Time lapse films with digital cameras.
There are a variety of creating time lapse films, that are all dependent on how you are capturing your source material. Usually your source is either still photo’s or video. For the later you are simply speeding up video you’ve captured at normal speed so that it plays faster, and it can have some nice added effects like original soundtrack (or speeded up sound), I’ve not really had much experience of this, as I’ve been using the other method, namely photographic stills.
For time lapse from photos you need some method to take these at regular intervals since consistency is essential to have smooth looking video at the end. I had a Canon A80 camera, which whilst not directly capable of capturing at set intervals, could be controlled externally to allow this. I did a test using a trial version of GBTimeLapse with the camera connected to a laptop.
It’s only a shot out of the window, so nothing exciting just a proof of concept. I’d chosen to store the images on the laptop, which meant that the shots were around every 13 seconds, I may have been better choosing to store them in the camera’s memory. Since I wanted something more portable, then I really needed to consider a new camera. From browsing around the web, it seemed than many cameras with built-in time lapse features either did it via a slow capture video or had limitations on the intervals.
Some camera’s, like various Nikon models, do it by slow motion video e.g. they are essentially capturing a video but at a lower frame rate so that it appears speeded up when viewed at normal speed. This, to me, has some disadvantages.
- sensor risk - you are capturing video the whole time, the camera is just choosing to only save certain frames, so your CCD sensor is at risk of damage if a bright object, such as the sun, is in frame for a period of time (especially if leaving it unattended so don’t realise it will be in shot).
- battery demand - you are continuously shooting video, so the battery will last a short while and so either sets of batteries of an external power source is needed.
- resolution - as most digicams only shoot video at 320×240 or if you’ve a new model 640×480, then this is your maximum size. Good enough for YouTube and the like, but means you can’t dabble into HD. As a side note I’ve found 640×480 fine for viewing on TV too but its only a concern for anyone wanting to create a HD video such as for a presentation on a large screen.
For the cameras that have built in interval options (taking photos at set intervals) there will still be limitations, so its a question of whether these will effect you or not
- Shot limit - some cameras boast a time lapse feature but for “2 - 99 shots”, which isn’t much especially if you want to convert it to PAL video (you effectively only get 4 seconds of end footage), so you will have to regularly keep restarting to get longer shoots
- Interval limit - the interval you set will be dependent on the subject you’re capturing. A building project lasting many months may just need a shot every day or every few hours during the day, where as time lapse of a car journey may need a shot every second. The interval you choose is both dependent on how long you want the finished video as well as how it looks. An 8 hour car journey shot every second will be almost 20 minutes long, which may be too long, though taking every 5 seconds brings this down to a 4 minute clip but speeds up the traffic a lot more. It can be a judgement call.
In the end I decided on a Ricoh camera, since these had unlimited number of shots and could shoot from 5 second intervals. I went for the Caplio R6 with a nice wide angle lens that I could use for my normal photography when on holiday. I’ll post the method I used to convert captured images to video in a few days
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