This post is written for anyone interested in what it takes to make a time lapse film or is looking for time lapse tips and guidance. I couldn’t find all of this information in one place so this is my attempt to put it together and reduce the spin-up time for those getting started in time lapse photography.
I was planning on shooting a short time lapse film so I needed a lot of equipment. I packed up a few days earlier so that I could head straight for State College. Some of the equipment that I took is below:
2 Bogen Magic Arms and Super Clamps, 2 Tripods, 1 Milapse rotating telescope mount for sweeping time lapses, 3 Canon dSLR’s and a bunch of lenses, and 2 Canon intervalometers. These are just the basics. I obviously brought a lot of support equipment like batteries, power strips, pocketwizards (to daisychain intervalometers), laptops, card readers, etc.
Well, THON 2010 came and went. I took off from work early and drove through 4 rush hours (DC, Baltimore, North Baltimore/PA, and Harrisburg) to get there in time to photograph it. My main objective this year was to improve upon my time lapse film from last year’s THON 2009. The plan was to create more of a short film this year composed of numerous time lapse angles of different things. I purchased a bunch of equipment, including a new rotating tripod head to be used for slowly rotating time lapse shots. I will go more into detail about the behind-the-scenes of this shoot in a future post. I captured over 13,000 images that I stitched together in the film below.
I have to thank Scott Lukas for being such an incredible help to me all weekend. I could not have made this film without him. He helped me position cameras, started cameras for me when I was sleeping, and coordinated his whole stage crew to aid me. The crew was awesome and they did a great job not only helping me, but working behind the scenes at THON. At the end of THON, I had two cameras set up in remote, hard to get to, positions. Of course, things also got crazy for them at the end of THON with everything else that was happening on the floor. Within 10 minutes, I had to position a camera in the catwalk, start it, move it once everyone sat down, and then rush down to the floor so that I could shoot the end with a handheld camera. At the same time, another camera that I had positioned 10 feet above the concourse had to be started with a ladder that we had hid on the other side of the arena. Without a LOT of planning and the crew’s help, shots like that could never have happened. I had three cameras going at the same time at TOTALLY different locations very far apart from each other in the arena.
Thanks to my friend and film editor, Ian Jefferys, who did a fantastic job editing the film. Thanks to my friend Jason Davoli for providing me with his music from his new CD for the soundtrack. You can check out his new CD at www.jasondavoli.com. You can actually see Jason and Dan (who plays the fiddle in Free) and their band, Lowjack, performing at THON at 1:37 in my film. If you watch closely, you can even see me shooting them up close halfway into the shot.
I stitched together a few images to create this panoramic image. Funny enough, I didn’t even remember this, but when I was zooming in on it, Tucker Haas is performing on the stage. You can see the photo bigger here.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 4 17mm images, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 29 mm, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)
I thought it was cool that they created a heart.
(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)
The final line dance.
(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)
I was one of the few people to know that there was going to be confetti shooting off during the announcement of the total because the stage crew was helping me with my cameras all weekend. I know they worked hard to create the confetti shooters and were excited about it. I thought it went really well and looked good.
I had to be up in the catwalk above the BJC so that I could move one of my cameras after it captured the sit-down to a different position to capture the final announcement. After everyone sat down, I quickly (but very safely) moved my camera to the other side of the catwalk and rushed all the way down to the floor (which included multiple ladders, a lot of stairs, and several crowds to wade through) to get in position to shoot the announcement with my handheld Canon 1D Mark IV. I didn’t have enough time to get through all the people to the back so that I could get a straight-on shot, so my shot sucks. But I knew I had the backup shot from the top of the catwalk (see first image in this post), so I didn’t feel too bad about it because I knew no one else had that shot.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 31 mm, 1/100, f/2.8, ISO 800)
The mass of people trying to leave the Bryce Jordan Center.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 15 mm, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 100)
For those of you reading an RSS feed, head over to my website and you will be greeted with a new face. I have updated the design to make it look less like it was created in the 1970’s and bring me into the future. I also completely revamped things behind the scenes, moving away from a platform that I wrote myself to WordPress. I’m very happy with both the new design and the ease and cleanliness of WordPress.
Work has been canceled for me the past two days so I spent the time doing a much-needed portfolio update. I printed out contact sheets of all my best photos and cut them up into tiny little squares to organize them into categories. I came up with some new categories and eliminated some others. I haven’t done a significant update to my portfolio in about 2 years so it feels much better to have my latest work on display instead of old stuff as I’ve gotten much better.
I just got back from Germany. I start my new job on Monday, pending the snow doesn’t make it impossible. I was in Hamburg visiting my friend, Chris. We took a short trip from Hamburg to Berlin. It was quite a trip to Germany. I got my wallet stolen and then recovered (with cash and cards) by the police, we were ditched by our ride back to Hamburg from Berlin, and a 45 minute flight delay because of a little snow in Hamburg caused me to stay an extra night in London. Overall though, it was a ton of fun.
I’ve been shooting with the 1D Mark IV for a little under a month now and I have to say that I really like it. It’s a huge improvement overa all cameras that I’ve owned. My biggest gripe is that I’m unhappy with the ISO performance as I was expecting a performance boost over the 5D Mark II that I loved and instead experienced a downgrade. I have noticed that the files are considerably noisier than the 5D – where I wouldn’t hesitate to go up to 3200, I now think twice about going to 1600 on the 1D.
I’ve been back from Kenya for about two weeks and I’ve finished my photos just in time for my trip to Germany this week.
I’ve really been working on my editing technique which you can see in the photos. We had a lot of fun in Kenya; saw lots of elephants, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, lions, cheetahs, leopards, and more. I flew into Nairobi and visited four parks while there; Sweetwaters, Masai Mara, Lake Nakuru, and Amboseli National Park.
In total, I shot 5,366 photos, 70 videos, totaling 143GB.
All photos are available to see in this gallery.
The photos are geotagged and you can see them on a map by clicking on the “Map This” link above each photo or view all of them here.
New Feature: you can now order prints of the photos right from within the gallery!
I also shot some video directly on my still camera. The Canon 5D Mark II captures really excellent video and, although none of it is production quality because I didn’t have the right supports and wasn’t there to capture video, it’s very interesting to watch nonetheless.
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/640, f/2, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/4000, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/30, f/2.8, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/5000, f/2, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/640, f/4.5, ISO 640)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 19mm, 1/200, f/9, ISO 50)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)
I’ve recently purchased a SmugMug account and am going to begin selling photos through the above URL. Check back in a week for my most popular photos now available for purchase online.
Also, you might have noticed that some of the photos are starting to say Canon 1D Mark IV. I’m now shooting with one and love it. I sold my 5DII and now shoot with just 1D’s. I wish I had the 1DIV for my Kenya trip, but it came in the week that I returned. Speaking of Kenya, I’m now editing my 150gb of photos and should have them up within the next few weeks.
