipment, especially at the start, especially at the start. Eventually, you're gonna wanna pan and tilt and do all that fancy shmancy stuff, but when you start, you could do a lot by capturing and by doing it in post and when you do it in post you use after effects after effects allows you to do all that motion and make use of the size of that file. Victor Free Air photo wants to know if you could do that same thing with the crop frame. DSLR. Absolutely, absolutely. The question is, can I do with crop frame? Yep, because the pixel dimensions air still larger, significantly larger than, uh than what we're playing back on screen. So we're gonna do a little bit of education right now. Okay, what is print Ray's print raises? 300 d. P. I. Okay, retina retina display is 90 60 p I. So if I take something that's 300 p, I and I put it on a retina display, which is 96 d p. I. What happens? That image boom gets really big, and I and if it's a picture of a person to get their nose, you gotta understand why is because in terms of display, it doesn't matter about the d. P. I matters about the dimensions of that overall picture. In the dimensions of the image coming off a five d mark three or a PSC is significantly larger than that of their frame that we're playing back on, which is 1920 by 10. 80. Okay, let it soak in. If you're still confused about it later, I'd be happy to come back and answer. Answer more questions. Okay, so let's talk about time lapse. Shoot manually. That means Manu exposure manual focus manual, white balance. You got to shoot manually. Here's why. Some interval. Ah, Mater's, which is what actually fires a camera at intervals over a course of time won't fire if it doesn't get focus. So if your cameras on auto focus, it will hunt and potentially miss a frame and then hunt. And then you could sit there for three hours, and it could potentially never take a frame. Okay. Second, you want manual exposure because as exposure conditions change, you don't want flickering. Okay, So if I'm gonna capture a sunset or a sunrise, I've got a sudden exposure and make it work. Okay? The next thing, um, you've got to shoot a manual custom white balance, and you gotta fix that white balance because as I think about the time of day, if it goes from dusk tonight, it will get warmer and color temperature will it? If you're an auto white balance, your camera will always try to adjust that auto white balance as the temperature of colors get changed and you're gonna end up trying toe fix that in post, it's just not gonna look right. Okay. A couple other things you want to pay attention to, um, is grab a book. You know, you're gonna book in a comfortable chair because you're gonna be waiting. You're sitting there for a long time. Those shots that I took, I was in London. I had a little mini tripod up and just kind of walked around London all day and shot time lapses. Each time lapse was about 30 minutes to an hour, and it only gave me 10 seconds of footage. Six seconds of footage, you know. So you're gonna shoot a lot now? One little side thing that I like. I like to say that everyone is. I get question. Do I shoot Robert J. Peg? Um, if you shoot raw, it's a lot of work, and it's huge files. It's a lot of files, and it's a lot of memory. So and it requires a huge computer to process all of it. So when the project matters, shoot rock. When the project, it doesn't matter and you're just doing your tests and you're trying to get a handle on how to make things work. Shoot jpeg. Okay, let me say it one more time. I don't wanna get skewered for this later. When the project matters, shoot rock. Okay, When the project matters, shoot raw. When you're doing your tests and you're doing your learning and you're experimenting, shoot jpeg because the JPEG will allow you just to get to the process of creating time lapses. Ah, lot more easily. Okay, Now there is something about this that I wanna kind of reiterate is time lapses require Ah, lot of photos. They require a ton of photos, some words up upwards of 607 sometimes even 1200 photos. So if I have a camera that I spent a lot of money on, and the one thing that I wanna be worried about is the shutter wearing out, I wanna make sure that I don't use my fancy new camera for that because you're gonna put a huge amount of shutter clicks on to it. So there are a ton of cameras out there that are used that are still great. That'll be great for time lapses. And they don't need to be new and they can be used. And you can find, like, a rebel or an old one D mark, too. And you can find an old five D and it still will work because all you need are the still frames. And what you can do is use an older camera, beat the heck out of that shutter and still have your other camera ready to go, not have to damage that camera. When when you get to the point of putting 200,000 clicks on to it. And it's funny, think about it. If one time lapse takes 1000 photos or even 10,000 photos, how many time lapses can you shoot before that shutter dies? Okay, so, um, I really encourage you when you shoot time lapse is to do more than one. And when it comes to the tools that you need, we'll talk about that in a second. Okay, um, I like to use a app. So I'm a big fan of Kickstarter, and I saw was on Kickstarter and I saw this app by vivo labs called Micron. Okay. And Micron sent me. This little thing goes on top, my camera plugs into my camera. And then there's another cable that comes out that allows me to interface with my IPhone. So what that does is I load up the app I click New time lapse Aiken set the duration and do all that stuff. You know, how many frames per second I want? How many frames total that I want? I can set all of that or it has, like, auto settings where I can pick like, Hey, I want to shoot stars and stars over or for four hours is going to shoot an interval of 40 seconds. Okay. And so what it does is it helps kind of like, get your brain out of, like, the math aspect of it, because before I used to have to sit there with a time lapse calculator and figure out my frame rain how many frames per second and do all that. And the cool thing here is with that app, I can plug it into my I can plug it in the unit, plug in my my my phone said it. Unplug my phone and walk away. I don't need the phone plugged in for the entire time. Labs. What's the app called again? Uh, it's called Micron. It's right there. Micron by Vivo Labs. Okay, you gotta get the unit for it. But I think they sell them now, too. Okay, now, when we come to time, lobsters and equipment, obviously a diesel with lens, large memory cards. When you set your time lapse and you lock it in place, you don't want to move the camera. Touch it. So that means you gotta get this big card. And you got to shoot that one card and never touch it. Okay? Make sure your batteries full as well. Okay. Extra batteries. An interval, ometer, which is that micron thing? Um, Cannon makes an interval. Ometer. There are a bunch of manufacturers that make interval. Ah, mater's. They're usually about a couple 100 bucks apiece. Um, I used one before I got the micron. I just like the micron so much. It's great. Ah, good. Sturdy tripod doesn't have to be a video. Tripod doesn't have to be a a expensive tripod. Just make sure it's a good, sturdy tripod and then get a sandbag for it. Okay? Especially if you're gonna be in a place where people are walking because obviously, you can't stop you from walking around your camera. But you can definitely help mitigate and dampen some of the vibrations as people are walking to help keep that frame steady.
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