Here's the 10 basics of time lapse.
Check it out.
Hi, this is JP Morgan.
We're out here at Bryce Canyon National Park.
We're going to do some basic time lapse today using our MyApps mobile device.
I just want to do the 10 steps of basic time lapse to go through those steps, so as you
set up your time lapse, go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10, and shoot, it'll get you going
every single time.
So number one, you've got to have an intervalometer, something that's going to trigger your camera.
I'm using the MyApps mobile device.
I love this little device because it's small, it's easy to put on my camera, and I'm going
to run it from my phone.
I mean, it's all right there, just like the standard MyApps device, but just gives you
something mobile and easy to take around and run from your phone, and that's what we love
about it.
Number two, choose whether you're going to shoot JPEGs or RAWS or both.
I always shoot both.
I want a JPEG that I can use and look at.
It's just a quick way to get to the images.
But, I want the RAWS for when I get back to the studio, I can sit down, I can process
all of my images, I can make them look exactly how I want.
And then I can export them into JPEG form to be able to make my final time lapse.
So, choose what you're going to do.
I'm going to do both today, and I'll take the RAW back into the studio for process them.
Number three, the exposure triangle.
Now, our goal today is not to go into all the different…
I mean, there's so many different camera settings we can talk about.
Camera settings are much different if you're going from day to night or night to day.
We're concentrating basically, on sunlight day time exposure.
So, set your aperture, your shutter, and your ISO according to your scene.
Number four, make sure you set your white balance.
If I'm doing from day to night or night to day, I will always do auto white balance.
But, if I'm in direct sunlight like this, I'll set it on sunlight.
Number five, set the interval on your MyApps app.
My interval usually, is two seconds because I like a lot of information.
I can throw away every other image later if I want to.
But, I want to get a lot of information as the sun is changing.
But some people go to four seconds or longer, depending on what you're doing.
But, it's important that your interval is longer than your shutter speed.
If you go into a night time scene, where you've got a 10 second exposure, or in the stars,
we're doing 20 seconds, then your interval's got to be longer than 20 seconds.
It's got to be 21 seconds or 22 seconds.
So, you got to make sure that your interval is longer than your shutter speed.
Number six, focus your scene.
Either manually focus it or use auto focus on the first frame to get your focus.
Number seven, turn the auto focus off if you're using it, because that's going to make your
lens jump around in every scene, and it's going to make it breathe.
You don't want that.
Number eight, turn off the VC control on your lens or any kind of conversation for you lens
and try to stabilize it.
It's going to make your lens breathe and jump around, and again, it's going to make the
time lapse start to breathe.
You want to get rid of that.
Number nine, set how long you'll want your final time lapse to be.
For me, a rule of thumb is 30 seconds.
So, I know if I need 24 frames a second, I'm going to need at least 24 times 30, which
is 720 frames.
So, if I don't get 720 frames, I'm not going to have 30 seconds of time lapse.
If you want your time lapse to be longer, then just calculate that for longer so you
know how many frames you need.
A lot of times for me, I'm just going to let it roll because I'll get great segments between
it.
Clouds looking great here, not quite so good there, got a little better here.
So, I'll run mine 1,000, 2,000 frames a lot of times.
In the MyApps mobile app, I can just go to the basic time lapse, get my interval at four
seconds, and then I just leave the number on infinity, which means it'll just go forever.
Now, I could set that at 720 frames, which means it'll go for the 720 frames, then it'll
stop.
Number 10, in your menu, you can shut the preview off on the back of your camera, if
you don't want that preview coming up after every image.
It just helps you save battery, and you're going to be able to shoot a lot longer.
So, not a must by any means.
I leave it on often.
But it'll just help you have a little longer battery life if you want.
So, there's your 10-step reminder for how to set up a time lapse.
Now, we're going to take these images back in the studio, we're going to process them
and create a time lapse on a time line, and see what we shot today.
So, let's go through the steps on how to process.
So, Julie and I got back from Bryce, and now it's time to process all of our time lapses.
But before you start this process, calibrate your monitors.
If you don't calibrate your monitor, you're going to be looking at the monitor thinking,
your exposures are correct, your color's correct, and you're really not looking at correct exposure
or color.
So, the Spyder5 is here on our computer from Datacolor.
We've calibrated our monitor.
It's completely ready to go, so that I know that when I set exposure and color, that I'm
looking at a correct color exposure this time.
So, let's get started.
So, I'm going to start in Bridge.
I like using Bridge.
I know everyone loves Lightroom, but I just do a very simple, quick process from Bridge
to Photoshop RAW, into Premiere.
That's those three steps.
I'm just going to scroll through the front of my images here.
I'm going to find where my first image is.
Go about to the middle, because that's about where I'm going to hit the JPEGs, because
I sort it by kind.
And there's the last, doing the camera raw.
This is all shot on manual, so our exposure stays the same.
But, the light's changing quite a bit.
But, I'm going to come down a little bit until I start to see some sunlight here come up
on the, kind of, the Bryce, the who do's in Bryce.
And I'm going to want to correct one of these, something that has some of the sun in it.
It's going to be a little bit closer to what my exposure's going to be.
I'll use that, kind of, as my test image.
That's my first step.
My big step, what's going to really help me here, is I'm going to jump over here to the
Dehaze in the FX, and I'm going to push the Dehaze.
And when I push that Dehaze up, it's going to give me a much richer color in the sky,
it's going to give me a better contrast in the clouds, and I'm going to push it up quite
a bit here into like almost 36% or 40%.
Now, I'm going to go back to my exposure again, and I'm going to play with these one more
time.
And do I want to brighten it up just a little bit, which I will.
So, I'm going to go up to the Spot Removal button here, because I got a problem on my
sensor in this image.
You see it right here?
So, I'm going to be reuse this in healing over here, rather than clone.
I want to use clone, I want to use healing.
I'm going to click on this spot right here, and it's going to give me two circles there.
It disappears, but first off, I'm going to make this one as small as I can, so it's just
going to barely cover the spot.
I'm going to grab the middle of this one.
I'm going to push it in as close as possible.
And now, that's going to clone out that bad spot on my sensor, and it's going to do it
on all the images when I sync these here.
Sometimes, you get a little funky spot where it goes to the clouds or something, because
the clouds are moving.
But it's going so fast, 24 frames a second, it's not going to be a problem.
I zoomed out just a little bit, so now I can take and add a gradient.
So, I'm going to put a gradient right here, I'm going to put it on the top of this and
this.
It gets really heavy on the very top, so I'm going to pull this up so that it starts to
kind of…
It gives me a nice blue up at the corners, but it's not going to push in, make too much
of a line.
This is just affecting the gradient levels.
It's not affecting anything else.
But this next gradient, I'm going to add one more gradient now, and I'm going to put one
in on the bottom down here, and I'm going to push this up through all this red rock.
And the reason being is I want to warm up this red rock.
Right now, it's way too yellow, so I'm going to take some blue out of it, or add some blue
to it.
So, let's look at that side by side is where we started out at.
I'd say we've come a long way here.
It's looking very nice.
So now, I'm going to go over to my image over here, little button on the right corner there.
I'm going to put Select All, and then I'm going to hit Sync Settings.
Now when this comes up, there's a couple things on here you got to do.
It automatically is going to check everything down to Crop, Spot Removal, and Local Adjustments,
so make sure you hit Spot Removal and Local Adjustments.
It's going to bring your gradiation in and the spotting that we did, so that this can
apply those to all these images.
So now, the next thing I do is just this.
Right underneath my image here, I have Save Images.
So, I hit Save Images and make sure you select the right folder so it doesn't go off somewhere,
wandering around the computer and dumping a million images.
And when I hit Save, it's going to transfer all of these images to that folder.
Eight hundred and three remain.
This is going to take a little bit of time, so I always do these over the weekend.
I get it set up.
Get one going.
I'd leave and go do something, and I'd come back, get another one, go and do something.
So anyway, so there we are in Premiere.
I'm going to open that up, and I now have a project here.
Very simple.
If I go up here in my Input Folder, Bryce number four, I'll select the very first one.
And if I look here at Options, if I click on Options, I got to make sure image sequence
is checked.
And now, it will import this in as an image sequence.
If we see up here on the top that it's at 23.97 frames per second, which is what I want.
24 frames a second basically.
Now, you may bring yours in and it's a different frames per second.
So, you can right-click on this, come down to Modify, Interpret Footage.
When the Modify clip comes up, you can assume this frame,s right.
You click on this right here and you can now change that to 29.9 if you want to, whatever
you choose to put in.
But, we're going to leave this at 23.9, which is 24 frames a second.
And now, I'm just going to simply drag this, put it onto my time line, and right there
is my time lapse.
This is not 16 by 9 video.
This is the entire full res image.
It's not cropped, it's giving you three by four there.
So, it's just a quick way to get it into Premiere, so you now can use it whatever format you're
going to use it.
I build them on this timeline, all of them.
Now I can export them out and nest them and use them in other timelines.
So, there you have it.
The 10 points of time lapse.
Bring that on a card or something.
It's a great mental thing, a list to go through, because a lot of times, I'll roll up, you're
in a hurry, you throw your camera up, you want to get it going quickly, and you start
doing dumb things, like I left it on auto focus.
I forgot to set the JPEG or the…
You start making mistakes.
So just go through that list quickly, to make sure that everything is ready, then you can
start your time lapse and you'll be successful more times than not.
Now, this is just the basics of time lapse.
I'm not going into shooting day to night, or all these kind of other things.
Just give yourself a good exposure, multiple exposures, cloud's moving, and you'll have
a great time lapse.
So, keep those cameras rolling.
Keep on clicking.
If you want to make the transition from just natural light to strobe light, get our mastering
studio strobes download.
It's at theslantedlens.com.
It's going to teach you what strobes you should buy, how to use them, and it has all kinds
of lighting set ups.
It'll help you perfect the skill and be using strobes in no time.
So get over to theslantedlens.com.
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