My First Time Lapse

[njgtr82]

Tried my first time lapse tonight at work. This was about 1 hour and 45 minutes at 3 second intervals. What do you guys think? I will try again tomorrow night but will zoom in a little closer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMh7KU7HWVc

Bill

[jerslice]

Nice!

[lijk604]

Pretty cool Bill. Would be interesting to see the same with just a touch more light in the sky, say, Golden Hour?

[gonzalu]

Bill, you have the best seats in the house :-) I am very jealous ... looks great but I think 3 sec intervals, the end result should be even more compressed otherwise it looks too jumpy.

--Set everything to MANUAL. Lock in the exposure, Manual focus, ISO etc. all of it manual
--Intervals of one second. 3 seconds is a bit too much unless you are going to speed up the movie considerably in the end.
--For night ops, a slight motion blur will help tremendously with smoothness... if not, you need much closer intervals even to make it looks smooth.
--Your platform MUST BE COMPLETELY LOCKED DOWN ROCK SOLID... this is so important. It will help with any jumping or jerkiness.

Here is one of my first test lapses... did a few in Seattle from my hotel room trying to learn night/day transitions (with horrible results) :tongue: so I will likely not post those lol...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifiy5OHmH-4

[njgtr82]

Thanks guys! Manny thanks for the tips. I can see how 1 second would make it more smoother. One thing I can't control is if the wind makes the tower sway at all. So I'll have to try it on a night when the wind isn't gusting at all. What software do you use? I used the basic windows movie maker.

[mattdueck]

First, I think I am going to try this out with my camera. Second, how do you get your camera to take a shot every second? I dont think my D5000 can do this unless there is a setting I can change? Thanks for the response.

Matt

[gonzalu]

The tower sway could be a real problem for you as the pendulum swing curve could be over 1 minute peak t peak... that is a huge sucker :P But, I am counting on it being a solid concrete core so it should sway less than a purely steel core. Do you know if EWR is concrete or steel wrapped in fake panels?

So, I have been using Adobe Premiere Pro for all my video editing but, recently I have been trying Windows Movie Maker and it works great... There are a few tools out there to join the frames. What you want is a way to control how much time to spend on a frame... :-) 1 sec per frame or .5 sec per frame etc. The sample above was done at .05 sec per frame.

I am now playing with a tool in Lightroom that will adjust exposure settings per frame to reduce flicker ... it is a bear in terms of learning curve (for me at least :P)

If you learn anything, do share! lol

[gonzalu]

First, I think I am going to try this out with my camera. Second, how do you get your camera to take a shot every second? I dont think my D5000 can do this unless there is a setting I can change? Thanks for the response.

Matt

Intervalometer is built into D5000. Here is a nice tut on your camera...

http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/2009/05/shooting-time-lapse-with-the-nikon-d5000/

[njgtr82]

Tried again today at 1 second intervals but day time shots, feedback is appreciated!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE-ghl4yfMM&feature=youtu.be

[lijk604]

Bill, I'm getting video is private. Did you maybe post the wrong video? ;)

[njgtr82]

Whoops! Sorry John, I listed it as private by accident. Here ya go:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE-ghl4yfMM

[Joe]

Bill and Manny, nice job with the videos. I have never tried time lapse and enjoy watching them. On Bill's second video, I especially enjoyed watching the planes line up and then taking off, while there is so much movement in the video, it just seemed fascinating since they go by so quickly.

Bill, for your six minute video, how many hours worth of shots do you have invested? You have such an incredible view, I could spend all day watching the planes.

[megatop412]

Bill your 2nd video has much less movement to it(like none). Did you tripod the exact same way between the day and night vids?

Maybe there was some focus breathing going on in the night video? Loved them both by the way

[gonzalu]

Wow Bill, that second one is superb!! I love it... that came out terrific...