Timelapse is really fun. What I learned and hopefully it can help you:
- Get a feel for what you want to see in terms of movement, and how that translates into the number of pictures per X seconds. We and the majority of the world look at PAL footage (25 frames per second) - although internet broadcasting is kinda making that irrelavant - but I like 25fps. Knowing that you can start to get a feel for how many seconds you'll get, after how many minutes of shooting - or hours.
Some interesting stats:
- Shooting a timelapse of the stars (haven't tried it, need some gear that I'm making) requires about 30 to 40 seconds per exposure - no pauses. Lets take 30s. That means if I start shooting at 6PM and stop at 6AM, I will have shot 1440 pictures. At 25fps - I will have a video of 57 seconds.
My timelapse, apart from the first day, I shot one picture every 10 seconds. I moved my camera about every two hours - no that was the 3rd day, moving the camera every about 2 hours. That is 720 pictures - or 28 seconds.
My point is, apart from composition, start to think in terms of the video, what it is you'll see and how you'll see it, i.e. cloud movement, people movement, etc. Another tip I got from G1_ was to shoot at full res, that way you can "create" interesting angles by merely using a part of the picture cause for FHD footage, you only need 1920x1080 pixels. Thus move that frame around your picture, "cutting out" different views without moving the camera. Obviously these aren't as dramatic as actually moving the camera - but sometimes you need to. I had to cause that song is surprisingly long and I didn't have that much footage cause I didn't really plan to make a video out of it.
Oh and in terms of video editor (although I just need to check for timelapse since I'm on the Pro version) - maybe look at Lightworks. It is a professional video editor - but they have a free version. It works differently to other video editors, so be warned - as for me, I learned it in 30 minutes and find it a lot easier that others I have tried, including Adobe Primiere. Whichever tool you use, I think you might want to look into a bit beefier video editor - Windows Movie Maker just frustrates me, but you could try it.
I'm getting long winded again. Have an awesome week guys and gals!
Topic: Time Lapse Photography (Read 8123 times)
