How to Make a Time Lapse Video With Your DSLR
Over in our forum one of our members Chrismar (visit him on Flickr here) put together a great tutorial on how he created a time lapse photo video using his Canon Digital Rebel XT dSLR and TI-83 calculator as his intervalometer.
Here’s his video (there’s another one at the bottom of the post) with his tutorial following:
How He Made It
1) Set-up your shot. Use a tripod or sturdy location to place your camera. I put mine in front of the TV in the entertainment center.
2) Take a test shot. Take a test shot of the area to calculate your exposure and to set the focus. I knew I wanted about a 2 second exposure, so I took my test shot in Shutter Priority mode.
3) Adjust the camera settings. Switch the camera into manual mode. Use your test shots exposure information to set the aperture. Set the shutter speed to what you used in step 2. Turn off auto white balance. Set it to a preset or custom. Basically make sure any auto features are not on auto, otherwise you’ll get a nasty flickering (like I did).
4) Take another test shot. Only do this if you have easy access to the viewfinder, and use a remote to avoid camera shake. This shot is just to make sure the images are properly exposed using the manual settings.
5) Setup your intervalometer. I used a TI-83 calculator as my intervalometer. See the links below for the instructable. I set mine to fire in 10,000 TI-83 cycles, which worked out to be around every 26 seconds.
6) Hook em up together. Hook up your calculator (or intervalometer) to your camera and press start.
7) Wait. For me, waiting wasn’t that bad since I was playing Mario Kart. But doing a nature time lapse will require a significant time commitment. For my example the time was just about 3 hours.
8) Compile the video. After the sequence is done and you’ve downloaded your images its time to make the video. I used QuickTime Pro as it was the easiest method and gave me the best results. I tried a few free applications, which worked, but I liked the flexibility QT Pro gave me. In QT Pro simply go to “File -> Open Image Sequence…” and then chose the first picture. Be sure to set your Frame Rate at something between 10 and 30. I used 15 for mine. If your files are numbered sequentially QT will be able to figure out which pictures to add. From there you can “File -> Save As…” a QuickTime .MOV or you can “File -> Export” to a number of different formats. If your video is long enough you can add music and the like. See the links for some sites to get free creative commons licensed music.
9) Post your video. I put mine on Flickr, but you can put yours on YouTube or any other video sharing site.
10) Enjoy.
The shots for this time lapse were taken with my 18-55mm kit lens at 18mm, f/8.0, 2 second shutter speed and 26 seconds between shots. I accidentally left on auto white balance, which is what gives it that flicker.
Other Notes:
- Sutter Speeds: Be sure to pick a shutter speed that will give you a good time lapse effect (ie- movement). If you have a shutter speed that is too fast you’ll end up with a choppy looking video.
- Interval Times: The interval times (time between shots) should also be set for your subject. For slow moving subjects you can have more time between shots. For fast moving subjects you’d want less of an interval. For example, for clouds you’d want to take a shot ever second or so.
- Battery Power: Make sure you have enough battery power in both your camera and your intervalometer. If you’re expecting things to take a while plug into AC power (if its near), use a power inverter, or a battery grip.
- Image Settings: Set your camera to use JPG (you won’t need RAW for this) and at a size that you think is reasonable. If you don’t it will make your post processing more difficult as you’ll have to convert all your RAW images to JPG and then re-size them. I started in RAW not knowing any better and alot time was spent converting and re-sizing. Save yourself the trouble and do it in the camera.
Links:
- Time Lapse FAQ
- Turn a TI-83 into an Intervalometer
- PhotoLapse (Software)
- JPGVideo (Software)
- CC Mixter (Music)
- Jamendo (Music)
- Creative Commons Search (Music)
As promised - here’s another of the Time Lapse videos from Chrismar.
Taken a picture or carried out a digital photography project that you want to share? Head over to the ‘How I Took It‘ section of our forum and tell us about it.
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I did this a short while back except with something that moves much slower: plants. I simply set up my tripod in my room with a pot of sprouted seeds since plants grow the fastest in their small stage. My video can be found below:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=33675357
Here is the link to the Instructable for the intervalometer:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-a-TI-Graphing-Calculator-into-an-Intervalomet/
I have a timer I ordered from HK that does this. Plugs into the remote jack and can program it to set off shots at whatever time. Just need to combine to make a movie.
That would be heaps of shots in 3 hours! Great stuff! Anyone with any idea how much it would cost to get the intervalometer or any other alternatives?
- Raymond Chan
http://chanraymond.net
Canon EOS cameras (not sure about the D-Reblels) come with software that allows you to shoot tethered to a computer. You can set the interval you want and go through the same processing to create the video.
Hey! I googled for my D80 and I had to pay around 100 Euros, which was too much for me…
alternatively, i downloaded the trial-version of “Camera Control Pro” for nikon cameras, which was running for 30 days and i hooked it up with my laptop. if you buy this it’s also about 100+ euros.
i have no idea about other currencies and countries. but i suppose it’s cheaper in the US (at least for europeans)
-Konst
I created a short screencast for creating time-lapse video using QuickTime Pro:
http://flickr.com/photos/gothcandy/2504041553/
Could you elaborate on how you ‘hooked up’ a calculator to your camera. I have never heard of such.
Never mind. I see the link for instructables…I’ll go there. thanks.
Very cool. Thanks! I really enjoyed this post.
I’ve done a couple time lapse videos but I didn’t use manual mode so they were a little flickery. Now I know what to do different to make them better.
To do the time lapse I used the software that came with my Canon DSLR on my laptop and tethered it to the camera. The EOS Utility has a remote shooting section, and one of the tools for that is Timer Shooting. You can set how long of a delay before you begin taking a picture, or set up Interval timer shooting. Unfortunately the shortest shooting interval is 5 seconds, so for shooting fast objects this method is not best. But since the software came with the camera its a cheep way to start making time lapses.
man, now i have to dig through all my stuff to see if i still have my old graphing calculator just to see if i can get that thing to work. it’s an hp, but i think it has the same connection. thanks for the tutorial!
Oh that’s cool! With Nikon you’re safe, if you have a laptop.
There’s a tool Camera Control Pro 2, which works with I guess most of Nikon gears. Having it installed you only need to connect your camera through USB, run the app, set up all parameters and start automatic shooting! :)
demo version of this tool is available somewhere on Nikon pages.
I love time lapse stuff, and want to experiment more. The main problem I’ve got is that I don’t have an intervalometer, so I’ve been triggering by the laptop. Not very portable. For shots by interior lighting, make sure to set your shutter speed to be an interval of the frequency of your local power supply, or you’ll get flickering from the lighting.
Here’s a time lapse I did with a fisheye lens in my car during a short drive around the suburbs at night. I was really happy with the results, and want to try some more sometime!
Fisheye night driving time lapse.
My D200 will do this from the menu. I regularly set it up to talke photos of myself climbing. Nice videos, thanks for sharing.
If you don’t want to fork over the $29 for QuickTime Pro, you can use ImageMagick to do the same for you.
Install ImageMagick.
Install mpeg2encode from http://www.mpeg.org.
Put your JPGs in a folder and name them sequentially.
Inside that folder from the command line, run this:
convert -resize 600×400 -delay 100 *.jpg out.mpg
The 600 is the width and the 400 is the height. The delay is in 1/100s, so 100 = 1 second, 50 = .5 second, etc.
Now you have a mpeg file and nearly anything these days will play those.
I have an example on my personal website. It’s hosted over my home DSL connection, so don’t be surprised if it’s a super slow download or fails to respond. Gotta love those DSL upload speeds.
http://www.mauter.com/walking.mpg
-Brian
Specifically, you can find ImageMagick at:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php
and mpeg2encode at:
http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/video/mssg-free-mpeg-software.html
-Brian
I did something like this in Linux with my Nikon D40x.
I used gphoto, connected my camera USB and used this bash script:
#!/bin/bash
for ((i=0;i<240;i+=1)); do
gphoto2 –capture-image -F 1 -I 1 –filename ./$i.jpg
#Time between pictures
sleep 1m
done
Although the quality obviously isn’t as good as with a DSLR, the Nokia N95 has this feature actually built in, which is handy if you want to do something like this without making any technical effort whatsoever.
It’s strange that my mobile phone has a feature like this, when none of the actual cameras that I’ve owned have done!
It isn’t better to buy a video camera?
Anybody knows if it’s possible to make a timelapse with iMovie? I think no, but maybe I’m wrong…
Great post ;-)
Hi There,
I’m the author of this how-to. I’ll try to respond to a few posts & answer a few questions:
Raymond Chan: There was about 500 or so pics for the first one. If you look on my flickr I have a time-lapse of clouds, which was well over 1500 images. A “branded” (Canon, Nikon, etc) intervalometer will set you back around $100 USD. There are cheap alternatives that can be found on eBay, etc.
robert: Yes, the Digital Rebels come with the same software. I’ve used it on both a PC and a Mac, and while it works it isn’t quite as portable as an intervalometer.
Alice Bevan–McGregor: Excellent. That’s exactly the method I used. Thanks!
Toby Fairchild: See the instrucbables link: http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-a-TI-Graphing-Calculator-into-an-Intervalomet/
Fabrizio: Video cameras don’t give you the same effect. The idea isn’t to create a video, its to basically create an animated picture out of multiple still images. Besides, a video of 3.5 hours of video games would be pretty boring.
Thanks everyone else for the comments!
Chris
here are a bunch of movies i made with my slr cameras and a motion controlled telescope mount.
all you need is quicktime and you can open an image sequence (folder of jpegs from the camera) then export it any size that you want.
you can subscribe to my podcast here
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=266982101
or check out the movies here
http://www.revver.com/u/tmophoto/
i have a bunch of them up
t
Here’s a timelapse video I made with my D200 showing my favorite parts of Dallas - you might like it :)
http://www.vimeo.com/910281
Hey guys - just made a timelapse cloud video using a timer I bought for £30 off ebay!
http://flickr.com/photos/andy206uk/2570752220/
Some really talent on this post!! I recommend people check out my forum. There’s tons of tutorial links and free software that can be used in lieu of the pay ones, like Quicktime.
timelapseforum [dot] com.
@Neil Creek: love your time lapse. Big fan of the fish eye lens!
@Anthony Skelton: even shooting in manual mode, will sometimes create flickering. I know there are pay options to remove the flickering, but sometimes it can be really frustrating!!!
This doesn’t work with the Nikon D40. I tried several times and the program just freezes when I connect the calculator to the camera. It’s a shame.
I made this video using Canon Utilities and QuickTime Pro.
http://www.mediaplus.ro/CriniWL.mov
Camera was in manual mode (inclusive focus).
Shots every 60 seconds.
About 3 hours.
Gear:
Canon 400D and a MacBookPro
Hi! I enjoyed this post and your time-lapse video! Thanks for sharing.
I don’t know if anyone can shed some light, but I am attempting to do a time-lapse of a longer term nature, e.g. a big construction project lasting over a year with a few images shot each week. We determined our vantage point, constructed a wooden frame for the camera and started shooting images. Problem is, even with the camera in the base, and the same focal length, the image frame is not the same, which causes the picture to jump around when I make the video. Not pretty! Any suggestions???
Thanks!
The frame must be tight to the camera. You can try to make a mould firmly attached to a concrete or steel structure.
Good luck!
Hi Marci.
This is actually a common problem and I recommend you go to my site for more info and discussion on this because it’s been raised there already.
But a few things to keep in mind. How solid is your set up? Is there anyway that the camera/tripod/wooden frame is moving, even a little?
What about your camera settings? Generally speaking, go manual for all settings, including white balance and focus. I assume you are shooting in aperture-priority mode, from what your post? Did you lock down the white balance in AE mode?
Is it the exposure that is changing from one image to the next? or is it the whole frame?
Hope that helps.
Hi all
For Windows user you can use a free tools to make/edit/… your videos : Virtualdub.
To import a serie of pictures as a video in virtualdub, take a look at the first paragraph of this short tutorial
You can apply some filters (resize, motion blur,…) on your video : menu Video > Filters > Add
And you can add more than one filter at a time.
You can choose a compression for your video (menu Video > Compression), add audio from a file (menu Audio > Audio from other file),…
And then choose File > Save as AVI
My first try in timelapse video is a Moon rising :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colliculus/2685201870/
Compilation of the very best time lapses on the internet:
http://journal.marisaduma.net/2008/08/18/time-lapse-photography-in-motion/