Timelapse Question for Guys with Cameras

[Tom Lowe]

1 second? There is an intervalometer, then? One second is great for day timelapse. Most cloud shots, etc, are done with like 3- to 5-second intervals.

 

[ColinSmith]

As far as I remember, the most that was promised from the longgggg..... timelapse thread some time back was a 1s shutter speed.

You can do pretty much anything else by setting the camera up appropriately and doing smart things with frames in post, so it's not going to stop anything being shot, and it's not anything very complex, just that at the moment it seems you need to allow a bit more post time and a bit more space on the media, although TL is of course pretty gentle on that anyhow.

 

[Tom Lowe]

1s rules out night/star timelapse photography for the most part, but that's a small issue. DLSRs can do that job. But I guess my main question is whether RED has an intervalometer or intervalometer-type function? If not, is that something we can look forward to later?

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

Just curious.
Mark.

 

[jbeale]

I've never used FCP, but in Vegas you can select any number of stills and import them in one group on the timeline. They appear in name order, which for all the DSLRs I know, means they appear in the order they were shot in. A preference setting controls how many video frames each still occupies. I assume most other editing software can do the same thing. No Photoshop is required, you can do cropping, filters and effects in the NLE software.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

Just curious.
Mark.

Mark, it's quite complicated and time consuming. I shoot Canon RAW on my DLSR, then I process all 400 or 500 frames with Photoshop using the Batch/Action function, which CCs and resizes them to 720p or 1080p or 2K, etc, saves them number-sequenced as JPEGs, then you can import them directly into Premiere Pro or After Effects as an Image Sequence. It's a bit of work to get right.

If you ever need step-by-step instructions, I'm always happy to help the best I can, by email or phone or whatever.

I would guess that FCP has file import options similar to Premiere Pro, but I'm not exactly sure.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I've never used FCP, but in Vegas you can select any number of stills and import them in one group on the timeline. They appear in name order, which for all the DSLRs I know, means they appear in the order they were shot in. A preference setting controls how many video frames each still occupies. I assume most other editing software can do the same thing. No Photoshop is required, you can do cropping, filters and effects in the NLE software.

With RAW?

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Cheers

Cheers

If you ever need step-by-step instructions, I'm always happy to help the best I can, by email or phone or whatever.

Cheers Tom,
I'll definitely pick yer brains on this in the hopefully near future, I'll PM you at the time.

Best,
Mark.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Cheers Tom,
I'll definitely pick yer brains on this in the hopefully near future, I'll PM you at the time.

Best,
Mark.

Any time, my friend.

 

[Stokestack]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

You can also bring image sequences into Shake and do your cropping & resizing there. I think someone has written a free raw importer for it; you can probably find it at FXGuide or HighEnd2D.

Since time-lapse shots don't typically require cutting, you're better off optimizing for image quality (in resizing algorithms and color handling) rather than using an editing product.

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Stuart English]

Intervalometer

Intervalometer

I guess my main question is whether RED has an intervalometer or intervalometer-type function?

Not in the camera yet, but we plan to offer one via a camera firmware upgrade.

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Any ideas what the parameters will be at this point?

 

[Andy Fordham]

Is there an external connection to allow for a remote shutter release rather than rely on an integral intervalometer.

This is then more useful when running on a motion track and the shutter released by external pc controlling positioning.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Not for on-board recording. REDCODE RAW is so good, there is not a lot of point following an uncompressed RAW to on-board recording strategy. You just burn up 12X the media.

Thanks for reply. Thats what I assumed, although I worry how it might stand up to post image panning (although not a great deal). Extra file sizes wouldn`t bother me, and I can think of lots of uses for uncompressed stills.

 

[jbeale]

With RAW?

Actually I shot my timelapse stuff in JPEG just to save space. But there are a bunch of different raw converters and all of them will do batch conversion, AFAIK. If you convert your Raw to a 16-bit format, you aren't loosing any dynamic range in subsequent processing, as long as your NLE handles it. Vegas only just now with version 8 offers 32-bit floating point bit depth.