I recently got into shooting time lapses. They are truly fascinating and a surprise every time. I love being able to go out on a hike, set up my equipment with a good foreground, clouds in the sky, set up the angle of attack and shoot. Not until I get back to the studio and see the animated images do I truly know the dramatic effect I am going to see. All music in the videos below I also created in my recording studio!
Here is my setup and a short time lapse example:
Nikon D810, Nikon 14-24mm, Syrp Genie, Syrp Magic Carpet.
To figure out how many images you need to shoot you need to first figure out at which frame rate you want to animate your images. This is typically going to be from 24-30 frames per second (fps). Then you will need to determine how many seconds you would like your time lapse to be. I typically like to shoot for 12 to 15 seconds. You always want a little longer than what you anticipate in order to edit and transition between shots. I will normally use around 10 seconds of the time lapse in the end.
Example:
- Frame Rate = 30 fps
- Length of Time Lapse = 12 sec
- # of images = 30 frames/sec * 12 sec = 360 frames
I shot the above time lapse for a period of 1 hour. You can estimate your time as follows
- # of images = 360
- interval between images was 10 sec
- 360 * 10 sec = 3600 seconds
- There are 60 sec in 1 min therefore:
- 3600 sec *1 min / 60 sec = 60 minutes or 1 hour
Here is another time lapse video I shot recently using the DJI Osmo + and the Nikon D810 with the setup shown above.