Time-lapse photography might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be a challenge. With the right gear and the right photography advice, you can master it in no time.
Quitting your job to travel the world is, in itself, a daunting task. Quitting your job to travel the world to take over 25,000 photographs is quite another. Yet, Kien Lam, did just that. Lam managed to sort through all the photographs and condense them down to a moving five minute time lapse video of his journey around the world. What sets Lam’s time lapse apart from others is the equipment he used. He didn’t tote around a pricey DSLR and dolly. The only camera equipment Lam brought with him was the compact Lumix GF-1 and a flimsy, off-brand tripod.
In the spring of 2010, the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted, shutting down airways all across Europe. Sean Stiegemeier organized a sponsored trip to the country to capture the natural disaster in a beautiful way. He used his Canon 5D MKII to film a time lapse of the eruption over the course of 1 1/2 days. Dynamic Perception loaned Stiegemeier a prototype of the MILapse dolly, which is now being marketed as the Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly Kit, an affordable alternative to the popular Kessler dollies.
Time lapse photography has always been a magic process where time is condensed and the familiar process of time experience is dramatically changed. Processes such as plants growing, a building being constructed, or an entire city changing through the cycle of a day and night, have become the subject of creative, expressive videos or films. Once you master time-lapses where the camera is stationary, you might wonder how professionals create sequences where the camera moves through a scene. These videos offer some helpful clues.
A few months ago we wrote about an extremely popular time-lapse from space that shows footage of earth as seen from the International Space Station (ISS) by Commander Mike Fossum, during Expedition 29. Now there is a video interview conducted by astronaut Mike Massimino from the NASA control center that reveals some of the techniques and equipment that captured the low light, night photographs. Fossum was using a Nikon D3 due to it’s low light capabilities. Keep in mind that the Nikon D4 was just announced and will be released shortly. Here is the interview from NASA.
Photographer Brad Kremmer, set out to capture Japan using his Canon 5D MKII. Kremer edited together the results of his labors to create a moving portrait of Japan in his time lapse film, Hayuku: A Time Lapse Journey Through Japan. The film is an eight minute long journey through many parts of Japan, including popular locations such as Tokyo, Nagano, and Matsuyama. The film is made entirely from a collection of over 1.5 terabytes of RAW photographs. Take a moment and enjoy.
Beautiful time-lapse photography is difficult enough to achieve, but attempting it in HDR (high dynamic range) photography adds another layer of complexity as was done here successfully in France (Normandy & Britany). This means the photographer has to take bracketed photos at different exposure levels for each individual frame, and then post-process those bracketed sets […]
Why have just one moonset and one sunrise when you can have two of each? This is a 28 hour time-lapse shot from one location captured by Gerald Donovan. It consists of 3359 individual photographs. The entire timelapse was shot on aperture priority and fixed ISO. It’s important to make sure that you set a combination of aperture and ISO that will allow the camera to take shots at the brightest time of day without hitting the camera’s fastest shutter speed limit, and will also not require a shutter speed longer than the timelapse interval when it’s dark. This was shot at f/5.6 and ISO320. Fastest shutter speed was 1/2500, slowest 6 seconds.
This beautiful short time-lapse film was shot during the Icelandic Midnight Sun in June of 2011 and has become a recent viral video garnering nearly a million views in the last few weeks. The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon occurring in the summer months north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle where the sun never fully sets and remains visible 24 hours a day. On this project, Joe Capra traveled around the entire island (some 2900 miles) in only 17 days; shooting photos the entire time only stopping to sleep in his rental car and eat when there was a free moment.
Are you fond of capturing images that need to be shown in sequence? Or are you planning to try out timelapse photography? If so, then you need the help of an interval timer: Timelapses are ideal when you want to show a process such as a flower coming into full bloom or how to build […]
This video released in the last few days has been stunning viewers worldwide. This incredible footage is made up of a time-lapse sequence of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the astronaut crew of expedition 28 & 29 on-board the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.
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