Timelapse with Nikon D800/800E/810

[PhotoEcosse]

Does anyone have any experience of creating short timelapse sequences with the Nikon D8** series of cameras?

From my reading of the manuals, it seems that I have two different ways of doing this:

1. Using the Interval Timer facility in the shooting menu to produce the requisite number of exposures at the requisite intervals (and then probably create the sequence in Lightroom and LRTimelapse)

or

2. Using the Timelapse function in the Movie feature.

Given that I would want to keep full manual control over shutter speed, aperture, ISO and white balance, can anyone suggest which route is likely to be the most satisfactory.

I am thinking, at this stage, that I might want to end up with a 3-minute timelapse compilation comprising of 20-30 sequences of 5-10 second duration. I might even want to use ProShow Gold (with which I am familiar) to create the final compilation but I am open to suggestions on this aspect too.

[kers]

Method 1 will gives far more detail/quality. you can shoot RAW.
But you have to turn it into a movie...could be done in quicktime7...

[Colorado David]

In my experience, Adobe After Effects works best to create the movie.

[Colorado David]

I was on my phone before.  I'm in front of the computer now, so more detail.  If you use ACR and Bridge, convert your RAW files as you see fit and create a jpeg of each.  If you've thrown any images away, you should renumber them in Bridge so that each of your sequences has all consecutive numbers.  Open Adobe After Effects and create a project.  Import your files as jpeg sequences.  If you have multiple views or locations, name them and import them individually.  When you do this it will create a movie.  You now have a movie at the resolution your images were shot.  Now you can create an After Effects composition and drag one of your movies into it.  You can now further work with the images either for look or for final output size.  If you want to size it for output, set that specification in your composition properties.  With that done you will size your movie to fit the composition.  Some of that will be done by reducing the size by a percentage and some may have to be done by cropping.  Now render your movie.  If you have questions, I'm happy to answer.  I have created a lot of time lapse movies via this process for a client that is particularly fond of time lapse.

[BernardLanguillier]

In my experience, Adobe After Effects works best to create the movie.

Yes, another option for those on OSX is Final Cut Pro X. It is reasonnably cheap and really as easy as drag and drop.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Colorado David]

I have tried to like FCP X.  I simply can't make myself like it.  I continue to use FCP 7 and Avid Media Composer.

[PhotoEcosse]

Method 1 will gives far more detail/quality. you can shoot RAW.
....

That is what I was thinking - thanks for the confirmation.

[HSakols]

I'm curious, if you shoot in RAW, say hundreds of frames then isn't post processing a bit overwhelming or do you make adjustments after you have imported them in a movie format?  Can one use iphoto for timelapse? 

[PhotoEcosse]

I'm curious, if you shoot in RAW, say hundreds of frames then isn't post processing a bit overwhelming or do you make adjustments after you have imported them in a movie format?  Can one use iphoto for timelapse?  

Not really. I use Lightroom and, even with the 45Mb Raw files of the D810, it flies through any form of batch processing. Yes - if I was processing a batch of 360 exposures in a sequence, then I might have time to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. And make the tea when the next sequence was processing.

I mentioned LRTimelapse in my original post. I have not yet tried that, so whether it would speed matters even farther in Lightroom - or slow them down - I don't yet know. But the Lightroom/LRTimelapse combination seems to be what all the experts recommend as, indeed, is their recommendation to shoot Raw provided card size and speed is up to the job.

[AFairley]

I can't remember the details, but when I did an in-camera 12-hour time lapse video with my D800 I ran into a 30 minute time limit on video files (regardless of size or framerate).  For reasons I don't recall, this did not allow me to capture the entire 12 hour period in a single take, even though the final video was only a few minutes and the number of frames far less than in a 30 minute video.   So I had to stop and restart the capture in the middle of the session and join the takes in post.  I'm sure the issue has been explained numerous times on the web.

[Petrus]

The way I would do it:

- always shoot individual frames only, never sequences (why would you?).
- shoot twice or four times as many frames as you need, just in case you want to make "slow-movement" sections afterwards. It is easy to speed up the video 2 or 4 times.
- either shoot small JPEGs to make things easier, or RAW and convert to small JPEG (longer dimension same as video frame), this makes things much easier to the video editor. At least FCP 7 chokes on unnecessary big files. Convert all with same settings.
- Import as a numbered sequence to FCP or Quicktime pro.
- edit

Here is an example, done over 3 workdays, with D800e:

There is a slo-mo section in the middle.

PS: notice the sugar-worm entering from the right at 10:00 sec...

[PhotoEcosse]

Thanks again for the additional advice.

[Torbjörn Tapani]

I keep my files full resolution. I might export 1920 wide frames if it's a simple clip but for a bigger project I keep full res files. Then it easy to do a fake zoom or pan in the video editor or 4k ready.

[dwswager]

I am thinking, at this stage, that I might want to end up with a 3-minute timelapse compilation comprising of 20-30 sequences of 5-10 second duration. I might even want to use ProShow Gold (with which I am familiar) to create the final compilation but I am open to suggestions on this aspect too.

You state the end product, but I really didn't understand the actual time-lapse part.

Are you saying each frame will be on screen during the video 5-10s?  The Movie Timelapse feature lets you setup the overall length of the photography and the interval between shootings and outputs a movie.  30 sequences of 5 seconds is 150 seconds total run time.

Both will give control over the shooting settings (set at the start and used throughout). 

The movie method is the easiest, but limits you to what it gives.  The Photo method requires you assemble the movie yourself, but gives you options to zoom in, pan, etc within the frame.

[esalz]

Hello forum, I'm Elias.

A bit late here, but may I suggest the excellent software 'Time Lapse Assembler', a simple but powerful tool based on the FOSS command line tool 'tlassemble' by the same author.

Output is up to 60fps MPG, H.264 and other formats I don't recall. Resizing while encoding is also supported. Personally, I shot RAW images and converted to HD-sized jpegs in Lightroom to get more exposure latitude and more control over the resizing/sharpening process.

[TwistedShadow]

The built in time lapse feature on the D8XX series camera is neat but I switched to the MC-36 Time Lapse controller. It's been a while but I wanna say I couldn't get my d800 TO shoot in Raw or it would convert everything into a movie. I wanna say it's limited to to 399 photos as well. The MC-36 gives you complete control, you can shoot in Raw and something like 999 photos or more. You can also use it as a remote shutter button cable.

FYI: As cool as the MC-36 is though, it does not come with an on/off switch! So I don't recommend storing it with batteries. You don't need batteries to use it for a remote shutter button, just time lapse.

[AreBee]

Hello forum, I'm Elias.

Hello Elias. Welcome to the Luminous Landscape forum.