Speaker 1: Complete Guide to Timelapse Photography, where I will teach you how to capture and create your own amazing timelapse videos. Today, I will be broadly covering timelapse photography, teaching you how to capture your first timelapse in a professional way. This video will be in four parts, explanation, gear, shooting, and post-processing and production. Let's deconstruct what a timelapse really is. Timelapse is strictly defined as a cinematography technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured, the frame rate, is much lower than that used to view the sequence. In short, we are manipulating time. Events that take minutes, hours, days, or even years can be sped up by factors of tens or factors of millions, letting you see the progression of time while not actually having to wait through it. Timelapse photography can be broken down into two flavors, video and photo. The types don't refer to the final timelapse project, which will always be in video format, but how the sequence is captured. The first method, video, involves taking a prolonged video of a subject with a camera and speeding it up later. This method is very simple and can be great for recording something on the fly, and post-processing is a breeze, but there are better options. The second method, photo, involves taking a sequence of images, usually with a fixed interval, and stitching them together to create a movie. This method offers some significant advantages over video. One of the main advantages is the amount of light photos can capture. Imagine a video camera as a camera that takes pictures very fast. Because it needs to capture real-time movement and play it back at the same speed, it needs to shoot at least 24 frames per second. This means no exposure can be longer than 1 24th of a second, which severely limits the environments the camera can capture. Photos don't have any limit on exposure, allowing for the capture of virtually any scene. Another advantage over video that photo has is the physical resolution of the image. Most video cameras only record up to 4K footage, which is the equivalent of 8.25 megapixels. Most cameras can record images of at least 20 megapixels, over twice the size of 4K footage, leaving room to crop and introduce post-production panning and zooming motions. Finally, the photo method is the industry standard. When cinematographers create time-lapse videos for anything professional, they always use a still picture camera, because it is better in almost all aspects. With the photo method, however, there are a few items you will need in order to create your first time-lapse, and countless others that can take them to the next level. To do any type of photography, including time-lapse, you will need a camera, and surprisingly, you don't even need a DSLR. Many newer phones are releasing with manual options for their cameras, and built-in time-lapse functionality. However, many of these implementations are just glorified video cameras, so make sure that the time-lapse is actually taking individual pictures. Cameras that don't have a manual setting will make capturing time-lapse much harder, and most point-and-shoot cameras will probably not work well for this. Once you have your camera, the next thing to secure is a high-capacity memory card. The size of camera RAW files, by themselves, do not equate to much, but after a time-lapse marathon, you suddenly may have thousands of photos amounting to tens of gigabytes of memory, and you don't want to cut your session short because of something as trivial as a full memory card. I recommend at least 32 gigabytes, and you can find them for as little as $15, which is a small price to pay for such an invaluable tool. Next, you will need to pick up an intervalometer. An intervalometer will function as the camera's shutter button, and with a little programming, you can set up the intervalometer to fire the camera's shutter with a specific interval, resulting in pictures that, when sped up, will produce a smooth time-lapse. The intervalometer can either be connected to the camera with a cable, or wirelessly, and are relatively cheap. Some cameras may even have built-in intervalometers, which may work as well as an external device, but if yours doesn't, you may be able to download an app for your camera, like the Sony Time-Lapse app, or install Magic Lantern, a free firmware add-on for DSLR and mirrorless cameras that unlock some additional features, including internal intervalometers. The final and most important necessary piece of gear is a tripod. Because a time-lapse is essentially stringing together hundreds of photos, any small variations in camera alignment will show strongly in the final movie. Strong exposures also require a tripod to keep the image pin-sharp without any motion blur from camera shake. For time-lapse, the biggest and heaviest tripods are best, since you are trying to minimize camera shake as much as possible. Now let's briefly cover some optional gear items that, while not strictly needed for capturing time-lapse, can expand your options and make the entire process easier. If you have any extra money, buy an ND filter. An ND filter is the equivalent of sunglasses for your camera, screwing onto the front element of the lens, allowing you to use long exposures during the daytime, which are great for blurring the motion of people or cars that is so commonly found in time-lapse. Polarizing filters are also great to have. Polarizing filters reduce reflections and glare, which is particularly useful in scenes with water. They also help increase the vibrancy of the sky by cutting through haze, and make green foliage more dramatic. Buying a bulb ramper, or bramper, works when your camera is in bulb mode, controlling the duration the shutters open down to the millisecond. It is a fairly advanced technique, but produces the best results, since the adjustments the camera makes are much smaller, leading to less flicker. Finally, motion control devices like the SERP and Dynamic Perception Kits introduce physical motion to your time-lapse. The devices operate on a shoot-move-shoot format, where the camera takes a photo and the slider moves a fixed amount, keeping the movement in between shots. These devices are fairly expensive, but can provide a unique look that can't be reproduced with artificial panning and zooming in post-production. As long as you have the four necessary gear items, a camera, large capacity SD card, intervalometer, and tripod, you should be well-equipped for photographing most scenes. SD filters, brampers, and motion control systems are not required, but they can improve the quality and customization of your time-lapses, allowing you to better tell your story. Now that you know the gear you need, how do you set up your camera to capture the stunning time-lapse you dream of? You may think that setting up a time-lapse is as easy as plugging in your intervalometer and letting the camera roll, but even though you may be able to produce a time-lapse from those pictures, the resulting video will not look good. Time-lapses often cover conditions with rapidly changing light, and with every picture, the camera's computer needs to decide the correct settings for the shot, and often the camera doesn't make the right decisions. When we compile the pictures from the time-lapse, the time-lapse flickers. Why does this happen? Essentially, instead of the camera's settings between shots remaining perfectly constant or purposefully changing in a slight and gradual way, large, inattentive exposure jumps occur in a few of the frames, which create images that look out of place when compiled with others. There are two ways to fix this. The first way is through camera settings and configuration, and the second is through post-processing. Let's find out how to reduce flickering in-camera first, to decrease our work later. Besides auto mode, there should be three other shooting modes on your camera—shutter priority, aperture priority, and manual. These three modes keep one or more camera settings free to change by you, the user. Before we continue, I always recommend leaving auto ISO off if your camera has it. For most time-lapses, it's important to dial in ISO before you start, so you don't have to worry about it. Shutter priority, as its name suggests, allow you to set shutter speed manually, while leaving aperture up for the camera's computer to decide. In time-lapses, this is seldom used. Aperture priority, however, is a great tool for capturing drastically changing light conditions. By keeping aperture constant and letting the camera determine the correct shutter speed, sunsets can be easily photographed by setting your aperture and ISO to the value of your ending exposure, and letting shutter speed grow longer as dusk turns to night. The only trouble is if your shutter speed becomes longer than your interval, you may run into problems, so make sure your interval is long enough, and your initial shutter speed is fast enough, that you will be able to cover up to 10 stops of light change in your session. Manual mode is also crucial for time-lapse creation, and is the most popular method for controlling exposure. Manual mode gives you full control over both aperture and shutter speed, so this is great for time-lapses that need to maintain the same exposure throughout the shoot. Milky Way time-lapses, for example, need to have the shutter speed and aperture set to specific values to let as much light into the camera without causing star trailing from too long of shutter speeds. So with the knowledge of aperture and manual mode, let's break down setting up a time-lapse into steps. The first step is to scout out a good location. This really depends on what you want to be capturing, but just remember to include foreground, mid-ground, and background elements to keep the picture interesting, and to incorporate the basic artistic principles of photography. The second step is to set up your tripod. Make sure the tripod is secure. Any small shakes will ruin your time-lapse. Next, turn on the camera and put it in either aperture priority or manual mode. Make sure to set the camera's white balance and focus manually, as well as make sure you are shooting in RAW picture mode. Dial in your aperture and ISO, and if you are in manual, your shutter speed. Then, set up your intervalometer. Be careful to set an interval that is appropriate for your shutter speed, or predicted shutter speed. If you are photographing a complete day-to-night transition, your interval may have to be 20 or 30 seconds to compensate for the drastic shutter speed changes. Finally, sit back and relax while you take in the environment as the camera captures it. If you are in manual mode, you may have to adjust shutter speed once in a while to maintain a proper exposure, but otherwise, just soak up the beauty of your scene. Once you're finished capturing your images, we can transform them from a series of photos into the traditional time-lapse video format. With time-lapse, there are many programs that can handle photos and turn them into video clips, lending to many workflows that you could pursue. But today, I'm going to cover one of the most popular methods, which is to use programs LRTimelapse and Adobe Lightroom. LRTimelapse is a program that helps you process time-lapses. It allows you to choose keyframes in your time-lapses that you edit in Lightroom, and animate sent together to create smooth transitions between each one. Let's start. Launch LRTimelapse and import your images into the program. I am importing a day-to-night sequence I shot in manual mode, manually ramping the shutter speed to adjust the darkening sky. While the images load, you can scrub through and get a quick preview of the time-lapse, and the blue curve that appears on screen represents the luminance of the time-lapse. As you can see, the luminance curve of my time-lapse is very jagged, because I manually adjusted shutter speed as the sky became darker. If you shot on aperture priority mode, this line may look smoother but with tinier spikes. We will be using the visual workflow in LRTimelapse, which works from left to right. First, I want to click on Keyframe Wizard. This will create keyframes which are displayed as small, blue diamonds. You can adjust the amount of keyframes you want, and I'm going to go with 12 just because I have a huge change from the bright evening sky to the milky way. Next, I'm going to go to the Holy Grail Wizard and adjust the level with the sliders so it matches with the blue line. Now I'm going to press Save, which will save the metadata to the files, and allow us to edit the keyframes in Lightroom. Make sure you are in the Library tab with the Grid view. Then, drag the button that says Drag to Lightroom into Lightroom, and click Import. Go to the Filters tab and only select the keyframes. This will only bring up the raw files at the keyframes that you set in LRTimelapse, and you want to edit them so that the colors flow from one keyframe to the next, allowing LRTimelapse to fix all the exposures in between. Once you're done editing the keyframes, go back in the Library tab, highlight all of the photos, go up to the Metadata tab, and click Save Metadata to Files. Back in LRTimelapse, click the Reload button, bringing those keyframes back into LRTimelapse, and then Auto Transition, which will smooth all the frames in between the edited keyframes. Click Visual Preview. Once it finishes, you can actually scroll through your corrected timelapse with the pink curve representing the new Luminance profile. You can see that the curve is still a little jaggedy, so I'm going to click Visual Deflicker and try to have the new green curve follow the trend of the pink curve, being careful not to completely smooth it out. Once it's applied, go back to Lightroom, clear the filter, select all the pictures, go up to the Metadata tab, and click Read Metadata from Files. This will bring all the metadata from LRTimelapse into Lightroom. Export the photos either as JPEGs or TIFF files. Now we are going to create the actual movie, and while I'm going to use Adobe After Effects for this part, other video editing software may work similarly. Open After Effects. Go to the File tab, click Import, and navigate to the folder you just created. Select the first photo of the sequence and click Import. Create a new composition of your preferred size and frame rate. I will be creating an 8K timelapse at 24 frames per second. Drag the photos into the timeline, and scale them however you want. I am also going to add a subtle zoom to the movie, which I will do by creating some scale keyframes. Once you're done doing any final edits or movements in After Effects, export the timelapse by navigating to the Composition tab and clicking on the Add to Render Queue button. The render might take a while, but afterwards you should be left with a professional, high-quality timelapse, which you can use in almost any film setting. I hope you enjoyed this comprehensive beginner's guide to everything timelapse. Subscribe to AppLapse for more videos like these every month. I am a one-man team, so supporting the channel through Patreon would be very much appreciated. Rate the video and leave a comment with your feedback, and as always, thanks for watching.