time lapse help

Luke

Legend
Location
Milwaukee, WI USA
Name
Luke
Hey all, I'm thinking of doing a time lapse video of a day at the record store (or a few hours....we'll see). I understand how to set up the camera, go with manual focus, etc. I'm just not sure what a good time interval might be. Some of it will obviously be determined by the length of the finished video (Obviously, I'd like to keep it short so I don't bore the viewer to tears) and some will be determined by how long I shoot for (the amount of time I want to compress down). But in between there is some leeway. Do any of you with experience doing these know what interval works well for people movement (when they will largely be standing around).

Maybe I need to just sit down and do some math. I just figure if some of you have done some (with human) it might save me some time (and thinking.....oh how I hate thinking). I suppose I could err on the side of shooting too many and just throw away some frames. But I'm guessing there is a sweet spot interval.
 
I think people in the frame will look better moving with a ghostly blur. So I would suggest a 4 second interval with a shutter speed around 2 seconds.
That would be my choice.
 
Wow, I hadn't even thought of the possibilities of long-exposure time lapse. I think I need to get a power adapter and start experimenting.

WOW....after a bit of searching long-exposure and time lapse I ran across the WICKED video (It's more than just time lapse long exposure.....well worth a watch.....
 
Hey all, I'm thinking of doing a time lapse video of a day at the record store (or a few hours....we'll see). I understand how to set up the camera, go with manual focus, etc. I'm just not sure what a good time interval might be. Some of it will obviously be determined by the length of the finished video (Obviously, I'd like to keep it short so I don't bore the viewer to tears) and some will be determined by how long I shoot for (the amount of time I want to compress down). But in between there is some leeway. Do any of you with experience doing these know what interval works well for people movement (when they will largely be standing around).

Maybe I need to just sit down and do some math. I just figure if some of you have done some (with human) it might save me some time (and thinking.....oh how I hate thinking). I suppose I could err on the side of shooting too many and just throw away some frames. But I'm guessing there is a sweet spot interval.

How about doing some experiments with different variables in your own kitchen? Set up a set of variables; photograph yourself fixing a cup of coffee; check the results. Rinse and repeat.

I don't think it needs to be a long sequence for evaluation purposes. The only danger is a possible caffeine overdose.

Cheers, Jock
 
Sometimes it's useful to think about what period of time you want to cover first. If it's just customers coming in and browsing, then a couple of hours should be fine. But if the store gets interesting light/shadows over the course of the day, then that may in fact become the primary subject and the customers secondary.

The interval is the next thing to consider. If the subjects are the customers, how long is a typical visit? How long do they stay in one spot before moving on? Those things will drive what kind of interval you want. If you set the interval to five minutes for example and most customers stay just two minutes (I'm making up numbers here), then you will just get one image of each customer.

Lastly, the shutter speed. A longer shutter may get them to blur, but it may also miss them if they are moving too fast for the shutter speed - think hummingbird on a 5s exposure.

Time lapse is fun but it takes a while to get a feel for it. Be prepared to make a lot of mistake in the beginning. It's all part of the learning process. Some of the Pentaxes can make in-camera time-lapse movies which will help climb the learning curve
 
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