Check out this blog on how you set up the 7D or 5DmkII to actually take the stills. But if your camera has an interval function like the Nikon D300, D700 etc this tutorial works exactly the same for you. Some compacts let you take interval stills too I believe but not sure which ones.
Normally I would recommend using RAW mode to take your stills with but I used JPEGs for this tutorial for speed and to be honest the subject wasn’t that interesting, just shot out of my window at the Clift hotel in San Francisco using my 5dmkII and my 35mm F1.4 lens taking one photo every 7 seconds and the shutter was set to 1/20th and the ISO was 100. Lens was at f8. Purely used as a demonstration for doing post.
Doing timelapse with the stills function gives you enormous flexibility and the ability to get some truly mind blowing low light timelapse sequences. Much better than you can do with a video camera.
How to make video timelapse from DSLR stills from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.
Tutorial on how to take your stills taken with your DSLR and turn them into great timelapse HD video.
Dungeness timelapse experiment with Canon 7d from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.
Inspired by Tom @ Timescapes I went out to my favourite filming location in the UK, Dungeness on the south coast to see what I could get.
Joseph Stunzi
October 18, 2009 at 16:09Just something to note (I’m sure Phil already knows this)… linear pullouts are great, but sometimes for a more realistic look, logarithmic pullout… it’s a simple change that anyone can make using the points in the motion tab in Final Cut. In After Effects and Premier, you can even use a shortcut to generate a standard log curve! Sometimes this helps with big movements like this one that fill just did.
pbloom
October 18, 2009 at 16:34yes, i kept this tutorial very simple and very basic. It’s a starter tutorial for people just getting into it
Steve
October 18, 2009 at 16:10When you exported the 1080p version does quicktime scale and crop it? Because the original video wasn’t 16:9, or is there some weird squeezing going on?
pbloom
October 18, 2009 at 16:33it crops it
Andrew Howe
October 18, 2009 at 17:31Nice timing Phil, just got myself an Intervalometer yesterday
pbloom
October 19, 2009 at 00:24cool. you will love it. I adore DSLR timelapse
Dave Dugdale
October 18, 2009 at 20:26Thanks for keeping it easy for the beginners like me.
pbloom
October 19, 2009 at 00:24you are welcome. You can get a lot more complicated with RAW files and curves in the frame size change. I will cover that in a future one.
GPSchnyder
October 18, 2009 at 20:27Is there a Timelapse Function on the Gh1 also? Cause I like the look of this timelapses very much and would really like to test some things out without buying just another DSLR again…
pbloom
October 19, 2009 at 00:23no timelapse. can it take a remote? not sure. will google it.
rawmeyn
October 19, 2009 at 15:01i think i´ll order this intervalometer for my gh1.
http://www.enjoyyourcamera.com/Fernausloeser/Kabel-Fernausloeser/Timer-Ausloeser-JJC-TM-D-fuer-Panasonic-FZ-50-FZ-30-LC-1-etc::2208.html
jehu Garcia
October 18, 2009 at 21:41Oh! Would have loved to have seen this a week ago, Would have done better in my first attempts at timelapses, check it out: http://www.vimeo.com/7115014
Dave Griffin
October 18, 2009 at 22:44Great tutorial as always. If you want to push the capture process even further, I wrote a short article on capturing the images in RAW (I used SRAW2 on my 5DMk2) and then post-processing them in Lightroom before importing them into Quicktime Pro as an image sequence. By shooting in RAW you have far more control over color balance and exposure. By using the “small raw” formats you can keep the file sizes reasonable with still plenty of resolution headroom for even 1080p files.
http://dmg-photography.com/blog/2009/10/lr-edited-tl-frames
How to shoot time laspe movies on a Canon 5D | Time lapse movie shooting | Neill Watson Photographer
October 19, 2009 at 08:10[...] by Tom over at Timescapes, I decided to borrow an intervalometer from the guys at The Flash Centre. Philip Bloom’s workflow tips were very useful and I had a subject in mind in the shape of the beautiful, newly finished Infinity Bridge over the [...]
Dave Aldrich
October 19, 2009 at 19:56Love it thanks!
I didn’t know quicktime could do that.
Never thought to use the extra resolution of the still images for doing digital zooms / pans.
Now I have to get an intervalometer for my GH1 so I can some of these!
Miguel Figueiredo
October 20, 2009 at 09:11Philip, if you could check my work at blizzarworks.blip.tv, you could see some timelapses done with a Canon 20D on the first video. First I suggest importing the frames into After effects – for those who have it – where it can accept Raw format and so make any colour correction within the 32bit range. And then render it into any format… What I still don’t know how to deal is the damn flickering… There’s a plugin within the Tinderbox collection that tries to correct it, but it’s never satisfactory…
Do you have a special way to deal with this? Thanks.
andrew
October 20, 2009 at 12:39good stuff. even better was your super clean desktop, it got me searching how to make my desktop icons smaller. always an inspiration, thanks!
Randy Noland
October 21, 2009 at 09:54Philip,
So what did you do to the “Speed” in the motion tab? I saw at 100% but where does is the sped up lapse adjustment made?
I created a time lapse with my JVC HM100u and Canon 5DMkII (in video mode) side by side then adjusted the speed to 5000% – was not sure how else to do.
Thanks for any info.
-Randy
Time lapse video tutorial | Video and Film Production in Springfield, Branson and Southwest Missouri
October 21, 2009 at 16:33[...] who is writing extensively about using the new Canon DSLR for video, also recently offered this tutorial on Time Lapse video with stills: Doing timelapse with the stills function gives you enormous flexibility and the ability to get [...]
Juan Mª
October 23, 2009 at 14:36Dear Philip,
I found a big problem when opening files as image sequence with Quicktime player v. 10,0 -the one which comes with snow leopard- as it does not support image sequences.
Any idea on how to solve this?
Thanks,
Juan Mª
P.D. Like very much your videos and tutorials.
pbloom
October 23, 2009 at 16:00hi Juan, use quicktime player 7. It is still on your hard drive. p
John Novotny
October 24, 2009 at 19:21I’m getting great deal of exposure flicker in my time lapses any way around this besides manual mode?
pbloom
October 24, 2009 at 21:09you really should do manual for timelapse unless you are doing epic ones like I did.
John Novotny
October 25, 2009 at 19:00I found a fix for exposure flicker using aperture priority mode at the timescapes forum. http://www.timescapes.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1292
John Novotny
October 25, 2009 at 19:04did you have any flicker problems in your 36hr time lapse?
I use aperture priority mode for day to night otherwise I’ll be using manual.
pbloom
October 26, 2009 at 23:59no flicker issues somehow. i should have been in aperture priority mode
John Novotny
October 26, 2009 at 04:30I found some freeware called VirtualDub that will assemble your photo time lapse and will de-flicker your images I was also able to save my time lapse as uncompressed HD (I think).
VirtualDub:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/
Tutorial:
http://timescapes.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=716&p=12083#p12083
pbloom
October 26, 2009 at 23:57cool. thanks for info John
John Novotny
October 27, 2009 at 13:57Just returning the favor.
JDL
November 15, 2009 at 16:05hi qtx doesn’t work with this…. as you say rightly say… There seems to be no way for using qt7 pro on my mac that has 10.6 and the rubbish qt x.
Do you have a work around please ?
The great thing is Apple allow you to buy qt 7 pro (as on my MBPro) Then doesn’t allow you access to it !! (£20 for nowt)
Thanks for this lovely easy tutorial…
Just wish that apple were as user friendly on this subject.
best JDL
PS I know this an old tutorial BUt if you are scanning this page would loooove to know
pbloom
November 15, 2009 at 16:07do you not have qt7 anymore?
JDL
November 16, 2009 at 12:11yes BUT canna seem to get it to load… qtx overrides it (I am also asking apple about this)
this is since loaded 10.6
(sorry didn’t reply earlier)
JDL
November 16, 2009 at 12:27Big Sorry… It is a case of RTFM… You can load qt7 on 10.6 it just doesn’t do it by itself…
you have to go back to the disk that come with 10.6 find qt7 and then reload from the install disk….
best jdl
pbloom
November 19, 2009 at 06:51yes, for some reason i didn’t need to reinstall it. It was still in my folder, hidden but there
pbloom
November 19, 2009 at 06:52use quicktime pro 7. on your install disc
Nathan Jongewaard
November 22, 2009 at 22:52Thanks for your inspirational work, Philip. Having trouble with this workflow in Snow Leopard – I am using QT 7, not the useless QT X, but when I create my image sequence, all I get is a black video. The images are fine – I am currently just processing the timelapse via After Effects instead, but I’d love to be able to use the (simpler) Quicktime 7 approach if you know of a workaround.
Any thoughts?
Nathan
Desmond
December 15, 2009 at 09:19This is weird. Something new for me. What the interval did you use to capture those images? Did you just purely use Quicktime to do the timelapse? What weird to me is how quicktime blend those images together to a smooth motion. It’s not choppy.
pbloom
December 15, 2009 at 11:59all just quicktime. depends on how frequently you take a photo that depends on the choppiness.
AcubySerScurf
January 5, 2010 at 10:28I figured it was the right time to say hello. Happy to be here! I’ve Been reading a lot of posts but am not so famaliar with how the boards operate just yet. If I dropped my helo line in the wrong part of the forum, I hope a mod will put it where it is supposed to go. I guess that since I read the posts here more often than not, it would be where I said hello to everyone for the first time. Well, thanks a lot and I hope to learn a lot more from someone of the already great information that I’ve found here.
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george
February 17, 2010 at 21:50hey ! phil do i have to get the timer controller in order to do a time lapse on a canon 7d ? or the camera come with a especial mode for it >?
thank you !
pbloom
February 18, 2010 at 02:48yep. type in timelapse into search engine and you will get the info you need.
jessemeyer
May 7, 2010 at 02:52Hello Philip,
First let me say that I would indeed be interested in a meet-up in the keys, along with a couple of my canon wielding friends. Especially after the 16th of June!
I just completed my first timelapse using similar techniques described here, although I had to lug my old macbook around with me and was limited to its battery life since my 7d/17-55 2.8 combo put me in the poor house. Can’t wait till I have $60 for an intervalometer. Sad, sad days.
Anyway, my question is this: I shoot RAW for everything, and absolutely love the control. But I’ve been searching for a solution to automate RAW parameters. It would be amazing to be able to slowly change exposure and other tweaks slowly over time. After Effects seems like a prime candidate for this, but as far as I know it isn’t possible. It might even be a limitation of the intervals in some RAW settings. For instance, if I recall, exposure goes in steps of .05 EV or something like that.
Do you know if anything yet exists for something like that?
Cheers, great work as always.
pbloom
May 7, 2010 at 10:01am afraid no ide. key west meet up details up soon
Thomas
July 13, 2010 at 19:59Hi Philip,
What is the preset of your sequence in timeline before sliding in your timelapse video ?
Thanks.
Pete Harris
August 15, 2010 at 20:16Yep would like to know that too, came to the meetup and did some TL and whenever I start to change the motion of the clip I get a lovely red rendering bar.
Cheers,