I started the new year by hiring two new assistants. I met them last December at a Christmas market in ZΓΌrich, and we got along well since the very beginning. I need to tell you in advance that they are a couple of rather bizarre characters, very silent and a bit hairy as well. On the other hand they are very good at dealing with children. I was thinking of taking a picture with them so that I can introduce them to you. I'll do that in the next post though... This is "lesson no. 1" of the year 2012, fully dedicated to time lapse photography.
Do you know what that is?
... If the answer is "yes" don't waste any more time and watch this video.
... If the answer is "no, but I absolutely want to know everithing about it, in a detailed and technical way", than you'd better stop reading this post (unless you want to get a bad stomach ache) and check this link.
... If you don't know much about it but you are looking forward to reading a general overview, than you are in the right place with the right photographer. Well, maybe...
I cannot promise you that at the end of this post you will be able to master all the tima lapse techniques but at least you will have got a general idea of what it is (actually, as I know myself too well, you might even end up being more confused about it than you are now).
Time lapse photography. If we want to explain it in a few words we can say that it's a sequence of photos taken at regular intervals and finally played back in a video.
Roughly the step-by-step procedure can be summarized as follows:
- Take your reflex camera and place it on a tripod.
- Choose an interesting subject that changes in time (for example a place where people walk, a road with some traffic, the sky with moving clouds ar anithin else that you might fancy...)
- Take photos at regular interval (one every five second, every minutes or any other interval that might suit your subject and your goal) for a lenght of time of your choice.
In order to do that you don't really need to squat next to your camera pressing the button every n seconds (did you really believe that?) Actually, if you are lucky, the menu of your camera will include a function that allows you to have it automatically take photos at regular intervals. By itself. No need to use finger. In case you're unlucky (like myself) and despite all the money you had to invest your camera doesn't feature this automatism, a viable solution is to purchase an intervalometer (it's some kind of remote control): this device can be connected to your camera and will allow you to shoot time lapse sequences (stillno need to use your finger).
Once we have all the exposures that we deem necessary (not less than a hundred anyway) we will use them to obtain a film, by playing them back in fast sequence (you don't need a very expensive or complicated software to do that, I use iMovie, for instance).
- I raccomend adding a soundtrack because even if the photos are very beautiful the final result might end up being a bit boring.
There are a lot of amazing time lapse films online: searche the web and check some of them out. For example
this one, or
this other one, both of them great.
This is also an interesting project (basically the guy made a time lapse film of his own life, taking two pictures a day fot seventeen years. Congrats on his perseverance!)
Than I have one that i made myself. You are not spared some of my work this time too. I actually already wrote about it a few posts ago (
here, to be accurate). I did show you the pictures I took for the
Mek Community Catalog and- if you were paying attention- you might remember that I wrote about having made a time lapse movie with the kids. The movie was published last spring in the iPad version of the catalog. Who doesn't have an iPad hasn't been able to watch it anywhere.
Yesterday I retrieved the whole sequence of photos, I choose a soundtrack and here is the final result. I set an interval of one shot every 5 seconds for one hour. The kids pretended to be photographers working on still life shots, including post-production activities, etc. It was not easy to coordinate them invisibly for a whole hour. I have to admit that at the beginning I was worried, but at the end they turned out to be great (much better than I could possibly expect). Pietro's finel breakdance moves were just the icing on the cake. Here you are! If you want to watch it in a higher definition you can check
this link.
