Help with time lapse settings.

Rocket58

Rocket58

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Ron
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Hi All,

I am Driving from Manchester to Cornwall on tuesday and want to do a time lapse of the journey. What settings should I use. I was thinking a frame every 5 seconds, that would be 12 frames per minute which is about 1 second of video every two minutes.

Is this about right? or do I need to take them at shorter intervals?


I have a remote with a built in intervalometer. I can set the interval to anything from 1 second to 99 seconds. I just thought that 1 shot every 5 seconds played back at 24 frames per second should be about right.

Just looking for some guidance from someone who has done this before.

Don't want to drive all that way and find the timelapse does not work out.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers

Ron
 
Google shows an average trip from Manc to Cornwall (in general) as 5 hours 38 minutes.

At one shot every 5 seconds = a total of 4056 minutes.

Have you got the memory space for that or will you need to stop at services to backup/change cards?
 
I will be using a 1D MKIII with 64 gig of card inside. A 32gb SD and a 32gb CF. I did anticipte stopping to change the battery in the camera at sometime on the journey as a full battery ususlly lasts about 1200 shots.

Thanks for the reply.
 
Shame you can't get an in car charger for the camera, but if I remember rightly, chargers and batteries cost a small fortune already for that camera.

As you have the mem card sorted, I suppose the next issue is mounting it inside the car. I've had a couple of goes at doing it and always seem to get some vibration showing in the photos. The 1ds mk3 is a heavy camera from what I recall so this will be the next issue. Maybe a tripod mounted in the back looking over your shoulder. 1 leg either side of the drivers and passengers chair and the 3rd pushed backwards in to the middle of the back seat?

It'll be interesting to see, even if it is around 10 minutes of footage once sorted. I really need to figure out how to do it on the D700 as I know it has built in options :S
 
I shot a time lapse of new kit getting delivered and installed at work over a 12 hour period. I used 1 shot every 10 secs, using canon's EOS software with the camera linked to a laptop over USB. Shots were saved to the flashcard but also to the laptops hard drive.

As it's such a long journey I'd guess your battery will need replacing at service station stops.
 
It would be wise to play around before you go.

You also need to consider how long you want each exposure to be and if you are going to change this for motorways etc.

Having a really fast shutter speed can lead to a very 'blippy' movie (is that a word?), whereas a slower shutter speed creates a blurred look. Not good for stills but good for time lapse.

Also set the quality to the lowest possible as this will still be greater than HD video.

You may wish to check out the tutorials on Vimeo as there are some good ones relating to time lapse.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for the info. I am just downloading 1400 images taken on a journey today at 1 second intervals. I will try playback at various frame rates and see what gives a smoother playback.

I will let you know how I get on.

Thanks again for the input
 
Byker28i said:
I shot a time lapse of new kit getting delivered and installed at work over a 12 hour period. I used 1 shot every 10 secs, using canon's EOS software with the camera linked to a laptop over USB. Shots were saved to the flashcard but also to the laptops hard drive.

As it's such a long journey I'd guess your battery will need replacing at service station stops.
Click to expand...

This was my thoughts re mem card. least you'll have a back up...but then you'll have to consider battery of two items then..laptop AND camera

Harvey_nikon said:
Shame you can't get an in car charger for the camera, but if I remember rightly, chargers and batteries cost a small fortune already for that camera.

As you have the mem card sorted, I suppose the next issue is mounting it inside the car. I've had a couple of goes at doing it and always seem to get some vibration showing in the photos. The 1ds mk3 is a heavy camera from what I recall so this will be the next issue. Maybe a tripod mounted in the back looking over your shoulder. 1 leg either side of the drivers and passengers chair and the 3rd pushed backwards in to the middle of the back seat?

It'll be interesting to see, even if it is around 10 minutes of footage once sorted. I really need to figure out how to do it on the D700 as I know it has built in options :S
Click to expand...

I tried this method of tripod positioning and it was awkward to expose the shot right with only a three door car :D .. i mention this as i exposed wrongly, and simple got me driving and hardly anything out of the windscreen... i was thinking of doing a double shot, two cameras mounted back to back so the movie could interchange and be more interesting.

as for frame rate... depends if you want a straight conversion of the journey..or a london to brighton in 60 secs sort of clip...because if its the straight movie then why not just get a video camera, satrp it to a seat rest and away you go, film the journey? :shrug:

i took this http://SPAM/3p66w8l on a night journey, got the xposure wrong because of the fact it was at night, but i feel it made a great little first attempt. also lets hope you don't get stuck in traffic, once on the dual carriageways it looks like the car seems to do the jump to lightspeed...

but if using a tripod, have you thought about moving the camera to replace battery, or aren't you bothered that camera position will move through out the end movie?.

most of all..have fun..
 
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