Introduction to TimeLaps Photography

As a video or content creator, I think you should also be thinking about what else you can add to your production to increase the production quality of your work. 

Something that I have found works really well for me and has allowed me to "stand out" with my video content is adding in time lapses and hyper lapses into my videos. 

I will be going over hyper lapses in a later blog post, so don't worry about them for now. 

As I will be using a good amount of technical language within this post, this post will need you to understand a few basic photography terms, such as shutter speed, Iso and aperture.

If you’re wondering what a time-lapse is, it’s a piece of video that has been sped up to show how a large amount of real-time passes in a fraction of the time. See for example this video of the umbrellas going up in the High Street – it compresses 9 hours of filming into 20 seconds of video. 

Now you may be wondering how those time lapses are actually created. 

There are a few ways of creating time lapses, but some will produce a better result than others. But for this post, I will just be going over how to shoot them.

The main technical tool I use when creating time lapses is "Interval Shooting Timer". In most cases this should be built into your DSLR (digital single-lens reflex camera). However, if the model you are using doesn't come with one built in, then all you need to buy is a remote. 

The first thing I do before I get my gear ready is to find a good location. There are a few things I look for when creating time lapses. The first is movement, such as a road or a busy high sheet. Then I look for any composition elements that will help add depth to my image (such as foreground, leading lines or symmetry.) 

When you know where you want to shoot, I would always recommend shooting time lapses on a tripod, just to make sure your gear isn't going to move during your shot. 

When I’m ready to start shooting, I always ensure that I can shoot with a shutter speed of more than one second.. If you are shooting in the day, you will need a ND (neutral density) filter for this. 

When filming people, I will keep my shutter speed at 1 second, as my interval is going to be two seconds (in most cases when you’re filming anything you want to keep your shutter at half your frame). When you have picked the correct shutter speed, you will of course need to change your ISO and aperture(f stop) to compensate for the amount of light let into the lens, as you want to try and avoid blowing out your highlights. In most changes the sky, this can be challenging on really bright sunny days. 

So when I think my settings are ready to go, I take a test shot. I’ll use this shot to see if I’m happy with my compilation and if I haven't blown out any highlights. If all looks good, then I’ll start to set up my Interval Shooting mode. If not, then I may need to change a few of my settings or my composition until I’m happy with everything.

In most cases, you will not need more than ten seconds of a given time lapse, so if I am filming people and my interval is two seconds, then I will only take 240 images. That should take just over 8 minutes to finish. When you click start, your DSLR will take a photo every two seconds until it has completed the full 240. 

As my post-production work can be quite long, I will save that for another blog post. If this topic is of interest to you, then make sure to check back soon.