Start your journey into timelapse photography with these tips from VIC VideopIC.
Ever wanted to venture into making timelapses but don’t know where to begin? This video tutorial by VIC VideopIC has 10 tips that should help you get started with this exciting genre, or allow you to create better ones if you think you can do better.
Timelapse photography has a lot of creative applications, especially in today’s visually-driven, social media age. If you’re looking into adding some timelapses into your portfolio, or engaging your audience with something extra, it’s worth learning the ropes by watching the video tutorial below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWTyPVZWoPI
All of the tips have their own role to play in making beautiful timelapses, but these are the ones that should be the backbone of the process:
Avoid flicker in your timelapses by using an old manual aperture lens.
These lenses can be fairly cheap, especially in the used markets. Go for the 35mm or 50mm lenses, if you can find them. If you’re using a mirrorless camera, look for a lens adapter which can let you shoot with lenses from different manufacturers.
Manually set everything.
Aside from being totally in control of your results, manually setting everything ensures consistent recording throughout your timelapse. This lets you avoid flicker, inconsistent focus, and strong color shifts from the camera adjusting automatically to every change in the scene being captured.
Use the correct intervals.
It’s all a matter of creative preference, but you’ll need to do some experimenting to determine the right frequency of shots or frames per second to use. The video suggests doing intervals or counting by the number of seconds in between shots. To start with, an interval of one or two seconds is generally good choice for timelapses with movement of people, cars, and boats, and hyperlapses made from moving vehicles. An interval of every 3 to 7 seconds is good for static timelapses showing movement of clouds or waves. Lastly, an interval of 10 to 20 seconds is best for capturing sunsets or transition from day to night.
Shoot RAW files.
As with still photography, RAW files allow you to effectively post-process each frame so you get a good timelapse with the right colors, white balance, contrast, and other adjustments.
Don’t cheat with the video shortcut.
Some people make a “timelapse” shortcut by taking videos and speeding them up by 24x. This is not the best way to create timelapses as they are often not in RAW format. The image quality per “frame” is often worse than JPEG and cannot be corrected the same way as with RAW image files.
Do check out VIC VideopIC on YouTube for more video tutorials about everything photo and video!