How To- Timelapses
At the heart and soul of every video is photography. Videos are simply lots of images sequenced, one after the other, at a very high rate. Movies are typically shot at 24 frames per second, but lower frame rates in the 12-15 FPS range are a popular choice for stop motion, while frame rates of 100 plus are often used for slow motion video. Knowing this underlying logic can be extremely useful.
This understanding is what allows for timelapses to be made and captured with relative ease. Like any other video, a time lapse is a series of sequential photos played back at a high rate. Timelapses simply take these photos (or frames) at less frequent intervals. Instead of shooting 24 individual frames per second, a timelapse might have one frame that was shot every few seconds, or even an interval of minutes or hours between each shot.
West Park Timelapse
The link above will take you to a timelapse I made consisting of 800 shots with 8 second intervals. That's 1 hr 45 min of real time condensed into a 29 second video!
These types of videos are undeniably cool, but how are they made? Most smartphones have a setting that allows you to easily film time lapses. They do all the legwork for you and output a fully rendered video file. While this is helpful, dedicated cameras give you the most creative freedom and control, as we’ve thoroughly discussed in previous posts. So if you want to make a timelapse that is higher quality, shot in more adverse and challenging conditions, or simply want more oversight on the final product’s looks, crafting a timelapse from scratch is the way to go.
While it’s not as simple as clicking a button on a phone, it isn’t as complicated as one might expect. A few simple steps and you’ll be well on your way to making high quality timelapses in no time!
Step 1: choosing a location
This step may seem elementary and frivolous to include, but there should be serious thought put into deciding where you will take a timelapse from. The camera (and perhaps you) will be in the same spot for quite a while. Depending on the location and conditions, there may be exposure to the elements or random passerbyes. These should certainly be taken into consideration, particularly if you don’t want to stay with the camera for the entirety of the time it takes to capture the images. Additionally, you’ll want to think carefully about what it is you are capturing. For example, if you are trying to capture a sunrise, make sure that your chosen location has a view of the sunrise that you like. As silly as it sounds, a poorly chosen location could have a lackluster foreground that lessens the quality of the final result, or an impeded view of the subject that adversely affects the entire time lapse.
Don’t overthink choosing a shooting location, but do ensure the spot you choose checks all of the boxes for the composition of your video, as well as your own preference for what you will be doing while the images are being shot.
One more tip: make sure you know the time of day that you want to be at your location. Another seemingly obvious point, but don’t underestimate the importance of arriving to your location early and staying late enough to fully capture whatever it is you want to be capturing!
Step 2: capturing the images
Once you are happy with a location and time to film your timelapse from, you simply need to go there and start shooting. The easiest method to create a timelapse will be using the in camera interval timer shooting setting, if your camera has it. This is essentially an inbuilt intervalometer. An intervalometer is a device that will set the camera to capture an image on a set interval for a set period of time or number of shots. I will take you through setting up interval timer shooting on my Nikon Z6, but this general flow should apply on most other cameras.
To start out, open the main settings menu. On the fourth (or second to last) screen in the photo shooting menu, there is an option for interval timer shooting. Select this.
interval timer shooting can be found here on the Nikon z6. This will differ slightly from camera to camera
You may note that the Z6, along with other cameras, have an automatic time-lapse movie setting. However, this runs into the same issue as the phone timelapses: lack of control. Editing a video file is significantly more difficult than being able to edit the frames before making the final video.
The menu after choosing interval timer shooting is where the real magic happens. There are a number of options to customize the set of images that will be captured. We’ll go through these one by one:
Choose start day/time: allows you to set a specific start day and time for the camera to start capturing images. This is helpful if you are setting up the camera in an out of the way location and plan to leave it. Generally, I just select now, as I don’t like to leave my camera unattended.
Interval: sets the interval between each image being captured. This can be set to any time from 0.5 seconds to 24 hours.
Intervals x shots/interval: determines the number of intervals, as well as the number of shots taken at each interval. These numbers are multiplied together to give the total number of images captured.
Exposure smoothing: (while in an automatic or semi-automatic setting) ensures that the exposure of one image is not noticeably different from the next.
Silent photography: enables the electronic shutter to be used, as opposed to the mechanical. The electronic shutter creates no noise. However, the electronic shutter can create artifacts in photos in certain conditions. You can read more about these here. Make sure you are in a situation that will not be affected by any of the electronic shutter limitations before toggling this option on.
Interval priority (page 2): (while in an automatic or semi-automatic setting) prioritizes maintaining the interval between shots as opposed to prioritizing exposure.
Starting storage folder: allows you to select a specific storage folder for the images captured.
This list may seem daunting, but it doesn’t take long to get accustomed to these settings. Of course, the settings that you use will vary based on your own situation. In addition, your camera may have some different setting options. However, the gist should be the same.
Once you’ve dialed in your interval length, number of intervals, and any other settings you see fit, it’s as simple as hitting start! Some cameras even have a helpful display at the bottom that will tell you the exact time the camera will be done shooting. Just sit back and relax while your camera does its thing.
Step 3: editing the images
Once you’ve captured your images and headed back home (or wherever it is you plan to make your timelapse!), it’s time to do some editing. This step isn’t strictly mandatory, but I would certainly recommend it. You can see more about my thoughts on the importance of editing here.
I simply connect my card to my computer and drop the photo files into my editing software of choice: Adobe Lightroom. I find it easiest to apply the same edits to all of the images in my burst. While there are some specialized softwares that allow you to apply specific edits as the conditions of the shot change, I think it is much more straightforward to find an edit that looks passable for an image near the start and an image near the end, and apply this edit to all of the images.
If there is a lot of change from the beginning to the end, editing in chunks is another good option. For example, my West Park timelapse has a slightly different set of edits every few hundred shots. This was necessary since I shot it entirely on manual, so the camera settings did not change as the sun went down, meaning later shots were severely underexposed. If you choose to employ this method, be careful to not make the transition between edits too stark. This will make it seem very unnatural.
These two images were edited slightly differently. but the settings are not actually that unique from each other, despite the images being at the opposite ends of the timelapse. This helped to ensure that the final product still looked seamless
After editing all of your images to taste, you’re ready to export your images to a video editing software to finally make a full video! I suggest exporting all of the images to their own folder to make the next step easier.
Step 4: sequencing the video in editing software
After exporting your images (hopefully to their own folder), import your photo files into your video editing software of choice. If you don’t have one that you prefer, I would highly recommend Davinci Resolve. It has pretty much any feature a professional editor would need in its free version. After importing the files, make sure that they are organized in chronological order. You want to make sure that they are going to appear in the order that they were taken.
Next, drop your files into the timeline. Each image will likely start out as pretty long individual clip. Make sure to select all of the clips and adjust the time of each clip. The longer the clips, the more choppy the video will be. I generally find a clip length of around 0.05 seconds to work as a starting point. This can be refined in either direction based on the needs of your project. After setting a clip length, pat yourself on the back. You’re done! At least, almost.
Step 5: adding final touches
I tend to like adding a few elements of flare to my timelapses. The biggest one is using keyframes to create a zooming and/or panning effect. I won’t do a full explanation on how to keyframe here (maybe in a future post!), so if you are interested in doing this, feel free to find one of the many great tutorials already online. You can see subtle keyframing in my sunset timelapse above. It just adds a nice touch, in my opinion. Additional options for final touches might be music or other audio, a fade in or out, or anything else you like. It’s your timelapse, after all.
Once any final touches have been made, congrats! Now you’re really done. Your own timelapse, made by you from start to finish. Enjoy it and share it with others, you deserve it. As always, never hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or comments. Happy shooting!
