Time lapse photography is a technique of recording images of a scene/subject that changes or develops at a rate so slow that it may barely be perceived in real time, normally from a fixed position, and playing back those images at a much faster rate. As such the technique can be used to effectively show an activity or event that might occur over hours, days or even years in only a few seconds of playback.
In addition to real factors like equipment budget and access to a physical location, the potential outcomes of a time lapse video are only really limited by creative intent. Furthermore with technology advancing at a relentless pace, options to novice and seasoned time lapse photographers alike are constantly increasing.
This then is not by any means an exhaustive guide involving every possible intricacy of producing time lapse videos, but it’s definitely not a bad place to start.
1. The Basics of Time Lapse
As humans our brains can make sense of moving pictures with a frame rate as low as sixteen frames per second (fps) and up to about forty frames per second before we can psychologically start to ‘reject’ footage for being ‘too real’. In the 1920’s a standard was set for film where moving images would be captured (and projected in the movie theatres) at 24 frames per second. This was a balance of cost, practicality and showing a moving image that people comfortably accepted.
In part this ‘conditioning’ of us by cinema (and later, TV) means we typically perceive real time video played back between 24 and 30 frames per second as natural looking. Here in the UK our television shows are played at 25fps which is really handy for making easy calculations for time lapse, (we’ll come to that in a bit).
Without delving too far into it the details, historically the use of time lapse photography has led to greater scientific understanding, documented changing landscapes (both naturally occurring and manufactured) and more recently found use as a creative film making tool utilising the aesthetic quality inherent in the technique. In all cases the common factor leading to a successful time lapse is that the subject or event captured happens over a relatively long period of time.
You probably have a few ideas already for what you want to capture in time lapse. Below are a few suggestions that are ideally suited:
- Sunrise/sunsets
- Clouds moving (their movement really helps communicate the passage of time)
- Celestial motion (e.g. stars, moon, meteor showers)
- Plants growing
- Flowers opening
- Building construction/demolition
- Ice melting
- People moving around
For ease, let’s go back to our frame rate of 25fps. That means for every second of film we see, 25 images are played, one after the other. Four seconds of video would be a total of 100 frames played and a minute of footage would be made up of 1500 frames.
A great place to start is researching how long your ‘event’ takes. Are you time lapsing an ice block that will melt in an hour, a flower that will take a day to bloom or a building being demolished over a year? Once you have the amount of time your camera will be used for in mind, you should next consider the interval at which to take your still images.
A useful tip is to think about how long you might want your final video to be. Say you knew you were going to time lapse a city street for 20 minutes to capture an essence of the hustle and bustle there. Now let’s say you wanted to show that time lapse in 8 seconds of screen time. (Now come your calculations…) First we’ll convert 20 minutes into seconds, that’s 1200s. To achieve our 8 seconds of screen time at a frame rate of 25 frames per second you need a total of 200 frames (or images/stills/photographs if you prefer). Then it’s just a case of dividing your 1200 seconds with 200 equal intervals (1200 / 200 = 6). Still here? Cool.
In the above example taking a shot every 6 seconds for 20 minutes would make 8 seconds of video when played back at 25 frames per second. By considering how long your ‘event’ is and how long you want to show it on screen for gives you a great place to start. As with other parts of your time lapse film the interval is subjective and you can play around with how often you capture your images. Just remember a shorter interval will give a ‘smoother’ video output and a longer interval will result in a more ‘blocky’ or ‘jumpy’ output.
If you’d prefer to have the calculations done for you, visit www.photopills.com/calculators/timelapse where you will find a rather handy calculator that allows you to calculate file sizes in addition to shooting intervals so that you can check that you have enough storage on your memory card for the time lapse.
A screenshot of PhotoPills ‘Time Lapse Calculator’
It is also worth noting that sometimes you will arrive at an interval that you cannot achieve with your equipment practically. Use your discretion here to achieve the best result (e.g. a suggested interval of 14.4 seconds could be rounded up to a more easily programmable 15 second interval). Rather neatly this brings us onto the gear you might use to capture your time lapse.
2. Selecting Your Equipment
The kit you use to shoot your time lapse will invariably come down to budget and practicality factors trading off against image quality and desired application. In most basic cases, you’ll need a camera, a way to support & stabilise that camera and a way to get it to take your required sequence of frames. The example we’ll use below is the standard approach we take when going out to film our ‘on-the-ground’ shoots that require time lapse footage, but it’s worth having a quick look at some alternative methods of capturing time lapse.
• Smart phones – Advances in technology have allowed cameras to become physically smaller and have higher image quality. Just as higher quality image capture and easy sharing has supported platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and given rise to others like Instagram and Pinterest, it has also brought the capability of capturing and sharing time lapse with relative ease, all from a single, portable device. Your phone may even already be equipped with software to help you take time lapses, but Instagram’s ‘Hyperlapse’ is just one app worth trying out to turn your phone into a time lapse camera on the go.
Instagram’s ‘Hyperlapse’ app makes for a convenient time lapse tool on your smartphone
• ‘Point and shoot’ cameras – Much cheaper than our choice of time lapse camera (DSLRs, below) but with significantly fewer features, compact cameras can still offer excellent image quality and therefore shouldn’t be discounted as a means to shoot time lapse. As with any other set up you will need a tripod or similar way to fix your camera to a point from which to shoot. Like smart phones some compact cameras now come to the market with in-built time lapse options so if you’re using a point and shoot have a look. It might be worth checking for firmware updates for your camera that will allow you to set up intervals for time lapse. Many robust action cameras such as the GoPro range offer time lapse settings right out of the box.
Selecting time lapse settings in the GoPro Hero4’s shooting mode menu
• DSLR cameras – While relatively expensive compared to some other options, digital SLR cameras give the photographer near uncompromised creative control over capturing stills and, by extension, time lapse. In addition to planning where you will take your time lapse and how long for (in step 1.), using a DSLR* gives you more choices and creative opportunities with lens selection; aperture, shutter and ‘film speed’ decisions, not to mention generally they have good battery life, or can happily run from a more permanent power source for long term time lapse projects.
*All of our examples feature digital cameras simply for cost and practicality reasons. You could of course shoot time lapse on a film camera but it would work out very expensive in comparison and processing/editing the film/video would take so very much longer.
At Inside Out Time Lapse Productions each of our ‘on-the-ground’ filming kits is supported by four Canon 1200D or 1300D DSLRs ready to set up with either a wide-angle or tele lens according to the subject matter to be time lapsed.
An example of our typical time lapse set-up: Entry level DSLR plus battery grip, battery cells, SD card, intervalometer and lens
You could of course use much higher end cameras (we’re talking examples like the Canon EOS 5D, 6D and 7D series’, Nikon D810 and D750 cameras, Pentax’s K-1 etc.) and if you have the budget and reason to (for a particular feature, say) then go for it. But we find that entry level DSLRs offer a great compromise between cost, function and quality.
Many, in fact most manufacturers will have firmware updates or plug-ins that will allow you to install time lapse settings software onto your camera, or you could even trigger your photograph intervals from a laptop application plugged in to your DSLR at your location. Often we set up our cameras in unique, unusual and/or hard to reach places meaning once the time lapse has begun our cameras are not easily accessible. As such we favor the use of intervalometers (often called ‘remote shutters’). These relatively inexpensive cabled or sometimes wireless control units allow you to set intervals between taking shots as well as other features like delaying the first shot or stopping after a certain frame number. They also have the added benefit of being more easily reached should you need to adjust a setting without disturbing the camera.
The beauty of time lapse is in capturing and watching something move/change/develop/grow over a long period of time and while more advanced techniques can successfully combine camera movement with time lapse capture, it is best to start with having your camera in a fixed position. Options include tripods, small ‘table top’ tripods, or for fixing your camera to things like poles or bars solutions like Joby’s Gorilla Pods or Manfrotto’s Magic Arm with a K-clamp are ideal.
3. Setting Up Your Time Lapse
We’ve already covered most of what you need to consider in preparation for the time lapse capture: you have your event and equipment planned. All that’s left to do before treating the footage is to go out and actually capture it. If you haven’t already checked, you should make sure that you and your equipment are in a safe place and that no harm is likely to come to you, it, or others nearby. Your time lapse set up could be in position for quite some time so considering how secure it is, especially if you are leaving it unattended, is also worthwhile. Weigh tripods down or add cable-ties to grips if necessary to aid stability.
Two of our time lapse cameras; one held with a ‘Gorilla Pod’ by Joby, and the other on a tripod, tied to the handrail to prevent it falling in wind
You need to make sure that you have enough battery power and storage for all the images your camera is going to take. It is worth doing a test to see how long your battery will last. Bear in mind that different intervals and ambient temperatures will all have an effect on battery life; if you shoot one photo every thirty seconds you will find that the battery lasts longer than if at every second, say. And if your time lapse camera is out in the cold it is likely that the battery will last far less than the test you might have done in your nice warm studio or living room.
For regular stills photography we’d normally recommend you shoot with your image quality set to RAW, allowing you to retain maximum image quality and therefore the best option for editing your images. For time lapse photography however we recommend you set your camera’s image quality to a .JPEG (often also written as .jpg). Normally our on-the-ground camera team set our cameras to JPEG quality: ‘S-standard’. Although limiting what you can do with individual images in terms of post-processing, shooting your time lapse in JPEG means you won’t be running out of memory card space nearly as quickly as in RAW, plus the computer you use for editing all the time lapse photos will thank you too! In any case, fire off a few shots and check to see what your image file-sizes are like. From there it’s only a simple calculation to work out how many images you can fit on your memory card/camera storage before you’re out of space.
Setting the image quality in the Canon 1300D’s settings menu settings
Even after these tests, take spare memory cards and batteries if you’re worried you might miss your time lapse event due to running out of power or storage space.
Once you’re at your location, take a few test shots and review them to make sure the framing is right. Now is also your opportunity double check all of your camera (and lens) settings are right. Here are some basics that are easy to forget if your camera is normally set up in a certain way:
• Where possible your lens/camera should be switched to manual focus mode, that way in your time lapse video the focus won’t seem to ‘jump’ around, as the camera tries to focus itself every single photo.
Where possible, switch your lens to ‘manual’ focus, this will stop the focus from ‘jumping’ in your time lapse video
• Turn off any automatic ‘image review’ mode on your camera. Leaving it on will lead to unnecessary battery usage and possibly lead to ‘skipping’ shots if you have a short interval.
Disabling ‘image review’ will give better battery life while shooting time lapse
• Double check the date and time is correct on your camera. We strongly advise against visible timestamps on your actual images, it’s somewhat ugly and unprofessional, but having accurate capture time data attached to each shoot means being able to accurately check when you took a batch of time lapse photos and can save time when editing and file-keeping.
• Reset your image counter to ‘zero’. Again, this is just a preference thing but we’ve found it makes it easier to import, edit and export a folder of images when they are all in a numbered/named sequence; it can get quite frustrating when a camera has ticked over past ‘image number 9999’ and gone back to ‘0001’ with images then being read out of order, or placed in a new folder altogether!
Resetting your camera image counter to ‘zero’ can help save time later, in the editing process
• Another thing to check and change according to preference is any beep and/or light settings. Leaving them on can be distracting. It’s also wise to turn off your LCD display too once you’re set up if you’re worried about battery life.
If you’re shooting your time lapse with a DSLR we’ll assume you understand how to set up your camera to expose correctly in manual mode, or are at least getting to grips with it if you’re a novice photographer. Whatever mode you set your camera to will be based on a number of things like available light and creative intent. Going back to our earlier example of time lapsing a city street; you may prefer to have the people walking and vehicles driving to appear sharp in every frame, or you may prefer them to be blurred slightly (or a lot) to emphasise their motion.
Setting shutter speed, aperture and ISO (light sensitivity; equivalent to film speed in photographic film) through manual mode gives you the maximum creative control but if the setup is left running too long without adjustments there is a risk of over/under exposing the images as light levels increase/decrease. Even so, this is often the best choice for relatively short time lapses. Shutter priority mode (Tv) will make sure the amount of time the shutter stays open for is the same every single frame. If the light level changes enough between shots this might lead to the aperture automatically stepping up or down in order to preserve the set shutter speed, the effect of which will be a video that seems to ‘jump’ focus and flickers. Similarly setting an F-stop (aperture) value will give you control over depth of field but is subject to automatic changes in shutter speed. For example If the light level drops when shooting in Av mode the shutter will need to stay open for longer to compensate for the fixed aperture. The possible effect of which is a time lapse film where sometimes the motion is crisp & sharp then sometimes it is soft & blurred, as well as also ‘flickering’.
If you’ve come this far, set that intervalometer firing and wait!
One of our intervalometers
4. Post-Processing and Editing.
All going to plan, you’ve now got a sequence of hundreds, if not thousands of images. Much of the hard work is done and soon we will find out how all that planning and time is going to look. How exciting.
Whatever the use for your time lapse video is we’re sure you’ll want it to look good played back in sequence. There are many, many effects that you can apply to the footage once it is ‘stitched’ together as a video file (which we will touch on very soon) but first we’ll talk about making those tiny tweaks to the stills before we handle them as a video.
The first thing to address is any brightness, colour balance, cropping and rotation issues. Try as you might to get things looking right in-camera, when you import your sequence of images into your computer you may find that the horizon isn’t quite level or the white balance is casting an undesired hue across your images, for example.
We favor Adobe Lightroom for this stage of post processing. Lightroom boasts intuitive, easy to use controls with a really easy sync function to apply the same changes to a whole batch of images. It also even reads the metadata from your images meaning you can easily (re)order the them (sometimes a life-saver if you forgot to reset your photo counter) and quickly get rid of any known issues from the lens you used such as warping and vignetting at the edges of the frame. Once you are happy with your edited batch there are a good number of export options including file and folder naming, and filetype and quality options; We still save the images as JPEGs at this stage.
An example of Adobe Lightroom’s image editing interface
An example of Lightroom’s image adjustment window with the image sync button in the bottom-left corner
Alternatively you can ‘batch’ edit your images as taken by your camera in Adobe Photoshop. This method requires a bit more work and time to process, but is still much better than editing each still individually, a thankless task. This method requires creating a Photoshop “Action”. Effectively, creating and naming a new “Action” lets you ‘record’ the editing process you apply to the first image from your time lapse folder. Then you ‘stop’ the recording and apply the same sequence of changes to the rest of the images using the “Automate” function. Here you select the action you’ve just recorded and select the folder of images you want to apply it to. Then you wait. For quite a while.
At this stage you now have a bunch of stills ready and waiting to be transformed into your time lapse video. At Inside Out Time Lapse Productions we’ve got our nerds to write a script that actually organises and compresses all of our stills into a video file but there are plenty of other ways you can convert your images.
• Apple Quicktime Pro 7 – although traditionally a Mac application it is available on Windows too and makes light work of turning a sequence of images into a movie file. It’s as easy as opening a new “Image Sequence” and selecting the first file in your stills folder.
• Freeware options are plentiful – Time Lapse Assembler for Mac and Chronolapse for Windows are both popular paths in to creating those first time lapse videos.
• LRTimelapse for Mac and Windows is yet another package dedicated to creating good looking time lapse videos and offers quite a few useful editing tools to help polish the finished product.
As we work on Mac much of our work is composited and finished in Final Cut Pro X (In addition to Adobe’s After Effects and Premier). Although the workflow has changed from earlier versions of the program it makes for a fairly quick process to achieve good results with your now stitched time lapse video. Colour corrections, speed adjustments and so much more editorial decisions are made possible. One plugin we recommend is Digital Anarchy’s “Flicker Free”. It has customisable presets for time lapse and slow motion footage amongst others to help reduce and even eliminate flicker from your footage.
Once installed, Digital Anarchy’s ‘Flicker Free’ (available for several editing platforms) allows you to treat footage with a number of customisable presets. Here is how it appears in the inspector window for Final Cut ProX
And that’s it! Once you are happy with they way your time lapse looks, hit that export button and save that video file! Depending on what software you used to produce your time lapse video you may be presented with a number of file-type options including options optimised for playing/sharing videos on i-Tunes, Vimeo, YouTube, mobile devices and for website embedding, to name a few.
[Final Cut Pro has many preset options for easily exporting your video]
Thanks for reading and happy shooting!
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