Time Lapse
I have spent the last two days on a different kind of job. The client has had a crew working around the country on an advert. They also want to include some time lapse video clips into this. And this is where I came in.
A time lapse is simply put a video created out of a series of images. The use of a tripod is critical otherwise the clip would flicker. As with any image step one is creating the composition. Once you have this nailed down you need to decide on the shutter speed and aperture combination. In this process shutter speed is more important than aperture. You want to have a slow enough shutter speed to create blurring; any sharp object that should be moving looks out of place.
In the attached clip I used a ND filter to hold back two f-stops of light so that I could get a shutter speed of 1second. A variable ND filter would have been very useful yesterday; these are becoming readily available in local camera shops. I set up the tripod close to the ground, set the shutter speed to 1s at an aperture of f8. The ISO was left at 100 as I did not want to increase the sensitivity. The camera is left on Manual Mode, Daylight White Balance, and as important Manual Focus. You do not want the camera to change anything during the series of images!
The cable release I used to control the sequence of images allowed me to set the spacing between each image - this was set at 3 seconds. After 9 minutes I had 144 images of the same scene with people moving through it. The hard structure stays still and everything else moves. The images were imported into Adobe Lightroom. The first image in the sequence was edited with subtle changes being made to the white balance, exposure, contrast, sharpness and luminance. It was also cropped. By selecting all 144 images I was able to apply all of these edits with one command - including the cropping!
The images were then exported to a video clip straight from Lightroom. Ironically editing and cropping 144 images took less time than capturing them did.
The proof as they say is in the pudding, watch the attached video clip to see how the scene ended up.
It was a fantastic exercise where I learnt as I worked - that is always good. And watching the clip for the first time reminded me of working in the darkroom - the excitement of seeing the results when you didn't know exactly what to expect. This is such a great career!
