Summary
Create a very high resolution, high dynamic range time-lapse movie. Using HDR software to blend bracketed exposures of the same shot you can create an image that better resembles what the eye sees compared to traditional photography techniques.
Capture
· Shoot with a tripod
· Set camera to bracket shutter speed. Shooting in aperture priority is a good approach. For most scenes you can either take 3 or 5 shots(depending on your camera’s bracketing options):
o 3 shots
§ #1 - 2 EV
§ #2 normal exposure
§ #3 + 2 EV
o 5 shots
§ #1 - 2 EV
§ #2 – 1 EV
§ #3 normal exposure
§ #4 + 1 EV
§ #5 + 2 EV
· Shooting high quality jpegs is fine but if you can capture RAW you should
· Use an intervolometer to repeat this 3 or 5 bracket capture sequence at a regular interval
Batch HDR Rendering
· Determine ideal HDR settings
o Use your favorite HDR software… Using Photomatix click “Create an HDR image”
o Pull in a full bracketed sequence (3 or 5 photos) from near the middle of the time sequence.
o Play with all the sliders and options to determine the ideal settings for this set of images
§ Good starting points that I gravitate towards are
· Strength 90
· Saturation 80
· Light smooth high or very high
· Black point (somewhere in the first quarter)
· White point (somewhere in the second quarter)
· Batch process your HDR Images
o From Photomatix click “Batch Process”
o Choose the folder that contains all of the images from your capture
o Tell the software how many images are to be combined to create an HDR image (3 or 5 in this case)
o Choose a destination folder
o Photomatix will remember your last settings you choose for your last image, or you can pull up the settings dialog to pick what you want (but you do not get the visual feedback so that was what the last step was all about)
o At the end of all this you should have a folder of high resolution sequenced HDR (tone mapped) jpegs that will be the individual stills for your time lapse movie.
· Color Correct & Crop
o Import the folder of high resolution HDR images into Lightroom or Aperture
o Perform any batch corrections (color, spot removal etc.)
o Batch crop the group of photos to a 16:9 aspect ratio
o Batch export the images to 1920 x 1080
o Now you have a folder of color corrected, cropped sequential images that have been down sampled to a full HD (1080P) resolution.
· Create your Time-Lapse Movie
o Using Quicktime Pro start a new image sequence by choosing ctrl+shift+O
o Choose the folder of images and pick the first image for the sequence
o Choose 30fps for the frame rate (as a starting point)
o (optional) Save the movie as a self contained file (it will be big!)
o Export the movie a .mov file using .H264 compression
o (optional) Set playback settings to automatically play full screen when opened
o You now have a self contained video file that is 1920 X 1080
· Burn a DVD that will playback full HD quality in your Blu Ray player (such as a PS3)
o Using Roxio’s Toast 9 product on a Mac…
o Click on the 3rd tabfor video
o Click on the Blu-ray video option (you will need the additional HD/BD Plugin
o Drop the .Mov file that is your time-lapse in the main window
o Choose DVD from the bottom right corner drop down
o (optional) Create a custom menu by dragging a photo to the DVD menu dialog
· Share your Time-Lapse online
o Upload to Vimeo www.vimeo.com
o Then post the viewing widget in your blog or Facebook profile. Here are 3 examples of HDR time-lapse that I did in Utah.
Great movies! Thanks for the info on your process--very useful.
Keep it up!
Norm
Posted by: normbear | September 07, 2008 at 12:18 PM
Well done Chad. Love the Bryce Canyon sequence. Feel like I should be leaping off and flying into the sky over the canyon.
Posted by: Elise | September 23, 2008 at 06:26 PM
Beautiful! Have you ever done any Starlapses?
Posted by: mostlyzoso | October 20, 2008 at 11:34 AM
Chad,
What is the interval that you generally use for timelapse? Thanks.
-LD
Posted by: Leather Donut | December 10, 2008 at 08:46 PM
LD- It varies usually between 5 and 8 seconds. Shorter for things like driving or flying sequences which i do at 1-2 seconds and a bit longer for things like night time star lapses - 12-15 seconds.
Posted by: chad1616 | December 11, 2008 at 09:28 AM
re: Star lapses I have done some but not a otn. Here is a good example of one I did:
http://www.vimeo.com/2448264
If you want to see cool star time-lapse I think Tom @ Timescapes does the best work there..
http://www.vimeo.com/timescapes
Posted by: chad1616 | December 11, 2008 at 09:30 AM
Chad,
love your work.. I have a D200 and I have used interval timer for my bracketing shots, My question is..what kind of memory card do you carry..I know that I have a 4gb card but after 200+ shots it gets filled if shooting in raw..do you carry 2 cards dump one on the computer while the other one is shooting and so forth? Once again congrats on the wonderful work. A true admirer.
Richard
Posted by: Richard | January 13, 2009 at 09:30 PM
Richard, Thanks for your kind words. I use 32gb memory cards. I also do not shoot RAW for HDR time-lapse (or rarely do) so that helps. I use these Transcend 32GB CompactFlash cards which I have been very happy with.
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-TS32GCF133-133x-Compact-Flash/dp/B0012Q2PD6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231953861&sr=8-1
Posted by: chad1616 | January 14, 2009 at 09:25 AM
love the work and the help is much appreciated.
my question is what are your recommended settings for doing time-lapses with changing lighting? like a sunset to night scene. do you use aperture priority? or a manual setting?
thanks
Posted by: Brad Kremer | January 14, 2009 at 11:58 AM
Brad,
That is a great question and one of the bigger challenges with time-lapse. I try not to leave it on Aperture priority as that is very apt to cause a higher level of issues with flicker. In an ideal world you are able to keep it in manual and you are close by to change the settings with major shifts in light. I have found that it is less of a gradual thing than you would think. I sort of think of it a nighttime (dark), dawn some light but no direct sun, and then sunrise as 3 settings. Then later in the morning you probably want to readjust as the sun is higher in the sky. Then just the reverse of this for sunset, dusk and night. Hope that helps. It is definitely as much art as science.
Posted by: chad1616 | January 14, 2009 at 12:26 PM
hey chad,
when exporting the QT you mention an option of saving as a self contained file. i am curious if you think this is a better way for quality. yes the file is much larger. but my main concern is exporting with the best quality possible for editing in FCP.
thanks again!
brad
Posted by: Brad Kremer | March 03, 2009 at 09:27 AM
To get something very colorful like that, is that recommended to shot 5 pictures (-2,-1,0,1,2 EVs) ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkbQ2FwZvYk
Posted by: Georges | June 13, 2009 at 09:57 AM
Thank you Chad for showing your work and sharing your tech thoughts. I am learning, and I 'followed' you here to see and read (hoping you feel admired and not stalked)
I posted a question on Vimeo time lapse for beginners forum and got this advice from you:
"What I do is use QuickTime Pro import image sequence...(command + Shift + O) I would set the frame rate to 23.976 and then save it all as a reference file (be sure not to move the JPEGS!!!). Then import that reference file into FCP and you are good to go.
I believe in you Chad, and I want to learn, I really do.I shot sequences of jpg's with my canon rebel, and have them in a file on my Mac - but when I open Quicktime and navigate to them, QT only wants to open one image at a time.
Further advice? I'm hooked on trying
thanks-
Doug
Posted by: Dadler503 | July 07, 2009 at 04:25 PM
Nice tutorial, but I've hit a snag.
This is driving me insane. I used Adobe Lightroom to batch process my sequence of images, so that for each image, I had images with values of -1, 0, and +1. All the +1 images are in a separate folder, as are the -1, and 0 images. I'm trying to batch process them in Photomatix to apply HDR tonemapping. When I check "Process subfolders" and select "grouped by exposures," it still doesn't group them by exposures. Instead, it takes the first three images from my +1 folder, merges them, and goes on. Any ideas?
Posted by: Phil | November 01, 2009 at 05:21 PM
Terrific stuff, Chad. You mention cropping and resizing before importing into the video editing suite. If you leave the shots in 3:2 and import them into your editing suite that way, this will allow you to add pan/zoom effects in the video editing software if desired. Just another approach.
Bob
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1436667268 | November 15, 2009 at 06:33 AM
sublime imagery Chad, stunning locations. I shall try your HDR process soon as I have been thinking about HDR for timelapse. At least it gets me out and about!
Posted by: Peter Enright | March 15, 2010 at 04:02 PM
Chad, your instructions say: "Batch export the images to 1920 x 1080"
is that @ 72 dpi web resolution or higher?
Phil: I've used Photomatix and I think you need to keep all your images in the one folder; it knows which are the bracketed ones.
Posted by: Peter Enright | March 16, 2010 at 05:14 AM
Hello Chad,
i think you are the master time lapser ! anyway
y have some trouble whit the noise in HDR time lapse
specially during sunset, the land who is coming black during sunset, have lot of noise and y understand that blakc on black doing noise
But y see some of your and they have no noise
what the technics, is it in Photomatix ? is it RAW file ?
i try HDR on tha scene, the end was hypre noisy, so y take just the overexposure shoot to make that
https://vimeo.com/47203568
thanks for your help !
Posted by: lutchot | August 08, 2012 at 04:34 PM