Shooting time lapse video has been made a piece of cake thanks to the DSLR. Here is a quick how-to on how to shoot time lapse video with your DSLR.

1. Setup

Setting up for the timelapse is a surprisingly complicated affair. No – it’s not difficult in the intellectual sense, but it ceratinly is in the “I better remember to do all of these silly things…” sense.

Anything that can impact exposure through the course of the image (as controlled by the camera of course) needs to be considered. My shortlist when setting the camera up (after placing it on a sturdy tripod that is protected from tripping or a breeze:

• Manually Focus Scene as desired, and switch OFF Autofocus.
• Select the White balace for the scene. Do NOT use ‘auto’ as changes to the scene will cause your colour to shift through the timelapse! Select the option that makes the most sense. Daylight, cloud, indoor etc.
• Ensure that if you have an “Auto power off” function that it is set to longer than your frame interval – or off altogether.
• If you CAN, set your “Display” off so that you aren’t paying battery power to display information when you aren’t watching for the next two hours…
• Last but not least, set your image size and quality to just exceed the maximum for HD quality video. 1080p video is 1920 x 1080 pixels, so for most DSLR’s over 10 megapixels, you can use the lowest JPG quality (as long as it’s bigger), in fine or superfine mode. This should allow over 1250 images minimum on a 2gb card.

2. Exposure Control
Now that you’ve got the camera set up – you’ll need to work over your exposure. Over the course of time, your exposure will be subject to change. Clouds, sunlight, shadow, angle – whatever may move in your scene can impact exposure. You’ve got two choices. Let the camera deal with it – which will provide exposure changes from frame to frame, or go manual.

If you are looking for consistency and ‘natural’ appearance, You are best to expose the scene manually, using the metering as a guide. Shoot a frame, and decide if you want to over or underexpose now, for better exposure later. Check the aperture and shutter settings from your favourite shot, and hop into manual mode, setting the exposure to match.

Take another frame, confirming your choice of white balance. You are going to be babysitting this rig for the next few hours without touching – so make sure you’re happy now.

As a side note – if you are looking at shooting a scene with people, animals, or other moving objects, and you’re shooting 6 or 10 frames a minute (or more) consider using a slow shutter speed to blur the motion in the frames just a tad. It will reduce the jerkiness of frame changes (visually anyway) by adding a ‘blurred’ component.

3. Timing exposures
Video for the desktop is produced in one of two formats:
Digital Video at 30 frames per second, or Cinema at just shy of 24 frames per second.

Knowing what style you want to use for your output video, you now need to determine the intervals of your frames. The more frequent the frames are shot, the less time will elapse over the course of your final movie. If you have an idea of what you want to shoot, and how long you want the resulting video to be follow the math to determine what intervals to follow. (Assume we’re outputting digital video at 30 frames / second.

I’d like to shoot 1.5 hours of sunset and have it last 15 seconds on screen.

15 sec of video = 15 x 30 = 900 frames
1.5 hours = 60x60x1.5 = 5400 seconds
5400 / 900 = 6 seconds

In this case, your sunset will require 6 second intervals between shots, for a total of 900 frames, which at 30 frames a second is 15 seconds of video.

Yes. 900 frames.

Shall we say this again? 900 frames.

Why am I beating this point to death? How many exposures do YOUR batteries last? Have some spares handy.

4. Shooting (Timer / Intervalometer Manual
Now the hard or easy or expensive part. How do you trigger the exposures? At a minimum, you’ll be sitting with a watch, clicking a cable release on your intervals. Some SLR’s have the ‘interval’ feature, though they are few and far between. Most manufacturers of serious DSLR’s (Canon, Nikon, Pentax) offer a higher end cable release (like the Canon TC80-N3) which run for around $200-300. Please note – cheaper asian versions exist. Your mileage with these may vary. Wires on mine broke on the first cold night I used it.

For Canon Powershot and 400D users, the latest firmware hacks add this functionality to the camera along with some other cool features. Again – your mileage may vary, but personally I’m thrilled with the hack on my XTi.

5. Creating video from the stills
For Mac and Windows OS’s there are a number of packages that do this job. For Mac, Quicktime Pro will create a full quality MOV file from raw frames of JPG, at one frame per second. Similarly you can use “iMovie HD” by importing photos with a length of 0:01 (0 Minutes, 1 frame) to a project, and exporting it as DV to your movie editor of choice (if that isn’t iMovie HD).

Windows Movie maker also supports the import of stills at 1 frame per image. You’ll need to be comfortable with your video package, but my quess is – you are or you wouldn’t be looking at this How-To.

Import – edit – do your worst – then, share it!

6. Sharing your output.
Only a short bit here – share your work! The more you share and get comments on, the better you’ll get at this technique. Practice it – use it – and most of all, add it to you bag of tricks for when you’ve just gotta have something cool in your video.

You can share on a number of sources. YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, Facebook, Flickr – there are dozens of options.

Just do it!

Like Charlie Sheen says: “Nike’s slogan isn’t ‘Just Try It’….”

If you use this tutorial, and want to share your sucesses (or failures) just drop me a comment!

Cheers!

If there really was such a place – I don’t know if I’d walk there at night. At least until the markets close. Cutthroat and conniving, the stalkers are running amok!

Empire Avenue invites users to buy and trade stalk (er.. stock) in their friends and social media acquaintances. Value is derived through a combination of factors, including social influence, activity, and content through one of several sources. Bloggers, twitter-kind, and Facebookers can take their daily contributions and turn them into ‘eaves’ – a social currency with which to buy and sell more stalk (er… stock).

Last night, the #YEG (that would be Edmonton) stalkers met at Runway 29 for our first Empire Avenue Board Meeting. Thus far – the growth of EA in Edmonton has been primarily via word-of-twitter, so the folks in attendance in no-small part had existing relationships from the 140 character world.

Meat-space therefore entered meet-space.

Faces to names – it was interesting to note that these folks were all quite eloquent, and capable of far more than 140 character conversations. Talk of EA and talk of twitter wrapped around talk of family, interests, work and most importantly social media. Opinions varied wildly around the table with respect to purpose, use, and value – proving only that social media is as it’s name implies – Social. Groups wax and wane, contacts come and go, and in the end you are left with a loose social circle attached to another loose social circle attached to a loose social circle.

You could perhaps view relationships in social media (or twitter anyway) as a Venn diagram like the Olympic rings. At each intersecting circle, is a single user who provides access via re-tweet to another circle. We have some common interests but our own broader circles to share within and through.

Demographically – we were all very similar. Around the mid-thirties, deliciously attractive people with income and electronic gadget fetishes. A marketers dream… but that my friends is another blog post.

Talk of the evening turned to technology and full circle to Empire – where strategy filled conversation highlighted the purpose of systems like Empire. Some come to play the game, while others see it as a valuable networking tool. Some see entertainment, some see true value from the content made available through the network of stalk (er… stock) picks. Either way – it’s clear there is some passion amongst the players. I must report one other exciting happening – @adrielhampton [(e)Adriel from Empire] is not only real – but will show you his fork on command!

Empire was present at the table with two shining examples of why start-ups are so exciting. Brad Grier and Tom Ohle – influential folks in the world of Empire Avenue were on hand to observe, ask questions, listen, and offer insight to the challenges and direction of EAV. In the end I think we all came out with a better handle on the game that is Empire Avenue but we also received more than that. Faces and personality to match the 140 character avatars.

Meet-space in Meat-space is wonderful. Particularly when you turn e-lationships into networking opportunities. All for the price of… a little stalk.

Facebook was a great example of Social Media, however the reach available to those ‘using’ it is limited in a great part to those contacts you already have. Given the noise and clutter of a service like facebook – you are competing on a daily basis with first-poops, got-drunk-and-fell-downs, hairballs, and emo grumblings from your fifth cousin 3 times removed to share your message. Oh – and by the way, the folks at facebook have probably shared that with the websites you visit too.

Location based services idealized by FourSquare (www.foursquare.com) and GoWalla (www.gowalla.com) provide a solid measure of Social content, but based around business and services. If you aren’t a social driver – as in car – you won’t often collide with the power-users of these systems. Content is limited in most cases to shouts of “I ate a pancake!” and “Yum! Breakfast for Lunch!”. Aside from the dubious ‘mayoral’ offerings, these tools are squarely targeted at promoting little more than shopping behaviour and gastronomic scheduling. They are also quite good (so says mediabistro) at pointing out when you aren’t home.

Then there are the ‘sharing myself’ crowd of services. Blip.fm, YouTube, MySpace, Reddit, and a host of others (this is actually a class that can be described as a ‘plethora’ of sites). These sites have loose communities of ‘regulars’ but again serve a targeted content form. Music, video, pictures what have you. Again valuable, but as a business or person attempting to use these services for personal or business gain – there are so many choices and each has such narrow content forms, they must be used as a collection because no one service can truly serve as a social cornerstone.

There are a few services however that do fulfil that ‘cornerstone’ niche. Most notably twitter.

With all the news, traditional media buzz, cellphone capability, ubiquitous ‘follow-me’ on every website, there are few who aren’t familiar with it. Or at least the name anyway. The 140 character explosions of dialog are succinct and take little time to peruse. Content is provided through links to other services, but you’ve still got a very capable social machine.

Following people based on shared interests or target demographics gives you a source for news and content that fits your interests, and there are routine meatspace opportunities to get face to face with many of your local stalkees (err – virtual aquaintences).

But does talking over a medium like twitter make you social? Does it make you an ‘influencer’ of any kind? If you want more than entertainment from a service like twitter it takes commitment.

1. Social media is only useful if you are useful.

Without your contribution, your followers (if you have any) won’t derive value from you. No value means no mindshare. No mindshare means you don’t exist in the social media world. Followers follow because you provide entertainment, enlightenment, or ego-stroking. Be yourself. Talk about things that you are knowledgeable about, interested in and can provide value for others.

2. Social media isn’t social.

You can’t think of social media as a cocktail party. It’s not social. While you will find and attract connections that share your interests, passion, or expertise, more often than not these connections will never see you face to face. Social media is not a dating engine, though I’m sure that it’s been done – sort of. These connections however can and will offer value in return once you’ve established some credibility.

3. Influence is a noun.

“The power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways” says Merriam Webster. The ideal definition despite it’s 14th century etymology. Your influence is a measure of your social value in the Social Media world. Without the awareness and grasp of the first two points above, this one cannot be leveraged. Your involvement, contribution, humility, humour, intellect, personality, persistence, and expertise all build this power. With all of these things in place – you will indeed be able to exert that influence on your followers and connections. If that is important to you of course…

The best users of social media are those who embrace the technology and don’t try to hard. They are genuine, thoughtful, and provide real substance to the areas for which they are passionate. These are the people who become true influencers. In general there are few of these folks. I can tell you this however. If you USE twitter and are paying attention to #1 and #2, you’re following one. If you want to be one, listen to your followers. If you don’t have any followers – I guarantee you aren’t one.

Provide that value, provide that expertise and experience. When your value extends past the 140 characters into the land of flesh and blood, then you’ve crossed that line.

Sites like the new “Empire Avenue” (@EmpireAve on Twitter) strive to put a real value on the intangible value of an influencer. But is it accurate? Ultimately these tools are rough estimates of value, but in the world of Social Media, the most valuable influencer is the one who provides real value to you the individual, not person voted most likely to succeed.

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You can follow Greg on Twitter @gscratch or Join Empire Avenue and purchase a little of the zombie stock (e) SCRAT.

They bill themselves as the ‘coolest agency in the land’. Having worked with some of the ‘bigs’ like DDB and the ‘smalls’ like Edmonton’s own Snowglobe – they are most definitely one of the coolest in the land.  That’s not to be taken as a ‘dis’ against the ‘bigs’ or especially the ‘smalls’ as they all bring great things to the table, but Darryl and his crew really do have the full package.  Branding, media, web-integration, social media, etc – they’ve got the skills to pull it off.

I just wish they were closer to me, or I closer to them.  I know that we’d work with them in a heartbeat (we being my employer) and I have the utmost respect for their opennes, humility, and work ethic.

If you are in the Motor city, or along the route through the mid-west to New Orleans, you really should be watching for the plaid wagon – a visit would be most excellent.

Check out the tour at http://www.plaidnation.com and Plaid – The Agency at http://www.thinkplaid.com

- G.