Oliver Edwards Photography Blog

I recently bought a replica canon timer remote from ebay to do timelapses amounst other things.

I had a play with it the first day it arrived, I was suprised how easy they are to do, you just push a few buttons then quickime and all done.

Timelapse Photography is a very simple and effective fun way of starting out in the world of video with a stills camera. I see it as a great tool which can be mixed in with other video in order to set the scene or be used as an ‘establishing shot’ similar to the first few pictures in a photojournalism story.

To get started you only really need three things;

1. A camera

2. A tripod

3. A timer Remote.

Being a photographer I allready have a tripod and camera, I just needed to get a timer remote and after a bit of research I decided to get a cheap ebay one for about £20 like this.

Then all you have to do is set it up on a tripod preferably a scene with alot of movement e.g traffic, windy/cloudy areas, high st. etc. Then set the remote off to do its work. This bit can be quite boring so bring a book.

Because when you create the timelapse every photo will be (roughly) 1/30th of a second you have to bear this in mind when setting the intervals between shots. For example if you set the camera to take one photo every minute and you were sat there for an hour, you would only get two seconds of footage.

So if this is your first timelapse I would recommend setting the interval to 10 seconds and sit there for half an hour and you should end up with 6 (30 fremes per second) to 12 (15 (fps) seconds of footage. Then I would move on and do the same thing somewhere else, I different scene to see how they comapare.

When you have finished plug all the jpegs into Quicktime Pro, click open image sequence, choose 30 frames for second then export the timelapse in a smaller format (1080 or 720p HD) to view it properly. You can play around with these settings and import your sequence at 15 frames per second therefore doubling the legnth of your timelapse without too much difference in the look of the timelapse.

Here is a great example of a really funny timelapse which sparked my interest. It is done using a tilt shift lens which makes everything look very small.