I've been doing a lot of time lapse photography for the past few years and here are a handful of shots that turned out pretty well. Timelapses are always a challenge, especially when you're doing light transitions. I'd say for every great one, there are 2 or 3 mediocre ones.
Music is the phenomenal Stars of The Lid. Very atmospheric, epic stuff that feels like it was designed for soundtrack use.
Under the influence of my current time lapse obsession, I found this little gem:
Video won't embed so click the image to go to the page.
In this BBC Video, the Cordyceps fungus infects the brain of the hapless ant, driving it mad. It soon dies and the fungus then continues to grow in the dead ant's cranium, eventually breaking free and releasing spores that will infect any poor ant that happens to be in its vicinity. The cycle beings anew.
Being a lifelong science fiction fan, I can only imagine a similar fungus infecting humans ;) Let's make the movie.
Around the middle of this video, there is an incredible time lapse of the fungus in action. Please, someone hire me to shoot your nature documentary.
I am loving this camera! It's so handy for pre-production - working out camera moves, finding placement and lens choice, working out blocking, etc. Nevermind the fact that it also shoots incredibly high quality raw stills and acceptable quality video.
I'm trying to figure out if we can use the 7D for a time lapse shot on an upcoming job. I did this first time lapse test in medium quality jpeg just to get a feel for the process. I shot it out of my bedroom window in Brooklyn, NY from 10PM to 10AM. 1 frame per minute, Aperture Priority, f/4, ISO 400. I kept the white balance in Auto and I think for the next test I'll set it around 5000k and shoot in the large Raw file. There is an enormous amount of color temperature difference in available light between nighttime and daytime. At night in the city, it's orange with hard green spikes as street lights have a very low CRI. It then gets very, very cool as daylight approaches but the sun has not yet risen. As the sun appears and sunlight hits the color temp is in the 2800-3400k zone and then cools back off to between 5000-6000k once the sun has fully risen. These numbers are obviously crude approximations but you get the idea. Obviously with Raw, you can control these color temps and find an ideal setting for each time period. Or you can just find one setting that looks great for them all. I'm going to try 5000 Kelvin for my next one. I'm having fun with this and can easily see how it could become an obsession.
Canon 7D Time Lapse Test 1 from Ben Cain / Negative Spaces on Vimeo.
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