Time-Lapse question

[SgtOneill]

Hi everyone.
Im new on this forum and i registered because i need some "pro" help about making time-lapses. Yes i googled but i wasnt satisfied.

I'm going to make an indoor time-lapse of a technology event.
Its going to last 3 days and i've done the math already, i need 1 picture every 60 seconds.
My question is... I think i should select a FIXED generous aperture to get a sharp picture of the whole area, its not a landscape so, maybe f.8 or so.
Using Aperture Priority i can fix the aperture and let the shutter speed work its way. This will make the pictures on daylight look ok and not burned, and pictures at night with clearly alot less light, clear enough to see people walking around etc.

At night the photos will have a slow shutterspeed making some motion blur wich can be cool when the time-lapse is put together and at sun rise the shutterspeed will automaticly increase balancing the light.

I read several tutorials that say, we should go full manual, but the time-lapse they are making is mostly in the same light, during the night, or during the day. However with making a timelapse where the light intensity varies, we need to keep the shutterspeed automatic....

My question is... wich settings to use?

Things i know:
Manual White-Balance
Shoot JPEG's instead of RAW
Connect the camera to the laptop (i dont have a remote for time-lapses, just simple one)
take a picture every 60 secs for 72hours straight.
3 minute video.




Dunno, i need some opinions =)

Thank you.

[sk66]

Depends, but I would say Aperture mode (might need a moderately high iso). This will allow primary "structures" in the images (i.e. a building) to remain in consistent focus throughout the series. The "transient" subjects may vary in focus/sharpness etc, but the primary structures will "anchor" the series.

[jdepould]

Which body are you using? If it's got an interval timer, you don't need the laptop, you can just tell it to take 1 picture every 60 seconds for however many frames (not doing the math on that one). Manual focus, probably taped down.

You haven't mentioned anything about your tripod, or how you're securing the camera.

Aperture-priority plus auto-ISO is probably the way to go. Set your base ISO as the starting point (100 or 200, depending on the camera), then maybe 800 or 1600 as the max, with a minimum shutter around 1/20? Depends on specific conditions.

You may want to stay away from manual WB, since the light is going to be changing. Could you give us more info about the room? Convention hall? Lots of windows? Etc.

[Jim Poor]

Why on earth would you shoot JPG for this? Get a bigger memory card if you need it and shoot raw. That way you can do bulk WB adjustments and such as needed. Editing the resulting almost 4500 photos isn't that big of a task.

You're looking at 1440 pictures per day which will easily fit on a 32GB card with one card change per day at zero compression. If you have a dual slot camera, you can use two of them and swap a new card in for card one whenever you like. Or, get a couple of the new 64GB cards and be done with it.

You could possibly shoot teathered as well which would remove the whole memory card issue from the equation.

Are you powering the camera by AC?

[SgtOneill]

Im going to use a Manfrotto 190XPROB Tripod.
My camera is a Canon EOS 40D. It will be battery powered, wich can be a problem if i have to recharge it once a day at least... didnt think about that.

JPEG will do, i cant really afford another card (currently have a 4gig one). I could dump the photos to my usb hdd, wich is 160gigs, every night.

About the room, i believe its going to be a big warehouse.. i dont think there will be many windows but there might be plenty of ambient light.

How do you set base shutter speeds? so it wont go any lower then 1/20.

Not sure about auto WB or auto ISO. ISO can go as high as 3200 and that ruins the photography, way too much noise. and WB shouldnt vary, would be odd to see the same source of light change color on the final time-lapse.

[jdepould]

You were talking about the difference between daytime and nighttime exposures, which led me to believe there were windows, which means the color of the light would change throughout the day. Thus, auto WB.

If the light isn't going to change, then aperture priority on its own is fine.

[DogHeadGod]

I shot this with the camera on aperture priority

YouTube - Glasgow Sunrise Timelapse

I don't think going full manual will work if the light varies, so unless there are no windows I'd go for aperture priority and let the camera make the decisions about shutter speed as the light changes.