Timelapse from my summer holiday

SUMMER TIMELAPSE FROM NORTHERN EUROPE

This is a compilation of several testing timelapse shoots I did this summer. They are captured in Copenhagen (Denmark), Herfoel (Norway) and Hvasser (Norway).

I tried out many different settings on the quest of mastering changing lights over longer periods of time. What started the idea of learning the longer timespan shoots was a desire to capture a scene during the different phases of day and night in on single take. Sitting back looking at the material an interesting thought pops to my mind; it´s absolutely super boring watching the same scene that long:)

As I see many others being new to timelapse photography and seeking information about it, I will try to summarize what I´ve learned so far.
While shooting and editing this attached timelapse I encountered just about every problem described below, so please, don´t expect this timelapse to be perfect. It was merely shot for self-educational purposes:)

Good timelapse material is a real effort to shoot
The easiest way to get some decent material seems to be shooting in Aperture mode, even though some flickering issues tends to appear with the constantly changing light. I have even seen some decent stuff shot by +Philip Bloom on “all Auto” (shutter, aperture, ISO) and that actually worked quite well, at least a lot better than you would expect.

Not being satisfied with the shoots in Aperture mode made me try out the Manual mode. I read that some people actually managed to shoot scenes going from daylight to night on manual by constantly monitoring the camera and changing the exposures as you go along. I tried it out, however being as impatient as I am I got bored quite quickly. I figured out I wanted to go back to Aperture mode and use the jog wheel for exposure compensation instead, basically doing the same thing in a different way. What I experienced from both the “manual” tests was that I still had a flickering issue on the frames where I actually did the exposure compensation. Even though I only did one step up or down and kept that going for a series of shots, the actual adjustment would be visible when looking closer at the whole series of shots afterwards.
My guess is that this still might work out pretty well if you have the patience to even out the adjustments post processing the shots in Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture afterwards. I still haven´t set away time to try this, but it might work…

Make sure you are free of all other responsibilities
It´s gonna take a lot of time to get the material you need so you might as well bring along what you need to have a good time! My best suggestions are a sitting mat or even a chair, a few beers, some food and good music.

What equipment do you need?
It would be pointless if you didn´t bring your camera and lenses so I´ll just put that one up first.
Secondly you will need a steady tripod and might even bring along a few plastic bags for the purpose of filling them with weight and hang underneath you tripod. That way you will get a steady shoot.

You will need memory cards with a good transfer rates to keep the intervals flowing evenly throughout the night. I experienced what should´ve been obvious to me; that the shutter speeds will get slower with less light, hence you will get fewer frames shot during the night and when edited into a movie it will seem like the night is actually a lot shorter than the day and evening. You will need to take into account what your slowest shutters speeds will be, how much time your camera / memory card will use to process each shot and plan your intervals accordingly to get a smooth and even timelapse.

Make sure to bring along enough good batteries and your battery grip as even the slightest movement while changing batteries or memory cards are crucial to the end result. Take my word for it, it´s really annoying screwing up a good scene because you had to change batteries every now and then.

An intervalometer is needed to program the interval rate of your shots. You can pick them up rather cheap on eBay, Amazon etc. I have one from Phottix which works absolutely great for my need.

A flashlight can become handy for several reasons if you´re shooting at night. You may need it for getting your focus straight, do some lightpainting on the foreground if you want to some stairtrail shots while you´re at it, and not so say making your trip back home safely.

Plan your shots
Like I said in the beginning, my idea when I started to doing this project was to capture a scene throughout day and night, getting all the changing light in one long timelapse. This turned out to be rather boring and the more I think about it I see that it´s crucial to have a plan.
A plan for what you want to show, which scenes do you want in there, what time of day/night feature the light you want to shoot it in etc.
For every scene you capture, make sure to throw in some extra material so you have something to work with in post processing, i.e. to make the transitions run smoothly between the scenes etc.

Hope some of you can use of my experience to your benefit and do not hesitate to leave a comment with your own experiences with can enlighten more people.

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