Timelapse in 24p

[Federico Rizzo]

May be this is an old but simple question. Which is the best setting in 24p for timelapse (clouds, sunsets..)?

 

[Carlbattreall]

Tom L is your man.

Tom L is your man.

Its all based on the speed of your subject and how smooth you want the footage to look. The playback rate doesn't really matter, its how many frames per second interval you use and the shutter speed. The only thing play back rate determines is how much footage you will need to get to get X amount of footage. If you want 10 seconds of footage at 24fps then you need to take 240 frames.

The more frames per second the smoother the footage will look. The generic rule for shutter speed is half the interval rate, So if your interval is one frame per second then your shutter speed should be at least a half a second.

On a windy day I will do clouds at 1 frame per second, on those days when the clouds hardly move, maybe 1 frame every few seconds. It takes practice.

Make sure everything is lock down in manual mode.

Tom L is the time lapse expert on these forums, you should visit www.timescapes.org, all the info you need on time lapse and much more.

 

[Federico Rizzo]

Thanks for your suggestion. My setting has been based until now in 1 frame for second in 24p at 4k , normally 1/48 but I'm not satisfied of the results. Clouds with a lot of wind is the subject. The footage is not totally smooth. May be a best result could be obtained with a different setting at 3k or 2k increasing fps rate?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Your timebase doesn't matter, that is just what you want to play your footage back at and it can be changed in post anyway. all that matters with timelapse is how many exposures or frames you shoot in a given amount of time and what the exposure time (shutter speed) of those frames is.

There is no one specific formula because every subject is different and a lot depends on how fast you want the motion to play back.

If you are shooting 1fps, then you don't want to use 1/48 as your shutter. That shutter speed is appropriate if you are shooting 24fps. You still want a 1/2 or 180 shutter so if you're shooting 1fps, try a shutter at 1/2s and then speed it up or slow it down. You just have to shoot some tests.

Tom L is the man when it comes to timelapse. But he also, like many of us, shoot most of our timelapse with an SLR and not the RED One. Especially for longer expsosure timelapse pieces. RED One's Mysterium sensor does not allow for long exposures and actually shows lots of hot pixel noise even in 1s exposure shots.

For fast moving clouds, try maybe try 3fps with shutter at 180 degrees (1/6s)... If you shoot 1fps at 1/48, that's just like shooting 24fps at 1/48 and using only one out of every 24 frames.

 

[Carlbattreall]

Too fast!

Too fast!

That's the problem, too fast a shutter speed. 1/48 is good for 24fps, I would slow it down to at least a 1/2 second. That will smooth things out.

 

[Antony M]

Of course, if you need 0.5 second exposure, you will need LOTS of ND filters!!!

And therefore, probably also an IR filter.