Time lapse tool photos out of order
But I’ve been revisiting my photo spots frequently enough to yield “true time lapse.” This approach takes some discipline and perseverance, but it doesn’t take any special purchases or planning. This approach has something in common with a “time study,” where someone sets up a fixed reference point such as a tripod out in a field, revisits it to capture images at longer intervals, and then fades or cuts between the results to simulate gradual change. I’ve also been using the corners of railings and ledges and steps and benches, and the tops of square posts, and other analogous physical reference points as makeshift pseudo-tripods. The first such spot I hit upon was the window looking out of my office at home: I place my camera on the top rail of the lower sash, slide it along with the lens square against the pane until it runs up against the jamb, and then take a picture of the scenery outside. Instead, I’ve been identifying spots where I can put my camera back in (almost) exactly the same position time and time again, day after day, week after week, month after month. And I haven’t needed to leave even that in place anywhere for long periods of time. That’s a disincentive for tackling unusually long durations, such as a whole year, and a real impediment in the way of capturing multiple long-term scenes simultaneously.īut for the past fifteen months, I’ve been taking time-lapse photo sequences using nothing but a handheld Panasonic DMC-ZS8. Moreover, all that gear traditionally gets tied up for however long it takes to capture each individual time-lapse sequence. On those grounds, it may not seem like something the average person could undertake casually. Time-lapse photography is pretty cool, and time-lapse photography covering long spans of time is especially cool-after all, who wouldn’t appreciate watching a familiar scene cycle rapidly through the seasons of the year with (say) the leaves turning color, falling, and growing back in a matter of seconds? But this sort of thing is generally assumed to require a certain minimum of gear: a tripod for stability, an intervalometer to trigger shots at programmed intervals, a neutral density filter, a powerful battery. Be forewarned that there are some large animated GIFs ahead-depending on time of day, you may want to go grab a beer or a cup of coffee while they load.
I’ll also share a Photoshop script I cobbled together to automate much of the process, which would otherwise be prohibitively time-consuming.
In this post, I’ll explain what I’ve been doing to try to get decent-looking results. Lately I’ve been creating some long-term time-lapse stills and animations out of photos I’ve taken with an ordinary handheld camera.