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jetjaguar

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Original poster
Apr 6, 2009
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I want to make a timelapse video for my short film I need to do for my film class. I just want to show the sky go from day to night. What do I need to do this ? I am using a canon 7d. I know I need a remote or something but the one people recommend is like 144$ from canon. I have seen a canon one on amazon for like 30 dollars. I don't need anything fancy, just something to get it done. Any recommendations?
 
there's one from Aputure (china) that's dirt cheap. i've used it, basically like the canon. Neither are very impressive, should be a built-in function imho.
 
how often should i set it to take a picture ? every 10 min ? or less .. first time doing a timelapse
 
I have this for use for a 7D:

http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Contr...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1302906755&sr=8-2

The instructions are a little confusing but a little trial and error will go a long ways. Generally with drastic exposure changes like a sunrises or sunset, your best be would be to set the camera to Aperture Priority and let it automatically adjust the F-stop; Focus will be an issue as the lens opens up at night as the depth of field will get shallower so leave yourself enough time between exposures to check your focus(thinking you can set your focus to infinity and just leave it throughout will result in out of focus images as the iris opens up). Give yourself enough time to shoot a few sunrises/sunsets.
 
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it's just math. if your night is 6 hours and you want 1 minute of video at 30 fps it's 360(minutes) divided by 1800(frames) or 1 pic every .2 minutes.

i would jump over to vimeo and search timelapse, there's a ton of specific info including step by steps there.
 
Timelapse tips

Hello, as others have said that cheap remote is fine. I use a similar one from ebay and it does the job fine.
You will need to pay close attention to how you setup your camera for this as you will be capturing a wide range of light levels.

Check out this site http://jedypod.com/tips-on-timelapse

Basically set your focus to manual and probably infinity unless you are focusing on a subject.
You have a choice of full manual or aperture priority, (or those are the 2 I would recommend).

Full manual you set it and it stays that way.... which means it won't produce flicker due to the settings jumping about, but also will mean you end up with the end too dark or the start to light.

Aperture priority keeps you aperture fixed (wide open is where I tend to have it) and then allows other settings to change as the light level drops. This can be good for what you describe but may also give you some flickering....

Experiment : )
 
Can you borrow a cam with it?

Maybe you can borrow a video camera that has interval recording built-in. It might be simpler.

I've got a Panasonic video camera with it and it works well. In the owner's manual they suggest as examples:

Sunsets. Recording Interval: 1 second / Shooting time: 30 min to 60 min / Video length 1.25 min to 2.5 min.

Butterfly emrging from coccon. Recording Interval: 10 seconds / Shooting time: 2 hours to 4 hours / Video length 30 seconds to 60 seconds

Flowers blooming. Recording Interval: 30 seconds / Shooting time: 1 hours to 3 hours / Video length: 5 seconds to 15 seconds

Good luck.
 
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